Ouch! The headline is a spoiler! Sure, we 'saw' Starbuck in the final episode of last season, but c'mon Salon, be a little more gentle for those of us that haven't seen the new season yet?

Grrr.

This is not news and the previous writer is correct. A pointless, graceless and thoughtless spoiler, but since I don't watch it, it isn't my problem.

What was the point?

I watch Battlestar religiously and nothing was spoiled for me. Anyone who thinks Starbuck isn't back for good has not been paying attention. She's got a SPECIAL DESTINY, folks. Sheesh.

Don't blame Havrilesky for pointing out the obvious.

I have a question about characters who "discover" they are Cylons, like Boomer and the new four-out-of-five. Perhaps I would be better off asking on some fan site, but there are a lot of fans here, and smart ones to boot.

Are we meant to suppose that Boomer's memories of her parents, her childhood, etc., are completely false? That, if she runs into people from her old neighborhood, they will have no recollection of her and her family? That any birth records or school transcripts that might shed light on her past are (a) faked, or (b) non-existent?

Or did the Cylons take a young, human Sharon, and replace her with a Cylon with her memories, who believed she was Sharon? So that her remembered history is real - it just happened to someone/something else?

Or are there other alternatives to these two scenarios?

I've only seen the miniseries because I have kids and other busy stuff in my life and didn't have cable during seasons one and two so I haven't been able to watch it yet but, it's set in the past right? That's the final point or something, yeah? Like the distant path and when they finally get to Earth it's going to be some kind of Adam n' Eve thing yeah? Garden of Eden scenario, maybe one human one cylon or somesuch? That's the final joke right, where in rebooting this series, they're rebooting the creation myth? Or am I on a kind of "... so the cops knew Internal Affairs was setting them up?" kick?

Now we know something that's been reported on in every story about BSG for the past twelve months! Will the spoilers never end?

To begin with, I never cared for either Galactica show. But I have good reason not to watch this one. Everyone I know in my science fiction community says that any show where Starbuck is a woman is heresy and a fraud.

That's not reason enough for me to ignore the show. But the times I have seen it, I couldn't buy its political commentary. I'm sure it's there, but it doesn't feel honest to me.

Sorry for all of you reading this, and I'm sorry I have to refer to myself so much in this post. But I won't pretend to make sweeping, grand Comments of Truth about a show I don't care about. (However, Havrilesky did a good job in doing just that; I'm glad she has a sci-fi show she likes. Maybe she's learning something; I just wish she had a better show to learn from.)

I refuse to watch anything on the Sci-Fi channel. I love good sci-fiction, but not the excessive amount of commercials that many of the cable channels run. Sci-Fi seems among the worst in that regard.

For me, the show drifted into boredom as it turned into a high school bull session about belief and faith. None of the endless angst feels moored to anything specific enough--as if the writers never got beyond a first draft of each of those scripts. To compensate, they spent much too much time trying to make the camera work creepy, dreamy, whatever. The high praise for this show might make some people who don't know it think the writers have reached the heights of Heinlein or Asimov when it's often just trite and undeveloped. Oh well, maybe they'll do another Jamie Bamber-in-a-towel scene this season. Now that would be exciting, or at least diverting.

The "All Along the Watchtower" ending last season was one of the most embarassing moments of television. Sounds like this season is an improvement.

And if I get any more beatific smiling from Starbuck, I'm going to fraking retch.

I hope Baltar kept his beard.

I've watched the (new) series from the very beginning, and to the best of my knowledge, we really don't know.

I could only stand to watch the first few episodes of that 70s series before giving up on it in disgust; great costumes, spiffy sets, but the writing was putrid - too cutesey, too jock-strappy, at times like a lame Western. Reading wikipedia, it appears that the Galactica reaches our Earth some time shortly after the 1969 Apollo moon landing - in that series.

They've changed everything else, so why not the time frame of Earth? Maybe they'll arrive during WWII and "give" the United States the atom bomb (cliché, cliché). Maybe they'll get here when we're in our early Star Trek phase - space travel, but no or a limited warp drive. Maybe it'll be back in ancient times, and they'll end up blending with and sparking the intellectual developments of the Greeks or Romans. Maybe they'll arrive last week. Have I left out the real story of "Roswell"? Clichés on steroids!

It'll hopefully be more complex than that, because of the Cylons. Both flavors of Cylon. "There's somethin' happenin' here, and you don't know what it is - do you, Mr. Jones?"

Footnote: My speculations about Galactica reaching Earth in past actually don't make sense, unless they also have time travel, because last season, Galactica encountered what appears to be a 20th century (or later) Earth satellite. This is what caused the "Cylon plague." Dr. Baltar actually recognized it as having come from the semi-mythical 13th colony. So, as Emily Litella used to say: "Never mind."

At this point, my bet is that Galactica will get here in our future.