Let the Best of 2009 lists continue!  I hope you all enjoyed my list of the Top 10 TV Episodes of 2009.

Now let’s dive into my list of the Top 10 DVDs (or Blu-Rays) released in 2009!

First, I’d like to give Honorable Mentions to the complete series sets of three amazing TV shows that I had just about given up all hope of ever seeing on DVD: It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and Andy Barker, P.I. So why aren’t these shows on my list?  Because I can’t put anything on this list that I haven’t actually watched, and I’ve been way, way too busy to get through any of these sets.  Of the three, the only one I own is Andy Richter Controls the Universe.  (That one came out first, and I’m not going to purchase the other two sets until I actually have time to watch them.)  But I take great delight in knowing that these three DVD sets exist here on planet Earth, and I know that I’ll get to them all in good time.

10. Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut (Blu-ray) — I’ve seen Watchmen quite a few times since it was released early in 2009, and while the film certainly has some weaknesses, I remain overwhelmed by the enormity of its successes.  It’s hard to believe that Zach Snyder brought this seminal graphic novel by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons, which long had been considered unadaptable, to life.  It thrills me to see such a faithful take on the material and that the filmmakers had the confidence to craft a super-hero film that was aimed squarely at adults.  The Ultimate Cut of the film is Zach Snyder’s longest version, stitching together his Director’s Cut with the animated Tales of the Black Freighter sequences.  It’s pretty astounding.  This Blu-Ray set would be much higher on this list were it not for the paltry special features.  Not only are the special features lame (this is a movie that cries out for a full-fledged making-of documentary), but this set just reproduces the special features that were already released on the Director’s Cut set.  (I guess I’ve been spoiled by the amazing extended editions of the Lord of the Rings films, which came not just with phenomenal extended versions of the films but with extraordinarily elaborate making-of documentaries that didn’t duplicate the special features on the theatrical version DVDs.)  (Read my review of the theatrical version of Watchmen here, and of the Director’s Cut here.)

9. Contact (Blu-Ray) — A beautiful film that manages to combine a serious, cerebral sci-fi tale with an effecting story of the personal journey of scientist Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster).  This is director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) working at the top of his game.  The special effects are elaborate but never come close to overwhelming the story.  It’s a terrific special edition, chock full of special features, and the film looks positively STUNNING on Blu-Ray.  (Read my full review here.)

8. Homicide: The Criterion Collection — Another film that I have been waiting a long, long time to be released on DVD.  David Mamet’s 1991 film follows detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) and his investigation of the murder of an elderly Jewish shop owner.  What follows is a great, twisty Mamet tale, filled with tough guys and double-crosses.  But what gives the film its weight is the way the investigation story-line is wrapped in a deeper story of Bobby’s struggles with his Jewish identity.  The fine folks at Criterion hit another one out of the park with this beautiful new edition.  (My full review of Homicide is coming soon, but click here for my thoughts on a variety of other films by David Mamet.)

7. Eddie Izzard: Live From Wembley — It’s been a long, long wait since Eddie Izzard’s last stand-up DVD.  (That would be Circle, released back in 2002).  Live From Wembley isn’t exactly the freshest material — the footage is from Eddie’s Sexie tour, from several years back.  And the camera-work is surprisingly amateurish in places (quite a few shots are rather blurry, and there are several instances where Eddie isn’t properly framed on-screen).  But forget all that — it’s new Eddie Izzard stand-up material, and the performance (while not reaching the heights of Dress to Kill), is superb and very, very funny.  There’s also a terrific special feature on the disc: 40 minutes of Eddie’s stand-up from long before Live From Wembley, in which we can see him beginning to work out some of the material that would eventually be included in his Sexie show.  It’s a funny performance, and a neat look into his process.

6. Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder – The fourth and final installment in the series of Futurama direct-to-DVD films.  In this one, Fry gets inducted into a secret organization of telepaths (that have been popping up in the background of the show since its very beginning).  The film’s wide-reaching story also deals with Leela’s involvement with a group of eco-terrorists, Bender’s affair with the wife of a robot mobster, and a lot of other zaniness.  At the time, it looked like this was the end of Futurama, and the film’s final scene provided a wonderful capstone to the series’ run.  Luckily, the show has once again risen from the grave, and new episodes are being produced to air on Cartoon Network.  Hooray!  (Read my full review here.)

5. Star Trek: The Motion Picture Collection (Blu-Ray) — Star Trek comes to Blu-Ray with this fabulous set containing nicely spruced-up editions of the first six Star Trek films.  The films themselves have never looked or sounded better, and there have been a number of new featurettes created for each film.  (The set also includes almost all of the special features from the previous DVD releases.)  I still wish that the featurettes had been edited together into a longer, more comprehensive documentary for each film, but I can live without that.  Extra props to the makers of this set for choosing to use the original theatrical versions of Star Trek II and Star Trek VI on these discs.  (The previous Special Edition DVDs of those two films used slightly re-edited versions, which I found to be rather inferior to the original versions.)  For a die-hard Trek fan like myself, this set is a treasure.  (Click here for my full review of the Blu-Ray release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.)

4. Will Ferrell: You’re Welcome, America — A recording of Will Ferrell’s stage show featuring him as Geroge W. Bush, looking back on his eight years as President.  I was a bit dubious, at first, as to whether Ferrell’s Bush impersonation could really sustain my interest for 90 minutes, but it unquestionably did.  The show is well-crafted — while the focus is on Ferrell’s monologues on Bush, there is also good fun to be had with short appearances by other characters, which keeps things interesting.  But all that would be moot if Ferrell’s Bush wasn’t so relentlessly entertaining.  My favorite moments of the show are when he dives fully into total insanity, such as his elaborate and manic story about being trapped in a mine shaft with his father.  We’re lucky that this live show has been captured for us all to enjoy.

3. Battlestar Galactica: The Plan — Ron Moore’s reinvention of Battlestar Galactica takes its final bow in this tour-de-force direct-to-DVD film.  Diving deep into the show’s mythology, The Plan winds the clock back to just before the events of the original Battlestar Galactica mini-series, and then shows us the events of the show’s first two seasons from the point of view of the Cylons.  Cleverly weaving in-and-around the events that we saw, The Plan connects events and characters into a complex and fascinating tapestry, bringing a whole new light to the show’s beginnings.  A terrific lead performance by Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap) and mind-blowing special effects combine to give the show a far superior farewell than the actual finale episode.  I wish there were more of these direct-to-DVD BSG films being made!!  (Read my full review here.)

2. Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut) — This six-hour documentary traces the full history of Monty Python, from the group’s beginnings to their work on feature films The Holy Grail, The Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life.  Told almost entirely through interviews with all five surviving Pythons as well as an enormous number of their key collaborators, this documentary is endlessly interesting and also quite a riot. It’s also filled with elaborate little touches that elevate it beyond the usual sort of behind-the-scenes documentaries, such as the creation of new songs introducing each of the six episodes, sung by the same woman who sung the classic Life of Brian introductory tune.  With a third disc containing clips from their best sketches, extended interviews, and lots of other fun stuff, this set is a winner through-and-through.

1. Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II — I loved the first Robot Chicken Star Wars Special, but things are taken to a whole new level in this second go-round.  Focusing on The Empire Strikes Back (with lots of screen time for Vader, The Emperor, Boba Fett, and the other bounty hunters), this special has more laughs-per-second than anything else I saw all year.  Hard-core Star Wars fans like myself will be bowled over by the attention to detail in the recreation of key scenes and the references to obscure characters and moments in the saga, while there is also plenty of silliness for a more casual fan to enjoy.  (Who wouldn’t laugh at the image of an Imperial officer putting a styrofoam cup over the little Vader hologram on his console?)  Just having the special on DVD would have been enough for me, but not only is this set absolutely overflowing with special features (commentary tracks, behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, and so much more), but it also contains a newly extended (almost twice-as-long) version of the original special filled with a ton of new sketches.  Phenomenal.  I can’t wait for Episode III.  (Read my full review here.)

Coming on Monday:  My list of the 10 Best Movies of 2009!  See you there!

I followed a link the other day to the 10 Most Insane, Child-Warping Moments of ’80s Cartoons.  Pretty funny stuff there.  I’d also like to direct your attention to this list of the 10 Star Wars Toys that Unintentionally Look Like Other Celebrities.  (It’s worth your while if only so that you, too, can be stunned by the resemblance of General Riekaan — from The Empire Strikes Back — to Senator John Kerry!!)

I’ve just discovered a phenomenal web-comic called Let’s Be Friends Again.  It’s mostly about comic books.  I love it to death, and it’s well worth your precious time, so check it out.

Have you seen this ten-minute fan-made live-action G.I. Joe film, Battle For the Serpent Stone?  I’m a big proponent of fan-films, and this one is of pretty high quality.  It’s quite an achievement — take a look.

Here’s a link to an terrific interview with IDW Comics editor Scott Dunbier, discussing his work in putting out the gorgeous new hardcover Bloom County: The Complete Library, Volume One (1980-1982), the first of five books that will collect every single strip (many of which have never before been collected) of Berkeley Breathed’s masterpiece comic strip.  I lust after this collection, and very much hope that Mr. Dunbier is able to move forward with collections of Outland and Opus as well.

This is a great story about an annoying movie theatre patron.  I wish there was a theatre like The Alamo Drafthouse here in Boston, because I would be more than happy to spend an enormous amount of money watching movies there and nowhere else.  I am sick to death of having my enjoyment of a movie interrupted by some jackass talking, texting, or some other such nonsense.

Harvard University is offering a class on The Wire??? Sign me up!!

I never believed it would happen, but filming on the two-film adaptation of The Hobbit is coming closer and closer to getting underway.  Click here for an interesting interview with director Guillermo del Toro with some updates on how things are progressing.

Despite my renewed appreciation for the final run of episodes of Battlestar Galactica, this hilarious evisceration of the plot points in the last 45 minutes of the finale is impossible to argue with.

Here’s a terrific list of one fellow’s Top 15 Episodes of Batman: The Animated Series.  It’s an interesting list.  I absolutely adore episodes such as “Over The Edge,” “Mad Love,” “Robin’s Reckoning,” and “Heart of Ice,” and I was also pleased to see some lesser-known gems like “The Ultimate Thrill” and “Growing Pains” make the cut.  (However, while “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” and “The Clock King” are solid episodes, I definitely wouldn’t count them among the series’ 15 best.)  I posted my own best-of episode list for Batman: The Animated Series last year, so click here to read my selections!

As with Monday’s post, today’s blog contains SPOILERS for many plot twists of the spectacular Battlestar Galactica series, so be warned!  If you haven’t seen the series (or if you’re in the midst of watching it on DVD but haven’t made it to the end yet), then I hope you enjoy today’s hi-LARious Inglourious Basterds cartoon, and then c’mon back on Friday for my review of The Invention of Lying.

OK, all the rest of you BSG fans still with me?  Then let’s dive in.

Starting with the very first episode of the first season, “33,” each installment of BSG (for the first few years) began with the words (say ‘em with me now):

The Cylons were created by man.  They rebelled.  They evolved.  They look and feel human,  Some are programmed to think they are human.  There are many copies.  And they have a plan.

It was that last line, “and they have a plan,” that was the most intriguing to me — and, ultimately, the most frustrating.  Throughout the early episodes of the show we watched our heroes in the ragtag fleet attempting to flee their destroyed worlds, all the while being dogged by Cylon attack forces as well as various Cylon agents within the fleet.  The bold declaration that “they have a plan” implied that there was more going on than we knew — a larger, over-arching goal towards which the Cylons were working (beyond, apparently, the simple extermination of humanity).  The glimpses we got of the Cylons (mostly through the adventures of Helo, trapped with an Eight on “Cylon-Occupied Caprica”) furthered this notion.

But as the series progressed, and we began to spend more time with the Cylon characters and get to know their histories and the distinct personalities of the different models (and sometimes the differences between Cylons of the same model number), it started to seem that there was no larger plan to speak of.  By the time we got to the New Caprica arc (the high-point of the show, in my mind), it seemed that the Cylons were just as confused and uncertain as the humans.  This provided for fascinating storytelling and the bringing of commendable depth to the “villain” characters, but it also seemed to me to be in contradiction to the bold, declarative statement that “they have a plan.”

While I have complaints about the final season of the show (click here for my thoughts on the finale), one of the plot developments that I most enjoyed was the development of Cavill, played so menacingly by the great Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap).  As the back-story of the Final Five Cylons was (confusingly) played out, we learned that it was Cavill who was behind much of what had transpired, both during the time-span of the series as well as the back-story (in his placing of the Five into Colonial society some thirty-years before).  The implication, cleverly, was that there WAS indeed a plan all along — it just wasn’t anything like what we’d thought when the show began.  I liked that idea a lot, but I felt that there was still a disconnect between the revelations of the show’s final episodes and all that had gone down during the early seasons.

Well, apparently the BSG writers (or at least talented scribe Jane Espenson) agreed, which brings me (finally!) to the absolutely marvelous new direct-to-DVD film, The Plan.

Written by Ms. Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos (the Old Man himself, who also directed many terrific episodes of the series), The Plan brings us the story of Cavill.  Or actually, of the TWO Cavills who we first met during the excellent second season two-parter “Lay Down Your Burdens.”  There’s the Cavill who was a part of Sam Anders’ resistance group on Caprica (this is the fedora-wearing Cavill), and the Cavill in the fleet who we first meet as the priest that Tryol goes to when he becomes convinced he’s a Cylon sleeper agent like Boomer (scenes given a much different spin in light of the events of the show’s final year!).  In The Plan, we meet the Cavills in the day immediately preceding the Cylons’ destruction of the Twelve Colonies, and follow their separate stories through the events of the first two seasons of the show until the events of “Lay Down Your Burdens” once again bring them together aboard the Galactica.

But The Plan is not JUST the story of the two Cavills.  It is also a staggeringly complex jigsaw puzzle that pulls together a dazzling number of plot threads and characters from throughout the run of the show.

The Plan allows us to see heretofore unglimpsed exploits of characters who weren’t on the show during the miniseries and the early episodes (like Cavill himself) such as Sam Anders, Ellen Tigh, and Tory Foster.  We get to see, now, how they survived the Cylon attack and how they made it through the tumultuous days that followed until we eventually meet them in the series.  Sam, in particular, gets a lot of screen-time in The Plan, and we see how he transformed from a fun-loving athlete into the tough fighter he was when we (and Kara) first met him in “Resistance.”  We also learn, finally, why it took so long for Ellen Tigh to seek out her husband Saul (in “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down”), despite her having been in the ragtag fleet for months before she first appeared in that episode.  (I must point out, though, that Tory does get short shrift — while The Plan gives us a glimpse of her from right before the Cylon attack, we never actually learn how she got herself onto one of the ships in the ragtag fleet — a curious oversight!)

The Plan also gives us a lot of terrific new character development for many of the Cylon characters.  I was most intrigued by the wonderful story given to one of the Simons (first glimpsed in the series as the doctor operating on Kara Thrace in “The Farm”), who I always felt was the least-developed Cylon on the show.  I was also THRILLED that Simon’s story allowed the writers to bring back the actress Lymari Nadal, who had ONE LINE in the original miniseries (as a civilian woman who Apollo helps out of a shuttle on Colonial One while she asks about her husband) and flesh out a complex and tragic storyline for her character.  We also get to spend an enormous amount of additional time with Boomer.  While her “sleeper agent” storyline during the first season was intriguing, I never exactly understood how all of that worked.  If she didn’t know she was a Cylon, how and when did she “switch on” in order to plant the bombs in Galactica’s water supply (in “Water”) or shoot the Old Man (in “Kobol’s Last Gleaming Pt. II”)?  Well, The Plan finally gives us some answers to those questions, and in a way that only adds to the heartbreaking story of that character.  There’s lots of other fun stuff, too, such as what prompted the Doral in the fleet to blow himself up (in “Litmus”), and, even more interestingly, just how Leoben’s fascination with Kara began.

Finally, and most delightfully, The Plan fills in a number of scenes we suspected might have happened but never saw during the first two seasons of the show.  To my delight, we finally see who Six was talking to in the miniseries, after she leaves Baltar in the park on Caprica to meet someone (to whom we hear her say “you’re late”).  FINALLY now we get to see the other half of that scene — who she’s talking to, and why they were meeting.  And as this DVD movie progresses, we see scene after scene from the early episodes of the show interwoven with new material that answers long-standing questions (such as — YAY! — who wrote Adama the note in the miniseries warning him that “there are twelve models”) as well as countless questions that we never even knew we had.  We get to see how so many of the events of the early seasons connected, and how they fit into of Cavill’s unfolding plan.

This is historical revisionism of the best kind.  I am quite confident that the writers of BSG’s early episodes did not have much of this in mind when they were creating those early shows.  But what Ms. Espenson has done is to make us believe that they DID really have all this in mind, and to allow us to see those events from an entirely different perspective.

This is NOT a movie aimed at a Battlestar newbie.  And if it’s been a while since you’ve seen the first two seasons of the show, there is a lot that might go over your head.  The Plan is extraordinarily fast-placed, constantly jumping around in location and time and bouncing from event to event and character to character.  It relies on your knowing how those early episodes unfolded so that, for instance, when we see Leoben being interrogated by Kara (in “Flesh and Bone”), or when we see Baltar being publicly accused of being a Cylon Collaborator by a Six calling herself Shelley Godfrey (in “Six Degrees of Separation”), you know how those events wound up.  As someone who has watched the first season of BSG several times, I was constantly giggling with glee as I watched The Plan reference one obscure event from those early shows after another.  (And the highest compliment I can pay The Plan is that it makes me want to go back and watch those episodes yet again.)

Before wrapping up, I must also heap additional praise on the stunning, marvelous, jaw-dropping visual effects of The Plan.  BSG has consistently had, ever since the initial miniseries, amazing, feature-film-quality visual effects, but The Plan trumps everything that we’ve seen before.  The astounding opening montage (whose details I won’t spoil here), the horrifying imagery (never-before-seen in detail, just hinted at in the miniseries and in “Razor”) of the Cylons’ destruction of the Twelve Colonies (and finally we see imagery from many of the other colonies, not just Caprica), more great Centurian effects… the list goes on and on.  The effects wizards have outdone themselves this time.  I can’t think of a sci-fi movie from the past two decades that has had better effects.

So, I really liked The Plan, can you tell?  There are one or two mis-steps (such as showing us a shot of Apollo in his fighter while Adama declares “we are at war,” when, oops, Apollo wasn’t with Galactica when that scene happened in the miniseries, rather he was with Roslin on her ship) but nothing that distracts from my tremendous enjoyment of the film.  The Plan is astoundingly complex — never dumbing things down for the audience, but rather assuming that we all know the series very intimately and don’t need to have everything re-explained to us — and also emotionally potent.  It connects the beginning of the series more directly to its ending (without getting bogged down in any of the Final Five silliness that I felt hampered the fourth season), and reminds me of everything I loved about this series, the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

“You can’t declare war on love, brother.”  ”I think I just did.”

Please note:  there are SPOILERS AHEAD, so anyone who has not yet watched the final season of Battlestar Galactica should enjoy today’s cartoon, perhaps take in an archived blog or two (might I suggest my look back at the films of David Mamet?) and then head on their way.  Got that?

Ok, onward!

After watching the series finale of BSG back in March, I wrote at length about my over-all love for the series, as well as some of the dissatisfaction I felt about the finale and the final run of episodes.  Here’s an excerpt:

I think any lingering dissatisfaction that I feel rests not with the finale, which (nit-picks aside) was really a magnificent episode, and more with some of the storytelling decisions made during the course of this last season.  Ever since Kara’s “death” (and I guess now I should remove those quotation marks, huh?) towards the end of season 3, the show became much more about the various mysteries that were being presented than it ever had been before.  Questions such as what happened to Kara, what was her destiny, who was her guide, how did she survive… who was the final Cylon… what was the nature of the final five, how could they be Cylons, what was their history… what, in fact, does it mean to be a “Cylon”… who was Daniel, and what, if any, connection did he have to Starbuck… what really happened back on Earth, and on Kobol, 2-3,000 years ago…???  Etc etc etc.  For most of its first three seasons, BSG wasn’t really a show about mysteries (the way Lost is), but I felt that these questions came to dominate the show during its final year.  I would have appreciated it had more of them been answered, in more substantial ways, before we even got to the finale.

With the release of this final batch of episodes (labeled Battlestar Galactica season 4.5) on DVD, I was excited to take another look at the end of the show.  As I wrote a few weeks ago, I love having an opportunity to take in a movie or TV show a second time, so that I can watch it free of any expectations I might have had about what I thought it would be or HOPED it would be, and just enjoy it for what it IS.

So it was that, first of all, in re-watching these final 10 episodes of Battlestar Galactica I was reminded (all niggling over certain plot points aside) what a spectacular creation this show was, and how phenomenally well-made every single episode was.  There is extraordinary drama to be found in these final episodes.  I couldn’t possibly list all of the terrific moments contained in this last batch, but I can tell you that some of my favorite scenes include Adama’s angry, drunken show-down with the revealed-as-a-Cylon Tigh (in “Sometimes a Great Notion”), old men Adama and Tigh taking out the Marine guards assigned to escort them to the brig (in “The Oath”), Felix Gaeta’s final scene with Baltar (in the closing moments of “Blood on the Scales”), Ellen’s discovery that Tigh has been intimate with a Six (in “Deadlock”), Tyrol’s devastation at discovering Boomer’s betrayal (in the final moments of “Someone to Watch Over Me”)… I could go on!  Beyond the plots and the acting (which are superb), each episode looks and sounds phenomenally great.  The visual effects, the costumes, the sets, the props, the music — everything comes together in these episodes to produce what was essentially an extraordinarily well-made little movie each week.

The greatest thing about this DVD set, though, is the inclusion of significantly longer cuts of several episodes that are FAR superior to what aired on TV.  If I had a major complaint about these final episodes (other than the unresolved mysteries, as mentioned above), it’s that in many respects I felt the writers moved things too quickly from episode to episode, without giving the viewers a chance to see the characters react logically to the situations unfolding around them.  This concern is significantly addressed by the extra material in these episodes, almost ALL of which represents character moments that fill in a lot of these missing blanks.

The first extended episode is “A Disquiet Follows My Soul,” the second episode of the set.  The BSG gang have just discovered that Earth is a charred cinder, and are left to deal with the fall-out of their complete loss of hope.  There’s some great extra stuff to be found in this extended cut.  The early scene in Adama’s quarters in which the idea of installing Cylon jump-drives in the fleet is significantly longer.  Rather than the “huh?” moment that I felt that plot twist was in the original version, now we see a lot more of the characters debating this issue (as I’d expect they would).  We see a lot more of Lee, Zarek, and the Quorum as the political fall-out of this move is explored (which provides a much better context for Zarek’s actions in the mutiny in the next episode).  There’s a great Baltar/Six scene in the episode’s opening (which is a terrific scene on its own, and also gives Baltar something to do in this episode since he was pretty much absent from the original version).  There’s a whole new sequence, later in the episode, with Adama ripping Zigurski a new one because 10 of their Vipers are grounded because his deck-crew aren’t showing up to work.  (Interestingly enough, in this version the phone-call that Adama gets in his quarters is to inform him about this situation on the hangar deck.  Then the scene with Zigurski leads into his finding Roslin jogging in the corridors, avoiding her cancer treatments.  In the original version they totally cut around this, skipping from Adama receiving a call to his stopping Laura in the hallway, so that we assume the call was about Laura.  A fascinating case in clever editing!)  There are also lots of other nice little bits of business throughout the episode, such as Helo asking the Chief about his son, and more with Tyrol and Hot Dog, little moments that flesh out the relationships between the characters.  In the original version I felt this episode was all over the place, with some interesting moments that didn’t cohere into a unified whole, particularly after the dramatic events of “Sometimes a Great Notion.”  But I think MUCH more highly of the extended version.

I have similarly high praise for the even-more extended version of “Islanded in a Stream of Stars,” the series’ penultimate episode.  (”Disquiet” was extended from 43 minutes to 53 minutes, while “Islanded” is extended from 43 minutes to a whopping hour and three minutes.)  The opening conference in Adama’s quarters is longer, and there’s much more discussion of the futility of trying to rescue Hera (which helps us understand Adama’s decision, in that scene, not to go after her), as well as more explanation of why exactly Cavil wants her.  In a nice continuity note, Boomer is now included in the Opera House visions that we see Laura and Six share.  There’s much more to Baltar’s speech over the wireless about angels (which of course ties in to the events of the finale).  We also now see a cut-away to Kara listening to Baltar as he says a line about God sending angels to steer one back onto one’s path (which more clearly establishes for me the writers’ intentions for all of Kara’s scenes with the piano-player-who-might-have-been-her-father in the previous episode, “Someone to Watch Over Me”).  There’s an I-can’t-believe-this-got-cut scene of Tyrol in the brig (which of course would be the logical consequence of his helping Boomer in the previous episode) being confronted by a furious Athena.  There’s a lot more great Saul/Ellen stuff dealing with his dead son and his relationship with Six that includes a powerful moment in which he angrily declares to Ellen that “these are MY people.”  There are several additional short scenes of Adama visiting Laura in sick-bay which adds some nice tenderness to the episode.  There’s a great scene between Helo and Starbuck (established as good friends in the early seasons of the show but who we seldom saw together in the later seasons) when she talks to him about the hybrid’s description of her as the harbinger of death.  (It’s a great moment, and also one that shows that Baltar isn’t the ONLY person she’s told about this — an implication that I always thought felt wrong in the original version).  There’s a much longer version of the Adama/Tigh scene in which Adama comes around to the necessity of abandoning the Galactica that includes a great joke by Tigh in which he comments that, despite his age of 2,000 years, he still has all of his original teeth (which he then shows off to Bill).  The whole ending of the episode is entirely re-organized.  While the original version ended on their toast to Galactica, here we actually see several sequences of the crew beginning to evacuate (including a beat of Hot Dog escorting a civilian who I believe is actually his mom, Edward James Olmos’ wife), and a great moment of Tigh walking up to stand beside Adama.  The episode ends on a scene that the original version included much earlier in the last act, Kara’s visiting a comatose Sam and saying that “I’m not leaving until we figure this out.”  There are so many great connective-tissue moments added back into this episode, that as with “Disquiet” allow me to see this episode not as a time-waster just getting things in place for the finale, but rather as a key character-focused piece that allows us to spend a lot more time with the beloved characters to whom we’re about to bid farewell.

Which brings me to the finale.  The DVD includes an extended version that knits both originally-aired parts of the finale together while also adding in a number of additional scenes.  These new scenes don’t alter my feelings about the finale as dramatically as they did the other two extended episodes.  Most of the additions come fairly early on, and mostly contain additional flashbacks for some of the supportive characters — specifically Chief Tyrol, Helo, and Boomer.  It’s great fun to see more material of those three in their early days on-board Galactica, and more focus on their relationships with one another.  In particular, one of the Chief’s flashbacks features the return of a long-dead character (that I won’t spoil here) who I was really pleased to see included in the finale.  I was hoping for some more material in the final 45 minutes of the show to address some of the concerns I expressed in my original review of the finale.  In particular, I really wanted at least one scene in which someone dealt with the possibility that maybe SOMEONE among the rag-tag fleet wasn’t too keen on abandoning the ships and destroying all of their technology.  But that was not to be, as those final 45-or-so minutes were presented exactly as they originally were.  Since that was the part of the finale that I had problems with, that was a bit disappointing.

Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed re-watching these final episodes.  Rather than obsessing over the mysteries that would ultimately disappoint me, I was able to enjoy all the meaty character drama with which these final episodes were stuffed.  The extended episodes (not to mention all of the additional deleted scenes included with the rest of the episodes) really helped with that, as those extended episodes allowed the story-lines (and the characters) to breathe a little more, and for things to unfold much more naturally and organically than they did in the more breathlessly-paced original versions.

This final season has flaws, no doubt about it.  In many respects, the show did not unfold in the direction in which I had wished it to go.  But with a little distance now I am better able to enjoy the directions in which it DID go, and Battlestar Galactica still stands as one of the very finest television series ever created.

But wait!  The story is not quite over!  Come back on Wednesday for my thoughts on the final piece of the Battlestar Galactica puzzle, the just-released to DVD movie, The Plan!

“All of this has happened before…”

Love that photograph.  (I first saw it here.)

My friend Andy recently pointed me in the direction of a terrific web-comic called XKCD.  It’s a self-described web-comic of “romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”  My buddies who work in the computer world picked this comic as their favorite.

Here’s an interesting article that compares various shows’ original pilot episodes with what actually made it to air.  I was particularly intrigued since I recently saw Joss Whedon’s original, unaired pilot for Dollhouse that was rejected by FOX (it was a special feature on the season one DVD set), which Steph and I agreed was FAR superior to the pilot that aired (and, frankly, superior to ANY episode that actually aired during the first season!!  The two episodes that FOX never aired, that pilot and the epilogue episode Epitah One, were far far better than any of the 12 episodes that were actually broadcast.  But that’s a blog for another time…)

Here’s an interesting list of one fella’s thoughts on the 10 best series of the 21st century so far (2000-present).  Some interesting choices there.  Love his description of season 1 of Battlestar Galactica (though beware a spoiler for that season’s shocking finish if you’ve never seen it!).

Click here for an absolutely fascinating, lengthy look into Spike Jonze’s almost decade-long effort to bring Where The Wild Things Are to the big screen, from the New York Times.  I cannot wait to see what he has created.

There’s a really intriguing new trailer out there for Up in the Air, the new film from director Jason Reitman (Juno, Thank You For Smoking) and starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Jason Bateman, Danny McBride, and Zach Galifianakis that looks spectacular.

Last year I wrote a piece that I called My Farewell to Heroes, in which I vowed to stop watching that incredibly disappointing show.  Luckily (judging by the consistently terrible reviews that the third season of the show got) I was able to stick to my vow.  Life is just to short to watch shitty TV.   Anyways, there’s an amusing review of the third season DVD set up at DVDactive.com (a terrific DVD/Blu-Ray site) by someone who shares my disdain for the show.  Worth a read.

I’ve breen pretty down on the movies of summer 2009.  My feeling has been that this was one of the more disappointing summers in recent memory.  But a recent article by Devin Farici over at Chud, listing his 10 best movies of summer 2009 just might cause me to change my tune.  I haven’t yet seen Moon, Away We Go, or World’s Greatest Dad (missed ‘em in theatres, but I hope to check out all three on DVD), and I just didn’t have much interest (sorry, Devin!) in Drag Me to Hell.  But I must admit that any summer that saw the release of Star Trek, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Funny People, District 9, Up, and Inglourious Basterds can’t be that bad.  Still, it’s hard to forget the disappointments of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Terminator: Salvation, Year One, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

See you all back here tomorrow!

Battlestar Galactica vets Hamie Bamber (Lee Apollo) and Tahmoh Penikett (Helo) will be together again on the season 2 premiere of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse! Click here for more details.

Speaking of Dollhouse, any interview with Mr. Whedon is always worth a look, and this piece contains some tantalizing glimpses at the unaired Dollhouse episode “Epitah 1″ (which screened at Comic-Con and sounds super-cool) as well as hints at a sequel to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog (one of my favoritest things ever)!!

So wow, Capone over at AICN has a report from Peter Jackson covering about 10,000 upcoming projects, all of them enormously exciting!!  Click here to get an update on The Hobbit, District 9, The Lovely Bones, Tintin, and more!

The Sci-Fi channel (urg, I really don’t want to call it Sy-Fy) has posted video from all of its Comic-Con panels.  Perhaps, like me, you couldn’t care less to watch video of people talking about Stargate: Universe — but be sure to check out the full hour-long panel about Battlestar Galactica: The Plan and Caprica!

Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill will be lending their vocal talents to The Simpsons?  Awesome!  Here’s some additional info that came to light at Comic-Con on the season’s upcoming 20th (20 years!  Unbelievable!!) season.

I am disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to read that Kevin Smith might have to change the title of his upcoming buddy cop movie (starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan), A Couple of Dicks.

By all accounts, the Iron Man 2 panel was pretty awesome.  (Click here for a description.)  Why can’t some of this footage be found on-line??  Grrr.  But here’s another interesting tidbit of Marvel movie news: some hints about the line-up for the upcoming Avengers movie!  Some interesting choices.  I really hope that they use Millar/Hitch’s magnificent Ultimates series (which I reviewed here) as the basis for this film.

Since Comic-Con is also a place for news about, you know, comics, I’ll close with a piece of comic-book news that should get any true comic fan very excited:  Planetary #27 is finally being released in October!!!  Can it possibly live-up to the hype generated by the years-long delay?  We’ll see!

Good news, everybody!  Futurama lives!!

So Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) is joining the cast of 24 next season?  Time for the Battlestar Galactica actors to learn what the members of the ensemble from The Wire have discovered: they’ll never again be in a TV show as good.

Did you see The Daily Show’s John Hodgman’s uproariously funny speech at the 2009 Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner?  Not to be missed.

A nice farewell to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles can be found on Composer Bear McCreary’s excellent blog, as he lists his 15 favorite moments from the show.  (They are all excellent choices.)  This show had its flaws, to be sure, but I am really disappointed that we won’t be getting a third season.  (By the way, Bear was also the composer for the reinvented Battlestar Galactica throughout its run.)

Speaking of The Terminator, the fine folks over at filmschoolrejects.com have posted an interesting list of 20 Things We Didn’t Like and 10 Things We Did about Terminator: Salvation.

I don’t play videogames, but I must admit that this trailer for Lucasarts’ new Star Wars: The Old Republic trailer is ridiculously cool.  I wish we’d seen half that much bad-assery in the prequels…

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog has made his first appearance on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien!  Watch him make fun of some hippies here.

Have a great weekend, everybody!  See you back here on Monday!

The series may be over, but Galactica lives on!

Some tantalizing clips from the two-hour Battlestar Galactica TV-movie “The Plan” have made their way onto the interwebs, courtesy of the fine folks over at Galactiaca Sitrep.  Check ‘em out!

I can’t wait…

It is 58 years “before the fall.”  Life on the twelve colonies is peaceful and prosperous — especially on Caprica.  And yet, amongst the elite of society, there is decadence and decay.  The new direct-to-DVD movie Caprica focuses on the patriarchs of two families.  Daniel Greystone (Eric Stoltz) is a wealthy inventor — part Bill Gates, part Steve Jobs — who seems to have everything he wants in life.  But his artificial intelligence project is at a stand-still, and he’s in danger of losing his military contract to a rival company.  Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) is a lawyer, struggling to balance his desire to find his own way in life with his obligations to the crime family that helped pay for his education.  A terrible tragedy that involves both Daniel and Joseph’s daughters brings the two of them together and sets in motion events that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons… and 58 years later, the near-annihilation of the human race.

This Caprica direct-to-DVD project is something of a weird entity.  As the pilot for a TV show that we won’t get to see until 2010, Caprica isn’t a complete movie in and of itself — it’s more of a tease for what we’ll eventually get to see next year.

Despite whatever complaints I have with Battlestar Galactica’s final run of episodes (and you can read my thoughts in more detail here), there certainly was a tremendous high of excitement and anticipation just a few months ago as the final hours of BSG were broadcast.  I wonder if Ron Moore and the makers of Caprica wouldn’t have been wiser to hold off on showing their pilot until next year, to let the memory of BSG fade and to build more anticipation for new stories within that universe.  As it is, it’s very difficult not to compare Caprica to that intense final run of episodes of BSG, and I think Caprica pales in comparison.

For better or for worse, Caprica is an entirely different type of show than BSG.  Whereas Galactica was intense and action-packed, Caprica is much colder, much more leisurely paced.  There’s one explosion (and it’s a doozy — one of the most dramatic moments of the pilot), but other than that Caprica’s focus is not on action-adventure but on drama.  Now, that’s not a bad thing, necessarily.  You can have very compelling television without space-ship battles… and if Caprica had set out to be just like BSG, it would probably would have wound up being derivative and lame.

I remember when Star Trek: The Next Generation launched back in 1987.  In its first few seasons, the writers (for the most part) bent over backwards to avoid bringing back characters or storylines from the original Star Trek, their thought being that they wanted the new show to stand on its own.  While Caprica’s title and setting casts it as a prequel to BSG, it seems as if Caprica’s writers and producers have decided to follow that Next Gen path.  Other than the names of some of the characters and locations, a few mentions of a secret belief in “the One True God” (a blasphemous idea in Caprica’s polytheistic society), and of course the very familiar-looking design of Greystone’s creation, there is very little to connect Caprica to BSG.  (So don’t go looking to an answer to the question of the mysterious Cylon # 7 named Daniel — at least not here in the pilot!)  Ultimately, this might turn out to be the right move, as it was with Next Gen.  But based on the pilot alone, I think I’d be more supportive of the decision by the makers of Caprica to go their own way if I thought more highly of what they that produced here.

Because, as I watched the pilot, there really wasn’t any moment when I truly felt myself hooked into the goings-on I was watching.  The acting was fine, the script was good, the visuals were lovely — but I just wasn’t all that excited by any of it.  Now, I don’t want to be too negative.  The show is remarkably well put together.  But forget for a moment any comparisons with BSG’s final episodes.  Let’s think back to that original BSG mini-series.  I remember how blown away I was the first time I saw it.  I went in with incredibly low expectations (I don’t even recall what on earth compelled me to watch it).  But, like so many other viewers, I found myself immediately gripped by the dark, exciting story and the amazingly charismatic group of actors.  I think about that mini-series, and I think about Caprica, and there’s just no comparison.  While I enjoyed all the actors in Caprica, I didn’t find any of them to be as compelling as any one member of BSG’s huge cast of characters — all of whom I found to be amazing and engaging right from BSG’s original miniseries.  I did enjoy Eric Stoltz’s performance in Caprica quite a bit, and there were some fine actors in other major roles (Alessandra Torseon as Daniel Greystone’s brilliant-but-up-to-something daughter Zoe, Magda Apanowicz and Avan Jogia as Zoe’s friends Lacy and Ben, and Paula Malcolmson as Amanda Greystone, to name just a few).  But not a one of them equals Bill Adama, Colonel Tigh, Kara Thrace, Lee Adama, Laura Roslin, Baltar, Tyrol, Dee, Gaeta, Helo, Boomer, or any of the other phenomenal characters introduced in those opening hours of BSG.

I am encouraged that Ron Moore and so many of the writers and other behind-the scenes talents from Battlestar Galactica are involved with this prequel spin-off, and rest assured I will be tuning in when the series finally launches next year.  But I do hope they take things up a few notches when Caprica season one begins.  I would like to see the culture of the twelve colonies explored in much more detail (this was something really only hinted at in BSG).  What is life like on the OTHER eleven planets?  How are their people different from Capricans?  (The pilot hinted at some racial issues between Capricans and Taurons… and in BSG we saw some of that in Baltar’s desire to repress his roots and assimilate into Caprican society, but I’d love to see more.)  I’d like to learn more about the sub-culture of belief in the One True God (an intriguing story-line that was so important to BSG and that was teasingly hinted at in Caprica’s pilot).  Where did this belief originate, and what is the ultimate goal of the One True God’s hidden followers?  I could go on.  There’s a real wealth of stories that can be explored in this universe.

Make it so!

Um, I mean, so say we all!

So, it’s over.

I can count on one hand the number of truly great science fiction TV shows.  As I look back at Ron Moore’s reimagined Battlestar Galactica, there is no question that this epic tale is high on that list.  Seeing the show come to a close is a great loss — although I am comforted to know that in the often-brutal TV marketplace that’s out there, Moore & his team were able to end the show on their own terms, when they felt their story was finished.  This is a saga that I am certain I will revisit many times in the year to come.

It is staggering to consider all the little choices that Moore & co. made correctly, right from the beginning, that all came together to make BSG such a masterpiece.  The brilliant casting of the enormous ensemble.  The decision to forgo most of the Star Trek ideas that were so innovative 30 years ago but that have become such sci-fi cliches over the past four decades (such as aliens with strange foreheads in funky suits, magic transporters, view-screens, a bridge with a big captain’s chair in the middle of it, super-duper shiny computer consoles everywhere… I could go on!) and create a retro look for the show.  The fearlessness with which the writers tackled the inherent darkness of the premise — the near-total annihilation of the human race — and all of the logical questions and struggles that would come out of that apocalyptic event.  (What will our society be like?  Will we have a government?  Courts?  Freedom of the press?  Where will we get fuel, or food, or water?  What happens when we start running out of supplies like medicine, or toothpaste?  Who will be in control, the military or the civilians?)  And finally, the choice to center the stories not in sci-fi mysteries (no time-travel, no alternate universes, no weird astrological phenomena to investigate, no aliens to make contact with) but in characters.  There were no cardboard cut-outs, perfectly moral characters to be found on this show.  No, everyone (even the robots!) were completely human — flawed, imperfect, and capable of making terrible decisions (even our most heroic characters!).

The show has made some mis-steps over the course of its run, there’s no question about that.  I, for one, felt that it nearly lost its way in the latter half of season 2, after the Pegasus three-parter concluded.  There were a couple of stand-alone episodes there that were weak in the extreme, particularly the notoriously terrible “Black Market” (by the way, if you haven’t heard it, Ron Moore’s brutally honest mea culpa podcast for that episode is a must-listen).  But as I look back over the run of the show, despite a couple of clunkers here and there, BSG had a hit-to-miss ratio of episodes that was truly ASTONISHING.  And when it was great — as it oh so often was — ho boy, there was just nothing better on TV, sci-fi or otherwise.

So what did I think of the finale, already?

Well, I’ll try to keep my thoughts as spoiler-free as I can, but if you’re someone reading this who hasn’t seen the finale yet — or, if you’re someone who is watching BSG but is behind, OR if you’re someone who MIGHT SOMEDAY choose to sample this amazing, incredible show, then let me kindly invite you to GET LOST NOW.  Believe me, you don’t want any surprises spoiled for you in any way.  Enjoy today’s cartoon, and then come back tomorrow when I discuss International Talk Like William Shatner Day!  (I’m not kidding about that.)

Ok?

Great!

I thought the first hour and a half of the finale was pretty much perfection.  

This show has been astounding me, ever since the original mini-series, with the beautiful, feature film quality of its visual effects.  It seems that every week they give us some incredible sequence that tops everything that has gone before.  And then they go ahead and top that the week after.  The assault on the Cylon Colony was one of the most magnificent sci-fi action sequences that I have ever seen, on TV or at the movies.  If the new Terminator film has robot-on-robot action that is half as amazing as what we saw here, with centurian battling centurian (and the old-style 1970’s centurians, no less!!), then I will be very impressed.  The entire extended sequence was the type of nail-biting action spectacle that BSG has always done so peerlessly.

There was also a lot of humor (Tigh’s remark about it not being too late to throw all the Cylons out the airlock), great character moments (Boomer’s choice, Baltar and Caprica Six realizing that they each see “head” versions of each other), and a healthy dosage of the type of “holy shit” moments that, like the epic sci-fi action, has always been such a hallmark of the show.  The realization, at long, long last, of the Opera House visions (that had been a mystery of the show ever since the season 1 finale) was just perfect, a spine-tingling moment.  The Chief’s final reckoning with Tory — wow, did that get me!  Ron Moore has stated, in some post-finale interviews, that the writers purposefully did not mention the Tory-Cally stuff recently, so that they would surprise viewers who had thought that story-thread forgotten.  I’m usually pretty attentive about these sorts of things, but they got me good.  I also loved the revelation as to the ultimate purpose of “All Along the Watchtower” — I thought that was just about perfect.  And the twist about Earth, and the charred cinder of a world that we’d seen in the mid-season finale — well that was brilliant as well!  I’d been thinking about that a lot, actually, in the last few weeks, as I contemplated where the show was going to end, and I’d become more and more dissatisfied with the revelations we’d gotten mid-season about Earth.  It had seemed a bit anti-climactic, and so I was really, really glad to see that there was a lot more to the story of Earth than what we’d seen to that point.

The last 40 or so minutes of the finale, after Kara jumps Galactica… well, I am a little bit less enthusiastic about that.  I do really love that they took their sweet time with the ending, although I also wish that, after such an intense, amazing first hour-and-a-half, that a little something more had actually HAPPENED in the final 40-45 minutes.  I sort of like the inevitability of ending up on “our” Earth in the past (which was something that I had guessed as a possible ending of the series way back when I first saw the miniseries, and started wondering about where their quest for Earth would take them), although, again, I must admit to having hoped, as I watched the end of the finale unfold, for some sort of additional twist on that.

But what we got instead was a slow, elegiac goodbye to all of the (surviving) characters that we’d grown to love over the course of the show.  I can’t really complain about that.  This sort of closure is a key component of a successful series finale, and it was great to see everyone get a little attention.  I was very worried that poor Helo wasn’t going to make it through to the end (particularly after Athena left him bleeding out in the hallway, and then WE DIDN’T SEE HIM AGAIN FOR LIKE AN HOUR!!), so I was particularly happy to see him get his happy ending with Athena.  The death of Laura Roslin, which we’ve known was coming ever since the mini-series, was tender and moving.  Her final flight, and Adama putting his wedding ring on her finger (echoing Laura’s vision from “The Hub”), were powerful moments.  And thank the gods that we got to hear Adama and Starbuck give their familiar “nothing but the rain” back and forth (that was first introduced all the way back in the miniseries) one final time!  I was waiting for that for the whole episode, and was starting to doubt that we’d get to hear it again!  Whew.

I’ve read some grousing on-line about the final revelations about Starbuck, but her disappearance worked for me.  That wasn’t something that I needed totally resolved.  However, I will admit that I would have liked a LITTLE more information — like, if she was a “head” character like Six and Baltar after all, then what the hell was the deal with her Viper??  And who exactly was the figure who’d been guiding her all along (taking the form of Leoben back in “Maelstrom,” the episode in which she died in the nebula, and the form of her father the piano man just a few weeks ago in “Someone to Watch Over Me”)?  And was she connected to the mysterious missing Cylon Daniel, or not?  If her father didn’t have a Cylon (or “head” character) connection, then how/why did he teach her that song when she was a little girl?

My main dissatisfaction with the ending has to do with its pat, simplistic nature.  For a show that always addressed the realistic details and problems that the “ragtag fleet” faced, this just seemed too easy.  There weren’t ANY Colonials who wanted to stay on their ships?  There wasn’t ANY dissent about destroying ALL of their technology?  It’s all well and good to see everyone frolicking in the grass and on their respective cabin-site hilltops — but what about a month later when it gets cold, and people start getting sick, and going hungry?  I would have liked to have seen at least a scene or two addressing some of those possible concerns.  (And speaking of simplistic, is Adama going to build that cabin all on his own??  Come on.  I would have liked to have seen one final scene of him and Lee reuniting, after both losing their respective ladies.  That would have felt a bit more “right” to me than having both Bill and Lee left alone.)  I also, frankly, was a bit distracted by the similarity between this ending and that of Douglas Adams’ novel Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Maybe that’s just me!

But I am starting to nitpick here.  The final scene, 150,000 years later, was wonderful.  I enjoyed both the connections to our modern world (on-the-nose though it was) and to the mini-series (echoing Six walking unnoticed through the bustling streets of Caprica).  Who knew the famed One Year Later jump at the end of season 2 was just the beginning of the show’s time-jumping!!

I think any lingering dissatisfaction that I feel rests not with the finale, which (nit-picks aside) was really a magnificent episode, and more with some of the storytelling decisions made during the course of this last season.  Ever since Kara’s “death” (and I guess now I should remove those quotation marks, huh?) towards the end of season 3, the show became much more about the various mysteries that were being presented than it ever had been before.  Questions such as what happened to Kara, what was her destiny, who was her guide, how did she survive… who was the final Cylon… what was the nature of the final five, how could they be cylons, what was their history… what, in fact, does it mean to be a “Cylon”… who was Daniel, and what, if any, connection did he have to Starbuck… what really happened back on Earth, and on Kobol, 2-3,000 years ago…???  Etc etc etc.  For most of its first three seasons, BSG wasn’t really a show about mysteries (the way Lost is), but I felt that these questions came to dominate the show during its final year.  I would have appreciated it had more of them been answered, in more substantial ways, before we even got to the finale.  

Does any of this dilute my over-all love for this show?  No, it does not.  In fact, I can’t wait for the eventual DVD release, so that I can re-watch this final batch of episodes and see, in hindsight, how I feel everything fits together.  

There have been very few television shows as relentlessly challenging, thought-provoking, and just ridiculously entertaining as Battlestar Galactica.  To Ron Moore and everyone involved in the creation of this show, you have my thanks.  

Say it with me now, folks:  So say we all!

It has been a long, long wait for the Sci-Fi Channel to begin airing the final 10 episodes of Battlestar Galactica.  (The first ten episodes of BSG’s fourth season aired from April 4th through June 13th, 2008.)  At last, this past Friday, the wait was over.

For any of you who haven’t been following this spectacular series (without a doubt one of the best shows currently on television), Battlestar Galactica is a “reimagining” of the classic (yet, let’s admit it, also pretty unwatchable) series that lasted one season in 1978.  Galactica follows the last survivors of humanity (the military folk on the Battlestar Galactica and a rag-tag fleet of civilian survivors), following the annihilation of the Twelve Colonies of the human race by the robotic Cylons.  In one of the great reversals of standard heroic television & movie behavior, the series began with the humans deciding to flee the Cylons, rather than stay and fight to the last man.  Of course, things weren’t quite that easy.  Over the course of the series we have seen the men and women of the Galactica struggle to survive, and to keep some semblance of human civilization together, in the face of crises and horror at every turn.  To say the show is gripping would be an understatement of the highest order.

The latest episode, “Sometimes a Great Notion,” picks up with the crew of Galactica at their breaking point.  Having been searching for so long for the salvation they thought the fabled “Earth” would bring, in last year’s cliffhanger they finally found Earth — only to discover it was a wasteland (having suffered the same fate of nuclear annihilation as did their Twelve Colonies).  This year’s premiere doesn’t contain any action-adventure whatsoever.  Rather, the show takes an unflinching look at the reactions of all of the show’s characters to this crushing disappointment.  Most of them do not react well.

One of my favorite things about BSG is the way the characters in the show are always depicted as real people, with real human failings.  I have seen plenty of sci-fi adventure shows in which we see heroic characters always making the right decisions.  Not BSG.  “Sometimes a Great Notion”  is a prime example of that.  

Spoilers from here on out, gang, so if you haven’t seen this episode yet I suggest you move on.

The biggest shock of the episode came from the suicide of Dualla.  I was totally caught off guard by this moment.  Dee has been in the show since the mini-series, and she was always one of the sweetest characters on the show.  It was a total shock to see her fire that gun (particularly since the few scenes prior had been a tender reconciliation with Apollo).  Hats off to the writers for not telegraphing this moment by having her appear all mopey and depressed in the early scenes of the show.  (Although looking back now that we know how her story ends, it’s hard not to see her almost-breakdown in the raptor with Helo as a clear clue as to what was coming.)  It is very sad to see Dee go, however her character had not been well-used by the series ever since the death of Billy.  (Her sudden infatuation with Apollo seemed rushed and out of no-where, and a betrayal of the touching love-story with Billy that had been a major part of the show’s first two years.)  While I hate to see that character out of the series, I am glad to see Dualla return, at least for a short time, to the fore-front of the show.  

After Dee, the biggest character breakdown would have to be that of Admiral Adama himself.  His brutal scene in Colonel Tigh’s quarters was a stunner.  (Bill has had a tough couple of days, if you remember his collapse in his quarters in last year’s finale, after learning that Tigh was a Cylon.)  Watching the lead of the show completely fall to pieces before our eyes was staggeringly painful, and a testament to the amazing acting of Edward James Olmos.  (How has this man not been nominated for an Oscar for his work on this show??)  What’s even more amazing is that Colonel Tigh came off as the most level-headed, in-control character in the whole episode!!  Talk about a reversal of roles!

But while some characters clearly stepped to the forefront of the tale, I was very pleased and impressed by the way almost every major character got some attention in the premiere.  Almost as stunning as Adama’s collapse was that of President Roslin’s.  The scene in which she stepped off the raptor, totally unable to face the crowds awaiting some word on Earth, was another high-point of the episode for me.  Who else?  One-legged Gaeta is looking a lot worse for the wear.  (I wonder when the events of the webisodes will start to come into play.)  I loved seeing Baltar back in arrogant scientist mode (as opposed to Jesus mode).  I was also engaged with Apollo’s struggle to pick up the pieces on Galactica without the help of Roslin or his father.  (The call-back to Roslin’s wipe-board with the total number of humans left alive was especially poignant.)  And then there is Starbuck, poor Starbuck, confronted with her crashed ship and the burnt corpse in the cockpit.  

Which brings me to the other thing that impressed me about this episode — we got some pretty big answers to some pretty major mysteries!   The revelation that the 13th Colony was Cylons was genius, just genius.  When we first learned the identities of the four Cylons in the fleet (in the 3rd season finale, “Crossroads”), it seemed apparent to me that being a Cylon meant something more than just being a robot (or a “skinjob”).  I thinking about the show’s mantra that “all of this has happened before,” and began to wonder if  we weren’t headed for a revelation that somehow, some humans could also be Cylons, or that somehow ALL humans were Cylons (whatever exactly it meant to be a “Cylon”).  Now, we didn’t quite learn THAT in this week’s episode, but I was fascinated by the implication that, 2,000 years ago on Earth, the “Cylons” were the human-looking people living on the planet, who were nuked by robots.  (The “humans”???)  Great mind-bending stuff.

I have no idea what Starbuck is, how she got to Earth from that nebula, or what her ultimate destiny is.  But damn if I’m not intrigued!  I was also surprised but very pleased by the revelation that the beacon she was following (that lead the fleet to Earth) wasn’t something left by the 13th Colony 2,000 years ago, but was in fact the beacon from HER OWN crashed ship.  Very clever.

I was also extremely tickled by the revelation of the final Cylon!!  I thought we’d have to wait a lot longer to learn the identity of the final Cylon, but I love that it is now out of the way so that we can focus on its implications and its fall-out.  Remember way back in the first season, when we first met Ellen Tigh (”TighMe Up, Tigh Me Down”), and Adama suspected that she was a Cylon??  Guess he was right after all!  It puts a whole different spin on everything we’ve seen of Ellen in the past, from her dalliances with Cavill on New Caprica to, of course, her death at the hands of her husband Saul.  

Now, of course, to really understand the revelation about Ellen, we still need to learn what exactly it means to be a “Cylon.”  What is a Cylon, and why were the five hidden Cylons different from the seven other models?  Who created them?  What is their ultimate plan (referred to in the opening credits of the show since the first season)?  It is hard to evaluate what I think about Ellen’s revelation (and also the revelations about Tigh, Tyrol, Anders, and Tori) until we learn the answers to those larger questions.  

But for now, I am fully engaged and on-board.  I honestly have NO IDEA where the show will be taking us during its final nine episodes, and that is so rare and so exciting.  I can’t wait for next week’s episode!  (Will this be the end of Zarek??)

If you’re interested, here is a fascinating, in-depth interview with Galactica master-mind Ron Moore in which he discusses this past episode.  

Also, here is another great interview with Ron Moore that was posted about two weeks ago, in which Mr. Moore discusses the end of the show.  It’s a great interview that avoids spoilers, but does hint at some of the story-lines that will be addressed in the final remaining episodes.  Luckily, a LOT of the unresolved issues that are on my mind are mentioned by Mr. Moore, so I am encouraged.

Can’t wait to see the final nine episodes!!  I wish there were more!!

To all the Battlestar Galactica fans out there who, like me, are very sad to see the show come to a close with the 10 remaining episodes (to air on Sci-Fi later this year) — rejoice!

In addition to the much-discussed and finally green-lit Caprica TV-movie (set 50 years before the show — watch a trailer here), an additional BSG prequel TV-Movie has just been announced — one with much closer ties to the show. It’ll feature many actors from the series (announced so far: Anders, Chief Tyrol, and Cavil), and it’ll be directed by Edward James Olmos. Check out the details here!

Also! Rumor has it that the final BSG episodes will air in “extended” form — longer than the regular hour (or approx. 42 minutes without commercials). Read what Executive Producer David Eick has to say on the matter here!

LOTS of fun stuff continuing to hit the interweb in this past week, after the San Diego Comic Con.  Check out these links:

Creepy new trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince can be found here!

Is the new Terminator movie going to be any good?  I doubt it.  But is this poster pretty cool?  Why it surely is.

Speaking of posters, some gorgeous new posters for the Watchmen movie can be seen here.

The entire hour-long Battlestar Galactica panel from Comic-Con (hosted by KEVIN SMITH!) is on-line here.

If you’re going to go see the next X-Files movie, this somewhat humorous recap of the final two rather lame seasons of the show can be found here.  Of course, the movie doesn’t deal with any of that stuff.  But its a fun trip down memory lane, as well as a reminder of why I haven’t rewatched any of the episodes from those final years of the show recently!

And finally, who better to sum up the entire Comic Con experience for those of us who couldn’t attend than Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.  He is merciless.

OK, that should keep you all off the streets for the next little while…

I’m a bit of a TV nut.  So, like so many of you, I had to go through a bit of an adjustment this winter without any new installments of Lost, The Office, and all my other TV pals.

How did I survive?  DVDs, my friends.  God bless ‘em.

Here’s just a sampling of the Digital Video Devicey goodness that I enjoyed over the past few months:

I.  Futurama: Bender’s Big Score – There aren’t a lot of shows (only Firefly and Arrested Development come to mind) whose cancellation burned me more than that of Futurama.  My goodness I loved this show. I still remember the moment when I first understood that this Matt Groening creation was a thing of awesome beauty and genius.  It was season two’s episode “I Second That Emotion,” (that’s the one where the Professor installs an empathy chip in Bender), in which it was revealed that the colony of underground mutants (long story) worshipped an unexploded nuclear bomb but, as one of the mutants commented, “its really just a Christmas and Easter” thing.  Any show that makes Beneath the Planet of the Apes jokes (that’s where the whole mutants-worshipping-an-unexploded-nuclear-bomb thing comes from) without care as to the tiny amount of viewers who would actually get that joke is a show that guaranteed itself my viewership until the end of time.  Anyways, this DVD movie was the 1st of 4 DVDs rescuing the show from oblivion.  It’s the bees’ knees, baby.

II.  Battlestar Galactica: Razor – Another direct-to-DVD continuation of a brilliant TV show.  If you’re not watching Sci-Fi’s stunningly amazing reinvention of BSG, then I have only pity in my heart for you.  This installment was, no surprise, gripping and surprising…in particular, the multi-layered structure of flashbacks-within-flashbacks was super-cool.  And we got to see a young William “Husker” Adama battling “toasters” in the First Cylon War!

III.  Zodiac – I totally missed this David Fincher film, about the real-life Zodiac murders of the 60’s & 70’s, when it was in theatres…and I don’t know quite what prompted me to pick it up on DVD.  But I found this film to be completely gripping.  A terrific cast,  including Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Junior, and many many other familiar faces really kept things moving.  And the beautiful set design & costuming combined with some really beautiful but extraordinarily subtle visual effects work brought San Francisco through the years to gorgeous visual life.

IV.  Igby Goes Down – Check out this cast:  Kieran Culkin, Clare Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Amanda Peet, Ryan Phillipe, Bill Pullman, and Susan Sarandon.  Find it.  Watch it.  You won’t regret it.

More DVDS I watched and loved this winter coming tomorrow!