Tuned In

BSG: Also Sprach Kara Thrace-stra

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WARNING: If you haven’t watched last night’s Battlestar Galactica and don’t want it spoiled, go the frak away.

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SCI FI Channel Photo: Carole Segal

It’s a strange experience watching sci-fi shows on advance screener DVDs. Because so many scenes contain effects that are added in postproduction at the last minute, the episodes are often swiss-cheesed with place-filler cards that indicate where the FX are missing.

All of which is to say, it was, as the producers earlier hinted, very 2001-esque when Starbuck took her final plunge to meet her destiny, and perhaps humanity’s, at the bottom of that multicolored whirlpool in last night’s Battlestar Galactica. Or at least I think so. I watched on an advance screener–yes, I have the final episodes of the season, and no, I’m not telling anything–and many of the pivotal scenes consisted of line drawings of Starbuck’s face through the cockpit and “Kara POV” drawings through the windshield. But: very 2001-esque line drawings.

I was glad to see the main race-for-the-thirteenth-tribe storyline advancing, after several episodes got mired in way too much personal business. Even in last night’s episode I could have done without the mother-daughter drama, nor do I care much about anybody’s daddy issues or marital issues, and frankly, I’m not aware of any BSG fans who really do. Though it is interesting, I guess, to see Thrace as the headstrong, self-destructive black sheep of a family with a military history. What’s she supposed to be, the John McCain of space?

In any case, I remember the Internet lighting up when I picked BSG as the Best TV Show of 2005, so I know Galactica fans are lurking out there. What’s your take on the fate of our antiheroine? Dead? Alive? Transubstantiated into some kind of star fetus?

Also, is there anyone out there who gets more nervous the closer Galactica and the fleet appear to get to Earth? Nobody wants to live through this again, do we?