Dresden Comes Into Its Own and Battlestar Wakes Up

Last night I sat down and caught up on three weeks of shows to help clear off my TiVo's plump little hard drive.

Sometimes I think it's better to watch shows "back to back". I really have a very limited attention span, so it's hard for me to keep the flow going when waiting one week for a new episode.

The two shows that I currently watch on the SciFi channel, Battlestar Galactica and The Dresden Files are really starting to excel again.

"Dresden" has been evolving at mach 3. In my earlier review of "The pilot", I did not know that the SciFi channel was running the episodes out of order (ala "Firefly"). I thought the first episode was adequate and much better than "Eureka" (I still can't get into that show). The mark of a good show for me is when the main characters become real to me. I find myself wondering about their back story and actually looking forward to a new episode based on only the previews. "Dresden" did this at about episode three and each new episode seems tighter and more well written than the last. It's nice that they are starting to bring in some of Jim Butcher's trademarks as well. Especially the fact that Harry can't really use modern technology because his magical abilities tend to fry modern devices. I think "Dresden" deserves another season and will be great as part of the tri-year long roation that SciFi seems to be doing with their hit shows.

"Battlestar" on the other hand, has sucked since everyone got off of New Caprica in the first episode of the new season. I guess the writers decided that they could explore personal stories for each of the characters, but only a few were done well. I could definitely see the themes that they were trying to address, but most failed to appeal to me on any level. The freshman mistake of reworking an entire second part of the season at the last moment made BSG stale and really confusing. Only in the last two episodes "Maelstron" and "The Son Also Rises" has BSG got back on track. Compared to "Dresden" I really don't care about any of the characters on BSG, it's just the fantastic tale that really drives the show. Making a pit stop to develop the characters for almost the entire season really slowed the pace. Props to "Sun" as well for getting Mark Sheppard on board as Baltar's lawyer. I think he had more presence in one episode than most of the actors in this season had combined. It's too bad the the season is almost over. Let's hope that the fourth season will be BSG's last. I think the show should end on a high note.