Misery in Space

Dear Jane,

I have to say that I really do appear to have a blindspot where New BSG is concerned. People around me not much given to talking about SF go all fluttery when it is mentioned, ‘Oh, that’s awesome’ went my manager when I mentioned I was watching the series. The United Nations – the frickin’ United Nations – has hosted retrospectives on the series and learned discussions of its themes. And yet I am finding it really hard going. Rather than something I make a point of sitting down to watch every night, it’s just become the show that’s on in the background when I’m having my tea in my garret, which usually only happens two or three times a week. Not to say that I’m not giving it my full attention: you’ve got no chance of keeping up with this thing unless you stay on the ball.

Possibly this is because I am from a background where stories come in discrete chunks, for the most part. I don’t object to the odd bit of metaplot development going on between episodes, but I’m not terribly keen on series suddenly starting to turn into serials, which is what’s been happening with BSG over the course of the last season or so.

Also, and once again this is perhaps a personal thing, the general tone of the last few episodes is really just not to my taste, as it seems mainly to concern people undergoing moments of extreme personal angst and despair while no-one has a bloody clue what’s actually going on around them. Someone gets thrown out of an airlock. Someone else has their leg sawn off. The admiral appears to be having some sort of nervous breakdown.

I must confess to feeling particularly exercised on behalf of the minor characters, who I’ve always found rather more engaging, for the most part, than the programme’s leads, most of whom feel somewhat crushed by their own significance: apart from the two Adamas, both of whom are well-enough played to be sympathetic, the others don’t feel like real people, just mouthpieces for the writers. And yet its those minor characters, whose performers have had the latitude to bring a bit of humanity and depth to them, who are primarily being ravaged to generate that atmosphere of despair and struggle. Someone has to lose a leg? Ah, make it a minor character. A bunch of hidden Cylons required? Where’s that cast list? And, hey, let’s kill off a sympathetic character who’s been consistently presented as a bit of a loser, by having them murdered. Cally doesn’t qualify for an inexplicable resurrection, unfortunately, presumably because she’s not an insanely omni-competent Mary Sue with a Special Destiny.

I suppose I should probably point out my problem is with the Kara Thrace character and not with Katee Sackhoff as an individual. I know nothing of Katee Sackhoff as an individual, but she obviously has some sort of screen presence (not that it was especially noticeable during Riddick, but that’s by-the-by). I am sure that if I only saw Sackhoff in another part I would be able to give a much more objective assessment of her abilities.

Or possibly not.

Anyway, when it comes to not having a bloody clue what’s going on, I fear I should perhaps raise my own hand. Let’s try to sort out where we are at the midpoint of season four: Starbuck, who is apparently fated to destroy the human race, blew up but then got better and returned from the planet Earth with a mystic sense of how to get back there. Meanwhile four of the mysterious final five Cylons have been brought together by their shared feeling for Bob Dylan cover versions. They do not feel inclined to act any more like Cylons than they did before, they just know they are Cylons somehow (a peculiar epistemological point). Various minor characters are wheeled on to have visions and toss supposedly-profound theological points into the mix, while the carnival of despair goes on around them.

I really preferred it when it was just Ben Cartwright in a cape leading a parable about Mormonism, to be totally honest. Ho hum.

I actually sat down to do the usual episode-by-episode thing at this point, but they’re all blurring together in my head and I couldn’t find many genuinely positive things to say about any of them. I can still appreciate the skill and artistry that’s gone into the designs and special effects, and many of the actors are consistently doing very fine work. But as far as the actual story’s concerned, it’s really not my cup of tea. The last chunk of the show is going to have to do something spectacular to get me back on board, and striking as the last shot of Revelations is (it would even have been a good moment to close the entire series with) I get no real sense that this is on the cards.