Solider Up! Blood & Chrome: Internet Installments 3 - 6

I have to say it.  The guy playing Bill Adama is too stinking pretty.  No, really.  Have you taken a good, hard look at Edward James Olmos (and I LOVE EJO) face?  Pretty boy lacks the pock marks and what have you.  Yes, I realize that Pretty Boy Adama is a sign of how young and fresh he is versus the Commander Adama we met at the beginning of the re-imagined BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (who was on the eve of retirement along with the ship when we met him.)  I still want something to happen to the kid to mark up that pretty face at some point.

Space Porn!  (Okay for those new to all of this, "Space Porn" is a term used by some in the sci-fi, BSG in particular, community for space battles.)  Installment 3 opens in the middle of a fight with Cylon raiders.  Hooyah!  Our passenger, Dr. Kelly, is still in command.  I want to know what this chick is up to.  Why is she so important that they wind up in Cylon space?  Holy Frak!

The sexual tension (or attempt at it) between Adama and Dr. Kelly is enough to gag me. 

Nice use of the ‘ticking clock’ with the colonial marker and the need for a password before the ‘good guys’ blow them to bits.   By the way, the ticking clock is a plot device used to increase the tension of the story.

Love the collection of ghost ships just sitting there in Cylon space.  Ships that the Colonials thought were destroyed or lost.  Manned by people they thought were dead.  We have a female commander!  This so excited me because I get annoyed by the term ‘strong female role’ used by Hollywood that I typically see as ‘big fat victim that needs rescue.’  This commander and Dr. Kelly are not the Hollywood version.   Nope, they are the real deal.  And I love it.  But then Ronald D. Moore’s BSG world is filled with strong women. 

The mission – or should I say the new/next part of the mission is to deliver Dr. Kelly to Ice Planet Djuba.  This gives me flashbacks to the two part episode from the original BATTLESTAR series titled ICE PLANET ZERO where a pilot crashes on the ice planet and they have to rescue him.  But wait!  There are Cylons on the ice planet.  Put that in your memory bank (or better yet if you have not seen the original series, go watch it!) 

Nice touch with seeing a human side of Cranky Coker, who tells one of his ‘dead’ friends that he has a son.   Cranky Coker is not pleased with gung ho Adama who has volunteered them to deliver Dr. Kelly – who insists that Coker & Adama take her to Ice Planet Djuba. 

Crikey!  This is intense, which is saying a lot for the small increments we receive.  And I cannot wait to view it again when it actually airs so I can see the flow in ‘regular time.’  The Commander is using one of the ships to take on a nearby Cylon Basestar (nice touch, these basestars mimic the ones from the original series.)  We are now up to installment 5 which opens with more space porn!  Battlestar Osiris takes on the Basestar.   We have Nukes.  But, sadly, due to heavy damage aboard Osiris they must be detonated manually.  Meaning the Osiris is taking out that Basestar in a kamikaze move.  Right here, I will admit – I. Am.  Hooked!  I have emotional connection and I have barely seen this commander/crew.

In a “what the frak” moment – raptors have tail guns?  Seriously?  Love it.  Who knew?  Apparently not me.  Nice touch, reminded me of World War II movies like one of my favorites, THE DIXIE BELL.

And in a return to being reminded of the ICE PLANET ZERO episode of the original series, the raptor is in trouble and crash lands on Ice Planet Djuba.  I want to know if this is intentional mirroring of the original as a homage or merely accidental.   

Post-crash – Coker, who is apparently closer to his baby raptor than he is any human, has to be ordered to leave the ship behind.   Yay they have a transponder.  Whoops, big, unpleasant surprise in the snow in a cave entrance.  For this low quease-factor viewer we are happily not shown the carnage and we are told it wasn’t gun shots.  Adama turns his back and makes a short recon only for a (predictable) giant sink hole to open up and swallow both Dr. Kelly and Coker.  Adama’s answer to a rescue: drop a line down the never-ending hole and then drop off the line.  Swift job there, now how are you going to get out?

We get a lovely BSGverse meets ALIENS (on ice) moment when there is something down the hole with them.  We hear it.  We can’t see it.  It gets Coker.   When we finally DO get a look at it – it looks like a lizard or serpent, with really big frakking teeth.   Serpent (or whatever) is taken out by this crazy dude who tells them they are late.

I miss the name but he’s this techno, demolitions sergeant dude with the marine group that is, of course, the pile of dead folk in the original cave.  Crazy sergeant says that the serpents are ‘little demons’ which gave me a bit of a Biblical squee.    Ohm and we learn from Crazy Sergeant that the Cylons have been experimenting with part machine, part live critters.  This is a nice bridge of information that links us between the technology of CAPRICA and the technology of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA when we meet the skin-job Cylons.

Furthermore, that tidbit reminded me of the websiodes that BSG put out prior to one of the seasons (or half-seasons) that involved young William Adama when he, as a viper pilot – meaning later in  his career than we are seeing here – landed on a planet and discovered Cylons experimenting on people.  It makes me hope that the series is picked up and we actually make it to that point where the original series flashed back to. 

Discuss eps 3-6 here!

Installments 7 & 8 will air on YouTube from Machinima Prime November 30.  And a visual between installments tells me that BLOOD AND CHROME will air on SyFy in FEBRUARY 2013!