Last week’s episode Battlestar Galactica, "The Oath," ended with those dreaded word ‘to be continued’ and so this week they pick up where they left off with "Blood on the Scales" the fourth of the final 10 episodes of BSG. In our weekly BSG Preview we have clips, details, interview links and videos, plus more frakin links all about BSG, including news on the release of the Caprica BSG prequel on DVD.
“Blood on the Scales” [Season 4 Ep. 14]
US: Airing February 6th on SciFi at 10 PM (9 Central)
Canada: Airing February 6th on Space at 10 PM (7 Pacific)
UK: Airing February 10th on Sky1 at 9 PM
Synopsis: President Roslin faces off against Tom Zarek and Lt. Gaeta as they try to take control of the Colonial fleet. Both the alliance with the rebel Cylons and Adama’s life are at stake.
Zarek and Geata are in command, but for how long?
Preview (SciFi – USA)
Preview (Space – Canada)
Sneak Peek
Last Week’s Episode Roundup
You can watch the entire episode of "The Oath" at Hulu.com (US) or Spacecast.com (Canada). Hulu also has a version with Ron Moore commentary. Here is a the recap:
Writer interview
Chicago Tribune’s Maureen Ryan interviewed writer Mark Verheiden about the "The Oath.
Ratings update
A so-so season 4.5 debut and a dip of 19% in week two apparently wasn’t low enough. Episode three, "The Oath", drew 1.56 million viewers, dropping 9% from the week prior and pushing the total decline to 26% (or 550,000 viewers) since the season premiere. By way of comparison, the third episode of season 4.0, "Escape Velocity", drew 1.74M.
New BSG Interviews
Tricia Helfer (Six) interview with Bonnie Hunt.
more interviews
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io9: interview with Jane Espenson (on BSG, Capria, Buffy, Dollhouse)
BSG Spoilers
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TV Guide ‘Mega Buzz’ on future returning characters (scroll down)
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jeebs 83 NBC Photos of upcoming episodes
Caprica (BSG Prequel) News – Coming On DVD in April
Caprica, the highly anticipated prequel to Battlestar Galactica, will premiere exclusively on DVD on April 21 from Universal Studios Home Entertainment. The feature-length prequel will be available on DVD as a limited-edition uncut and unrated version before the series’ broadcast premiere on the SCI FI Channel in 2010. The DVD will carry a suggested retail price of $26.98. More details in the full press release (To sign up for updates, visit the official Caprica DVD site). See below for a promo for Caprica and find more info and video at SciFi Caprica page.
Caprica Promo
More Frakin Links
Stump butter opening bid: $110
Even more BSG
If that isn’t enough for you, keep track of all your Frakin needs at our favorite BSG site, Battlestar Sitrep.
Catch up on DVD
If you need to catch up, the Battlestar Galactica 4.0 DVD set was recently released, here is a promo:
Can’t wait for this tonight! Looks to be an exciting episode.
Argh… and I have not seen The Oath yet ;))
2 – You need to see it.
“Shove it up your ass!”
Adama is da man!
I just don’t get it. This show gets better and better……why do the ratings drop off week to week? TIVO? WTF?
Makes no sense to me.
Really looking forward tonight’s episode. I have not been this excited since the ending of “Pegasus.” The nice part is I don’t have to wait months for the conclusion. Hopefully the rest of the episodes leading up to the series finale is this exciting.
“This boy died honoring his uniform. You– you’ll die with nothing.” — William Adama to Felix Gaeta
#5 – there was an article somewhere on line recently that said if you factor in timeshift viewing, BSG’s ratings are actually higher this season.
4 I’m hoping Felix gets impaled with his own prosthesis… a Procrustean prosthetic petard ;) Or, at least, the firing squad has REALLY bad aim. That would be perfectly Procrustean.
Adama’s kicking Captain Robau’s ass even. And so is Olmos. He’s deserved of an Emmy for this season. He’s taken Lorne Greene’s Grampa Adama, and turned him into Ol’ Blood and Guts Adama.
Interesting development with the Caprica DVD release…. Perhaps SciFi is worried that the end of BG might somehow damage interest in Caprica? (Does this give credence to the “they’re a computer simulation on an endless loop” theorists? Let’s hope not.)
i wonder what other uses stumpbutter has. hmmm.
Anyone notice that Sual Tigh isn’t mentioned as having his life hanging in the balance? Spoiler!
#5 and #7…
I watch the BSG episodes on SciFi online (usually around Weds. nights…)
I am catching Terminator: TSCC online as well…
I wonder how they figure in the downloads/Online viewers?
I have friends and neighbors who, like me, do not have cable so we have followed the show on DVD, downloads, and now online.
Don’t fret about those ratings. Everyone, and Rosario, I encourage you to read this link:
(http://galacticasitrep.blogspot.com/2009/02/ratings-schmatings.html)
That article brings in DVR numbers and a whole lot more that plain ol’ Nielsen just doesn’t bother with.
BSG is more watched than the old fogies would have us think.
frakin awesome
Well. Last weeks Ep was pretty good and Im looking forward to tonights Ep. Should be good. But I say lets get the Story Moving and get off this Mutiny thing.
I don’t know how they’re gonna wrap this series with only a few episodes left?!?!
I can’t understand why such a truly great program hasn’t been able to capture more of an audience. I understand the dvr numbers and the good dvd sales, but still a program of this quality should have triple the viewership that it currently has.
Does anyone know why Sci-Fi buried this show at 10pm on Friday nights and gives it very little promotion compared to trash like “Stargate Atlantis”?
In the long run I think BSG’s legacy will be similar to TOS. In years to come in will be remembered as a genre defining classic that was well ahead of it’s time.
“So so”? That isn’t describing the same BSG as I’m watching. It’s absolutely gripping!
Although, it would be better as a screwball comedy about a pair of twins who look nothing like one another who were separated at birth and have been brought up on opposite sides of the tracks, who fate brings together and who, after initially despising one another, learn to love each other as they engage in a hectic, strange event filled cross-country chase pursued by the mafia, the FBI, greedy corporations and the Womens Christian Temperance Union, all seeking a lost formula which can make everyone beautiful, developed by the right side of the tracks brother, who is a scientist, and who stores his discoveries only on singular indestructable floppy disks, and who at the end, in a heartwarming moment, throws the disk in the sea, because he has learned from their adventures that everyone is beautiful inside.
SciFi promotes the hell outta everything else on it’s channel except for BSG!
that’s always bugged me but it doesn’t matter anymore since there’s only 6 episodes left in the show.
I hope that they don’t treat Caprica the same way.
#17 Not everyone agrees wholeheartedly on the show’s greatness. I watch every week but for the most part I feel like I’m watching just on leftover momentum … having devoted so much time to the show during its early seasons (when I felt it was brilliant, intelligent, layered and challenging) that I now feel obligated to ride it through to the end (even though I now find it dumbed-down, watered-down, and pandering).
I still enjoy many of the characters and performances … I could watch Eddie knock it out of the park as Adama every day and never get tired of the man, he brings such sincerity and gravitas to the role … but at this point I’m just watching because I may as well slog on through. (That said, the ep a couple of weeks ago was an unexpected bright spot, well worth my time; here’s hoping for a few more such surprises before the curtain falls).
Really looking forward to this episode, although I have to wait until Tuesday here in the UK!
Great that the Caprica pilot is getting an early DVD issue, although I reckon it’ll hammer the ratings for the TV broadcast in 2010! With luck, we’ll get it on DVD in the UK around the same time as the US.
Sadly, I’m seeing a lot of hate for Caprica on the web already. A lot of it, though, appears to be the same goons who have spent the last five years bitching up Ron Moore’s show for ‘desecrating’ Glen A. Larson’s original ‘masterpiece!’
It’s weird and disturbing that so many years down the line these saddoes are still running a vendetta against a show that has utterly eclipsed its predecessor and redefined science fiction on TV. Trek’s got a bunch of them as well. Hopefully, they’ll do us all a favour and commit mass suicide after seeing the new movie rather than spend the rest of their lives attacking the Abrams film!
Ron Moore’s Galactica functions very well as a complete novel, in a similar way to what JM Straczynski tried, but never quite succeeded in doing, with Babylon 5! I’ve spoken to more than one person who has said that they’ll wait for the whole series to end and buy the DVDs. I suspect that, once the show exists as a complete entity from the miniseries through to The Plan it might gain a second wind and be recognised more widely for the great piece of TV that it is!
I hate to say it (actually, I don’t!) but DVD boxsets are the best way for a lot of us to watch TV. I’ve never seen Buffy, Angel, Alias or Lost in any regular fashion on TV. It was boxsets all the way.
Hopefully Sci-Fi will find the same with Caprica and, in the event of iffy ratings, keep it going for DVD sales!
#10
The teaser says he’s dead but I somehow doubt it.
The Live + 7 Day audience for the season 4.5 premiere was 2.8 million viewers. That’s an improvement of more than 30% over the live + same day viewership (2.1 million viewers).
It’s also an improvement over the season 4.0 premiere live + 7 day figure (2.65M).
We’ll know in the near future if the loss in viewership in the live ratings (from 2.11 to 1.72 to 1.56 million) is reflected in the time-shifting data.
So, fifty years in the past on Caprica they didn’t cut the corners off of all the books and pictures. LOL
Caprica DVD or DVD and BluRay? Inquiring minds want to know.
Things have gotten very wild on “Battlestar Galactica” this season. Let’s hope this is all leading up to a kick-a$$ conclusion to the series!
God bless!
Maybe it was only the military that cut the corners on things?
I’m not a Caprica hater, but I’m entirely disinterested in it. I just don’t see the point of prequel series or movies. An occasional flashback episode of as series can be fun. But an entire series is very difficult to maintain because, well, you know what ultimately happens. It’s like knowing the end of a book or movie, it ruins it.
Like, with Caprica, who’s going to be sitting there saying “Gee, I wonder if these Cylons don’t work out as expected?”. Nobody. What’s worse, you’re watching a civilisation that you know will be nuked in a few decades time, so the much lauded “soap opera” aspects seem especially redundant. Who cares if Alice builds her business into a big corporation? It gets nuked! Who cares if Bob and Carol have children? They get nuked! And so on. It all seems completely pointless.
I’m just hoping they’re not holding back explanations from BSG to lure us into watching Caprica, because I doubt I’ll be interested in trawling through several more years of TV episodes to find out e.g. how the Final Five influenced Cylon development. Though in years to come I may bother to find out via the web, if I remember what I used to be interested in back in 2009.
BSG has been a fabulous ride, but it ends for me with the last episode of BSG, I’m afraid. I also think it’s a bit strange that Moore is touting Caprica as “science fiction without the science fiction”. Peolple watch science fiction because they like… science fiction. So it seems a bit like creating a heavy metal band that don’t play heavy metal, then expecting heavy metal fans to like them and being perplexed if they don’t.
I’m a very hardcore fan of BSG but this Caprica show sounds incredibly unappealing.
28. Ian B: ‘I’m not a Caprica hater, but I’m entirely disinterested in it. I just don’t see the point of prequel series or movies.’
It’s remarks like this that make me want to bang my head against the wall! Stories set in the past of the same world as another story don’t have to be pointless if they’re good stories. BSG is about the painful flight and rebirth of a civilisation after its fall. Caprica is about a machine-dependent society that can indulge itself in whatever it wants and is utterly decadent, spiralling out of control. Watch the clips on Sci-Fi. There’s also, obviously, a parallel to what obviously happened on BSG’s Earth!
‘An occasional flashback episode of as series can be fun. But an entire series is very difficult to maintain because, well, you know what ultimately happens. It’s like knowing the end of a book or movie, it ruins it.’
That depends. Caprica isn’t about being a lead-in to BSG the way, say, the Star Wars prequels were. It’s a different story set in the same fictional universe with some crossovers.
‘Like, with Caprica, who’s going to be sitting there saying “Gee, I wonder if these Cylons don’t work out as expected?”’
That’s not the point of the show!
‘Nobody. What’s worse, you’re watching a civilisation that you know will be nuked in a few decades time, so the much lauded “soap opera” aspects seem especially redundant.’
Why? Our whole planet might get nuked in 50 years time. Does that make the lives of its inhabitants before that time irrelevant? Does it mean we have nothing to say and we have nothing to learn? Do we just give up? You’re going to die in a few years. You know that. Does that spoil the life you have now?
‘I’m just hoping they’re not holding back explanations from BSG to lure us into watching Caprica, because I doubt I’ll be interested in trawling through several more years of TV episodes to find out e.g. how the Final Five influenced Cylon development. Though in years to come I may bother to find out via the web, if I remember what I used to be interested in back in 2009.’
They’ve already said that BSG is a complete entity unto itself and that all questions will be answered. They’ve actually said it till they’re blue in the face! Read the countless interviews with Ron Moore out there, many of which are linked by this site! Anything stated to the contrary is just BS spouted by obsessives of the 70s Galactica who hate the new show and want anything connected with it to fail!
‘BSG has been a fabulous ride, but it ends for me with the last episode of BSG, I’m afraid.’
Fair enough! Bye bye! Shame you’ll miss The Plan, though! ;)
‘I also think it’s a bit strange that Moore is touting Caprica as “science fiction without the science fiction”. Peolple watch science fiction because they like… science fiction. So it seems a bit like creating a heavy metal band that don’t play heavy metal, then expecting heavy metal fans to like them and being perplexed if they don’t.’
I think he means to do something radically different stylistically, the same way BSG turned its back on the glossy sets, pompous cod-Shakespearean dialogue and wallpaper music of most other sci-fi out there! What I’ve seen so far looks intriguing!
Maybe you should be a little open-minded and not rip the p!ss out of something you haven’t seen! BSG has been radical and different. Why shouldn’t Caprica be?
Me-
‘Nobody. What’s worse, you’re watching a civilisation that you know will be nuked in a few decades time, so the much lauded “soap opera” aspects seem especially redundant.’
Dom-
Why? Our whole planet might get nuked in 50 years time. Does that make the lives of its inhabitants before that time irrelevant? Does it mean we have nothing to say and we have nothing to learn? Do we just give up? You’re going to die in a few years. You know that. Does that spoil the life you have now?
Well, the key thing there is the word “might” before “get nuked”. If you did know that human civilisation was going to end, entirely, in 50 years time- that everything you do would be erased from eternity by a nuclear fire, would you indeed bother doing anything? There really would be no point in building, or striving, or learning. Because it’s all certainly going kaput in five decades time.
It seems paradoxical that we all live and do things knowing that we will die, but one answer to that is that we have descendents. We are all part of the story of humanity, playing our part forming the future. So while I will die, some part of me, of what I have done with my life will continue- perhaps through my children, or my work, or charitable acts. Our individual selves all return to dust, but our civilisation doesn’t. But if it really is going to end in 50 years time, then indeed there would be no point.
Which is why a prequel set in a society due to be blasted to atoms is probably the most pointless prequel imaginable, as I said above. We’ve seen the entirety of what will remain of the Colonies fifty years hence- the ragtag fleet. Anything the characters in Caprica do which isn’t a direct precusor to the BSG situation is just the same as the real life example you suggested. Utterly pointless.
There’s a general problem with prequels, which Enterprise suffered from the outset. You can’t change the future. This is after all why the new movie creates a new timeline. Nothing in Caprica can change the ultimate fate of the colonies, just as nothing in Enterprise could change a future we’d already seen in the other series. Everything has to be trivial, to not change the status quo. Stories are generally intriguing because the viewer/reader doesn’t know where they’re going. With a prequel, you not only know where you’re going, you’ve already been there. How dull. Beyond a single episode flashback, they’re basically a waste of time.
Will the Republic become an Empire? Why, yes it will, we’ve already seen it. Will Earth become the nucleus of a United Federation of Planets? Well, yes, we’ve already seen it.
Prequels only really serve a function to those fans with an unhealthily obsessive desire to know everything about a fictional universe as if it’s a real history. In storytelling terms, they’re largely a waste of time.
Another outstanding episode tonight….those of you who aren’t watching are missing an incredible TV show that is way ahead of its time.
I’m no network exec, but I don’t think I’d put my premiere series on at 10 PM on Friday. I mean really, what brainiac decided to do that?? Ridiculous.
YES!!!!
fu*king great episode tonite!!!
everyone that I wanted to die……died!
and so marks the end of Richard Hatch’s stint on BSG.
Yeah, it was a frakking great episode.
…..and it also opened the door to some other things:
Is the Galactica itself breaking up? Anyone notice Tyrol seeing that huge gash in the hull? There was a clue on the “youwillknowthetruth” website that showed Adama walking in to his cabin and seeing the same type of gash. Hmm??
Well, a few more episodes to go until everyone else gets wasted. LOL.
I am in complete awe of tonight’s episode. Damn Good!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m looking forward to Caprica, but I hope it doesn’t become as fatalistic as BG has. The original Galactica (the Lorne Greene one) wasn’t as good a show, but it was better in one way, at least: The people were in a difficult spot, but they didn’t lose themselves in the darkness of space. They maintained their strength because they didn’t lose sight of their own higher aspirations as a people. The people of the reimagined BG have lost their way in the dark. They have lost faith in their gods. They have lost the golden dream of Earth beckoning them to fight on. What do they have left to sustain them? It will be interesting to see if they find something, but it is damn painful to watch people you have come to love self-destruct under the pressure. Maybe that’s one reason the ratings have dropped. Most viewers want to see people who learn to rise above their circumstances and win. Will the Colonials win in the end? It remains to be seen.
awesome episode!
great one tonight… i still think the galactica is going down in flames by the end
# 31… If I may draw from reading your passage… If a meteor were coming to Earth to wipe out all life, would you want to know? BY your words… You don’t. I on the otherhand would like to know. You see, I live my life with only 25% lung function as it is. I know I have a limited future. And even though I know I am to die, I want to live my life doing what I do. To know ones future gives no right for that one to give up. They should continue living their life as though the future was unknown. In living that life, a story is to be said of how we’ve lived. Though knowing Galactica and its end, I for one am interested in seeing how life for the colonies was long before their life became fracked by their own creation. I can’t wait to see how the Cylons were created and what led to them turning on us?
I did see Tyrol looking at that huge gash in engineering…. what was that? Did you see that hair style for Caprica Six…WOW, I loved it and it looked so great on her. Richard Hatch… Gone! Gone too are Gaeta and the Quorum of 12, or I guess eleven since Lee Adama is alive. I was so happy that Adama returned to power. Look forward to next week and in seeing Helen, the fifth Cylon return. With her return, does that mean the bad Cylons are returning?????
And when did we start allowing the rampent posting of spoilers all over this thread?
While I have seen the episode, I didn’t feel the need to come in and post key story points to ruin it for others who haven’t sen it yet.
There are folks who may be reading this who haven’t if you are going to post spoilers, at least have the decency to label them with something like…
**************** SPOILER ALERT ************************
… so people can skip your message. Have some common sense for crying out loud!
#41
that was not Caprica-Six. It was a brand new Six.
Caprica 6 is very much pregnant and in the brig.
Great episode.
As to why the ratings are falling- could be that the story has become so insular that only the hardcore fans are willing to slog through it. I remember Moore and Eick mocking Farscape for this very same problem- that in the final season of that show it was all about the relationships and the various threads built up over the years and it was being written for “the nine people who still watched the show”, lol, or in this case the Final Five.
Once the episode airs it is OK to reveal spoilers. That means that you should avoid comments in BSG threads after 10PM eastern until you see the episode.
Personally i agree the show has become insular. I can’t imagine anyone just picking up with season 4.5 and being able to watch it. It does look like the battlestar is wearing down. With all the death and destruction of 4.5, it seems very possible that the Battlestar itself will not make it to the end of the finale…I imagine Moore would like the poetry of destroying the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ in the final episode of “Battlestar Galactica”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my gf and I have been glued to the screen every episode this season. I think they’ve kept a steady hand — or perhaps even steadied their hand further — since the start of the 3rd season. My feeling is, they’re going to end this show as well as it can be ended.
Anyway, in regard to Caprica, I have a question about this:
“The feature-length prequel will be available on DVD as a limited-edition uncut and unrated version before the series’ broadcast premiere on the SCI FI Channel in 2010.”
Does this mean the DVD will show something that they *won’t* also air when the show premieres on TV, or is it more like a DVD sneak peek?
the Canadian promo for next weeks episode is on YouTube already!
it begins with Ellen Tigh ressurecting and laughing sinisterly. then it cuts to Anders and Starbuck in the sickbay. an excited Anders tells Starbuck to get everyone because sonething wonderful had happened. He tells her that he remembers everything! eveything about earth and why they’re (I assume he means the Final 5) there.
End Promo.
so did Anders die or what?
Did Starbuck and Romo get him to Doc Cottel?
great episode,
lol at the Trek reference of the engineer scrambling thro a “jeffries tube”
48 OLLEY OLLEY OLEY –“lol at the Trek reference of the engineer scrambling thro a ‘jeffries tube'”
You know, just last week, while watching “The Oath” I thought to myself, “I bet Ron Moore’s wishing he could use the Star Trek Jefferies Tubes right about now”, so when I saw Tyrol going through the ducts — that even have vaguely the same shape as the Jefferies Tubes — I couldn’t help chuckling….
Yes of course Romo helped Starbuck.
If we’re lucky, Starbuck is the Cylon goddess of magical healing and rebirth, and Romo is a Cylon fertility god, and together, poof! Anders is magically resurrected.
Fits in with the pagan gods theme of BSG.
In other news, Zarek and Gaeta died, like I said they would. Seems awfully familiar…
Kai Wynn and Gul Dukat anyone? We saw all this in the Pah Wraith episodes of the ending of DS9.
What’s so great about TOS is IT NEVER ENDED. There was no “finale” there was no wrapping up of all the loose ends. And you know what? That’s why we love it. For all of us Original viewers of the 1960s, we kept Trek alive in our imaginations. Fanzines happened, books happened, comic books happened, suppliments to the show happened, conventions happened, Phase II almost got made, and then the movies happened.
You cant have any new DS9 because Sisko is dead.
Speaking of dead, now I see why Dee died. Anders died tonight so Kara and Lee can get it on again. Romo is not a Cylon god of resurrection. He’s just a guy with really good luck and really bad karma, who cant help but do the right thing.
Baltar can finally see past his own nose now? Baltar grew? Damn.
I like the petty, vindictive, selfish, conniving, hedonist Bill-Mahr Baltar who gave Pegasus’ 6 his nuke because he was too passive aggressive to hurt Adama himself. I miss the Baltar who let Boomer pass as a secret Cylon who he thought he could use against Adama and Roslyn. I miss the Baltar who settled New Caprica for no reason other than he wanted to defy Adama and Roslyn, and wasted his presidency with sex and drugs. Does anyone remember that guy?
We’re supposed to hate Baltar. He’s a metaphor for every Hollywood producer ever born.
Now we’re supposed to love Baltar? (rhetorical, dont answer)
And last, but no least, the return of Ellen. I’d like to see where they dig up her series. She has to be born on Cavell’s ship only because we havent seen them lately.
Peace and Chicken Grease,