Two observations about nerdy things I watched on TV last night

1. There's been a lot of speculation about the identity of the final Cylon. Ron Moore has said it isn't one of the principal characters (Roslin, Lee Adama, Bill Adama, Baltar, Starbuck). Lots of internet nerds think it could still be one of those people anyway. I think Jonathan has said before that he'll stop watching it if it's one of those characters, as it would be too easy and, I imagine, soap-operatic to make one of those characters a cylon.

Here's what I'm hoping: that the payoff of the "who's the final cylon?" plotline will come from the circumstances in which the final cylon finds himself/herself when s/he is activated. I'm picturing some big battle, and then at some crucial moment, the cylon is activated. The most likely characters to end up being cylons in this scenario are Dualla or Gaeta. If it's Dualla, there would be some symmetry in the Starbuck/Anders and Lee/Dualla couplings, as Starbuck and Lee would find out that they'd each married cylons. The fallout from that, and the possibility that this revelation could bring them back together for good, could be somewhat interesting.

2. Spike TV is showing episodes IV, V, and VI of the Star Wars trilogy. Last night was A New Hope, and I watched the first couple of hours before having to switch to BSG. I'm sure this observation has been made by millions of people, literally, but it's striking how much better the performances are in the original films. The actors -- especially Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher, but even Mark Hamill and the actors who played his aunt and uncle -- had so much more presence, charisma, and ownership of the dialogue than the actors in the later movies. Even the good actors in the later movies -- Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman, and to a lesser extent Jimmy Smits -- delivered performances that weren't really representative of what they can do.