Sometimes A Great Notion

Tim Goodman sfgate - Spoiled Bastard: "Battlestar Galactica" Ep. 1: "Sometimes A Great Notion."
Granted, in the end, there was hope. No, that's not true. There was a tiny fraction of rage against the dying of the light.
Welcome to the end of your hopes. Have a great ride back home, wherever that is.

James Poniewozik time - Tuned In » BSG Watch: Pleased to Meet Me «
The most interesting question is the one that BSG has unexpectedly made the focus of its final episodes:
After your gods fail you, after you lose what you have been told was your last hope for survival, what next?

Alan Sepinwall - What's Alan Watching?: Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion" 128 cmmts to scan...


...& to read: The Watcher [Mo Ryan] - Interview: 'Battlestar Galactica's' Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of 'Sometimes a Great Notion'
--this episd was shot during the strike, right?
Right, the strike was called, that episode was the only script we had written so that script would be shot. I flew up to Vancouver, gathered the whole cast and crew together & said, “OK, this is where we are. There’s a strike. I’m on strike. The other writers are on a picket line right now, I’m flying back to join them. There’s not going to be any more script pages. The show is entrusted to you. Just make the very best one that you can."
Obviously I wasn’t there, but what I heard was there was a tremendous amount of emotion from the cast and the crew as they were shooting it, because they all did wonder if this was going to be the last episode ever done, would the series be canceled if the strike went on too long. I think that informed a lot of their performances and a lot of the mood.
The day the staff finished putting the cards up on the board with Ron, and the day before we began writing, I flashed on my favorite American novel, Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey. It is a much underappreciated and towering work. Anyone interested in fine literature and great story telling should read Kesey’s masterpiece.
The book opens with a childish rhyme that enunciates the theme of the book and what to me was the theme of our show. “Sometimes I live in the country. Sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I get a great notion. To jump in the river and drown.”
In Kesey’s book, the hero --Hank Stamper, an Oregon logger -- does constant battle with the river that runs past his home, a river that has claimed the lives of pets and loved ones and comes to symbolize the vast and indifferent power of the universe that both gives life and cruelly snatches it away again. In his notes to himself as he was writing the book, Kesey scribbled something that has become one of the shorthand phrases Brad and I use while writing scripts. Kesey wrote: “Try to make Hank quit.” By that he meant: take this strong, heroic character and pile one misfortune on his back after another until he finally falls. What happens in that moment? Does he despair? Does he get up and go on? For me, there is no more defining moment for a character.
We tried to do this with almost all the characters in this episode: Adam, Laura, Kara, Lee. We ripped everything out from under them then sat back to see what they would do. What were their individual breaking points? And if they did break, would they stay broken or grope toward a recovery?
It felt like, if we were going to get to a place where we’re going to find Earth mid-season and it’s not going to be what they’d hoped, it’s all going to be ashes, you had to play it truthfully. You had to say it’s really going to devastate them. It’s going to hit them in a way we’ve never seen before. Our heroes are not going to be heroic.

-{the rhyme} at the beginning of Sometimes a Great Notion, it's the great folk song Goodnight, Irene - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight,_Irene
-David Wheedle might be interested to know that those childish rhymes are in "Goodnight Irene," a folk song made popular by Leadbelly, and I believe the Weavers, at a time when Ken Kesey would have probably heard it all the time on the radio or in jukeboxes during his youth. Just some added resonance.


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dlcs-mcass: z0901 + tele-v + a-before
got my attn bcs critics saying how unexpected the reveals, of final cylon, of earth, of Starbuck meeting self. held my attention bcs about After The End. After your gods fail you, after your last hope is lost...


[cmmt at james's blog] -As to Starbuck, I don't think she's been there 2000 years. As the opening reminded us, "there's something different about that Viper", Starbuck's aircraft from when she disappeared, returned, then went on her solo search for earth. oh okay. I took it to mean Starbuck had found earth but crashed. A rebuilt Starbuck and Viper were who and what returned to Galactica. I don't know how or anything, but that's how it looked to me, based in part on the skeleton and hair, much more appropriately decomposed in this timeline.

IMDb :: Boards :: "Battlestar Galactica" (2004) :: Jan 1 2009 :: Is kara isn't the FC then how the frak...:I'm shocked to see that there are hardly any people who think that Kara (Starbuck) is the final cylon. If she's not the final cylon, where the hell did she go when she 'died' in maelstrom, and where the hell did she come from when she magically appeared in a brand new Viper (that just so happens to point the way to Earth) in the beggining of Season 4? Also, all this stuff about her 'destiny' has to mean something...

[cmmt at alan's blog] -If Ellen is officially the "final cylon", what in the heck is Starbuck? It doesn't seem possible that she is still human, especially if those are her remains. But she can't be cylon either.
& Do we know that the 13th tribe was "pure bred" cylon? I had always speculated that they might be hybrid. Since when did the humans have "cylon bone carbon dating technology"?

[cmmt at tim's blog] -It does beg the question, if Earth was "Cylon", and are identifiable as such, just what are the members of the 12 colonies? Are they the true machines? wait why wld they be machines. but y that is what ints me here, some qstn begged, what does it mean for earth to be (have been) cylon? I mean really I d n know what that means for them.


__________ggl...
...Their hope and home of the future: the distant and unknown 13th colony, Earth.
...the fabled lost thirteenth colony, Earth.

Twelve Colonies - Wkp: The Twelve Colonies were founded by tribes from Kobol, the alleged birthplace of humanity, although the tribes were of the number 13, one of which instead went to a planet called Earth. far away from the other twelve planets? The humans of the Twelve Colonies (at least 20 billion in the new television series) were virtually exterminated by the Cylons. Less than 50,000 survivors managed to escape in a civilian fleet guarded by the Battlestar Galactica.

Battlestar Galactica speculation - Earth and Backstory «Life In Motion August 14, 2007:
There has been speculation as to the origins of humanity in this version. While the original series suggested that humans actually colonised the Earth and originated off-world, this version suggests that Earth is the original homeworld oh. and that humans somehow found their way in a new universe founding twelve colonies.

...

Battlestar Galatica - Finding Earth and Nothing… « Tasithoughts’s Weblog June 15, 2008 : In their legends and religious records, Earth was the purported home of a 13th colony or tribe that left their home worlds millennia before.
The journey started when through betrayal their planets were destroyed by nuclear war by a robotic race( Cylons) originally created by them.
The series is about the exodus journey of the humans while being pursued by the Cylons.
Much of the show is about the process of self discovery and unraveling preconceived notions and out of the box ways of looking at things. It is great TV.
The mid season finale leaves the viewer wanting more because when the Galatica and Cylons ( now United) reach earth all they find are ruins. This means the journey has not ended. There is no promise land flowing with milk and honey. We can’t wait when BSG resumes its season again in January 2009.
cmmt: -I just read another interesting theory. What if, what we believe to be Earth, in the show, is in fact the Cylon homeworld? There are some things that don’t add up to it being our Earth. Namely, the prophecy that a dying leader will not step foot on earth. Secondly, as I watched the fleet in orbit, the landmasses were covered by clouds, leaving no visibly identifiable continents. Thirdly, Starbuck claimed Earth was pristine. hmm. but now in this midseason premiere, it sounds like it is clear that it *is* 'Earth' but just that it turns out Earth was inhabited not by humanity but by cylons. so, the myth of a 13th human colony wld simply have been incorrect?

Mo Ryan interview w Ron Moore:
That planet is Earth? We’re not going to find out, “Oh, there’s this other Earth over here...” This is the only Earth we’ll see?
--They have found Earth. This is the Earth that the 13th Colony discovered wait so no Earth was not the origin, Kobol was, and a 13th colony did go to Earth .. and? that colony was not human?? , they christened it Earth. They found Earth.
Then there’s the whole Starbuck thing. We don’t know what she is now, right? All 12 Cylons have been accounted for, but she doesn’t know that. Is she suspecting she’s a Cylon?
--Yeah, I think all questions are open for her at this point.

imdb: "Battlestar Galactica" (2004): After losing the war against the Cylon robots, the Battlestar Galactica crew speed toward the fabled 13th colony, Earth. Galactica Commander Adama and President Laura Roslin face waning supplies, crushed morale, and the credible threat of Cylons aboard the ship.

IMDb :: Boards :: "Battlestar Galactica" (2004) :: Is kara isn't the FC then how the frak... p9:
We have a planet of entirely cylons, which was evidently nuked 2,000 years ago.
"All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."
I know this is really out there, but here goes: Cylons create human beings as servants. hrm. does the show give reason to suppose cylons can *make* humans? Humans rebel, nuke cylon masters, move off and create their own colonies. Humans create cylons as servants. Cylons rebel, nuke Human masters, move off and create their own colonies. Rinse, repeat, over, and over, and over, ad infinitum.
I've recently seen a lot of people talking about how it may be that there are no humans at all - just cylons of different kinds. The above theory would create a lot more ambiguity about just where the borders between cylons and humans occur.