TV: tougher than a battlestar

[sigma7]

Day 01 - A show that should never have been cancelled
Day 02 - A show that you wish more people were watching
Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Day 05 - A show you hate
Day 06 - Favorite episode of one of your favorite shows
Day 07 - Least favorite episode of one of your favorite TV shows
Day 08 - A show that's had a significant effect on who you are today
Day 09 - Best scene ever
Day 10 - A show you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving
Day 11 - A show that disappointed you
Day 12 - An episode you've watched more than 5 times
Day 13 - Favorite childhood show
Day 14 - Favorite male character
Day 15 - Favorite female character
Day 16 - Your guilty pleasure show
Day 17 - Favorite mini series
Day 18 - Favorite title sequence
Day 19 - Best TV show cast
Day 20 - Favorite kiss
Day 21 - Favorite ship
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death


So my favorite ship is definitely Galactica, beating out the USS Enterprise and the TARDIS by a relatively....

Oh. 'Ship. Not ship. Gotcha.

Well, that's a slightly more difficult can of worms. Some ships are inevitable (Jim/Pam), some certainly look that way (Beckett/Castle), some can seriously derail a show (Buffy/Spike, House/Cuddy), some are doomed from the beginning because of impending emfridgening (Willow/Tara) and some just don't work (Foreman/Thirteen, Buffy/Riley). Some fail for colossally awful shoehorned reasons (Dana/Casey, Willow/Oz, Xander/Anya). And those are all good and well. I actually kinda liked Buffy/Spike, myself; they were different enough to be interesting while still having just a bare bones of a framework of an actual grudging respect (after "Intervention," anyway) to make it plausible.

But my favorite is the one that sneaks up on you, that makes zero logical sense and seems laughable at one point in time -- and by its culmination, you're surprised it took them that long.

There's a whole hideous tangled web of relationships on BSG, to the point where I don't think between the different Cylon models and resurrection protocols one can map the relationships properly in Euclidean space. [The frakchart (just what it says) is complicated enough (someone should Visio it up a notch) for a four-season show.] But the different permutations of being unwitting Cylons, one of the Final Five, just a plain ol' human...that's not even getting into the complexities of the individual characters, who by this point in the series are each a fingerprint of bundled traumas and neuroses and delusions.

And then there's Bill Adama and Laura Roslin. Their mutual quiet contempt comes out a few different points in the first season -- she's afraid of the military dominating the last survivors of the colonies and snuffing out democracy forever. He's afraid of the willowy schoolteacher with sudden delusions of grandeur leading humanity into a religious scavenger hunt into extinction. In the first season finale, she's blatantly defied his directives, co-opted one of his troops and a vital piece of equipment, and he's having her arrested and her administration ended. This being BSG, things get worse. Far worse than anyone was prepared for.

A few years down the road, that little spat seems absolutely insignificant compared to the tribulations they faced -- often with the support they derive and inspire from each other. There's a very definite sense that each is damaged goods -- terrifying in their own right, sure, but still incomplete. When they're together, that sense vanishes.

It's also my favorite because, despite the typical longing for a "happily ever after," between prophecy and fate and simple probability, you knew that there'd never even be an illusion of such for Bill and Laura, and thankfully, they finally figured that out -- it was about stolen moments between nightmares, which is really the best any of us can hope for. They got enough to make it worthwhile.

Sorry if there's been a glut of BSG content lately. Anyone want to lay odds on tomorrow's entry being BSG? *snerk*

Comments

[phoenixfire12.livejournal.com]

For me the TARDIS rocks all the way, but the new Galactica IS impressive.

As for 'Ships... Nothing is coming to mind at the moment.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Oh, if I had to pick one ship to be on, the TARDIS is just about perfect -- space/time, bigger on the inside.... Galactica's a museum piece at her earliest, but she worked hard. I'd just never want to live on her.

[phoenixfire12.livejournal.com]

And yet, on the outside it IS attractive, even for a warship whereas the TARDIS is whimsicle. Galactica looks mean adn like it can kick some serious ass. I'd pit it against Enterprise and all of their force shields any day. Nothing like going against one ship with squadrons at our command. Look at sparrows defending their nests against hawk in vasions. The hawk may not be seriously hurt, but the sparrows still win.

[beagle1971.livejournal.com]

No Tony and Angela? OK, how about Aeryn and John? Riker and Troi?

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Funny thing? I could've bought Worf/Troi. Riker/Troi was just too much Decker/Ilia reupholstered for me. Now, Picard/Crusher....

Aeryn/John I always saw as one of those awesome inevitabilities. Not that I didn't like it -- it's just that when she was "dead," I knew where they'd have to end up.

And for some reason, Tony/Angela makes me think of Tony Alimeda from 24 and Angela Martin from The Office. Which is one crossover I'd watch.

[phoenixfire12.livejournal.com]

Ok my vote is for Aeryn/John.

[motteditor.livejournal.com]

No Serenity in the top three?

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

Of the three big 'ships in the Verse, one's solid and functional from the pilot 'til the third act of the movie, one's teased from the beginning but isn't consummated until the closing of the movie, and the other never gets a proper chance to develop at all.

And yet it's the last one I think most of us found the most potential in -- obviously it would be built on a foundation of conflict...no, under a facade of conflict, I think, because it's their foundation of attraction and intrigue that keeps them in each other's orbit despite all their myriad differences....

...Unless you mean ship-ships, in which case, eh, while Serenity has her charms, it's the sense of unity among the crew that makes her a home.

[brightrosefox.livejournal.com]

That very last scene of Adama and Roslin together, when he cries because... um, you know... that always, always makes me sob like a baby.

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

The latter half of the fourth season, McDonnell just kept knocking it out of the park for me, even when the plot itself was going around in circles. And saying Olmos was awesome just seems...ridiculously redundant; of course he was. I thought both parts of "Daybreak" had them at their best.

It helped that, as querldox put it, when it came time for someone to hold the "idiot ball" in that episode, it wasn't the elder Adama.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

He didn't hold it with respect to Roslin (and I agree that's one of the things about BSG that did manage to stay good through the end). But as to a certain decision about how the colonials would live the rest of their lives? Idiot ball the size of a planet.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Even though I hadn't seen the fourth season, I'd sort of figured Adama/Roslin was a likelihood from Day 1. Not because it was obvious, necessarily (and I liked how genuine their conflict felt in the first season - it didn't at all feel like the shoehorned-into-the-plot-for-the-sake-of-romantic-convention type), but pretty much for the same reason House/Cuddy was - of the many characters in the show, the one had only the other on an even keel with them, power-wise. Relationships where one member doesn't have the ability to tell the other to fuck off when they need to aren't very healthy, generally speaking. :)

[sigma7.livejournal.com]

I'd figured against it because I think -- especially after that first-season finale -- one of them would end up dead before too long. By the end of New Caprica, of course, they were nestled in such proximity that, by that point, it wouldn't have been surprising. That said, I was impressed by how naturally it evolved from New Caprica on....

And you're absolutely right -- they are on their own plane in terms of power and gravity, much like House/Cuddy (note my lack of invocations of such terms as "Huddy"). It would've been shocking to see either of them even attempt relationships with anyone else; nobody could've been up to the task.

That said, the biggest surprise relationship I ever saw on BSG got its own commercial.