30 days of television: Day 7
Jun. 14th, 2010 10:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccDay 07 - Least favorite episode of your favorite TV show
OK, that one's easy.
Battlestar Galactica: The Woman King.
This was the first episode of Battlestar that we turned to each other and went "well that was pretty ordinary." The IMDB synopsis is: When a group of refugees board Galactica with a curable illness, it becomes very mysterious when they begin to die after taking the injection they do not believe in.
This had the potential to be interesting (although "a group of refugees" - ffs, they're all refugees, talk about miss the point - although reading on I think it was written by someone with English as a second language, as "taking the injection" is a bit off) because not a lot really had been said about the differences between the cultures of the 12 colonies, and how that would interplay. Most people on Galactica were identified as Caprican, the culture aboard Galactica was a Caprican/military culture. So having a large group of Sagittarons suddenly having to find room on the ship could have lead to some more interesting ideas - as could the idea of having a large group of non-military personnel who'd just spent about a year in a concentration camp actually living on a military ship actually. But it didn't. What it led to was the same theme as in Babylon 5 season 1 "Believers", only less well done. There was no real getting to grips with the colony differences, just cardboard poses by characters that didn't fit in with who they'd become, and where there was a lot of telling that didn't come from the characters and not a lot of showing. They didn't really even manage to get the Sagittaron point of view across at all, which was just annoying actually. One of the things that summed it up for me was the reaction of the TWOP editors to an almost throwaway line in the episode: "Of the Picons he treated, 12% of them died, Capricans -- oh, he likes Capricans -- the mortality rate was 6%. Sagittarons? 90%. Ninety percent of the Sagittarons died while in his care." And just like that, we've gone from a so-so crappy episode about medical ethics to a very crappy story about...serial killers who do things for literally no reason whatsoever. ["I also like the idea that he's letting twice as many Picons die as Capricans, and no one thinks to mention that." -- Joe R]"
Which yeah. In better episodes of the series it would have been mentioned, if only to discount that it wasn't underlying genetic differences in the groups. The issue of medical resources, which should have been the main theme of the episode, was almost completely ignored. The two threads together should have made for a very good episode, and if they'd ignored having this new character and made it about Doc Cottle and the refugees and the resources and ongoing cultural clashes it would have been a good episode. The 'abortion' episode was fantastic - not least because it did all of the above, but it came from the characters, and importantly you could see how they got there. Roslin didn't suddenly decide to completely change her long-time beliefs out of the blue, she was forced into a situation which could only have occurred because of the genocide and which was completely in keeping with her character making hard, and personally repellent decisions. Her response to the Gemenon priestess ("you've had your pound of flesh") when the priestess demanded the return of the Gemenon girl to her to be punished showed how much she hated making that decision, just how much it cost her, and how much she disliked aspects of the Gemenon fundamentalism, even when she was using it as part of her own leadership strategy. (And you knew that Doc Cottle would ignore the new law if he thought he could get away with it - he'd been managing it to that point, and doctors were in short supply so why not?)
The Woman King (even the title sucks) was a very ordinary episode. It was an episode that in a lot of other SF series would have been good (the acting, the sets etc), but for this series was just bad.
Battlestar Galactica: Daybreak, part 2.
And then you have the final ever episode of Battlestar. Ok, it was always going to be difficult to wrap up the series. But when you've spent almost two and a half seasons developing this damn visions theme, at least pay it off in the final episodes. The pay off to the vision of Hera in the opera house was amazingly bad. The actual ending annoyed the absolute crap out of me, to the point that I wandered off in the middle to make coffee. To be honest I really liked this episode right up to the point of the Hera/Opera House reveal, at which point it started going downhill fast. Then it picked up even more speed and slammed into the wall. I could live with them landing on Earth - but the whole "no, abandon cities! go back to nature! Civilisation leads to genocide by killer robots!" theme really, really, really annoyed me. As I said to Dean I would have had fewer problems with them founding Atlantis, and spreading out from there. (Dean to me: rubbish. You'd have whinged about that too.) I did feel incredibly sorry for the groups that got sent out to colonise Australia in hunter/gatherer style, having read Guns, Germs and Steel and being aware of the lack of cultivatable indigenous plants here (macadamia nuts. That's the total). Considering they'd just spent all this time getting across the galaxy, making peace with the Cylon faction who wanted it and keeping their tiny, tiny band of ever-diminishing survivors alive it seemed like a bloody waste to chuck it all away by spreading out onto different continents to die in even tinier groups instead of just building a city and learning to live together. (And then the final final reveal in New York City, modern day, made it even less worthwhile. Sheesh. We're all descended from one Cylon/human hybrid (Hera), which you think might have shown up in our DNA as being alien to the rest of life on Earth or something. So all the rest of the poor little group of refugees died out. Meh.)
I don't know how I wanted it to end - not at all if possible, although that never is - but certainly better than how it did. They did try and wrap up all the threads, but ergh it was frustrating!! I hated Starbuck's conclusion, I hated Lee's apparent lack of reaction to the almost simultaneous loss of Starbuck, his father, Roslin, everyone he'd ever known, I hated Galen going off to Iceland or Greenland or wherever to die of self-loathing, I hated so much of this ending. I hated the sheer stupidity of going "back to nature". I hated what they did to Anders, although in fairness I think he got the best end-deal of the characters. I guess what I wanted was a way forward for the Cylons and humans; one that made so many of the sacrifices worthwhile, one that gave hope for their future and the possibility of permanent reconciliation and healing and forgiveness. And instead we got "oh yeah, you're all descendants of Hera and everyone else died." Thanks. Meh. Even the Opera House vision resolution was less irritating than that (barely.) For a series that spent four seasons exploring the theme of what makes us human it was annoying to discover their final answer was actually "stupidity".
OK, that one's easy.
Battlestar Galactica: The Woman King.
This was the first episode of Battlestar that we turned to each other and went "well that was pretty ordinary." The IMDB synopsis is: When a group of refugees board Galactica with a curable illness, it becomes very mysterious when they begin to die after taking the injection they do not believe in.
This had the potential to be interesting (although "a group of refugees" - ffs, they're all refugees, talk about miss the point - although reading on I think it was written by someone with English as a second language, as "taking the injection" is a bit off) because not a lot really had been said about the differences between the cultures of the 12 colonies, and how that would interplay. Most people on Galactica were identified as Caprican, the culture aboard Galactica was a Caprican/military culture. So having a large group of Sagittarons suddenly having to find room on the ship could have lead to some more interesting ideas - as could the idea of having a large group of non-military personnel who'd just spent about a year in a concentration camp actually living on a military ship actually. But it didn't. What it led to was the same theme as in Babylon 5 season 1 "Believers", only less well done. There was no real getting to grips with the colony differences, just cardboard poses by characters that didn't fit in with who they'd become, and where there was a lot of telling that didn't come from the characters and not a lot of showing. They didn't really even manage to get the Sagittaron point of view across at all, which was just annoying actually. One of the things that summed it up for me was the reaction of the TWOP editors to an almost throwaway line in the episode: "Of the Picons he treated, 12% of them died, Capricans -- oh, he likes Capricans -- the mortality rate was 6%. Sagittarons? 90%. Ninety percent of the Sagittarons died while in his care." And just like that, we've gone from a so-so crappy episode about medical ethics to a very crappy story about...serial killers who do things for literally no reason whatsoever. ["I also like the idea that he's letting twice as many Picons die as Capricans, and no one thinks to mention that." -- Joe R]"
Which yeah. In better episodes of the series it would have been mentioned, if only to discount that it wasn't underlying genetic differences in the groups. The issue of medical resources, which should have been the main theme of the episode, was almost completely ignored. The two threads together should have made for a very good episode, and if they'd ignored having this new character and made it about Doc Cottle and the refugees and the resources and ongoing cultural clashes it would have been a good episode. The 'abortion' episode was fantastic - not least because it did all of the above, but it came from the characters, and importantly you could see how they got there. Roslin didn't suddenly decide to completely change her long-time beliefs out of the blue, she was forced into a situation which could only have occurred because of the genocide and which was completely in keeping with her character making hard, and personally repellent decisions. Her response to the Gemenon priestess ("you've had your pound of flesh") when the priestess demanded the return of the Gemenon girl to her to be punished showed how much she hated making that decision, just how much it cost her, and how much she disliked aspects of the Gemenon fundamentalism, even when she was using it as part of her own leadership strategy. (And you knew that Doc Cottle would ignore the new law if he thought he could get away with it - he'd been managing it to that point, and doctors were in short supply so why not?)
The Woman King (even the title sucks) was a very ordinary episode. It was an episode that in a lot of other SF series would have been good (the acting, the sets etc), but for this series was just bad.
Battlestar Galactica: Daybreak, part 2.
And then you have the final ever episode of Battlestar. Ok, it was always going to be difficult to wrap up the series. But when you've spent almost two and a half seasons developing this damn visions theme, at least pay it off in the final episodes. The pay off to the vision of Hera in the opera house was amazingly bad. The actual ending annoyed the absolute crap out of me, to the point that I wandered off in the middle to make coffee. To be honest I really liked this episode right up to the point of the Hera/Opera House reveal, at which point it started going downhill fast. Then it picked up even more speed and slammed into the wall. I could live with them landing on Earth - but the whole "no, abandon cities! go back to nature! Civilisation leads to genocide by killer robots!" theme really, really, really annoyed me. As I said to Dean I would have had fewer problems with them founding Atlantis, and spreading out from there. (Dean to me: rubbish. You'd have whinged about that too.) I did feel incredibly sorry for the groups that got sent out to colonise Australia in hunter/gatherer style, having read Guns, Germs and Steel and being aware of the lack of cultivatable indigenous plants here (macadamia nuts. That's the total). Considering they'd just spent all this time getting across the galaxy, making peace with the Cylon faction who wanted it and keeping their tiny, tiny band of ever-diminishing survivors alive it seemed like a bloody waste to chuck it all away by spreading out onto different continents to die in even tinier groups instead of just building a city and learning to live together. (And then the final final reveal in New York City, modern day, made it even less worthwhile. Sheesh. We're all descended from one Cylon/human hybrid (Hera), which you think might have shown up in our DNA as being alien to the rest of life on Earth or something. So all the rest of the poor little group of refugees died out. Meh.)
I don't know how I wanted it to end - not at all if possible, although that never is - but certainly better than how it did. They did try and wrap up all the threads, but ergh it was frustrating!! I hated Starbuck's conclusion, I hated Lee's apparent lack of reaction to the almost simultaneous loss of Starbuck, his father, Roslin, everyone he'd ever known, I hated Galen going off to Iceland or Greenland or wherever to die of self-loathing, I hated so much of this ending. I hated the sheer stupidity of going "back to nature". I hated what they did to Anders, although in fairness I think he got the best end-deal of the characters. I guess what I wanted was a way forward for the Cylons and humans; one that made so many of the sacrifices worthwhile, one that gave hope for their future and the possibility of permanent reconciliation and healing and forgiveness. And instead we got "oh yeah, you're all descendants of Hera and everyone else died." Thanks. Meh. Even the Opera House vision resolution was less irritating than that (barely.) For a series that spent four seasons exploring the theme of what makes us human it was annoying to discover their final answer was actually "stupidity".
