By Todd VanDerWerff
“The Passage,” the penultimate episode of Battlestar Galactica's 2006 run, was both a throwback to the series’ more action-packed first season and an attempt at rehabilitating a character who was mostly invented to be a thorn in the side of the regulars. It succeeded at the former and almost succeeded at the latter, though it took a strong final monologue from Edward James Olmos's Admiral Adama to rescue that plot point. All in all, a solid stand-alone, inching the show's mythology forward a bit while returning to the feeling of imminent doom that was Season One's stock-in-trade.
The plot finds the fleet running perilously low on food. To get to the algae neeeded to compress into precious protein bars, the ships must pass through a highly irradiated star cluster. The military pilots, already weak from hunger, are told to pump themselves up on stimulants and chaperone the civilian fleet through five trips to and from the planet on the other edge of the star cluster. (They are able to jump in to the danger area, then jump out later, but they can’t go on their own and leave the civilians unprotected). The episode revolved around this exhausting mission, and the cast's ragged performances were a nice reminder of just how raw things can get for the denizens of the fleet (since Season One, there have only been a few episodes where the characters struggled to acquire the materials for fuel and life-sustaining essentials, probably because there were only so many ways to retell that story without seeming repetitious).
The end of all things has always hovered over Galactica; indeed, the series is often at its best when we’re reminded of just how necessary every life is to the continuation of the human race. (I often miss President Laura Roslin’s whiteboard that tracked the population of the fleet, even as it always seemed to trend downward.) As the show has gone on, though, the nuclear apocalypse that kicked it off has necessarily receded further into the background. Characters started having children (bumping that whiteboard count up ever-so-slightly), the portrayal of the Cylon civilization deepened, and the writers grew more interested in pursuing the series’ underlying mythology. It was nice, then, to see an episode that focused on one of those essential survival questions again (though it seems unlikely that Adama or Roslin would let the food situation get that dire before seeking a new algae source), especially as it called back some of the most vivid Season One elements -- the exhausted pilots holding themselves together with drugs and minimal sleep, the interest in the role rank plays within the pilots' dynamics, and the reapppearance of the wall of photos honoring those who died in the Cylons' opening attack.
If "The Passage" seemed to view now-familiar elements with fresh eyes, that might be due to the fact that it was written by a non-staffer -- longtime TV writer Jane Espenson, whose career spans everything from Dinosaurs to Jake in Progress (though she is best known for her five season stint on Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Like many freelance episodes, it felt like an attempt by someone not in the inner circle of writers to capture what they liked about the show while steering clear of outright fan fiction. For the most part, Espenson and director Michael Nankin succeeded.
Working against all this was the fact that "The Passage" was, of all things, Kat-centric. Luciana Carro was strong in the role, but Kat has always been underwritten, conceived as a younger, better foil for Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck in the Season Two episode “Scar.” (Kat appeared several times prior to that, but her storyline in “Scar” -- also directed by Nankin -- is easily the most remarkable thing about the character so far.) Kat was brash, cocky and gratutiously challenging to Starbuck, her superior; the audience knew nothing about her and plenty about Starbuck, so it was only natural that we would side with Starbuck in the end. Kat made more appearances after that, but, for the most part, she was a one-episode wonder (if an irritating one).
"The Passage" unexpectedly turned into a Kat story roughly halfway through its first act. (Though, perhaps, we should have seen it coming; Espenson's blog urges fledgling TV spec-writers to pin the plots of spec scripts to under-utilized recurring characters.) Over the course of the episode, we learned that Kat used to be a drug runner; overhauling a minor character's background isn't a big deal (it's riskier when it’s done to a major character, as it was with Apollo in "Black Market"), but giving Kat a dark past is just this side of being a completely unbearable groaner. Much of "The Passage" felt like those episodes of Lost where we learn plenty about the past life of a character we hadn't spent much quality time with before, only see them killed by the episode’s end. Sure enough, Kat died, purposefully taking on more radiation than she could handle in an attempt to keep pushing ahead, burn away her past as another woman and save a civilian ship. She lied about her radiation level by swapping out the badge showing she had absorbed too much with another badge that indicated she hadn't, thus ending a career that started in one lie with another. (As Starbuck said, “You lied your way into the company of good people.”)
The Kat storyline felt somewhat forced, but it was redeemed by two final scenes -- Adama sitting at Kat’s bedside and talking about how he always wanted a daughter (advancing the idea that he has hyper-personalized those who serve beneath him, despite attempts to distance himself in the last few episodes) and Starbuck pinning Kat’s photo to the wall of the dead and missing. It felt wrong to have Starbuck come around completely on Kat, but Sackhoff played the scene well. "The Passage" suggested that a whole life, even one rife with wrongdoing, can be redeemed by an in-the-moment good deed. While this is sketchy from an ethical point of view (if a mass murderer saves a life, does that absolve him of former crimes?), it’s an interestingly democratic idea that advances Galactica’s expanded focus this season; it implies that any character can be the hero, and every character’s story is worth telling.
The Cylons returned this week after being mostly AWOL from the past two installments. The scenes on board the basestar continue to be technically intriguing; the dissolves and that haunting piano score redeem some clunky dialogue. And the show’s mythology took another step forward with a well-acted scene in which Baltar (James Callis) and D’Anna (Lucy Lawless) visited the hybrid who powers the Basestar (Tiffany Lyndall-Knight). D’Anna’s chasing of the identity of the final five Cylon models (by endlessly killing herself) is a nifty metaphor for addiction (and not one you’ve seen a million times already), and her drawings of what she remembers from the land between life and death are devolving into obscure darkness, like schizophrenic artist Louis Wain’s famous cats. 
Finally, a word on the special effects. The visual effects team on Galactica, thrice nominated for Emmys now, never calls attention to itself, but the scenes set inside the star cluster must have been tough to compose on a television timeframe, and they all looked completely convincing within the show’s universe. The team has yet to win an Emmy (losing last year to, of all things, Rome), which executive producer David Eick attributes to the effects not being horribly obtrusive. Here’s hoping that this episode, filled as it was with stunning vistas and starships jetting through them, will land them that elusive prize.
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House Next Door contributor Todd VanDerWerff is the publisher of the pop culture blog South Dakota Dark.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
BSG Saturdays: Season 3, Ep. 10, "The Passage"
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7 comments:
This episode had weaknesses, like Starbuck's turnaround (which you mentioned) and the discrepancies between Kat having a secret & her showboating behavior in "Scar" (pointed out on the TWoP boards), and others.
But Lord have mercy, was I ever bawling during Kat's protracted death sequence. Good golly. I don't think I've cried this hard at BG since "So say we all" in the miniseries. (Though I have been known to mist up from time to time.)
First, let me dispell any notions that Rome's special effects nod was unearned. That show was gorgeous.
Which allows me to segue into my chief complaint about this episode: these people have jump technology, and they've never heard of tinted glass? Jumping into blinding light should not be a problem. Our astronauts now have visors on their space helmets that filter out extremely bright light. We're supposed to believe the Galactica fleet doesn't have sunglasses? Please.
This issue was so bad that it took me right out of the story.
Next up: they have to go through the star cluster? Why not make several safe jumps to go around it, when they could all jump together and no one would get fried? Was the planet in the middle of the star cluster or what? Yes, there was some hand-waving explanation about why everyone had to be subjected to this extreme risk, but the writing on this aspect was poor. Very poor.
Kat's got a bad past? Who cares?! If this is Espenson's great advice -- focus on undeveloped minor characters -- then she will soon become the bane of series producers everywhere, as freelancers pitch all sorts of non-sequitor stories at them. There's a reason these characters are minor, and under-developed. If a minor character is brought forward only to be killed off (like Kat here) or sent away (like Bulldog earlier this season), the viewer is left with a "what just happened, and why should I care?" feeling. OK, Kat's dead, but since we hardly ever saw Kat it's really not important.
ITA, for however little it's worth, that Starbuck's and Adama's last scenes were good, but not good enough to make up for all the ick that came before.
I like where the Cylon storyline is going. I loved Baltar's throw-away line about wondering what the heck the Cylons do all day, anyway. The basestar scenes were really the only thing that made this episode worthwhile -- the rest of it was manufactured melodrama, which I can do without.
If last weeks's episode was a low point in this season, "The Passage" has to be the absolute nadir - the epitome of schmaltzy fan fiction replete with tear jerker ending. Frankly, I had some hope for some redemption for the show after last weeks unfortunate episode - sadly it was not to be.
There were so many holes in the plot line, it's hard to even begin - so I won't.
More to the point, once again, Starbuck is showing herself to be a Queen Bitch and it has nothing to do with her with Kat - she is being written as a Queen Bitch no matter what the story line and that is unfortunate. I'm sure this is all leading up to some sort of Starbuckian personality salvage - some ultimate act of courage or sacrifice that will show the "good" side of Starbuck - it's being telegraphed from a mile away. The evidence is the Starbuck/Kat speech about good people - I was confused as to who Starbuck was talking about - herself or Kat.
It's interesting to note that this episode, except for the "do no wrong " fanboyz/grrls contingent, is being pounded to death in the fan forums and the scifi forums (not to be confused with the SciFi Channel forums).
I really enjoyed the first series of episodes up until this last set. It's becoming harder to just set aside the asinine and let the suspension of disbelief flow.
It's my bet that if they continue in this direction, the end for BSG is very near.
Todd! I'm at sixes and sevens over this episode. I'm a devoted Jane Espenson fan and had high hopes for 'Passage', but came away disappointed. Hugely so. And I think it's the show's fault rather than the episode's: 'Passage' pointed up a few things wrong with Galactica down at its roots. It's an excellent show and yet week by week, since the ferocious opening of Season Three, it's gotten harder to escape the series's limitations.
I don't mind that Jane didn't get a chance to bring the funny; it's BSG, and the show sticks to Big Dramatic Gestures without the leavening tiny human moments of, say, Buffy. But 'Passage' felt wrong in a very specific way: it's clear that a tremendous amount of material was cut to bring it down to an hour. Ron Moore talked about this in the podcast this week - a Roslin storyline was cut entirely, and a good deal of Cylon material went out the door. The focus on a peripheral character was welcome (and made sense given last week's engrossing core-ensemble melodrama, though see below about that), but a good deal of the Enzo (drug-runner) storyline apparently fell by the wayside as well, so instead of bringing out the richness of Galactica's military/civilian culture clash, there was a bit of Day Player Crack Pipe syndrome happening this week - starting with a huge quantity of exposition and tech-talk babble to set up the story. Kat wasn't interesting as a reflection of Galactica culture, because the producers generally don't follow through on the social ramifications of their stories (seriously, you do a story about a food shortage and the only onscreen hunger you see is five buff fighter pilots sharing a Clif bar?!). She wasn't interesting (anymore) as a foil for Starbuck, because Kara has more serious shit going on, between the psychosis and the, um, other psychosis. And there was no time for deep backstory. So the story choices felt mechanical to me, like the producers were explaining for the umpteenth time that it's hard out there for a pilot by staging Yet Another Tragic 'Echoes of 9/11' Tableau.
It's those tableaux that are problematic. The BSG writers seem to think in terms of big character moments, but often fail to attend to the nuances and workaday relationship stuff that make those moments fulfilling beyond their spectacle, beyond their satisfactions. But it's hard to avoid the feeling sometimes that the scripts are meant to tell us things about the characters' places in the universe, instead of just show us those places in all their nasty complexity. The sight of Galactica dropping into the atmosphere on New Caprica gave me goosebumps, because the New Caprica storyline was by that point three and a half hours old, every minute of it close-to-the-bone character work. (I doubt that Moore et al. will surpass the New Caprica episodes; they were at times simply unbelievable.) But Kat's death, besides being telegraphed for 50 minutes, wasn't really about Kat; it was about Redemption in the abstract. Seeing Helo lose his temper on the flight deck, having lost his civilian vessel, was considerably more affecting than watching Kat save the civilian ship - offscreen, I might add.
On the other hand, her big scene with Kara, the confession, was chilling and warming and spot-on, even without the unexpected erotic charge of it. That's when I was reminded who wrote this hour of TV, and why I regard her work so highly. (The two actors did great work throughout as well.)
The production style of Galactica is a little problematic as well; because so much material is left behind from episode to episode, because the scenes seem to be laid out in somewhat cut-n-paste style across several episodes, the various storylines sometimes fail to land the thematic punch that a more holistically-conceived show might deliver. Espenson used to work on this little spacegoing soap, Firefly it was called, that handled its tonal/thematic work more consistently. In this regard Galactica's problems are the opposite of those that plagued Ron Moore's last job, the calamitous Carnivale - which was all tone/theme/symbolism, such a superb premise and mythology, but with a soul-sucking shambolic plot moving paper-thin characters tentatively across too much ill-defined geography. It seems, rather, that BSG is a lot like a Star Trek show, structurally - the open format (of production and story) makes the ongoing storylines, like the seraglio-of-the-stars weirdathon that is the Baltar/Cylon stuff, come off as jerky and haphazard, giving the whole thing a bit of an unintentional anthology-show feel. The state of the TV-narrative art is something quite else, and it frustrates me to see (for instance) all the exhilarating tension and emotional heft of the boxing tournament episode left behind for such a broadly gestural plot. To end 3x09 with that Apollo/Starbuck clinch and then show no interaction between them in 3x10...irritating.
I share joan's frustrations about the weak sci/tech vibe this week - though I think she's missing the boat on Espenson's spec-script advice, which is a separate thing from pitching freelance stories to a head writer. But Todd I'm with you 100% on the visual effects team: they're doing masterful work, and the star cluster scenes this week were unique and memorable.
And then there's Baltar, interstellar he-bitch-a-trois and apparently head of a mildly confusing one-man nonprophet organization.** The scenes on the basestar appear to originate on a TV show far from Battlestar anything-the-hell and I gotta say I don't mind. It all seems a bit contingent and often tread-water-y - with Baltar's overheard orgasm love-declaration making my personal 'Top Five Ludicrous Plot-Moving Coincidences' list for the year, and the producers apparently using like 0.5% of the material they're writing/shooting - but as long as we eventually get him in a room with some humans again I'll stay riveted. I'm not sure I care about the content of the Cylon basestar scenes at this moment, but since they amount to cinematographic field trips (today's stop: the set of Minority Report!) I'll take 'em.
I wish the show took its invented cultures more seriously; the Cylons have developed in interesting ways, and the military culture of the show has gotten plenty of treatment, but I wish I knew more about what life is like on a plain ol' civilian spacecraft. (Thank God the Internet makes clauses like the previous one possible.) The flight deck melodrama was contrived this week - it felt like a one-off, like it couldn't have been anything else. Buffy fans can contrast 'Passage' with Espenson's classic 'Superstar' episode, a very freelance-y alternate universe story (in which perpetual victim/schlub Jonathan takes over the starring role on the show, initially without comment) that nonetheless served a strong purpose for the core ensemble (underlining Buffy's relationship to her power and her friends, and using Jonathan's grand, theatrical, magical gesture to make a point about the tiny just-human gestures sustaining and complicating Buffy's new romance). As Moore himself puts it, with 'Passage' the producers wanted to make a point about life on the ship. The on-the-nose formality of the story, its abstractness, stemmed directly from the abstractness of the point Moore et al. wanted to make. It doesn't really matter that Kat gave her life to redeem herself; she was basically a plot point herself. What matters is how that death weighs on the communities to which she belonged. And since the writers have an unfortunate tendency to just sketch in those communities, those reactions, rather than following them through (e.g. remember that Adama might have provided the proximate cause of the war - a fact dispensed with in two pages of dialogue), the story of her death didn't matter much either.
Pity, really. 'Passage' was nice to look at, beautifully scored, well acted, and gave us the Tigh/Adama laughter scene - a breath of fresh air after their long estrangement. But it passed as suddenly as it arrived, and Tigh didn't turn up onscreen again. Which is BSG dramatic technique in a nutshell, I'm just a bit sorry to say, and if a show this good can admittedly get away with missing a whole slew of opportunities and still pack a punch, we can get away with wishing it just, y'know, wouldn't.
** Kill me.
Ah, here's something. I never listen to the podcasts or read the producers' (or whoever's) blogs. I take the show as broadcast, and evaluate it on that basis. I think that in this way my experience of each episode duplicates the experience of the vast majority of viewers. Having all that inside info can sometimes be exhilirating, but most of the time, IMO, it's a distraction. I don't care that a ton of footage was left on the cutting room floor, because I'm never going to see it. The episode has to stand as broadcast. If the producers are relying on 'net-provided content to supplement certain episodes to placate the fanbase, they will soon find the majority of that fanbase disenchanted, because we're not interested in excuses. They all know the constraints -- technical and timely -- that they must work under. If there was too much material to properly shoe-horn into the episode, then make it a two-parter (I recall how Farscape's "Look at the Princess" actually became a 3-parter) or scrap it and start over.
Wax banks, I utterly and completely refute this idea: Adama might have provided the proximate cause of the war . It's absolutely absurd for anyone to think that could be so. The Cylons war plans were well underway at the time Bulldog's little ship slipped over the Armistice Line. I am content that the writers have left the idea in the dustbin where it belongs; it was among the more egregious ideas foisted upon the viewers this year. Still, the good so far still usually outweighs the bad.
joan -
Wax banks, I utterly and completely refute this idea: Adama might have provided the proximate cause of the war . It's absolutely absurd for anyone to think that could be so.
I should say here, I'm with you on the broad reasons for the war, and agree with Roslin's brief and surprisingly moving speech to Adama, that looking for 'root causes' is largely an exercise in assuaging guilt rather than facing consequences, that 'thousands of things...every day' led to the war, not one action. My point is, that's a half-page monologue by Roslin to dispense with an enormous moral issue that (1) never came up before, (2) isn't necessary to explain Adama's actions since the genocide (it's a point about War, not a point about Adama), and (3) is unlikely to be mentioned ever again. The whole 'give them a Hero, let that be your penance' ending was a little thorny to be resolved so easily. But Galactica takes that turn more often than not - with the exception of the Tigh scenes, for instance, 'The Passage' could've happened at any point in the series.
BTW annie frisbie - You can guess I didn't feel much of anything during Kat's prolonged suffering, but I cried off-and-on from Adama's speech at the end of 'Exodus Pt. 1' to the post-liberation celebration onboard Galactica. Easy to forget, I think, that the major American cultural anxiety of our time - our Big National Problem for the last three years - was solved by spaceships in the span of an hour and a half, in that two-parter. Awesome, and a little guilt-inducing if you're disposited toward that cheery Catholic style.
[Also joan, minor grammatical bitching: I think you mean 'reject this claim', not 'refute this idea.' One of those common (mis)uses that sets my English-teacher mom rolling in her grave. :^) ]
Hey, all.
I've been on computers that abhor Blogger, so I've been unable to respond to you until right now. As such, this all may seem a bit more rushed and less substantive than you'd really like, but, really, I'm surprised by the lack of things I have to say about this episode. At least the too-rushed "Measure of Salvation" had some interesting structural things and that cool political subtext. This one just felt like a holdover from the first part of season one -- no buildup to it and no real ramifications from what happened (though, apparently, the algae planet is pivotal in next week's midseason finale if the TV Guide blurb can be believed).
But, at any rate, some thoughts:
joan, I misrepresented what Espenson says to some degree, and I apologize. Her advice is to write about an underutilized REGULAR (on Galactica, I guess, that would be Six) whom we, the audience, have plenty of questions about. This will give your spec that fresh, if familiar, feel. We also have no real way of knowing what she pitched and what was given to her. It's possible her concept boiled down to "Fleet has to make difficult passage" and the death of Kat was imposed on her from above (that was probably more likely, even) as Carro had to leave the show or something.
Secondly, and this is rather addressed to you and sheik, I don't tend to notice plot holes (especially science-related ones, as I'm kind of science-stupid) in the moment unless they're especially egregious (like the computer virus in Independence Day, for an example everyone cites all the time). So long as I'm given enough evidence that what's happening is necessary and as difficult as I'm told, I'm willing to go with it. If I don't think of the plot hole until, say, 30 minutes later, I'm usually willing to forgive the storyteller that (unless it's just something huge or completely manipulative). Sure, there are problems that the fleet doesn't have protective glass (as it's not wholly believable), but if this episode were the finest televised entertainment ever, no one would complain about that (plot holes can be found in any form of narrative because no narrative can hope to encompass as much raw data as real life -- if plot holes bug, it's usually because the narrative fell down ELSEwhere, often in characterization).
Wax (on his blog and here) and I have argued that the widened focus on the fleet on New Caprica (and the Cylons after that plot) has made the purely military stories feel a bit limited, a bit standalone-ish. sheik has argued (I think and correct me if I misrepresent) that the military stuff is still what's most interesting, and that's what the audience tunes in to see. While that may be so, I think "The Passage" made the best argument for my argument possible -- it felt sealed-off, concerned by things that didn't really matter.
I know some of you don't like the pure, character-development hours and want the plot to move forward, but, for the most part, I LIKE these characters and want to know more about them. The problem comes when they deviate from the characters that have the richest stories (roughly, Starbuck, Apollo, Adama, Roslin, Baltar and the Cylons in general -- MAYBE Tigh) and wander far afield after more minor characters. If Kat had lived after this episode, it might have felt point-ful. As it was, I agree, Joan, that it seemed to be pointless to someone following the overall arc.
Which sort of dovetails in with something Wax said, which is that the show doesn't yet trust its ability to be a sci-fi novel for television (aside: interesting that you brought up Firefly, as I've always considered that, BSG and Farscape sort of an anti-Star Trek trilogy -- I would rank BSG above Firefly, but only because it had the time to outgrow its flaws, which Firefly was in the process of doing). I'm always hoping it will realize that it's got its audience and now it can trust them to follow the big picture, but I guess the small standalones are a palate-cleanser for all involved.
So that was a lot to say when I said I didn't have anything to say. Huh.
A side note: I don't consider this season a disappointment. I tend to rank TV based on cumulative effect, rather than some episode-by-episode metric (not that I find that a faulty system). Episodic TV, by its very nature, is erratic. Indeed, the most consistent series are often the least interesting (there's rarely a CSI that falls down on the plot-construction front, but the show's a total snooze). (The exception to this rule is The Wire, which is the exception to every TV rule already.) So I think the season, as a whole, is still quite good. We had the exemplary New Caprica episodes, the darkly flawed but still interesting Collaborators, the weirdly great Torn and the boxing episode. Plus, we had stuff like this and Hero, which had good and bad scenes. I still think the only episode that completely fell down was A Measure of Salvation. Overall, I like more about this season than I dislike.
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