[US] S03 E17 - Maelstrom - **Spoilers**

Ste.phen

TV.com wrote:

Kara continues to have dreams about Leoben Conoy and the mandala she painted at her old apartment on Caprica. While on patrol in her Viper, she encounters a Cylon Heavy Raider.

When Tyrol cannot verify Kara's claim that the Cylon ship struck the Viper, Admiral Adama and Lee become concerned about her mental stability.

Holy ****. When i saw they were using the same format as episode

10 - The Passage

I sort of guessed what was going to happen.

Still though, holy ****.
SPOILER. seriously. dont click this unless you've seen the ep or like ruining TV.

Killing off Starbuck?! I mean, they tried to be completely unambiguous about it, can we assume she's definitely not coming back then?

How does this fit into the overall plot? Does it? They seemed to be setting Kara up as some sort of 'chosen one'. Killing her off seems foolish in this light....

mcgarnicle

Igy wrote:

Killing off Starbuck?! I mean, they tried to be completely unambiguous about it, can we assume she's definitely not coming back then?

How does this fit into the overall plot? Does it? They seemed to be setting Kara up as some sort of 'chosen one'. Killing her off seems foolish in this light....

It was anything but unambiquous in that sense, the guy talking her through it said he was not Leoban but in fact someone there to help her discover "what hovers in the space between life and death" and to help her "become what you really are". Now unless what she really is is dead, which would be a bit silly considering how this episode set it up, then she is certainly not killed off and will be back next season.

I think it was a crappy episode, didn't make a whole lot of sense and if they are trying to move BSG away from sci-fi and towards psuedo religious/Calvinist mumbo-jumbo then it doesn't bode well for season four. It looks like Starbuck is becoming the Daniel Jackson of BSG, Leoban look a like seems to be her Oma Desala.

Ste.phen

Well i was referring more to the manner of her 'death', they seemed to be drilling it in that she was definitely dead.
As for the 'what lies between life and death' thing, I'm not sure, the show has always had a heavy religious theme, this might just be misdirection.

Hey, there's always the Kara = Cylon theory to explore?

Tazzle

I'm totally confused by the direction BSG is taking. It seems to be very uncharacteristically incoherent at the moment. I don't get it, like there was a cylon raider plain as day from apollo's pov in one of the final sequences when he starts saying 'visual'. So, is Starbuck a cylon or what? Or is there something more sinister going on and is that raider involved? She can't really be dead though, that'd be more pathetic than the way they killed off Cat. I felt no empathy in either instances.

Azza

I hear in episode 20 Adama wakes up and then realises the entire third season was a dream

mcgarnicle

Tazzle wrote:

I'm totally confused by the direction BSG is taking. It seems to be very uncharacteristically incoherent at the moment. I don't get it, like there was a cylon raider plain as day from apollo's pov in one of the final sequences when he starts saying 'visual'. So, is Starbuck a cylon or what? Or is there something more sinister going on and is that raider involved? She can't really be dead though, that'd be more pathetic than the way they killed off Cat. I felt no empathy in either instances.

I may be way off but the feeling I get after watching this ep and the rest of this season is that Kara is not a cylon... I get the feeling that next year a new group will be introduced, probably the "gods" that both sides seem to pray to in their own ways. The pantheon that the colonials pray to and the "Final 5" that the Cylons seem to admire. Worth remembering that it was in the period between dying and reviving that Xena was able to see the faces of the final 5. Hardly a coincidence.

The whole Kara discovering what lies between thing leads me to believe that she will be with them when she returns next season.

It's a rip off of Stargate if they do it and Stargate's decission to go down that road sort of marked the beginning of the dip in quality. If that is what BSG has been leading up to all season then it's a nice coincidence... seeing as this season has been fairly ****e.

Talisman

Haven't seen the episode but from reading what has been posted :

Kara is the One

link

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

Holy ****ing ****. Don't read unless you want to be really really, no I mean really spoiled:

Starbuck's a woman

tvnutz

Apparantly a lot of people had known she would be killed off months ago...I didn't! Which is why this was a fairly big shock! But Im not sure if she si actually gone for good. Will she be back next year? is she one of the final five? I liked starbuck,i think she was one of the better characters.

anyone know how many episodes left in this season? is it a standard 22 ep season?

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

Standard 22 episode season yeah.

sioda

Yeah but wasnt he telling her to discover what was between life and death.

Plus was the raider there at all??

BopNiblets

Stark:

Or is she?! She couldn't have that baby when the Cylons abducted her: DUN DUN DUNNNN!

Yeah she is. Probably, I mean she has bewbs.

Barry Aldwell

Azza wrote:

I hear in episode 20 Adama wakes up and then realises the entire third season was a dream

Don't say that, they might consider doing it! They even have the moment in Lay Down Your Burdens Part 2 where Baltar puts down his head to go back to.....

gandalf

1 - Absolute rubbish

Well one good thing from this ep

No more Kara-Lee will they won't they, ah ffs this is getting stupid!!

Oh I reckon

she is a cylon and will appear in ep22

BTW wheres the poll, not good enough that there is no poll!!!

MisterAnarchy

Did anyone see Starbucks hand on the eject seat ?
Judging from that final destruct scene she ejected just on time.
To where is the question .

Mr E

I was really looking forward to this, but it was weak as hell... average at best. Her destiny was to go nuts and crash? Whoop-de-do. I wanted to see her emerge from a tub of cylon goo at the end....

c0y0te

Of all the crap theorised thus far I'd have to go with the

Starbuck as a god/third species/race

option, in particular because it fits in nicely with all the other

projections we've been seeing between Baltar and Six, and vice versa.

.

The key plot point for me in this one is that

Leoban admitted he wasn't Leoban, meaning the others (Chip-6, Head-Baltar) could quite possibly be 'other than what they appear to be'... simply choosing a form suitable to their purposes for each human/cylon candidate.

Ultimately it's all about manipulation. And for anyone wondering whether or not

Starbuck makes a reappearance...

, the answer is

YES!!!

.

Oh yeah - in the absence of a vote I'd go with a 6.5 on the basis that it did reveal a serious plot point and direction, or at the very least confirm

that there is a third race/species/character-set

.

MisterAnarchy

Good episode but again the editing was poor.
They really need to start editing the show properly.
I hope Starbucks fate is explainable and not some mumbo jumbo hocus pocus super being waffle.
I can't imagine anyone believing that Kara is gone. That simply makes no sense. To build up for almost 2 seasons the notion that Kara is "special" and that she has a "destiny" and then just kill her is silly. Her destiny is not to be a corpse.
Somehow, I see a "Ship of Lights" story coming out of this

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

c0y0te wrote:

Of all the crap theorised thus far I'd have to go with the

Starbuck as a god/third species/race

option, in particular because it fits in nicely with all the other

projections we've been seeing between Baltar and Six, and vice versa.

.

The key plot point for me in this one is that

Leoban admitted he wasn't Leoban, meaning the others (Chip-6, Head-Baltar) could quite possibly be 'other than what they appear to be'... simply choosing a form suitable to their purposes for each human/cylon candidate.

Ultimately it's all about manipulation. And for anyone wondering whether or not

Starbuck makes a reappearance...

, the answer is

YES!!!

.

Oh yeah - in the absence of a vote I'd go with a 6.5 on the basis that it did reveal a serious plot point and direction, or at the very least confirm

that there is a third race/species/character-set

.

Okay, seriously. How is someone who's seen this episode and wants to read all the relevant discussion for the episode supposed to pick out episode "spoilers" and actual spoilers from that?

Can we just come to the agreement that "SPOILERS" in the title is good enough for current episode "spoilers"?

I know I unintentionally spoiled people for this episode because people who'd seen the previous episode were just skimming through the mass blocks of spoiler text for that episode and didn't notice my actual spoiler.

An okay episode by the way. It was well acted for a change but not much plot wise. I hope it's just setup for something big next season.

Calibos

MisterAnarchy wrote:

-
Somehow, I see a "Ship of Lights" story coming out of this

Thats my worry too.

I don't think the ending was unambiguous at all. Quite the opposite. They've been hinting at there being another Cylon model to be discovered in the fleet. The Cylon Leoban seemed to know a lot about her and said she had a destiny and then she has visions of the Eye of Jupiter. Unambiguously pointing to Starbuck being a cylon.............except....

Close up of the mothers Colonial Marine medal from Starbucks Childhood. Red blue and yellow? So thats how the pattern was imprinted on her?? POV from behind Apollos Viper showing the Heavey Raider intimating that Appollo saw it and it was real and finally seeing her hands on the Ejector Seat Handle moments before.

So while we are expecting her to wake up on a Resurrection ship/bath in later episodes there was enough ambiguous clues in the last few minutes of the ep to indicate that she may wake up aboard the heavy Raider about to dock on a baseship having been picked up in her ejector seat by the Raider.

I_Mr_Euphony

Calibos wrote:

POV from behind Apollos Viper showing the Heavey Raider intimating that Appollo saw it and it was real

I don't think so. The raider goes into the clouds before it cut to Apollo's POV. That tells me he didn't see it.

thelordofcheese

were there a poll, i'd give it an eight, but depending on where they go with this, i might mark it down by 2.

I get the feeling that this episode is the set up for something else, and depending on what that something is, this episode will either be remembered as a load of crap, or quite decent.

Now, lets see what they do with the next 5 or so episodes, BSG has always had a decnet end of season run in, so heres hoping.

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

There's actually only 3 episodes left. Turns out it's a 20 episode season this time round.

Overheal

3 - Ok

Im unsanely curious about this 'other race' theory....

Baltar wrote:

What is she? Is she an Angel? a Demon? Or something else...

Watching Starbuck die....the way it was directed...I dunno: she is not dead; at least in the Television sense.

The way its going I'm prepared to forgive them for making us suffer through all that filler crap for the last 4/5 episodes: they probably wanted to have it all explored and done with before they had to kill off Kara.

Ri_Nollaig

I_Mr_Euphony wrote:

I don't think so. The raider goes into the clouds before it cut to Apollo's POV. That tells me he didn't see it.

he should have seen it, as the raider disappeared the viper appeared.
i took screenshots
raider
viper

Scruff

havent seen it yet. Can a mod add a poll to this?
Usually like to take a peak at the poll to see what people thought of an episode if i havent seen it without having to read all the spoilers. oh and a poll is traditional!

Talisman

I caved in this morning and watched the last three episodes (15-17). This was definitely the best of the three.

Not the first time that there has been a ship that's invisible to dradus. It's entirely possible that the Cylons have developed their own stealth technology. I don't think Starbuck ejected and has in fact landed on the heavy raider. Clues: the bright light in her face was in front of her and not sun light from above, there was also a metallic clunk/thud sound which would have been consistent with two ships making contact.

There are parallels with the original BSG/Galactica 1980.

The son of Starbuck to return and save the fleet from the Cylons?

Rev Hellfire

Worst. Episode. Ever.

I must say that this episode has to be one of the biggest let downs to date.
While it certainly looks like its a prelude to some upcoming plot, I'm hoping against hope that we don't get any bloody ship of lights or other nonsense creeping in. Could it be she's one of the final five, certainly there seems to be some connection between them and the transition between life/death as shown by No. 3 and her drawings plus visions in the temple.

With the exception of 03x16 Day in the life (which was ruined by the plot change, it was to deal with upcoming elements for the following 3 episodes) it was the weakest to date. IMESHO.

muppetkiller

I don't see the big issue..
She looks to Eject initially...
Lee sees both ships, the raider and hers just before it blows.

Theory ...she ejects is collected by the Rider and we'll see her again..

I admit i've been very disappointed in the last few shows but this one was interesting...

Overheal

3 - Ok

That model ship is going to take a lot of time to re-glue......

Johnny Storm

I kind of enjoyed this ep. I thought the childhood scenes actually did go a good way to resolving the mess the writers had made of Starducks character.
I thought Adama and Tigh's reactions were a bit OTT and not believeable.

If we ever see her again it had better be in a big bath of transparent goo or I will badly feel cheated. The third race of gods theory though makes a lot of sense. EG the oracle was deffo plugged into some higher power (and we've seen that in the past too)

Scenes from next weeks ep .... zzzzzzzzzzz.

PS Lee's viper was very different from Starducks in this ep. Have they got some new and improved CGI models?

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

I thought the CGI looked really crap in parts of this ep actually. The episode looked like something from a 90s computer game at times.

Johnny Storm

Stark wrote:

I thought the CGI looked really crap in parts of this ep actually. The episode looked like something from a 90s computer game at times.

Ahem. Well I was watching it on my Pocket PC while lying in bed....it looked Ok on the 3 inch screen

Oafley Jones

I'd be amazed to see her return.

Taken from aint it cool news:

‘I am dead as far as I know,” Katee Sackoff claims in her first interview following Kara “Starbuck” Thrace’s apparent demise on Sunday's “Battlestar Galactica.”

She also tells KUFO-FM’s Cort and Fatboy that she’s shooting a pilot for NBC, so she might not even be all that available even for “Galactica” flashbacks if that pilot goes to series.

“I did sign a six-year contract,” she mentions at one point. “Galactica” is an NBC/Universal show just completing its third season.

She also says she plays Starbuck at least one more time – on Seth Green’s “Robot Chicken.”

Overheal

3 - Ok

I have so gotta catch that episode of robot chicken

thelordofcheese

Johnny Storm wrote:

PS Lee's viper was very different from Starducks in this ep. Have they got some new and improved CGI models?

Thats a MK VII viper, Lee flew one at the start of the mini series, and there were several of them with the pegasus that now are on board galactica.

youcancallmeal

I knew what was going to happen in this episode and i spent the entire time thinking no don't do it this way! I can think of loads of different ways that it could have been done so much better. Besides that what the frack is bsg about anymore, there has been feck all plot in season 3 and this just continues it?

Overheal

3 - Ok

thelordofcheese wrote:

Thats a MK VII viper, Lee flew one at the start of the mini series, and there were several of them with the pegasus that now are on board galactica.

How did more people not get this? Those MkVIIs are everywhere: they have been in since the miniseries: the entire compliment of Galactica's Mk VIIs was destroyed in the inital Cylon attack. Only Lee's Mk.VII remained on Galactica, and it was not launched to defend the big G when it first got nuked (though I wonder why)

Pegasus became the largest supplement of Mk. VIIs; since then there are ever more of them: Starbuck flew one in Scar, for example.

and eh...FYI....theres been a full scale Mk. VII in the maintenance hanger since the Miniseries. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

Were all the Mk VIIs destroyed? I thought most of them were destroyed and they had to recall the rest until they could remove all the networked components.

iguana

c0y0te wrote:

The key plot point for me in this one is that

Leoban admitted he wasn't Leoban, meaning the others (Chip-6, Head-Baltar) could quite possibly be 'other than what they appear to be'... simply choosing a form suitable to their purposes for each human/cylon candidate.

Good point, I hadn't thought of that.

Was I the only one who was thinking, during Starbuck's meeting with the oracle who quotes word for word what Leoben said to her in Flesh and Bone. That the first thing I would do if I was Starbuck is have that woman arrested and interrogated as a possible cylon.

cregser

Just to clarify (because I didn't even notice it on a 32inch tv!). I have a freeze frame of the raider and kara's viper from behind Lee's viper (raider.jpg) right before he says "visual, visual".

The other two attachments are two frames literally one after another. One showing a figure in the cockpit another showing a seemingly empty (although blurred) cockpit. There's no sign of any ejection and its only 1 second before the explosion. Looks like she ascended :rolleyes:.

Have to say, despite the lack of a plot, I've been enjoying the last few episodes just because I like the way BSG does things. It hasn't been gripping but it's sure a lot better than typical sci-fi filler material. On the plot side of things, the God issue has been heavily hinted at for 3 seasons now and its been just bearable. I think they want to have a stab at it now... and I don't think there's a good way to do it.

I seem to remember Ronald D.Moore's other baby, Deep Space Nine heavily relying on Gods roughly half-way through its lifespan. It was teeth gritting stuff but came out the other side with an intergalactic war!

Benjamin Starbuck?

[EDIT] Attachments disappeared. Here's linkys: starbuck.jpg. starbuck2.jpg
[EDIT EDIT]Attachments reappeared. WTF is up with boards these days?

Stark

2 - Pretty bad

Apparently Ronald Ego Mór has denied any talk of Starbuck being a cylon/ascending whatever in the podcasts. Apparently her "destiny" was to simply go nuts and die. Or "face her fear of death in a bold move for us blah blah blah".

youcancallmeal

cregser wrote:

Just to clarify (because I didn't even notice it on a 32inch tv!). I have a freeze frame of the raider and kara's viper from behind Lee's viper (raider.jpg) right before he says "visual, visual".

The other two attachments are two frames literally one after another. One showing a figure in the cockpit another showing a seemingly empty (although blurred) cockpit. There's no sign of any ejection and its only 1 second before the explosion. Looks like she ascended :rolleyes:.

Have to say, despite the lack of a plot, I've been enjoying the last few episodes just because I like the way BSG does things. It hasn't been gripping but it's sure a lot better than typical sci-fi filler material. On the plot side of things, the God issue has been heavily hinted at for 3 seasons now and its been just bearable. I think they want to have a stab at it now... and I don't think there's a good way to do it.

I seem to remember Ronald D.Moore's other baby, Deep Space Nine heavily relying on Gods roughly half-way through its lifespan. It was teeth gritting stuff but came out the other side with an intergalactic war!

Benjamin Starbuck?

[EDIT] Attachments disappeared. Here's linkys: starbuck.jpg. starbuck2.jpg
[EDIT EDIT]Attachments reappeared. WTF is up with boards these days?

Thats seriously clutching at straws imo

Vokes

Stark wrote:

Apparently Ronald Ego Mór has denied any talk of Starbuck being a cylon/ascending whatever in the podcasts. Apparently her "destiny" was to simply go nuts and die. Or "face her fear of death in a bold move for us blah blah blah".

If that's true, then it was a pretty lame way to end to one of the more interesting characters on the show

cregser

youcancallme>al wrote:

Thats seriously clutching at straws imo

You saying I've lost it altogether or that I'm overly optimistic?

youcancallmeal

cregser wrote:

You saying I've lost it altogether or that I'm overly optimistic?

A little from column A and a little from column B....

jor el

Depending on what comes from Kara's death, that episode was either brilliant or shít. Currently I'm leaning towards the latter though.

I didn't know they were going to kill her off and at the end I just assumed she wasn't dead, but now it seams that she really is. Very poor way for her to go out, went mental and killed herself. OK, she was always crazy, but this was just bizarre.

For a minute I thought that maybe she would fly into that big storm and then pop out of the big red storm on Jupiter. As cat as that would have been, it probably would have made about as much sense as what actually happened in this episode.

I'm glad there's no poll. I'd have to give an episode of BSG a very bad rating, which is something I've done enough of this season and only once last season (Black Market).

Barry Aldwell

Listening to the podcast, it sounds like RDM just killed her off because he could. Seriously.....wtf?

Overheal

3 - Ok

Stark wrote:

Were all the Mk VIIs destroyed? I thought most of them were destroyed and they had to recall the rest until they could remove all the networked components.

They were all sploded: none were available to defend the Galactica (except Apollo's personal Mk.VII which was not launched...)

SB: 'Pilots you have, there's (20?) of us climbing the walls down in the ready room; but fighters....-

Adama: I seem to remember a whole squadron of fighters yesterday in the Starboard hangar deck?

And they were not at the time aware of the CNP hack: Starbuck, the senior pilot aboard the Galactica at the time of attack was not aware, and thus the ground crew could not have been aware, etc. so in conclusion: no available Mk. VIIs else they would have scrambled to defend galactica. Instead, only Mk.IIs were seen launching.

SB: [the raider] appears to be irradiating some sort of weapon at me but its not having any effect

Listening to the podcast, it sounds like RDM just killed her off because he could. Seriously.....wtf?

wheres this now? Maybe its his way of saying 'I promise; the love square is GONE'

MisterAnarchy

Barry Aldwell wrote:

Listening to the podcast, it sounds like RDM just killed her off because he could. Seriously.....wtf?

If this is true its ludicrous especially when it was leaked so early.
If you are gonna do it,do it properly for impact,not leak it 2 months before it airs.
I think Moore is just trying to be coy.
I think he is losing his grip on the show .

Barry Aldwell

Stark wrote:

Were all the Mk VIIs destroyed? I thought most of them were destroyed and they had to recall the rest until they could remove all the networked components.

The mining efforts in Scar were to extract ores that could be used to construct Vipers, aboard the Pegasus. If they were making Vipers they would most likely make Mk VIIs. At the time of the Cylon occupation of New Caprica both Galactica and Pegasus had full Air Wings.