It wasn’t the best of series to be sure. And it wasn’t my favorite show by far. But it did have some things going for it. Dare I say it even had a touch of BSG? What I think killed it was also a touch of Star Trek Voyager. Yes, that old show where the bad guys flew in giant ham ships, look at them, they look like hams.

What I mean here is that though there was a solid story to Stargate Universe, it was just too episodic. Often we are greeted by some stupid episode where the crew has to get off a planet and before some monsters eat them. Big whoop.

Now, it wasn’t a lot of episodes like that but it was enough to slowly kill the show. They really needed to stick to their guns and do more about destiny’s mission. Though, honestly, when you start looking for god, there’s really not much to do to end it. I mean, where do you take a story like that?

And when there was two destiny’s, great episode, they should have stuck with it. Lets have two of a character. Farscape did it and it was brilliant. Don’t shy away from the bigger weird and cooler plots. Your core audience wants to see it!

The biggest disappointment is that I fear there will be story lines that are not going to be explained. What was going on with the dead people that came back to the ship? The created planet? The drone fleet? Suckiest bad guys ever. I mean come on, a drone the size of a person can fire an energy weapon strong enough to penetrate the Destiny’s shields? Give me a break. Gobflys. It’s not like the people that built the Destiny were idiots. They knew how to build tough shields. Those shields can survive inside of a freakin star, some little tiny drone can fuck it up? Crapola.

In the end I think the bigger plot was great but the smaller plots were rushed and unsophisticated. You just can not do that in today’s environment. With shows like Babylon 5, Farscape, BSG and Firefly in the can, you really need to step up to compete in this genre. Stargate Universe just didn’t stand up to that caliber of shows.  And that really is what has me peeved. Now there really is no space based TV show out there. And Stargate Universe had some really interesting twists to it. It’s unfortunate we cant’ see where they go. A message to future writers, dump the episodic filler episodes and go balls to the walls! Make every episode a nail biter! You will be rewarded for it.

One thing I hope the book answers, why were there only 13 colonies? Seems like there were 13 colonies for about 2000 years? Did they always have FTL travel? It sounds like they did, I mean the escaped Cobolt. So, why did they stop at 13 planets? They are humans right? Why not keep going? Find other planets?

This is kinda my pet peeve with BSG. It would be really hard to totally annihilate a species that could travel faster than light. I mean totally annihilate in a matter of minutes. Now, don’t get your pants in a bunch, I know the Cylons weren’t able to do it and one Battlestar survived. What I mean is that that there would be space stations, asteroid colonies, they would have found other systems. One thing humans like to do is migrate to another place. Sooner or later some group gets fed up with the rest of their tribe and wander off to start a new one. Every species does this to some extent.

So why didn’t the people of the 12 colonies do it? Once FTL is introduced, they would have been to every planet there was. And since astronomers are now telling us that 1 in 4 solar systems with an earth type star probably have earth like planets, we’d be everywhere. Like a virus.

And don’t give me that “well they just didn’t expand yet” crap. They had 2000 years. All it takes is a ‘colony’ ship to get chartered and off you go. Trust me, they’d be going in droves. If we could do it now, people would be peace’n'out by the millions.

Honestly, we could take a long hard look at just about every show and find something wrong with it on some level. That’s what happenes when you get into analyzing a fiction show and try to place real world logic to it. Just doesn’t work. But i’m all for the trying of it, it’s fun. I just did it after all.

Caprica was really doomed from the start. I call it the Titanic syndrome. We know the ship is going to sink, we know that Leo is going to die, we know it because it’s based on a historical event. So why in the world do I want to watch the movie when I know the ending and that ending is really really depressing? Bottom line, I don’t. That said, it was one of the biggest grossing movies of all time so what the hell do I know. Though I think that was because it was a real historical event, so people wanted to watch. Caprica wasn’t a real historical event so there’s no burning desire to see how the 12 colonies fell.

Its hard to watch Caprica and not think, boy, everyone in this show is going to die. All the kids, all the people, every last one of them, except Adama the younger. None of the characters have any hope of survival and that is simply a depressing reality of this show.

Caprica had other major issues with it as well. I felt like the characters depth just wasn’t there. Graystone lost his daughter and seemed to care more about going to a Pyramid sports game than anything else. Which is fine, honestly, any top level CEO may act the same way, but it’s hard to relate to that type of personality. In Battlestar the characters were vulnerable, real, deep and we could relate to them. You could cut the tension with a knife and that is what made it so powerful. In Caprica it’s some gangsters and some CEO execs and some religious fanatics. Big flippin deal. If I want to see that dance I can watch CNN or CSPAN.

It is cool, however, how we learn where the Cylons get their ideas for a single God. Both cool and depressing honestly. The entire cylon race are all fanatics whose beliefs are those created by other fanatics. And really, whoever this God is he kinda sucks. Billions killed just so he could create a hybrid human cylon? What a dick.

Where I think Caprica is going is all the monotheists will eventually die and get uploaded into Centurions, then get telencephalic inhibitors put into them by the human Cylons and turned into slaves. Ha. Now there’s some irony right? Plan the destruction of all the polytheists only to be turned into slaves by your own creations.

Now I’m all for creating a new show in the Battlestar universe but honestly, Caprica wasn’t it. BSG went outside the box when they did the reboot of the franchise. Why can’t we see that level of out of the box thinking now? Lets see a fourteenth colony, lets see another Battlestar to have survived, or fuck it, lets see the Centurions that left Earth come back in 2050 and want to raise some hell. Lets take it to the next level. No matter what they do, they better keep it gritty and real. Stargate Universe feels much more like BSG than Caprica does.

Disagree? Ask yourself if BSG didn’t exist, and Caprica was the first show, would you watch it? Of course! Because you don’t know what’s going to happen. But, since you do ultimately know, why care?

The Plan was really just a recap of what happened from a Cylon perspective. How they kidnapped their five progenitors and imprisoned them in the colonies. How they were kept alive and somehow all made it to the Galactica fleet. It started and ended with two Cavil’s, 1 models, walking up to a launch tube about to be spaced. From there, it takes a tour of how both of them got to that place. What The Plan actually turns out to be is a huge psychology experiment to discover how the same person can be changed and have two totally opposed viewpoints all by going through different events.

Cavil alpha, calling him number 1 is confusing since his model is 1, started on Galactic. I choose to call him alpha as he was the one who eventually wins out and boxes Cavil beta. Cavil alpha spends his time on Galactica organizing the other Cylons there. Most notably it is he who is the driving force behind Boomer’s multiple personalities. It is Cavil alpha that directed Boomer to blow up the water supply, try to expose Baltar as a traitor, and try to blow up the fleet.

Through his time on Galactic his opinion of humans that they should be destroyed is solidified. It’s interesting that his opinion is locked in not by his observing of humans but by his inability to kill them. As each of his attempts fail, killing of Adama, blowing up of ships in the fleet, he becomes more and more convinced that they need to be destroyed. It’s his own failing that drives him of course, not that the humans are doing anything bad. I should say, his failing and that of his subordinates.

As it turns out, all of his Cylon underlings are actually failing on purpose. They are beginning to see Humans in a different light. The number two, Leoben, is falling in love with Starbuck. Boomer is claiming she is happier when she thinks she is human. Simon, the number four, is head over heals in love with his human wife and adopted child and even commits suicide instead of following Cavil’s orders. All this infuriates Cavil. He clearly hates how his own kind is revering the parasites that are humans. This only serves to convince him that the humans should be killed lest his own people change their minds, something he can’t stand.

I’ve always wondered where the hatred cylons had for humans came from. I can only imagine it was from the destruction of the 13th colony. Though we never found out who destroyed the 13th colony we have to assume it was humans. The final five brought the story with them and Cavil hated humanity for it. My guess anyway.

Cavil beta had an entirely different experience. He was not surrounded by other cylons, only one model four. His time was spent mostly on Caprica with one of his ‘fathers’, Sam, one of the survivors of the 13th colony holocaust. He tries again and again to convince Sam that humans don’t deserve love. That the Cylons should be forgiven for their action; at which Sam nearly punches him. His journey leads him to realize that the capacity of love can cross racial barriers and that a cylon, Sam, can actually love humans. Cavil beta learns that humans aren’t the evil demons he thought they were.

When the two Cavil’s come back together it’s of little shock that insanity wins out over reason. Cavil alpha believes Cavil beta is flawed now and should be boxed on returning to their resurrection ship. Cavil alpha’s opinion was formed from watching his own kind resist his notion of killing all humans. Cavil beta’s opinion was reached by watching his “father” love humans even after they destroyed the 13th colony. Cavil alpha goes on to continue his destruction of humans as best he can and eventually commits suicide on the Galacitc bridge, a point that I always thought was out of character.

The deeper plot lines of The Plan were perfectly constructed. Watching both Cavil’s come to different conclusions was brilliant. Seeing the old girl, Galactica, again was of course wonderful.  Seeing Caprica city before the fall was great and it makes you want to watch Caprica the series more than ever, which is the point of The Plan.

On a scale of 1-10 I’d have to give The Plan a 9. There weren’t any slow points, the plot was solid, and the nostalgia was euphoric. The only down side was not explaining more about the final 5 or about Daniel, model number 7. Though I suppose The Plan wasn’t about “The Past” but rather how they are going to kill all of humanity. I suppose that begs the question, is The Past an upcoming movie about the Cylon 13th colony?? Lets only hope.