"With my three wishes clutched in her hand..."

[darcydodo]

Tonight's BSG episode was truly awesome and chilling. For a start, all that stuff with the opera house and Hera and crazy vision stuff and all the 6's? It's like Molly's drawings of the Nightmare Man with the weird sigil from Heroes. And adorable little Hera had her first line, except it was way creepy! But then, also, Gaeta's ballad, which, oh my god. The music was beautiful, and damn that man has a beautiful voice, too. I went and looked at Bear McCreary's blog, and it turns out that a) he wrote the piece, and b) Alessandro Juliani (who plays Gaeta) apparently studied opera at McGill. I always knew I liked Gaeta! We were discussing tonight whether all the focus on him and the particularities of his situation make it more likely or less likely that he's the final Cylon. We did decide, however, that unless the Final Cylon is Zarek (please no), they probably are unaware of their identity.

I'm sad that Natalie is dead, though. I liked her.

I also discovered this past week that Raya is (and has been for the last five years) dating Bear McCreary and actually sings on the show some. As I said to jessbess and Raya, it's pieces of information like that that make you go: "Five years? I think I've been a little remiss on keeping up with some of my friends...."

On another note entirely, before BSG started we caught the tail end of Doctor Who — now, I don't watch the show, and I'm told that it's much better if you actually watch more than the last five minutes of an episode like we've done for the past few weeks, but here's an approximation of our take on tonight's episode:

*watching a woman in a weird bath thing* Oh, so that's how they make cylons!
*two seconds later, as a copy of the woman comes out of another bath exactly in the fashion of a resurrected cylon* Wait, no, seriously, that actually is a BSG reference, isn't it?
Ha ha, and that guy with the really fat head is like a Centurion without his helmet on! That's what's under the helmet!
*half a minute later* Wait, they're actually called Centaurons?

Someone who actually watches Doctor Who as well as BSG, tell me: Was the blatant intertextuality intentional?

Comments

[scazon.livejournal.com]

Watching a Woman in a Weird Bath Thing totally sounds like it could be the latest book by Judith Butler, or possibly Mary Lefkowitz if it had a colon and [Subject] in [Author] after it.

[darcydodo]

Watching a Woman in a Weird Bath Thing: the Intertextuality of Space Operas in the Twenty-First Century.

[scazon.livejournal.com]

Sounds like this book (http://www.amazon.com/Cylons-America-Critical-Battlestar-Galactica/dp/0826428487) which my adviser co-edited.

[darcydodo]

I always knew I liked Toph. :)

Say hi from me, by the way.

Sontarans

[neonchameleon.livejournal.com]

Probably - but if so the cloning tank was Dr Who pointing out that BSG stole from them. Sontarans have been cloning themselves and looking almost like that (helmet and all) since 1973

[judytuna.livejournal.com]

i'm going to point you in the direction of mayamaia (francesca) and heidi_wiggin (laura). they um, rather like doctor who. also they sing.

Hi, sent here to answer questions about Dr. Who.

[mayamaia.livejournal.com]

The Sontarans (http://themindrobber.co.uk/sontarans-rutans-invasion-of-time-warrior.html) have been around since the early '70's with the Third Doctor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Doctor), and they've been listed as a clone race from the very start. While it's the first time we've seen the method they use for cloning, it's not the first time nor the last that the goopy bath is used in any of hundreds of shows - in fact it's kind of depressing that BSG and Dr Who couldn't be more creative about it, but sometimes you just stick with the tradition. The earliest one I remember is from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Body_Snatchers), where the clone people are grown from foamy plants.

Not really intended as intertext then.

[larslp.livejournal.com]

As a religious viewer of both BSG and Doctor Who, I just watched both eps in question. And I have to say that, though I saw some similarities with the Sontarans and the Centurions, I dont think it was meant to be a link between the two shows. As mayamaia commented, there are plenty of nasty goop cloning scenes in pop culture and it just so happens that these two came back to back in the programming.

Dr. Who

[jessbess.livejournal.com]

Poor production and super weird. Love those Brits!

[istgut.livejournal.com]

> Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Haven't seen the episode and I can't tell from your summary, but it might be a reference to
the 1967 film of the same name.

Not reading! Not! Not!

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the latest episode yet, but this bumps it up to my "try hard to see it tonight" list (displacing Iron Man, which I still haven't seen, to probably Wednesday).

Thoughts when once!

Re: Not reading! Not! Not!

[shoutingboy.livejournal.com]

Finally saw it! And, um, wow. I still think they're making it up as they go, which is a little disappointing--but they're still making a heck of a show along the way.

P.S. I am naughty. (Assuming you can read that, though I'd bet you can.)