ON THE SHORES OF A MUDDY RIVER

Official Verdict: ‘The Plan’ sucks, or, How I Learned to Stop Watching at the Series Finale

Yep, I said it. I called part of the BSG cannon ‘suck.’ It’s worse than ‘Hero,’ worse than ‘Black Market.’ It’s a piece of junk, and I’m going to pretend I didn’t watch the half of it that I did (again, like ‘Hero’).

I can only speculate as to the motivations that the BSG production staff had for making the final installment/prequel/backstory-caulk that is ‘The Plan,’ and I imagine it has something to do with milking the cash cow one last time by neatly tying up all the ‘loose’ plot-ends. The problem, though, is that there weren’t any plot-ends that needed tying up, and what results looks and feels more like a clip show than a new story told about the Cylons (TNG’s ‘Frame of Mind,’ anyone?). Which is sad, really; there’s the beginnings of some interesting stories present (Anders’ transformation into a guerrilla leader, Leoben hiding out as a stowaway, developing his fixation with Starbuck by listening to her transmissions on the wireless) but they’re so wrapped up in the muddled rush that is the rest of the film that they get lost and end up easily forgotten.

My other major problem is the one I had with ‘Razor,’ a piece I ultimately ended up liking, if only for Michelle Forbes’ cutthroat portrayal of Cain coming back for so much screen time. Namely, both suffer from the ‘fillin stuff in’ syndrome: they go back and show things they didn’t need to show (the execution of the families in ‘Razor,’ various mysterious events in ‘The Plan’) and thus take a lot of the emotional and psychological punch out of those plot points (we knew Baltar left Adama the note about there being 12 models of Cylon at the end of the miniseries, you didn’t need a meaningful music cue and slow fade to beat it into our heads long after it was no longer a salient plot point). Shelley Godfrey is way more interesting as a mystery than what ‘The Plan’ tries to retcon it into — just another stupid Cylon plot.

Dean Stockwell, badass and creepy though he is, can’t even save the day (I do love his scene with Ellen Tigh in the sickbay, though, and he has some generally choice lines) and his character ends up being rather one-note. I suppose it’s the problem with the whole thing. All the characters have been developed deeply, dramatically, and fantastically, and there seems to be a reluctance (or refusal) to pour the same kind of power into this, the last appendix of the saga. Too bad, I would have enjoyed that, one last little story in the collection. Instead what we’re given is a low-budged (all the CGI shots smack of a low budget, especially compared to the series) and half-assed couple of hours that, instead of highlighting what was so great and original and well-done about the four seasons and the miniseries, just serves as a strong reminder that that kind of awe-inspiring science fiction on television is probably over for a very long time. and has been since we panned out from Adama perched atop Laura Roslin’s grave.