As promised, here's my comment in response to the season premier episode of Alan Light's great fan podcast, The Combat Information Center, where I address some of the issues that Alan has with Season three of Battlestar Galactica, some of which I addressed briefly in a previous post. There were some issues with file encoding, so the comment didn't make it onto last week's show, but with any luck, it will be there this week.

Click here to download the mp3 of my comment.

This past Friday, October 6, brought us the highly anticipated third season premiere of the Sci-Fi Channel (in the U.S.) original series, Battlestar Galactica. The two-hour event didn't disappoint; however, the great fan-produced Galactica podcast, The Combat Information Center did. I've been a regular listener to Alan's podcast since the very first episode in late season one, and, while he sometimes makes small errors in his commentary, whether in his account of events in an episode or in his interpretation of a given storyline or plot element, none come close to the whopper he gave us this week.

While he, too, enjoyed the episode overall, he took particular issue with the Kara/Leoben/Kacey storyline, particularly Kara's reaction to her child. I had three major problems with his assessment:

1. Alan claims that the scene during the "Previously on Battlestar Galactica" recap, where Leoben comes to Kara and Anders's tent never actually happened in the show. I beg to differ. It occurred at the very end of "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2". I just downloaded the episode from iTunes on Thursday, so my wife could watch it.
2. Alan also takes issue with the existence of Kacey, claiming that it and, more broadly, the entire relationship between Kara and Leoben is a cop-out from the writers. I would tell Alan to go back and review his Season One DVDs, particularly "Flesh and Bone", the episode where Kara interrogates a captured Leoben. There are seeds of this relationship there, so much so that when Kara's ovary was removed in "The Farm", I thought, immediately, that Leoben would be the father of any cylon/human hybrid from her eggs would be fathered by Leoben.
3. Finally, Alan claims that Kara's reaction to Kacey is completely out of character for her. I don't think he could be more wrong. Kara, as she has been presented over the course of the first two seasons has two sides. First, is the tough bad-ass, not gonna take any crap from anybody, punch out the XO Starbuck we met in the miniseries. The other is a more sensitive, caring, compassionate Kara Thrace, a woman scarred by the memories of her own childhood, the loss of her fiancé, and her guilt over leaving Anders behind on Caprica. In "The Farm", Kara talks to Simon about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father, and briefly mentions that she doesn't really ever want to have kids of her own, because she'd be too afraid of messing them up, or worse. So, yes, when Leoben introduces her to Kacey, her initial reaction is one of cold detachment. She, intellectually, recognizes the likelihood that he's telling the truth, that she is her daughter, but she can't accept it emotionally, on many levels. But when Kacey is hurt because of Kara's actions/inaction, all of those fears come boiling to the surface, and those insecurities lead to her reaching out and embracing the child, and, by extension, her father.

I plan to put together an audio comment for Alan's show sometime this week, where I'll not only address the above concerns, but also his take on the Resistance's use of suicide bombings, the Cylon's torture of prisoners, and Lee's weight. If you want to hear what I have to say, either tune in to Alan's podcast or, if he chooses not to play my comments, I'll post them online after his show airs.