blegh

I've got one of those headaches. The kind where I'm sitting in the dark using my computer, because I couldn't handle the noise of the TV, and I had to turn the brightness of the laptop almost all the way down because even that was too much.

Good thing I don't have a Battlestar Galatica DVD tonight; that would be a dilemma. I have 2 movies at a time from Netflix, and I've been watching them as fast as they come in, and so I get 2 DVDs every 3 days unless I mess up and forget to put one in the mail.

I've seen the first few episodes of season 2 and I'm enjoying it immensely. I like that season 2 seems to be focusing entirely on the over-arching story, keeping the pace moving all the time, with very few "one-off" type episodes.

My only criticism of the plot is this thing about the prophecy and the arrow and so forth. It annoys me that the President would have a drug-induced fantasy, would decide that this fantasy is a prophecy coming true, and would bring down the entire government in her attempt to fulfill the prophecy, and this is portrayed as noble and principled. Regardless of how fantastical a science fiction story, its characters have to behave in a believable, realistic way within the story. And in reality, when a person has drug-induced fantasies that sound kind of like a religious prophecy, that person is not the fulfillment of the prophecy. That person needs to lay off the drugs.

Things which seem like meaningful coincidences happen all the time, and people assign significance to them, but they actually mean nothing. In real life if you think some odd coincidence means you're the focus of an ancient prophecy, you're wrong. If you risk your safety, your government, and your entire species trying to act out that prophecy, you're not heroic. Except that this isn't reality, it's a TV show. And in a TV show, prophecies are always real, and the person trying to fulfill them is always doing the right thing. Because why would you even mention a prophecy in a work of fiction if you weren't going to have it come true later on? It's Chekhov's gun at its most gross and unsubtle. The President is behaving like she knows she's in a TV show.

For me the only satisfying outcome of this prophecy storyline is if the President is completely, absolutely wrong. Like if it turns out that there's nothing in the tomb, they can't find Earth that way, and besides which she isn't even dying. (It would be interesting if that cranky doctor found a way to cure her cancer, but she didn't want to let him because she was so wrapped up in this crazy prophecy which requires a dying leader.) Or maybe if the prophecy would have been true, but by trying to force it to happen prematurely she has undone it. I could live with that too. Please, please don't tell me what actually happens. Let me enjoy my ignorance while I can.