December 22, 2004 - Cylons, Cylons everywhere..... and not a one can think.

I'm not sure what to think about Ron Moore's re-visualization of Battlestar Galactica anymore.  Just when I start to warm up to the series a little, it pulls something out of its shiny helmet that makes me wonder all over again if Ron Moore wasn't on some secret mission from Paramount Pictures to destroy any hope of the Galactica franchise ever succeeding.  It's no wonder Moore has been jumping up and down all over the Internet, begging people not to download the episodes early.  Heaven forbid too many people figure out that the series is a creative mess before SCI FI Channel suckers some advertisers out of their first quarter budgets.

As always, spoilers abound so if you're one of those people who likes to watch something and pretend it was created in a vacuum and no information about it has ever reached your virgin ears, hit the back button now.  You should know better by now.

Episode 7: Six Degrees of Separation

Keeping a long standing tradition from the original series of ripping titles off from much more successful films, Six Degrees would have been more interesting if the entire cast would have spent the approximately 45 minutes of story time playing a game of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.  Dr. Baltar has been a very, very naughty boy.  See, he was so busy being hyper-intelligent and trying to sex up the hot blonde in the red dress that he let the Cylons slip right through the security grid and destroy most of the Human race.  Ever since then, Baltar has had to not only live with the shame and guilt of his actions but has also had to live with that hot blonde Cylon living in his head.  Most people just think is a brilliant nutcase who talks to himself and seems to like to wrap his arms around himself in a loving kind of way while having the occasional lovers spat with no one else in the room.  When Blondie starts pushing Baltar to give himself over to God, the fecal matter hits the turbines.  Baltar, being an educated man, dismisses the whole God notion entirely and doesn't understand when his Cylon Nookie Machine decides she's had enough.

Given all of that, I suppose Baltar can be forgiven for ignoring the hot blonde when Commander Adama introduces her on the Galactica's bridge.  Yup, she's here for real this time and it's not for a roll in the cargo bay.

The question the audience has had to ask so far in this series is if Baltar is really nuts or did the Cylons manage to do something to him that has created a connection with the blonde Cylon?  And if you had sex with more than one of those Cylons at the same time, would it be a three-way?   Unfortunately, this episode only answers one of those questions while also exploring the phenomenon of someone's fall from grace in the public eye.  Cylon Hottie Number Six shows up on board Galactica with a security disk she claims contains proof that Baltar betrayed the Humans and allowed the Cylons to invade.  The disk shows a man that sure looks like Baltar planting a bomb in a secure section filled with defense computers.  Of course, Baltar is guilty of betraying the Humans but isn't guilty of sabotage, a conundrum that tugs at the last few strings of sanity the good Doctor still has left.

Everyone on the ship seemingly turns on Baltar, including his good friend, the President.  Of course, once he's suddenly exonerated, everything is hunky-dory once again with everyone in the fleet.  Eventually, Baltar is broken down and does exactly what Cylon Six of Nine (divided by the square root of track 3 of The Beatles' White Album) told him to do in the first place.  The lesson here, kids: If the hottie that's getting naked in front of you tells you to give your soul to God, you say YES.

This episode also re-introduces the Cylon notion of God.  The idea that Moore and company are following is intriguing, that the Cylons have actually formulated a concept of God that is much closer to the "real world" concept while the Galacticans are still worshiping multiple gods based on the Lords of Kobol.  More on that idea in the next episode.  Unfortunately.

Oh, yeah, and meanwhile, back on Cylon Occupied Caprica, Helo and a copy of Boomer continue to wander around, being watched by a couple of the other humanoid Cylons for no apparent reason.  For everyone that gave me crap over liking The Blair Witch Project, this is like every complaint I heard about that film without any of the entertainment value.  I'm still confident that this stuff is all going on the cutting room floor when SCI FI decides it needs to run more promos for Earthsea II: The Revenge of Ursula K. Le Guin.

2 1/2 stars out of 5

Episode 8: Flesh and Bone

Another copy of one of the humanoid Cylons has been found onboard one of the ships in the fleet.  Adama dispatches Starbuck to interrogate the prisoner, who claims to have hidden a nuclear warhead somewhere in the fleet.

Meanwhile, President Roslin has been having dreams and waking visions that feature the same man Starbuck is about to interrogate.  The visions are startling but very much like the ones we've seen Baltar have with his Cylon sex-bot. 

Most of the episode is the Cylon doing exactly what Adama warned Starbuck he'd try to do – get into her head.  It's a whole episode built around Cylon religion.  This is what happens when fiction tries too hard to be smarter than it really is – you wind up with pretentious drivel that makes you feel like you'd have gotten more entertainment from watching paint dry.  Because this is television we don't ever get to see Starbuck do anything really horrible to her Cylon captive while trying to extract information from him and President Roslin's actions at the end of the episode seem to come from nowhere, as do a couple of new plot seeds planted by the Cylon of the Week.  Note to the production staff: when you've only got 13 episodes to begin with, don't waste one on crap like this.

Oh, and Sharon & Helo are still avoiding Cylons on Caprica but are thinking of settling down in a cabin in the woods.  Like anybody really gives a rat's ass at this point.  This plot line would be interesting if it just, uhm, er...  Oh, never mind.  It wouldn't be interesting if it suddenly beamed the details for the Colonel's Secret Recipe and the secret of cold fusion into our brains.

1 star out of 5