Season 4 BSG Wishlist

[selenak]

As in addition to TW finale and DW season opener goodness, we're approaching the start of the new and final season of Battlestar Galactica, here's my hopeful wishlist for said season:



1) Show, I know I can rely on you for terrific season opening episodes until ca. ep 4-6, and upon great finales, but it would be really nice if you avoided the mid-season slump this time. Pretty please?

2) No more Kara/Lee in any shape or form. Kara and Lee as friends again (a la Maelstrom) is fine.

3) On that note, no more romantic entanglements with Lee Adama as one of the participants, full stop. I used to like Lee very much indeed until and including Home II in season 2, and went back to liking him very much indeed during the final season 3 episodes, when the old Lee/ethics dilemma pairing was back with a vengeance. (Kudos whoever thought of making Lee part of Baltar's defense team. Arguably the best decision made for character salvage on this show.) In between, he didn't seem to have other storylines than being involved in various geometric shapes of romances and being self-pitying about it, which is a waste of a good actor and made the character irritating, to put it mildly.

4) More civilian view points. Laura Roslin isn't enough, since she's the President (and far too cozy with Adama these days). Rosco Lampkin was a neat new civilian character last season; more of same?

5) On that note: last season, you teased us with Zarek in the opening episodes, and basically ignored his existence for the rest of the season where he was The Invisible Vice President. V. v. v. frustrating, that, show. Either kill him off or actually use the character.

6) Speaking of using your potential: season 2 demonstrated what a terrific actress Tricia Helfer can be if you let her. You severely underused her in season 3. Pray rectify this. (Actually, the promo pictures make it look as if you will.)

7) Most of what you did with Gaius Baltar through three seasons was original and inspired, show. Keep that up. As long as you don't pull a Dukat or Brother Justin on him, I'm fine with everything.

8) This reminds me: I loved the Baltar and Roslin scenes in s3 in their unexpectedness (meaning: they weren't about Roslin, due to being awesome, pwning Baltar, as fanfic would have it, but Roslin finding herself ethically challenged). I already mentioned I loved the Zarek scenes (all of which were with Roslin). And Lords of Kobol, did I love the Roslin and Lee courtroom confrontation. I think the common denominator is: I'd like to continue seeing Roslin with people not Bill Adama, as they tend to challenge her more. Not that Laura and Bill aren't cute together, but, you know - CHALLENGE.

9) Which in turn reminds me: it was absolutely unforgivable to delete the Laura-meets-Six scene last season (and also, it made some of both Roslin's and Six' later statements incomprehensible for every viewer who didn't watch it online). I do hope this has occured to you, too, show, and you will give us a lot of Laura and Six (with or without Sharon) in season 4.

10) Whoever the last of the Final Five is: I want a sensible explanation why someone like Tigh, who fought in the first Cylon war where they didn't yet have the ability to look like humans, can be a Cylon. My own guess is that this is because the final five were not created by the Cylons themselves - as the seven were - but I want whatever explanation there is spelled out in canon, on screen, no deleted scene.

Comments

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything here

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

Word on 9 and 10. I want a really good reason why Tigh is a Cylon.

[skywaterblue.livejournal.com]

Cult!Baltar is giving me scary flashbacks to Dukat, though I know you tend to be in favor of that storyline somewhat due to your love for the Kai.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Cult!Baltar and his shipful of protective fangirls is scaring me into thinking that the show's gender politics will get even worse.

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of the things on the list, but I would also like to see more interaction between the female characters in general.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

No, the way I'd phrase it is: Kai Winn's crisis of faith and fall is the ONLY good thing to come out of the whole Pagh Wraiths versus Prophets storyline. And the scenes with her are about the only ones of Dukat's post-Walt that don't make me roll my eyes. Covenant = Worst Episode Ever. Well. Maybe the Molly one is worse, but - no. Covenant. Worst. Ever. Why, Ron?

Anyway, yes, I had scary flashbacks, too, but then again the Cult!Baltar photos seem to be from early in the season (he still has the beard) whereas in most of the promos he hasn't, which makes me think he'll ditch the cult as soon as he finds a reasonably save way to survive without the cultists who picked him up last season.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. Roslin and Kara, Kara and Sharon, Dee and any one (including Kara as long as they don't talk about Lee) - and some more followup on Six and Athena since we did get some interesting scenes between them would be good.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Your Ellen icon makes me all wistful again. God, the heartbreak of that scene...

[adn-heming.livejournal.com]

Whoever the last of the Final Five is: I want a sensible explanation why someone like Tigh, who fought in the first Cylon war where they didn't yet have the ability to look like humans, can be a Cylon.

Yes and yes. Because that would feel like such a huge cheat otherwise, and I do not wish that from the show I love.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I am not opposed to the storytelling choice as such - i.e. Tigh as a Cylon without knowing - but I want a good explanation as part of that story, not just handwaving and hoping people won't mind there is a date problem.

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

As long as you don't pull a Dukat or Brother Justin on him, I'm fine with everything.

As long as they don't turn him into Byron from B5 either...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Great Maker. DO NOT SCARE ME LIKE THAT.

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but of all the religious nuts in genre television, he was the worst by a long way. And while I'm certain RDM won't fall into the same trap JMS did (he seemed to have a thing for long haired, erudite British men), Byron is the yard stick by which I compare these things.

Apologies again :-)

Otherwise, your list is pretty sound. And I have faith they'll explain Tigh - how could they not? It would be a huge cheat otherwise.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but of all the religious nuts in genre television, he was the worst by a long way.

Verily. I was thunderstruck when a few years ago the daughter of a fannish friend told me she loved Byron. (And really meant The Obnoxious One, not the poet.) I think the hair was her excuse.

But back to Gaius B: given that the writing for him so far has been mostly excellent (meaning: he never gets whitewashed or woobified, or, on the other end of the scale, turned into an evil monster (tm)), I think we're safe from the Byron precedent at least. I'm still a little bit wary on the Dukat front. The horrible Covenant was an RDM episode, after all, even though he apologized for it.

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

Heh, I didn't remember that Covenant was RDM - and I never knew he'd apologised for it! That is amusing. I think RDM will have learned from that. There are other DS9 writers on the staff too who might remind him of the bad way this can go...

I rewatched nearly all of B5 about a year ago - watching S5 in its entirety for the first time since, maybe, it originally aired. And while I realised I had judged Commander Lochley too harshly, Byron and that plot is just terrible - mostly because it's stretched out too long. I understand the reasons for the padding, but it's still the fatal flaw of the fifth year.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

I suppose they could semi-cheat and explain it by having the Final Five choose human hosts well after the events of the show are underway. After all, all four that we know of were down on New Caprica in the missing year and during the Cylon occupation. They could've been chosen because hte Final Five considered them special, rather than being special because they'd always been Cylons. Either switching hte originals with new, identical bodies, or importing their consciousnesses to co-exist with the existing human personality. Say the Final Five were tracking the Seven Dwarves, and when the Seven Dwarves discovered New Caprica the Final Five did as well, but secretly.

Okay, fine, so it's a huge reach. But less of a reach than Tigh, with a history going back DECADES, having been a Cylon all that time. Solves the Nicky Tyrol problem as well, not to mention how many times all four have nearly been killed.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Oh, no argument from me. I love my fifth season, because it has a lot I appreciate (not just the Londo & G'Kar storyarc, which would have felt so imcomplete if we had left them in s4), and I am among the few who actually liked Lochley from the start, but I would never defend Byron. (Or my defense would sound like: "at least he was an excuse for Bester to come to the station, and I love Bester?") Or the singalongs...

[crossoverman.livejournal.com]

Oh, why did you have to remind me of the singalongs?!!? WHY!

You're right about Londo, G'Kar and Bester, though.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

My problem with anything involving cloning or otherwise the creation of identical bodies to already existing humans is that if the Cylons (either party) could do that, why not do it to Roslin or Adama? (And Roslin being a Cylon, much like Baltar being a Cylon, would take away the whole point of her storyline.)

I do like the "host" idea, though - after all, with the whole "downloading" concept, it could be the Five have found a way to do without artificial bodies altogether and download in existing ones.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

Um (thinks frantically) no can do on Adama because he wasn't on New Caprica during the occupation and Roslin because they suspected the cancer would return soon and make hers an unsuitable host body. As for Baltar, could be that each human only has one download slot and Head!Six had already grabbed his. Or maybe the Five have standards and don't want to be associated with the likes of Baltar.

Okay, fine, so the justifications for my host body idea are paper-thin. But unless Moore & Co. pull a metaphorical rabbit out of the backstory hat, any canonical justifications will be paper-thin too. In Season 1 and early Season 2 it never would've occurred to me to doubt that they could do it. In early Season 3 I doubted but was optimistic that they could now get over Season 2.5's sophomore slump. Now, I have lots and lots of doubt.

I'll be thrilled if they can get back to the tight plotting that was once a feature of the show, but I've been burned often enough that I'm not going to assume they know what they're doing and any perceived inconsistencies are part of the brilliant master plan. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised by Season 4 and have them pull it all together in a way that makes sense, so here's hoping.