"Battlestar Galactica" spoilers coming up just as soon as I figure out who I have to call to get the Sci-Fi promo monkeys fired...Ron Moore said that he dreamed up the New Caprica arc because he was getting bored with fleet on the run stories, and worried that the audience was, too. He figured that by taking such a drastic departure from the formula, "Then by the time we get back into space, it'll have much greater impact."
Now, I consider the New Caprica episodes (from "Lay Down Your Burdens" to "Collaborators") to be by far the best sustained stretch this show has ever done, but the return to space hasn't had the impact that Moore was hoping. If anything, the extended stay planetside has made me less willing to indulge mediocre space opera, and we've gotten a little too much of that in the last month or so.
The New Caprica episodes felt like they had things to say, socially, politically and about the characters. The episodes since have had some strong moments, but overall they've felt aimless. Baltar is on the Cylon baseship. Why? Do we know significantly more about the Cylons than we did before? Are they more interesting now? Why bother having Tigh and Starbuck go so far off the deep end if you're going to resolve it (for the most part) so quickly? Was there any real point to "Hero"?
With "Eye of Jupiter," at least, a lot of the seemingly pointless strands began to come together: the Kara/Lee/Dee/Anders quadrangle, the D'Anna/Baltar/Six triangle, D'Anna's suicidal tendencies, the search for earth, etc. Plus, we got our first taste of Brother Cavil in quite a while, and Dean Stockwell continues to be all kinds of awesome. And the cliffhanger would've been pretty cool...
... if the eedjits in Sci-Fi marketing hadn't given away the entire damn resolution in the January promo. Way to not leave people on the edge of their seats, guys.
What did everybody else think? Am I being too hard on the most recent episodes?
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