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Dear Colonel Tigh,
Saul, we’ve known each other a long time at this point, you and I. I’ve been watch­ing you intently for three and a half years as you’ve wres­tled with the Ambrosia-drinkin’ and put-a-gun-to-your-head demons in your mind and you’ve failed more often than I know you’ve wanted to, but I’ll come right out and say it, Saul — you’ve always been my favorite on “Bat­tlestar Galac­tica”. Oth­ers may think that Adama is king or Star­buck is the coolest or Lee is too pretty for words and he gets all the lucky breaks, but for me it’s you, Saul. It’s your craggy ways, your hard livin’, hard drinkin’, always ready for a fight lifestyle, your eye patch, your abil­ity to sum up every sit­u­a­tion by curs­ing. For frak’s sake, you killed your own wife for col­lab­o­rat­ing with the enemy! You loved her and you poi­soned her and held her while she died! Yes, you did cry after­ward rather than drink and curse, but you killed some­one you loved! Do you think Roslin would, could ever do that? No. It’s one of the things that I love about you that just makes you, you.

After that first Cylon war years ago you were drift­ing, floun­der­ing here and there, drink­ing, get­ting into fights, until that one bar where you met Bill Adama and the two of you pledged to each other that no mat­ter what hap­pened the two of you were going to get back into the fleet. And you did. That took guts and guts you have, my brother.

You were crafted by war, Saul, and war needed you. When the Galac­tica had been hit by nuclear mis­siles dur­ing the ini­tial vol­leys of the Cylon War II, you had the hulls sealed off and then the air­locks opened to put out a fire that was threat­en­ing to take out the entire ship. In the process you shot many liv­ing peo­ple into space, but you saved the ship. You killed your crew­men but you did it for the greater good and it was a shin­ing moment in your dented and scarred career. Who else would have had the stones to do that? Few men, I tell you.

And when the war came again you found your place. You hated Cylons with a white-hot Tilium-burning pas­sion and that hate has got­ten you this far, but now you’ve come to a HUGE cross­road, my friend — you’ve dis­cov­ered, along with three other peo­ple on board the Galac­tica, that you’re Cylons. You’re part of the fabled Final Five which makes you spe­cial, very spe­cial. Sud­denly your life has tremen­dous mean­ing — you’re now more than just a man, you’re a sym­bol to some, a god to oth­ers. You’ve been killing Cylons for fifty years, from the first rebel­lion to the holo­caust of the human race to New Caprica, and now you find out you’re a Cylon? You your­self are one of the enemy? Well, that’s almost too much for an ordi­nary man to bear.

But damnit Saul, you’re no ordi­nary man! You’re Saul Tigh, the most rip-snortin’, butt-kickin’ Colonel, XO and one-time dic­ta­tor in the entire human race! Man up, son! Get your­self together!

Oh sure, it was soul cleans­ing when you told Adama that you were a Cylon. But what did you think he was going to do, kill you? Would that have made every­thing bet­ter? That would be too good, too easy for you. He handed you over to his son who almost killed you, but Bill never could kill his best friend. You think The Old Man could really have done that to some­one he loves almost as much as his own son? Never. I even had in my mind the way I thought you would go on the show but as the mid­point of sea­son four showed us it won’t hap­pen. Here it is though for you -

Adama knows you’re a Cylon. He’s in a rage, hold­ing you up against the bulk­head and has a gun to your chest.

ADAMA : You want abso­lu­tion, Saul?! What the frak did you think I was going to do? Kill you so you wouldn’t have to?

TIGH : No Bill. I couldn’t let you do that. It wouldn’t be right.

And then you shoot your­self in the head and as your body falls to the floor of the air­lock Bill bursts into tears as his best friend dies in his arms and he weeps over you because he knows that part of his soul is now gone and can never come back no mat­ter how many model ships or mir­rors he destroys.

It would have been an amaz­ing way for you to go and it would have sucker punched me in the stom­ach to watch you die. But you’re not dead yet, Saul. You have to keep going. The race isn’t over yet, brother. You said it your­self : you’re Saul Tigh, XO of the Bat­tlestar Galac­tica, and what­ever you were then, that’s the way you’re going to be until the day you die. That’s quite a mantra to live by Saul, given what’s hap­pened to you.

Toughen up, Saul. The worst may be yet to come. Good luck and gods’ speed, friend.

The show “Heroes” started out as a fun but deriv­a­tive con­cept — the hero ori­gin story. More point­edly, “Heroes” is a take on the X-Men. You’ve got your mind reader (Pro­fes­sor X), the guy who can fly (Angel), the girl who can regen­er­ate (Wolver­ine), the girl who can look like any­thing (Mys­tique) and a bunch of oth­ers, but it was fun at the begin­ning since every­body loves the “ori­gin” story. It’s fun to watch peo­ple get new pow­ers and then learn how to use them as well as their lim­i­ta­tions. It’s plain ol’ good vs. evil.

The evil on the show is Gabriel Gray, a nerdy watch repair­man who took the lame moniker of Sylar from one of the brands of watches he fixed. He is able to acquire other pow­ers by (he thinks, but I’m not so sure) eat­ing other hero-type people’s brains. Lovely.

The first sea­son was fun and I stuck around to see if New York would indeed be destroyed by the man who can’t con­trol his pow­ers, Peter Petrelli. Peter had acquired nuclear capa­bil­i­ties from Ted Sprague. Peter, unlike Sylar, gets pow­ers by being around peo­ple who already have the power he will develop. I think Sylar oper­ates the same way but he just doesn’t know it.

Half the joy of sea­son one was watch­ing Hiro, the time-traveling Japan­ese office worker, dis­cover his abil­ity and then real­ize that it can be fun as well as pow­er­ful. His jour­ney, of all of them, has been the most enjoy­able to watch as he grows.

Any­way, there was this “mas­ter­mind” named Daniel Lin­der­man (he has pow­ers too — regen­er­a­tion) who was going to bring about a new age by hav­ing Peter Petrelli destroy New York with his nuclear capa­bil­i­ties and then get Peter’s brother Nathan elected pres­i­dent. Nathan helped Peter get out of the city by fly­ing up into the stratos­phere before explod­ing. In the “destroy NY” show Lin­der­man is shot to death, right through the head, and can’t regen­er­ate. He’s dead. Really dead.

Which brings me around to now. Ain’t It Cool News is link­ing to a story where some­one from the BBC is giv­ing away what’s in a sea­son 3 ‘Heroes’ promo. I’m talk­ing spoil­ers, so if you care and watch the show, skip the next paragraph.

LINDERMAN IS BACK?

What?! Why can’t they kill any­one on this show and not have them stay dead?! Why can’t some­one just die and be really dead?! The freak­ing guy was SHOT IN THE HEAD. Kill him! Kill him! Have him be dead, really dead! Bad guys, even SUPER BAD GUYS, die! Come on, man, just kill some­one off of this show and have him be gone! He wasn’t that cool or any­thing. Even his name is lame. He was even lamer than the guy that could paint the future.((Don’t even get me started on how cool it would have been to have Hiro fight­ing a Tyran­nosaurus. That would have rökked.)) Jeez.

And man, I’ve hung on even through the lame new char­ac­ters they tried to intro­duce last sea­son where all I wanted was for the girl who’s eyes turn black to die. The sweet release of her death would have been a high point of last sea­son, but no, they had to have her “fall in love” with Sylar. She’s as lame as Nikki and Paulo on “Lost” were and the cre­ators of “Lost” were smart enough to kill them off! Kill Black Eyed Girl! Kill her as soon as possible!

The list of peo­ple on the show with pow­ers just keeps grow­ing. Nikki, who sup­pos­edly died in an explo­sion, I’m sure will turn up alive. Nathan, who was shot at the end of last sea­son right before he “came out” about his fly­ing power, I’m sure will be back too. Claire’s dad, who’s death was very pow­er­ful on the show, was res­ur­rected. Sylar him­self prob­a­bly was dead but they’ve brought him back to annoy us with his “my-head-is-down-but-I’m-looking-at-you” eyes and stu­pid way of talk­ing again. And Hiro can’t even kill a bad guy; he has to bury him in a cof­fin alive. The guy he buried is immor­tal so I’m sure he’ll turn up again, as usual.

The only one that I really am glad is back is Hiro’s friend Ando. Ando is one of the few peo­ple on the ros­ter with­out pow­ers which is prob­a­bly why I like him so much. Can’t we have fewer peo­ple with pow­ers? To see their per­spec­tive on those with pow­ers? And can’t this freak­ing show thin the ranks a lit­tle bit before the whole planet is on the show because, you know, they ALL have powers?

Being a dad I have to watch lots of tele­vi­sion that I wouldn’t nor­mally want to. I’ve sat through or heard in the back­ground hours upon hours of children’s pro­grams, some awful and some good. I can watch the “Won­der­pets” or “Oswald” or “Kip­per“¹ but when it comes to “Blue’s Clues” there are 2 camps: those that like Steve and those that like Joe. I pre­fer Steve but my youngest child prefers Joe. He is almost 2 years old though, so I won’t hold it against him.

Joe, to the untrained eye, appears to be Joe-like, but he acts far more juve­nile than Steve Burns ever did. Watch­ing him you get the feel­ing, and it’s prob­a­bly not Dono­van Patton’s² fault. Steve, towards the end of his tenure on the show, seemed to be get­ting more and more cere­bral. He would lift an eye­brow for effect here, a slight double-take there. He even used the word ‘jejune’ on the show.

Then Steve’s brother Joe showed up right as Steve was going away to college.

The pro­duc­ers prob­a­bly wanted to go back to the more kid-friendly for­mat of the early years of the show but after watch­ing Burns Patton’s deliv­ery seemed so pre-preschoolish.

When singing the sig­na­ture song he looks long­ingly at the screen like he hon­estly doesn’t remem­ber from pro­gram to pro­gram that he needs to use his note­book or find a clue. For god’s sake, in one episode he didn’t know where his nose was. Or his ear. Who in their right mind doesn’t know where his nose is? If you’re Joe, then you don’t, obviously.

The whole “Steve goes to col­lege” angle was alright, since Burns wanted to leave the show, and, from his own web­site “we have male pat­tern bald­ness.” Steve was look­ing a lit­tle long in the tooth. But how could “Steve” get into col­lege? He couldn’t find clues (as far as I know he only found one and that was in the “Blue’s Big Musi­cal” episode) so how did he get into col­lege? And what col­lege is it? Stu­pid U?

But at least Steve got into col­lege. Joe, the stu­pid brother, has been stuck at home for years now, liv­ing out his pre-preschoolish exis­tence with a talk­ing mail­box, some talk­ing salt and pep­per shak­ers, and a bar of soap that wants to be a ship cap­tain. Maybe Joe is crazy and the “Blue’s Clues” show is all in his head, or maybe Steve was crazy and, liv­ing in the Blue­si­verse, made up a brother out of thin air so he could escape his own insan­ity. Think about it. I could hap­pen. Sorta Being John Malkovich–esque. Or like the end­ing of “Saint Else­where”. Maybe Joe is dream­ing up the whole thing. Wouldn’t sur­prise me if he did.

1. Kip­per is awe­some. A small British dog that causes my 4-year old speak in a British accent fol­low­ing each view­ing. [↩]
2. The guy that plays Joe [↩]