Review of Battlestar Galactica: "The Plan"

[flowrs4ophelia]

HOLY GEE, WHO NOW SHIPS ANDERS/BAROLAY? THAT WOULD BE ME.
& the rest of my reaction to The Plan




Generally, I didn't love it but definitely didn't hate it. It's a good thing I didn't expect anything mind-blowing, because as a last BSG hurrah it probably would have left me feeling pretty empty. This is the kind of thing that will only be of much interest to big fans who know the universe very well, and at the same time those kind of fans probably know the episodes well enough that it suffers a lot from the constant re-used footage. I believe Razor did some of that too in places where it belonged, but not to this kind of extent that made it feel almost like a flashback episode of a show made as filler. Then again, I've always thought Razor was fun but kind of weak by BSG standards and overall not that necessary, and though The Plan has a lot of the same problems I would say it's definitely a step up. I just find myself regretting that unlike the mini or Razor, this one will only ever be available to buy on its own, so if I want it I'll have to pay twenty bucks for something that's only about an hour of new material.


Bits I notably enjoyed:

— The beginning showing the destruction of the Colonies was great. One of the things I loved most about the entire "movie" was simply that we finally got to see some of the other Colonies besides Caprica! It was like seeing all that devastation again in a way the miniseries could have done with a bigger budget. And the basestars swiveling and preparing to nuke was just aaaaaawesome.

— Of course, everything with Cavil was gold. He's an awesome, loathsome, hilarious, brilliant character who is amazingly played, and I knew anything with a lot more of him in it couldn't be too disappointing.

— Some things might have taken kind of a stretch of the imagination to see actually happening, like that Cavil was actually meeting with Boomer while she was a sleeper agent. But it does make a whole lot of sense that there were secret Cylon meetings happening on the Galactica (and boy does that makes his "I haven't seen you at any of the meetings" line to Tyrol even funnier), because what the hell else would they have been doing with their time around there? I don't know if I like the revelation that the Boomer/Cavil relationship started prior to her joining back up with the Cylons after Season 1 because it doesn't seem needed to explain it. But I like that the trigger to switch her on was a wooden elephant, because it calls back to the wooden elephants she had in her human apartment supposedly given to her by her mother.

— The parts with Anders and his Pyramid team were great to see, and I totally love the relationship between him and Jean Barolay, who you could kind of already see based on moments of the show meant a lot to him as a friend. A lot of the effectiveness of this whole thing depended on being able to flesh out more minor characters a little, and in the case of Barolay I like her a lot more now and can understand more what brought her to doing those things that the Six who recognized her killed her for. I like that Anders needed the motivation of having people like her with him to rise to the responsibility of being a leader.

— I really liked the scene with Cavil and the Six talking about how all their plans keep getting screwed up, because it was one of the only parts where you could clearly see the bigger cohesive point in all the scenes being shown rather than just a bunch of separate explanations of "How did they do this?" ninety6tears said it would have been great if the whole thing just ended after that scene and Cavil saying "Where did the bottle go?" Hahaha.

— Cavil basically explaining to Doral that his model is useless = priceless. "That jacket was burgundy. This is blue." LOLOLOLOL.

Comments

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Haha, doesn't that "cylon meetings" joke come up earlier? Cause in the miniseries I think when Baltar wants to point the finger at Doral, head!Six is kind of messing with him and saying, "Funny, I don't remember seeing him at any of the cylon meetings."

I thought the Cavil/Boomer thing made a lot more sense because of it being something that had been going on for a while. I think probably the most intriguing thing that The Plan revealed was that there was a personality in Boomer who was aware of what she was doing but also consciously living and remembering this supposedly human life, and had to be fully conscious of what she was doing when she shot Adama. For her to have that coherent revelation that she really isn't loved by herself or anybody except for when she's "under" required Cavil to offer something so that she'd remain loyal, and when everyone on Galactica wrote her off as a toaster he was the only thing she could fall back on when with the cylons. This makes more sense to me than her being brainwashed into feeling loved by Cavil later on. It's seriously suddenly occurring to me that Boomer's is probably a character arc to rival Baltar's, and this is the only storyline in The Plan that could've actually been more compelling if revealed in more detail earlier on. It's doubtful they had it fleshed out like this before, but it's believable enough.

[flowrs4ophelia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that makes sense why he'd pretend to care about her while she's a sleeper agent, but I think the whole point of their relationship later on was it didn't have any pretenses that they actually care about each other. She was more like a disciple or something to him who supported his ideas that they should just be machines and felt like she could learn a lot from him, and I think if he trusted her it was only because he expected her to help him accomplish what he wanted to for her own good. And part of her whole reason for finding comfort in the idea of not even trying to be human is how much she failed to be human and couldn't be forgiven after she shot Adama and everything, which is why it makes more sense to me for her to turn to Cavil after that.