PODCASTS DON'T COUNT

Technology has given us new ways to take in media content and also to interract with it, but a performance piece - whether it be music, film, television, comedy stand-up, performance art, whathaveyou can still be defined as a single work from its beginning to its end. A real artsy-fartsy modern art live installation with performers might be open-ended to explore time as a factor in the perception of it as art, but they tell you so.

With a television episode we can expect that what makes it to air is the completed piece of work. We all know that down-the-road there may be director's cuts, extended versions, alternate versions, deleted scenes, etc. etc. but a choice was made by the creative team as to what makes it to air and that is the completed work. Anything after that is a revised work. With Season 4 of Battlestar, especially Season 4.5 there are all kinds important, even critically important plot developments (Tyrol was thrown in the brig after freeing Boomer, mutineers were sent to prison ships) that have not made it to air but been mentioned and referenced online in forums, on blogs, in the general entertainment ethosphere. The juciest of these come from podcasts by Ron Moore. They don't count as storytelling.

And once again with Daybreak, Pt. 1 we get a synopsis on the SciFi website that includes this: "Bill Adama is in his office discussing whether or not he's going to command the battlestar one last time before his retirement." What was onscreen gave no indication of what his meeting was about, we were told by the guest actor, "It's an hour of your time." Further, once again a character behaved in a way very inconsistent with their past behavior: Kara's little dinner party for Lee and Zak had her behaving every bit like Martha Stewart. When Kara and Helo went back to her apartment after the Cylon attack (in which Kara was on a mission to retrieve the Arrow of Apollo) her place was a dump and she lived like a slob. At left is an image not in the episode but put up on the SciFi website as part of the synopsis. Here is another of Roslin walking through the park - again not shown onscreen.