Re: Season premiere: "Occupation" and "Precipice"
I am just catching up on the series at present. I am [cough] borrowing a friends copy.
I think the story came unstuck, in a big way, in series 2. The writers really seemed to lose the plot. Major plot arcs where ditched and new ones brought in for, as far as I could see, no discernable reason. I came pretty close to ditching the show. The only thing that kept me coming back was the sheer quality of some of the episodes. This is how adult SF should be done. However I want them to get back on the ships and get back into space. Frankly the series was far better when they were fleeing the cylon menace. The idea that a civilisation like the Cylons would consider that it would be possible to re-integrate with the humans, following the all-but complete extermination of the human species, is a very bad joke.
But what did I think of the 2hr season 3 pilot?
It was an excellent piece or writing. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I found myself saying "gosh" at the end of it. The raids on the tents were superbly handled (I thought) and the internal conflict of the NCP was quite intelligent. And Tighe... He is a hard bad man. I like him immensely. And the Deep Throat sub-plot was another piece of excellent writing. It makes me wonder if they researched the French occupation in WWII. One of my new favourite characters has to be cylon chaplain played by Dean Stockwell - he is a also a very bad man. As for Gaius Baltar... I think it's good to see them fleshing his character out and giving him a backbone (and not making him venally 2 dimensional).
I am not sure they have won me back over. I'd like to get them back in spaceships, looking for Earth, debating the big issues of; the nature of the universe and existence. There are still things I want to know about their universe which haven't been adequately explained: their gods, the god that rebelled (and is It the cylon god? And what would that mean if that were true), the cyclical nature of things and so on.