The fourth season has started and it is shaping up to be awesome! Is Starbuck the last unidentified humanoid Cylon model? Certainly there are many signs of this: survival of the explosion that destroyed her ship at the end of season three; a perfect recreation of her Viper ship for her return flight; her lack of observation of passing time (perceived six hours vs. two months). But that seems too obvious.

So how do you explain her return, if it wasn’t because of Cylon technology? Maybe it was divine intervention but I’ll be disappointed if that is how it plays out. My own theory is that Starbuck really did encounter Earth but their civilization is far more advanced than the Colonial fleet as well as the Cylons. Too fantastic though, even for BSG.

I’m waiting to see how the storyline plays out with Anders. Clearly he was “programmed” by the Cylon raider ship during the battle, we (as viewers) have knowledge of that event therefore the writers will make us wait and wait to see what happens. Will Colonel Tigh try to kill himself? Or the Admiral then himself? Gosh that is evil but very enjoyable all at the same time. I can hardly wait for the next episode!

I understand there will be a new spin-off series Caprica to replace BSG next year. I’m a bit skeptical about this one – it can’t really be set before the most recent Cylon war, and it can’t really be set in the present timeline on the occupied planet Caprica, so I don’t quite know what to think about it. However if the writing is as good as BSG then I’m definitely on board.

Just finished watching the finale to Battlestar Galactica season three and once again the writers have outdone themselves. I actually find this cliff-hanger even better than the one from last year.

I thought the introduction of the next four Cylon models was very well done; the whole episode had a tense, unsettling, gritty feeling and yet the last few minutes got the adrenaline pumping to new levels.

So there is still one more Cylon model yet to be revealed and the speculation has started: is it the president? or Starbuck? My money is on Baltar’s defense attorney, he was too good of a character to let slip by without a deeper back story and future appearances.

Of course nothing prevents the introduction of a new Cylon model or two, one that even the regular Cylons don’t know about yet, so maybe we are in for more than one!

More excellent news from Wikipedia: the series has been picked up for another season for 22 new episodes, including a two-hour direct-to-video movie.

What are your thoughts about season three? Any hopes for season four?

From the newspaper Le Matin on January 31, 1907:

What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?

I was flipping around the TV listings one afternoon a few weeks back and discovered a program titled Peking to Paris on the Book Channel. The program’s basic premise: recreate a historic race from modern-day Beijing to Paris using century-old automobiles and take along a TV crew to film the whole thing. I was hooked immediately.

The most fun appears to be meeting interesting people along the way during such a race. The least fun is likely the numerous breakdowns although crossing the border from Mongolia into Russia didn’t look to be a laugh. On a positive note, the frequent breakdowns turn into new opportunities to meet people such as a rough-looking motorcycle gang who turn out to be excellent mechanics and who also know a very skilled blacksmith who can make replacement leaf springs by hand.

The show concept is great, the narration is really delightful, and the visuals are excellent. There are four episodes in total; the first three involve getting from Bejing to the Ural mountains, halfway to Paris, and certainly the toughest half. The second half of the trip as well as the conclusion are all wrapped up in a single episode

I understand from the Wikipedia article there have been a number of recreations although none as accurate as this one. I also see there is another recreation coming up this year to commemorate the race’s centennial anniversary.

I think it would be really fun to enter such a race. Maybe someday! Anyone else find this sort of thing irresistible?

Edited January 28th: there were only four episodes total, not eight as I originally predicted.

I’ve discovered new joy in life, in the form of HD television and a PVR – a digital video recorder similar to a Tivo. Eileen’s folks gave us a beautiful Toshiba LCD HD television recently, and we upgraded to the Shaw HD terminal with the PVR feature. Sure it was expensive but well worth it.

At this very moment, we are watching last night’s Without A Trace episode, sans commercials. Earlier we caught up on some Daily Show episodes from last week, again we fast-forwarded through the commercials. This new gadget has really altered the way we watch television. Instead of trying to catch certain shows at certain times, we just record them for later viewing at a more convenient time. We record every episode of our favorites so we never miss out even if we are out being social.

I have thought about buying a Tivo for a long time now. I even considered building a MythTV appliance to make it even better. The only things that stopped me were the lack of HDTV support (although I understand this is now available from Tivo and you can buy HD tuner cards for MythTV) and the lack of integration with Shaw’s cable service for encrypted channels like the Documentary Channel. And the cost isn’t really less for either solution, especially if you end up with a good quality case for the MythTV solution.

Shaw’s service isn’t flawless but its darn near perfect. The recording feature integrates with the “guide” of upcoming programming, recording is a single button press, and it offers to automatically record every new episode of a given show. I have it set up to record every episode of the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, Numbers, and Battlestar Galactica.

I would like to have larger recording capacity but honestly I haven’t found it really necessary. And I’d like to have a text search to find programming to record but even that hasn’t been terribly limiting.

I just found out that the television program Smith was cancelled last Friday.

I was looking for it on the guide, I was expecting it to be on later tonight on CTV. I couldn’t find it, so I went to the CTV website but there is absolutely no references to be found. The CBS website is far enough behind that they are still talking about last week’s episode.

A search on Google turned up the Wikipedia link so I visited it, and found out the news.

Sure, episode two wasn’t as good as episode one, but episode three was really fantastic and both Eileen and I were eagerly anticipating tonight’s episode.

So sad. So tragic.