Flex’s blog

I haven’t had a chance to talk about the second season of Battlestar Galactica yet but here goes nothing…

So the second season of this critically acclaimed show began last Friday with the episode “Scattered” and the show instantly picks up where it left off with Adama bleeding from two gunshot wounds. Before I continue, I’ll give a brief synopsis of what happens:

* Col. Tigh takes command orders the fleet to jump to emergency jump coordinates because the new first officer fears that the Cylons are coming.. and indeed they are!
* After jumping to new coordinates, Galactica ends up in isolation having gone to a different set of coordinates than the rest of the fleet. As it turns out - Galactica had a new set of coordinates to jump to that the rest of the fleet didn’t know about. In order for Galactica to find the location of the fleet, it needs to go back to the original starting point and figure out the old coordinates that the fleet went off to. Problem - the Cylons are still there.
* President Roslin is thrown into the brig along with Captain Lee Adama
* Meanwhile, on Caprica, Starbuck gets feisty and tries to kill Sharon.. but Helo stops her and Sharon ends up escaping in the Cylon raider that Starbuck used to get to Caprica.
* On Kobol, Tyrol and company come under attack from some unknown force and lose a team member in the process. Baltar continues his conversations with Number Six and is amazed by the notion of the baby that he supposedly fathered.
* Back on Galactica, Tigh decides to network all the computers on the Galactica to speed up calculations of the old jump coordinates.. but this still means Galactica will need about 12 minutes of time to fight the Cylons as well as prevent the Cylons from cracking into the networking software.
* They decide to jump back to the starting coordinates and fight the Cylons in order to calculate the old jump coordinates. Lt. Gaeta figures out the old coordinates JUST in the nick of time and gets Galactica off to the old coordinates. However before he is able to do so, a new Cylon craft crashes into Galactica.. Hmm.. no explosion of any sort.. what could it be?
* During the entire episode, Tigh is having recurring flashbacks about his friendship with Adama and it’s revealed that Adama is the reason that Tigh is still with the fleet and even possibly still alive. Thus Tigh feels that he owes Adama everything .. this is not Tigh’s ship - it’s William Adama’s ship until he dies. Meanwhile, Adama nearly dies from the bullet wounds but the nurse saves him just in the nick of time.
* The episode ends with you the viewer realizing that the Cylon ship that crashed into Galactica actually has a Cylon raiding party. Oh dear…

OK… phew.. took me long enough to write all of that down. So the episode was quite convoluted as you see. One of the things that I’ve noticed about BSG is the fact that every episode has at least 4-5 different B plots going on at the same time. Compare that to Star Trek (where you have at most 2-3 storylines going on at the same time) and you realize why BSG is so much better. OK.. enough on that topic…

There are many changes to BSG in this second season - ranging from changes to the opening credits and music to the introduction of new characters on the show. There appears to be new threats and challenges to the colonial fleet - ranging from the shooting of Adama, to the imprisonment of the president, to the need in getting Apollo’s arrow to Kobol, to even threats on Kobol itself. Therein lies the beauty of the show - it’s complex and yet simple. The goal is the same from season to season - the fleet needs to survive and survival seems somewhat tied to the notion of finding Earth - whether it exists or not. Yet through it all - there’s the complex notion of man vs machine and the eventual melding of the two species; there’s religion and the notion of predestiny; and finally there’s a better understanding of the core characters that drive this show.

Season 2 shows us that things get ever more personal as Adama is critically injured and things are a mess around the fleet. I personally could have lived without the flashbacks but I recognize that they were important to show the loyalty that Tigh showed to Adama. It also shows that Tigh owes Adama LOT for where he is today which is arguably better than where he could have been.

There were some question marks or possible flaws that I’ve yet to fully explain:
* Why do they really need to go back to the beginning coordinates to figure out where the fleet jumped to? They should have the history of all the emergency jump coordinates on record.. so why can’t they jump to those coordinates? Or is jumping not so much about going to a set of coordinates but rather going a certain distance from where they are? If that is the case, then one should still be able to figure out where the fleet went off to WITHOUT the need to go back to the beginning. Oh well.
* How is it that the Cylon ship manages to survive Galactica’s firing zone?
* You’re telling 20+ Galactica fighters managed to hold off hundreds of raiders? Ummm ok.

Ok.. like I said - still the best show on TV outside of HBO. Sorry but Entourage and Six Feet Under are still better IMHO. However, the show is picking up nicely from where it left off a few months ago. It doesn’t wrap up the story line easily.. it makes things more difficult which is how it should be!

[Check it out]