Well, the day has finally come at last.  My new site, TanveerNaseer.com, is now officially up and running.

I invite all of you to come by to visit my site.  With the exception of a few select posts, all the post I wrote here – along with my latest ones – will now be found on my new blog.

So, be sure that you update your bookmarks and/or feed readers to this new site to keep up to date on the latest entries on my blog, “So, what were we talking about again?” now found at its new home at www.TanveerNaseer.com.

See you there.

As the title above points out, this month marks my first year of blogging. When I decided to start this blog last June, it was mainly because I wanted to have an outlet for my writing, a place where I could express my thoughts, ideas, and experiences on a variety of topics and issues. Over the course of the last year, my blog has also allowed me to meet and interact with some great people not only online within the blogging community, but also offline with readers of my blog who live in and around my city. Writing for this blog has even provided me with opportunities to write in a professional capacity, a development that is the key reason for the upcoming change I’m using this one year milestone to announce.

In the next week or so, my blog “So, what were we talking about again?” will be moving to its new home at my personal site – TanveeNaseer.com. I’m currently working on getting the place cleaned up and ready for the big move (the main excuse for why I haven’t been writing as much new material as of late). I can tell you it’s going to be a fresh and distinctive new look that will better reflect the writing style and content that’s come to define my blog. Naturally, I’ll be posting news of the new site’s launch here, but feel free to bookmark the site TanveerNaseer.com in the meantime.

This first year of blogging has certainly been an enjoyable experience and I want to thank all my readers who’ve stopped by my blog over the course of this first year to see what I have to say, especially those who took the time to share their thoughts about the piece in question.

So, here’s looking to another year of blogging on what we were talking about.

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Furl | Newsvine

And now comes the last part of my review of the BSG series finale “Daybreak, Part 2″ and I can’t think of a more fitting way to complete this review than to focus on the principal characters of Bill Adama and Laura Roslyn, as well as the much discussed final scene that ended this formative series.  It’s taken me some time to sit down and finish this review, so let’s get right into it.

Bill Adama – His life fulfilled and his honour intact

In the first two parts of my review of “Daybreak, Part 2″, I noted how valuable the flashback scenes have been for allowing us to appreciate the full scope of the journey these characters have been on since before the series began and that’s certainly been the case with Adama and Roslyn. The interchanging scenes showing what their separate lives were like back on Caprica shows us that they’ve started this journey in the same boat, of leaving behind lives where they felt trapped into accepting the choices they were being given. In the scenes of Adama and Tigh partying in the bar, it’s clear that while Tigh has a better life waiting for him outside of serving the Colonial Fleet, Adama is being corralled into a job he clearly doesn’t want. Watching Adama outside the bar, slumped on the ground covered in his own vomit gazing wistfully at the stars above, it’s not hard to appreciate that the stars were where he felt he belonged the most and yet, it was never as far away from him as it was at that moment. In some ways, Adama is reminiscent of Ishmael in “Moby Dick”, Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

In the first part of my review of the BSG finale, “Daybreak, Part 2”, I examined the conclusion of the story arcs for some of the characters that we’ve been following for a good part of the series run. To start this next part of the review, I want to take a look one character whose internal driving force was only revealed to us in these final episodes of BSG to see whether we got the necessary closure for this particular plot line.

John/Cavil – The Cylon with a plan

In the episode “No Exit”, in addition to the information dump provided by the reawakening of Anders’ original memories of Cylon Earth, we were also given some interesting insight into the John/Cavil character and his unmistakable hatred for both his Cylon creators and the inherent limitations imposed on him thanks to their encasing him in a human body. In the scenes between Ellen and John/Cavil, we learn that John/Cavil is driven in large part by his rage against his creators and the subsequent desire to make each of them endure as much pain and hardship as he can create. The ideas presented in that episode carried on into “Daybreak, Part 1” where we see that John/Cavil clearly relishes how his plan to kidnap Hera would inflict much pain on Ellen to the point where he wishes he could have been there to witness it first-hand. While we’ve always understood that the Cylons saw Hera as being the key to their future – even more so in light of the loss of the Resurrection Hub – these scenes help us to understand that John/Cavil’s drive is also fuelled by his seeking revenge against those he believes have wronged him.

It’s for this reason I found something noticeably lacking in the showdown scene between John/Cavil and the Colonial/rebel Cylon alliance in the CIC. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

When I sat down to start writing this review, I realized that it was going to be a hard one to do, in part because of how much there is to discuss about the BSG series finale, but also due to the reality that this would be my last time writing about this incredible series. After thinking about the various aspects of this finale that I wanted to write about, I realized that it would be best to divide this up into a multi-part review so that I could really delve into the episode’s various storylines and yet still keep the piece from becoming too weighty a read. To start off this first part of my review of “Daybreak, Part 2”, I want to touch base on two elements of BSG I haven’t mentioned previously, the work of the VFX team and the music score of Bear McCreary.

Gary Hutzel’s VFX Team and Bear McCreary – The magic behind the cameras

One of the common complaints about the last few episodes of BSG has been the minimal presence of its hallmark CG animation from the team lead by visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel. In “Daybreak, Part 2”, it’s clear that Ron Moore and David Eick wanted to save the CG effects budget so as to create the visual feast seen in this two hour finale. Indeed, there were times where the CG sequences had more the quality and feel of a blockbuster film than a TV series episode. Without question, BSG’s talented team of CG artists have once again raised the bar even higher for episodic television visual effects, a fact I expect the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will once again recognize when they hand out the Emmy awards for this season. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

For those who have been mesmerized by Ron Moore and David Eick’s series “Battlestar Galactica”, today is a day that is certainly filled with contradicting emotions of happiness and sorrow as expressed by Juliet at Romeo’s departure. The sadness felt by BSG fans is obvious as today marks the end of that journey we all undertook with these characters four years ago in their search for a new home and with it, a new life and beginning. On the other hand, the sweet aspect of tonight’s airing will be the culmination of all the events that we’ve witnessed so far into the final outcome, along with the expectation of addressing the numerous questions this series has wrought over its duration. With tonight’s finale, the writers will finally be bringing out the dessert carts so we can at last see what choices they’ve made for how they want to end this resplendent meal.

I wanted to write this piece before watching tonight’s episode because I do expect these emotions to percolate up to the surface, as it should if the drama and the story told therein are to live up to the expectations fans understandably have of this series’ finale, if not the legacy of storytelling this series has fostered over the course of its four seasons. And while I’m sure that there will be much for BSG fans to discuss and theorize about at the conclusion of tonight’s episode, I wanted to share my own personal thoughts before I watch the end of this series. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

It is often said that to reach the end of any journey, one needs to look back and see where it all began. It’s from this vantage point that the first part of the BSG series finale “Daybreak, Part 1” starts out and in doing such, provides us with some greater insight into these characters and through it, the significance of the choices they’ve made and probably will make in the final two hours of this remarkable drama series.

Watching the flashback scenes of what life was like on Caprica, we now learn that many of the series characters had in fact lost much of what mattered to them well before the fall of the thirteen colonies. The Kara we see traipsing around the apartment getting the place ready for her first dinner with her fiancé’s brother is almost unrecognizable from the Starbuck character we’ve known from the start, making the psychological impact of Zack’s death and her sense of responsibility for her part in it that much more palpable than it was before. When Adama wraps his arm around Kara later in the episode, reminding her that no matter what has happened she is still his daughter, serves to reinforce this reality, that those who knew Kara when she was engaged to Zack have seen the tectonic shift in her emotional grounding. Adama’s gentle words to Kara at this point also serves to remind her and all of us that the bond they have over that shared grief transcends any concerns over the nature of Kara’s existence, that such issues ultimately don’t change who she is or what she means to those around her. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

As the penultimate episode of the BSG series, “Islanded in a Stream of Stars” is unlikely to be remembered as one of the series most dramatic or memorable episodes in terms of specific moments or events. However, as we’ve seen in the previous episodes following the discovery of Earth, the focus of the series in this last leg has been an internal examination of how the principal characters are dealing with the new reality of there being no real collective goal for them to rally around. This particular episode continues on that approach and in doing so, shines a light on the very heart of the series – how will these characters find their new home.

The scene in sickbay between Adama and Roslyn sums up this episode’s message best when Roslyn starts discussing the idea of home, that perhaps it’s not so much a specific physical space but more a state of mind and the individuals who populate your life. Looking out from that lens, it becomes apparent that Roslyn is one step closer to her proverbial death bed because she’s realized that, for her at least, she has come to the end of her search for a home. In some ways, her journey is like Gaeta’s in that it’s only when she is nearing the end of her life that she is finally able to free herself of all the burdens – of tending to the fleet as a sheepherder does to his flock – and is now able to take out her emotions from whatever internal box she’s kept them in all these years and at last experience genuine peace. Her admission that it’s only been in the last few months that she has been able to feel this sense of contentment replacing that feeling of longing is a stark contrast to the realities that have been plaguing the rest of the fleet’s population. In some ways, this is becoming the thematic reality for the series – that the fleet’s population will never gain a home in the collective sense. Instead, the concept of home is something that needs to be resolved on an individual, internally-driven level. Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

In my earlier BSG post “Four More Days Until It’s ‘Frakkin’ Friday’ “, I described how one could approach the series as a whole much in the same way as one would a five course meal, with each season playing a specific part in the overall effect of both the meal and its presentation. With most of the episodes in this final chapter of the series now past us, it’s becoming clear that this analogy can also be focused onto this handful of episodes given the variety in character and plot arcs that were dealt with, if not also the manner of their presentation. For example, despite the prevailing disapproval among the BSG audience for “A Disquiet That Follows My Soul”, when viewed in such a context, the episode comes across much like a palate cleanser, something that was meant to wipe away the savoury tastes and textures of episodes past so that we could be prepared for the more elaborate and vibrant dishes to come in the episodes “The Oath” and “Blood on the Scales”. Watching last night’s “Someone To Watch Over Me” evokes the same idea, with its role being to remove the flat and unsatisfying impressions held over from the previous two offerings in this series countdown to what will hopefully be a decadent delight.

Continuing on using this analogy, it’s not uncommon for certain ingredients to be carried over from one dish to another in the meal plan and in some ways that’s what occurred at the start of this episode with the focus being on picking up on where we left the relationship between Boomer and Tyrol. Coming on the heels of last week’s focus on the love triangle between Tigh, Ellen and Caprica Six, it’s obvious that we’re once again revisiting the idea of viewing these characters through the initial lens of being humans – and not Cylons – and what their ability to love and feel pain and hurt means in regards to the distinction between the realities of being human or Cylon. And yet, the history that the audience has shared with Boomer and Tyrol makes their story Click to continue reading the rest of this entry

After watching last night’s BSG episode “Deadlock”, I found myself caught between enjoying some wonderful, philosophical character arcs and despising the overly simplistic, if not downright perplexing, portrayal of others. Sure, we could argue that some events were meant to set up those that are to come in the remaining episodes; but effective storytelling shouldn’t sacrifice telling a proper story in one episode for the sake of another. As you’ll see, my subtitle for this episode relates as much to the episode’s theme as it does to my own impressions of it.

In that vein, I’m going to start off picking away at those elements of this story that just didn’t work or which demonstrated a clear glossing over of some significant points in terms of the series and certain character arcs. First off, the arrival of Boomer and Ellen. I’m certain their arrival came as no surprise to any of us watching, but for me that’s still a really big issue. Why? Simple – how come Boomer was able to find the fleet so easily? Now, I’m certain we’re all anticipating the return of the Cylon fleet under the control of John/Cavil, considering his thirst for punishing his creators, all of whom are now once again in the fleet, if not also his needing the Final Five to help him rebuild the resurrection ship. Given the ease with which Boomer found the fleet, it’s not hard to imagine John/Cavil also having no issues in tracking them down. Add to this plotline they’ve created that Galactica at present can’t jump without putting the ship’s integrity at risk and yeah, this isn’t exactly a hard equation to calculate. And I’ll be honest here – if this indeed turns out to be the plot for what’s to come, I’ll be extremely disappointed. One of the hallmarks of what makes BSG such a compelling show is its unconventional approach to series television. We’ve all become used to getting a healthy dose of mind fraks simply because Moore and Eick would lead us down one path only to suddenly bank a hard right into another direction. So if John/Cavil is to return, I hope it’ll be under less obvious circumstances than what I wrote above.

Regardless, the simple fact is that when Adama et al find out that it’s one of the Sharon Cylon models aboard the Raptor, Click to continue reading the rest of this entry