BSG The Plan

If this is to be the very last word about Battlestar Galactica then I can’t help but feel it’s left a few things unsaid, and what it did say it perhaps might have said a little better. This straight-to-DVD feature-length special, The Plan centred around the original intentions the Cylons had for their assault on humans right up to the sudden shift in Cylon agenda that occurred at the end of Season 2.

The Plan began with a scene that slotted chronologically at the end of Season 2, with the two Cavil’s being taken to be flushed out of the airlock, and one Cavil telling the other why there had been a change in tactic. As a framing device it worked well enough, and it wasn’t shortly after that we were seeing the attack against the colonies from the viewpoint of the Final Five as well as the Cylon base ships.

The effects, whilst hardly blockbuster standard, were mostly impressive. The first hints that there was some greater force in the universe shaping events was present in such moments as Tory’s survival from the blast, crawling out of her car when everyone else around her appeared to have been wiped out. Ellen Tigh, also, survived in such a way like she did back on the original Earth. These were neat touches but, like most of the show, would probably be lost on everyone but proper BSG fans.

The manner by which the film skimmed along certain episodes from the first and second series was another narrative device that would have been bewildering to all non-BSG watchers. And yet here, in this conceit of filling in the gaps of episodes, is where my biggest complaint about The Plan arises. For every good fill-in there were some massive omissions.

A good one? Boomer’s ‘awakening’, dripping wet, having planted the charges in the water supply. We find out that Cavil was interacting with her, using an elephant as a recall tool to trigger her Cylon consciousness. It was nicely done and worked. And I like that we found out who Six turned to talk to in the miniseries after she had been with Baltar. Again, that was Cavil, and it was nice to have those moments revisited. Again, with Six, as the agent that tried to discredit Baltar - that was an odd episode that got a behind-the-scenes exposition.

But the omissions? The point that the Cylons kept attacking the fleet every thirty-three minutes. I presume this was because the Cylons were tracking them, and this was how long it took for the base ships to calculate their next jump? (Seems really slow, when you consider the Hybrid’s speed at jumping in later seasons.) But then the ship that had apparently been tracking them, the one Apollo and Starbuck shot down, it had appeared empty in that first episode. What had been going on there? The Plan felt like the perfect chance to answer that mystery, and it missed it.

Same goes for Starbuck’s internment in The Farm, where she received a scar. The Plan actually touched on this very subject, actually went there and showed pieces of it, and yet didn’t bother to explain why Starbuck had been given the scar. It was such a frustrating overlook that I really don’t know how to justify.

The Cylon plan itself did seem somewhat petty. That the Cylons were all hanging around the Final Five, and had inserted themselves within the fleet to mop up any survivors didn’t seem like the most machine-like and efficient way of achieving their goals. The suggestion was that the other Cylon models, aside from Cavil, were not so wholeheartedly bent on destroying humans. It’s really the only way of considering the Boomer/Helo on Caprica sideplot from Season One – that the Cylons wanted to know if the humans could love them and so, potentially, redeem themselves.

There were some interesting depths of the Cylon psyche mined. The Simon model, having a wife and family with humans, served as a direct counterpoint to the cold Cavil and the murder of the child at the finish (a fine BSG moment of ruthlessness). And Leoben’s drawing of the mandalas, and his intuition apparently drawn from future visions of Starbuck, all helped embroider his character’s actions. There was good stuff in The Plan, but the patchwork quality of the narrative didn’t help it all flow along enjoyably.

The only real tangible ‘plot’ was Anders and his Pyramid ball team’s survival and resistance on Caprica. Again, it was a nice touch that he was watched over by a Cylon model (Simon, again) but I didn’t really feel like I got into their plot as much as I could have. Perhaps the whole thing was blighted by the fact that it was a rehash and fill-in piece; the audience knew where everything was headed, who lived and who died, and how certain things had to play out so there was an inherent lack of drama. A similar problem inhibited the Razor special episode but that one did, at least, function as a standalone story. The Plan can’t make the same claim.

As a swansong then, it wasn’t the most graceful of exits. If this is the last word, perhaps there were some things that were better left unsaid and instead left for us to talk about amongst ourselves.

Razor

I understand that this one-off, feature length special aired in between Season 3 and 4. I didn’t even know it existed until I took to browsing around certain websites looking to see if I could buy BSG on DVD cheap and noticed this curiosity amongst the regular seasons. I believed that it was purely going to be about Battlestar Pegasus – about Cain and her crew and the story of what had happened to them during and after the first Cylon attack. I got that story, and a little more besides. . .

The story of Pegasus was told in flashback alongside a story that slotted, chronologically, not too long after Apollo had been granted Commander status of the ship. He made the decision to make the tough, hardline Cain-enthusiast Kendra his X-O and it was through her eyes did we see the history play out.

In truth, I was a little disappointed by watching the story of Cain’s decisions and the plight of Pegasus before it encountered Galactica. We had already been given the ‘beats’ of the story by hearing about the X-O who got shot, and the shooting of civilians when ships were looted of their assets. What I wanted was to really get inside the mind of Cain and understand how it was she had made those decisions in good conscience. Really, I didn’t get much past the idea I had of her previously: that she was a bitch with a single intent and will to get it done no matter what.

The biggest surprise regarding her was that she was a lesbian, and one that was getting it on with the Cylon that would come to be known as Caprica Six. Six’s treatment once she was discovered as Cylon, and the torture and rape that was no doubt encouraged by Cain, were no doubt fuelled by her own hurt and self-loathing about how she had been taken in and perhaps fallen in love with Six. (It also makes the fact that Six would be the one to shoot Cain dead a more salient, poetic act.)

Otherwise the events we had heard about worked out pretty much how they had been said they did, which left little sense of surprise and no real understanding of the motivation. The closest to rationalisation was when Cain was of the belief that Pegasus and her crew were completely alone and the only thing they had left was vengeance and anger to deliver some payback. That was fair enough when they thought they were alone, but why the shut off and murder of civilians once they were discovered?

The title ‘Razor’ was the justification, with Cain’s viewpoint being that they had to become like a blade that cuts, coldly, to survive. I understood what was being said, I just couldn’t believe in it from Cain and see where her head state was at. That was a shame really, because the story of Pegasus was one I was willing to get along for the ride with. Perhaps it was the fact that the story was told in flashback, and so drained of dramatic impetus, that prevented me from fully engaging in it.

There were two other notable elements which, perhaps, justified this being a special episode that was aired between Season 3 and 4 (otherwise there was no real point in the story of Apollo’s command and the mission Starbuck and co made, and how Kendra eventually sacrificed herself as repentance for what she had done).

The first notable element was a young Adama’s story during the first Cylon war, how he had come across a Cylon base that was conducting experiments on humans. It was there he found the first prototype hybrids that were being created. Some of the detail on all of that was kind of lost on me, in truth, but I got the impression that the Hybrids were the Cylons first attempts at what would eventually become the likes of Six and Boomer and the other moulds. These hybrids, however, appeared to have some special sense of the patterns of the universe, and how things that had gone before would happen again. . .

Which brings me to the second notable element, and easily the most juicy in light of the end of Season 3and what Kendra heard about Starbuck. The hybrid delivered some form of prophecy warning of how Starbuck would bring about the end of humanity and that she must not be followed. Quite what the meaning was all about was, naturally, kept kind of oblique.

My own personal take on it, and the direction I think that Season 4 is going to take, is that Starbuck will indeed bring about the end of humanity. And I also think she will bring about the end of Cylons. And what will happen is that the perfection of a Cylon-Human hybrid will be complete, and that will be the new race. . .

On saying that, it sounds like kind of too much of a bleak ending for all the various people we have come to know over the course of the Seasons of BSG, so maybe that’s something of a longshot!

So, in short, not a bad feature length piece that served as a diversion and a mild curiosity – but there was never any danger of it generating the immediacy and excitement of Battlestar Galactica’s regular episodes when firing on all cylinders. The story of Pegasus was mildly interesting, but there’s a better story we want to see play out!