It’s happened in pretty much every season of this show, but it’s becoming more pronounced. As time moves forward, and as the show goes on without the Cylons one can’t help but miss their presence. Six’s laugh, Sharon’s steely gaze, Leoben’s frosted hair, even the boxed Threes for goodness sake. There’s something about Cylons, simple as that.
The show without them, you see, is lacking in drama. The interpersonal drama is something that they are capable of doing, but seem to have lost track of. We spend far too long on the Starbuck/Anders and Lee/Dualla drama (It was really quite uninteresting), and everything to do with Chief and Cally does little to warm my heart. We get Adama dealing with his personal problems, we get everyone turning amongst themselves, and it becomes a problem.
You see, while I like that these people are persons, with their own problems and the like, I also think that their problems need to be more entertaining. Last week’s episode was Helo dealing with racial and civilian issues. This week was Adama dealing with his former wife’s ghost and Chief/Cally in mortal danger. Next week appears to be the Chief dealing with the labour movement in the fleet.
It’s all just a bunch of clichés, at this point. While the show is capable of really dealing with these political messages, with these scenarios, it appears that they’ve yet to find a way to make them as interesting as the rest of the show. What once could have been a convincing plot device, Adama searching into his past to try to reconcile his relationship with his wife, it seemed oddly distant and uncanny here.
In a cast of so many, characters often get lost in the shuffle, and it’s like the writers are taking this opportunity to shoehorn them into roles that aren’t really that interesting compared to the adventures of Starbuck or Lee. Helo works with civilians, Chief works with the labour movement…it’s all boring. There’s nothing interesting about it.
The problem is that the most interesting things sitting around, not being featured, are much more interesting. We’ve got Caprica Six sitting in a cell somewhere, apparently having discussions with Roslin…we didn’t see that. We have Baltar sitting awaiting trial, and we haven’t seen anything for two weeks. We’re building up to his trial, but we’re just not getting there yet.
There is something about the Cylons that puts the show into overdrive that has only been matched by the Pegasus Arc of Season Two. It is clear that the show hasn’t been capable of stepping up to that plate with its more simpler characters, its ones that they’re trying to humanize. Some of these characters, no matter what they try to convince us, are incapable of being interesting without being attacked by Cylons.
So, please, let’s see a little Baseship action to shake Battlestar Galactica out of its stupor. I’m really hoping that the Cylons show up to be part of Baltar’s trial, I think it would prove quite interesting.
Cultural Learnings 