Battlestar Galactica

[Lucas]

Well, avoiding this topic like a disease because I'm still in the middle of Season Two, when  

but I must say I underestimated the second season at the beginning, now I really  it.

Grace Park and Kandyse McClure (Dualla) are just gorgeous 

[NowhereMan]

Consdiering the last several pages of discussion it's kind of cute that you spoilered

[shiznitz]

Consdiering the last several pages of discussion it's kind of cute that you spoilered

Cute like a baby retard.

[eldaec]

Well, avoiding this topic like a disease because I'm still in the middle of Season Two, when  

but I must say I underestimated the second season at the beginning, now I really  it.

Grace Park and Kandyse McClure (Dualla) are just gorgeous 

Second season is wrought of pure awesome.

Third and forth... isn't.

[Jain Zar]

Back on topic, is there any series that everyone agrees ended well, wrapped everything up, didn't lose continuity, nothing was sorta hokey, and left you with that happy afterglow?

Neon Genesis Evangelion. 

As one of the few people who will get that, I ought to choke you.

Eva caused enough choking to anyone unfortunate enough to watch the last few episodes/movies on its own.  It does not need our help.

[Riggswolfe]

I swear to god some of you fuckers defy belief.

For the entire run of this series there has been a quasi-supernatural aspect to things. And you bitch about the metaphysical copouts? WERE YOU EVEN FUCKING WATCHING THE SHOW?

Baltar, oddly enough, was the character I found the most satisfying in the end. He's also the one who grew the most as a character.

Oh, and every character I wished death on? They died.

I was quite happy overall with the finale.

[Triforcer]

Everything except the primitive purity bullshit worked for me.  As someone said earlier, it won't seem so awesome when in ten years you die horribly from a preventible disease on your mud farm. 

[Rishathra]

You wished death on Racetrack and Skulls?  That's terrible.

[Riggswolfe]

You wished death on Racetrack and Skulls?  That's terrible.

I did after the mutiny.

The primitive purity stuff was kind of unexpected but it worked for me. Maybe I'm just getting old and sentimental but I could see never wanting to see technology again after it nearly destroyed them.

[Rishathra]

You wished death on Racetrack and Skulls?  That's terrible.

I did after the mutiny.

I totally forgot they sided with the mutineers in that one.  Never mind.  I'm glad they're dead now too.

[Tale]

The primitive purity stuff was kind of unexpected but it worked for me. Maybe I'm just getting old and sentimental but I could see never wanting to see technology again after it nearly destroyed them.

Good point. If it had been explained that way instead of "Lee has an idea and suddenly everyone does it" and we'd seen some die-hard technologists saying "yes, for the sake of breaking the cycle", it would have resolved better. I agree with you overall, that the finale was really good, but the low-tech decision was my only complaint.

Re Racetrack - I thought she was a throwaway character and I'm surprised anyone paid any attention to her existence.

[Lucas]

(SPOILERS on the second season...Yeah, well, you never know :P)


I Just finished watching the second season 

I really loved the flashbacks on Caprica, as well as the personality of the two "corrupted" Cylons back there :).

I must say that, given the budget and whatnot, they managed to create some gorgeous scenes, especially the attack against the Resurrection (but Christopher Blair, Hobbes and Maniac would have done a much quicker job :P) and the ambush of the rescue team on Caprica by the Cylon.

And how fucked up was the scene when Tyrol punches poor Kelly???  . I really felt sorry for her :(

Not sure about the last turn of events...I just hope Gaius dies of a horrible death :P
---

Ok, enough babbling, on April 6th the DVD box set of the third season comes out here in Italy 

[Riggswolfe]

Not sure about the last turn of events...I just hope Gaius dies of a horrible death :P

I did too at that stage but he does finally redeem himself. As others have said, his moments in the finale are the most touching as he seems to finally become humble and a believer.

[HaemishM]

For the entire run of this series there has been a quasi-supernatural aspect to things. And you bitch about the metaphysical copouts? WERE YOU EVEN FUCKING WATCHING THE SHOW?

Yeah, we were. We figured not even a douchebag like Ron Moore would just toss away 4 years of mystery in a 30-second dissertation that boiled down to "God did it."

[Ratman_tf]

For the entire run of this series there has been a quasi-supernatural aspect to things. And you bitch about the metaphysical copouts? WERE YOU EVEN FUCKING WATCHING THE SHOW?

Yeah, we were. We figured not even a douchebag like Ron Moore would just toss away 4 years of mystery in a 30-second dissertation that boiled down to "God did it."

"Too easy."

[NowhereMan]

One of the mysteries from early on that they explained and made part of the show was the identity of the Final Five. Do you really think what they did with that was better than what they did with Starbuck? I'm not going to defend the writing decision to make this show all about mystery but frankly I think they ended it in the spirit of the show and I think explaining all that shit would have been so much worse than leaving us with another set of questions.

[Riggswolfe]

For the entire run of this series there has been a quasi-supernatural aspect to things. And you bitch about the metaphysical copouts? WERE YOU EVEN FUCKING WATCHING THE SHOW?

Yeah, we were. We figured not even a douchebag like Ron Moore would just toss away 4 years of mystery in a 30-second dissertation that boiled down to "God did it."

Clearly you weren't paying attention. From Season 1 this has been all about the God(s) and their plan for humanity.

[HaemishM]

Except, he really didn't even have the balls to say "GOD" did it. He just said "Well, it was some divine force that the Cylons call God and we called the Gods and it doesn't really matter so long as you just have faith."

He could have saved me the trouble 4 years ago.

[Riggswolfe]

Except, he really didn't even have the balls to say "GOD" did it. He just said "Well, it was some divine force that the Cylons call God and we called the Gods and it doesn't really matter so long as you just have faith."

He could have saved me the trouble 4 years ago.

Ahhh...so the finale was supposed to not only wrap up plotlines but tell you exactly who/what the God(s) were? Got it. I guess I wasn't expecting the final episode to be a philosophy/religious studies course so I was happy with what I got.

[tazelbain]

Ahhh...so the finale was supposed to not only wrap up plotlines but tell you exactly who/what the God(s) were? Got it. I guess I wasn't expecting the final episode to be a philosophy/religious studies course so I was happy with what I got.

You seem to be able to increase your density at will.  That's an interesting superpower.

[gryeyes]

[HaemishM]

Except, he really didn't even have the balls to say "GOD" did it. He just said "Well, it was some divine force that the Cylons call God and we called the Gods and it doesn't really matter so long as you just have faith."

He could have saved me the trouble 4 years ago.

Ahhh...so the finale was supposed to not only wrap up plotlines but tell you exactly who/what the God(s) were? Got it. I guess I wasn't expecting the final episode to be a philosophy/religious studies course so I was happy with what I got.

4 years of build up followed by 30 seconds of "none of it fucking matters. GOTCHA!!!!!"

It's like being told your first time is going to be the greatest sex ever with Salma Hayek, only to find out you get 30 seconds of rumpy pumpy with Rosie O'Donnell's poodle.

[Teleku]

I just want to say that, I've avoided watching this series during its entire run.  All of my roommates loved it, and I saw the original mini-series.  I thought it was great.  However, all shit that happened after that immediately turned me off (like Cylons being human, and a bunch of humans being Cylon, and all that shit.  I really just wanted good human on robot warfare action).  Listening to my roommates, and seeing random bits of episodes, I kind of got the jist of the story through its rises and falls.  I've read the basic synopsis of the ending, and agree it's completely retarded, Mormon's go mainstream, crap.

I've also now just completed downloading a torrent of the entire series plus mini-series/movie, and will be watching it all now fresh from start to finish.  I don't know why, but I feel obligated to watch this, if for nothing more than the fact that I can come back and bitch about it.  I know I'm going to hate it all.  Yet, the series is also important.  It's the only fucking Sci-fi series anybody has dared to try recently, and I really enjoyed the setting and the feel.  The story already pissed me off from the beginning, which is why I haven't watched it till now, yet I'm going to try to get it all now.  I still can't explain why.  Thus is it's weird power.

I look forward to resurrecting this thread a month, or even a year from now, when I've finally made myself watch every episode of it, and bitching about the retarded writing.  Huzzah.

[Quinton]

Why in the world would you force yourself to watch something you have already decided to hate just so you can complain about it?  Seems like there's better things to do with one's life.

Still, I'd suggest watching at least season one, which was a lot of fun, moved fast, and was only 12-13 episodes.

Season two wasn't as good.   The end of two, beginning of three, and end of three had some great stuff.  Middle of three was a bunch of crappy episodic bits (the network thought the long story arcs were losing them viewers -- turned out the viewers liked the episodic bits even less).

Season four was all over the place, had some great moments but really didn't pull together coherently and a lot of people really really hated the ending (it worked for me, but I was not exactly expecting the most amazing finale ever).

A complaint I have is that for a character-driven show, they were really inconsistent about characters' motivations and behaviors, especially in the later seasons, which was frustrating. 

Overall, I'm not sure if it ever lived up to its potential, but I enjoyed the whole thing except for some really awful episodes in the middle of season three. 

[tazelbain]

Moore says it about characters.  But he is lying to himself.  It's about the stories they wanted to tell.  When a character does something out of character it always to move them into position to tell a particular story.

[Teleku]

Still, I'd suggest watching at least season one, which was a lot of fun, moved fast, and was only 12-13 episodes.

All joking aside, this is pretty much why I'm going to watch it.  Enough of my friends loved the show at various points in its life that I know there are a lot of good episodes to see.  So even if I think the overall story sucks ass, I know I'm going to actually enjoy many episodes of the show.  Plus, I'd have to turn in my Nerd creds if I just totally skipped this 

[Arthur_Parker]

Moore says it about characters.  But he is lying to himself.  It's about the stories they wanted to tell.  When a character does something out of character it always to move them into position to tell a particular story.

He might not be aware of it but he hates the characters, he wiped them from history, making every choice, every sacrifice, meaningless, playthings of the Gods.  He doomed their children to short life spans reverting to stone age levels of technology without even the comfort of remembering their ancestors.  I'm not all up in arms about it, because it's only a tv series but I can't think of any other show where the cast got shafted so badly, Blackadder goes forth had a positively upbeat ending in comparison.

[Khaldun]

Moore says it about characters.  But he is lying to himself.  It's about the stories they wanted to tell.  When a character does something out of character it always to move them into position to tell a particular story.

He might not be aware of it but he hates the characters, he wiped them from history, making every choice, every sacrifice, meaningless, playthings of the Gods.  He doomed their children to short life spans reverting to stone age levels of technology without even the comfort of remembering their ancestors.  I'm not all up in arms about it, because it's only a tv series but I can't think of any other show where the cast got shafted so badly, Blackadder goes forth had a positively upbeat ending in comparison.

Keep in mind that I hated the final episode, and I think it's absolutely true that Moore didn't understand or wasn't interested in his own characters, which is why so many of them shifted in fundamental ways whenever a story needed them to shift.

But: let's just say there had never been Cylons and the 12 Colonies had gone about their business without much of a problem: Adama had refused his lie detector test, Roslin gone into politics, Lee had eventually boned his brother's GF with bad consequences, what have you. 150,000 years later, I think the choices and sacrifices of those characters wouldn't matter much, either. I don't know much of anything about Og the Caveman's difficult personal choices in life. Hell, we barely know anything specific about societies that existed a mere 10,000 years ago except that they did exist and made tools of certain kinds, etc. 

But you could do this to any kind of speculative drama: leap ahead suddenly 150,000 years at the very end, and say, "Welp, didn't matter none". Which unless that's been an important point to the drama all along, unless you've been telling stories that have that kind of cosmic perspective, it's just a stupid and useless gesture.

[Jain Zar]

Moore says it about characters.  But he is lying to himself.  It's about the stories they wanted to tell.  When a character does something out of character it always to move them into position to tell a particular story.

He might not be aware of it but he hates the characters, he wiped them from history, making every choice, every sacrifice, meaningless, playthings of the Gods.  He doomed their children to short life spans reverting to stone age levels of technology without even the comfort of remembering their ancestors.  I'm not all up in arms about it, because it's only a tv series but I can't think of any other show where the cast got shafted so badly, Blackadder goes forth had a positively upbeat ending in comparison.

Keep in mind that I hated the final episode, and I think it's absolutely true that Moore didn't understand or wasn't interested in his own characters, which is why so many of them shifted in fundamental ways whenever a story needed them to shift.

But: let's just say there had never been Cylons and the 12 Colonies had gone about their business without much of a problem: Adama had refused his lie detector test, Roslin gone into politics, Lee had eventually boned his brother's GF with bad consequences, what have you. 150,000 years later, I think the choices and sacrifices of those characters wouldn't matter much, either. I don't know much of anything about Og the Caveman's difficult personal choices in life. Hell, we barely know anything specific about societies that existed a mere 10,000 years ago except that they did exist and made tools of certain kinds, etc. 

But you could do this to any kind of speculative drama: leap ahead suddenly 150,000 years at the very end, and say, "Welp, didn't matter none". Which unless that's been an important point to the drama all along, unless you've been telling stories that have that kind of cosmic perspective, it's just a stupid and useless gesture.

My game group is having this discussion right now in one friend's desire to run Star Wars Saga edition.  (Meaning I get fucked with a fifth Star Wars core rulesbook.  AAAARRRRRSSSSEEEE.)
I mentioned I would do it only if it were KOTOR timeframe.  Its less familiar taking place 4,000 years before Episode 4, and we can generally do what we want without covering existing ground much. 
My friend agreed and also made a good point that we can do what we want and there is room for it.

Also (and here is where it connects to the above) its so far behind that we can pretty much change the entire setting milieu of Star Wars and not affect the movie canon whatsoever.
4000 years is a LONG FUCKING TIME for things to happen.  Our actions will affect our characters and those around us.  4K years later its ancient fucking history with limited affect. 
But our tale IS important.  To us.

BSG is the same way, except its 150 THOUSAND years.  Its so damned wide open what happened and all you can pretty much rationalize it any dang way you want.  Hell, for all we know their actions cause Earth to morph into Middle Earth and Adama becomes motherfuckin Gandalf and Tyrol becomes Morgoth.  (Apparently LOTR is pre history Earth.  If so, does the War of the Ring not matter since nobody in the modern era knows or is affected by it?  In LOTR's Earth it fucking happened.  Just nobody remembers it NOW.)

You can do this with real history too.  How much do we really know about humanity pre 1000 BC?  Not much.  Technology degrades, stuff gets destroyed.

For all we know the colonists created Atlantis, and the Centurions went off to create Cybertron and Gobotron.

[Merusk]

All their sacrifices and struggles weren't for naught, though.  They served to get Hera to Earth and start the Human race.   It's that they were important in that 'God has a bigger picture than you mere mortals with your individual struggles" kind of way.   

[Teleku]

Update from the incredibly late comer!   

Because I've apparently been starved for entertainment lately, and this show is really damn good, I've spent the last few days cat-ass'ing my way from the Mini-series straight on through to the end of season 2.  Couldn't stop watching.  Show really is as good as everybody said it was, up to this point, heh.  I don't think I really liked the ending of the second season however.  Going to ruin the feel of things I think.  I'm particularly mad that Sharon/Helo didn't get the baby back, as that seems to have fucked their relationship (though it didn't show them in the year later, so maybe not..).  Sad to think the Sharon character suffered that long not knowing. 

I was surprised to find that I actually really enjoyed the caprica-sharon/Helo relationship storyline from the start.  I thought it was going to be the thing I least liked about the show, enjoying pew pew more, but the whole dynamic of her turning on the others and them trying to come to terms with loving each other was actually pretty neat.  I really hope they don't fuck that up, as the last half of the second season seemed to be trying to do.  However I seem to be about the start of where everybody tells me the series goes horrible, so I guess we'll see how I feel in another week.   

Having said all that, I think I'm actually going walk away from this whole series with a better enjoyment of it than most people here, by 1.)  Watching the entire thing in one go all together, and 2.)  By knowing how the show ends (read the basic synopsis, nothing to detail oriented).  While I think its retarded, knowing what the basic explanation for all the wierd crap I'm seeing helps me enjoy it!  I'm not left filling in the blanks with my imagination of the many (better) explanations.  With that in mind, I can watch the story go along and not be let down.  Guess we'll see how I feel after watching the next season, but thats my feeling so far.

I know this is all late, but figured some long time viewers might find the views of me, somebody who completely ignored the show till it was done, interesting/sad/funny/retarded.  I look forward to going back and reading old threads from earlier seasons to see the original reactions.

Fake edit:  I think my actual only real stupid complaint so far is how perfectly intact and green Caprica is after having gone through a nuclear holocaust.  I mean, not a single damn building is destroyed.  They could have just said they bombarded the planet with Neutron bombs or something to get the same effect. 

Edit 2:  Well fuck, that was fast.  Only 2 episodes into season 3 and I want to burn the writers alive  .  Seriously, the whole cylon occupation makes no sense.  They have to know that what they are doing isn't being "friends" with the humans, or helping them.  And that it would cause discord.  ESPECIALLY since original boomer is one of the leaders.  They seemed to imply previously she still has her same mind she did as a human, and would definitely know better than to do all this shit.  She (and many others) are waaaaaaay the fuck out of character now.  Fuck.

[Raguel]

Edit 2:  Well fuck, that was fast.  Only 2 episodes into season 3 and I want to burn the writers alive  . 

Don't worry, while season three suxors,  the series gets better after season six. 

[Tale]

She (and many others) are waaaaaaay the fuck out of character now.

Out of character will take on whole new meanings :) Also most posters felt that season redeemed itself with its ending (I wasn't too sure). Remember you've also got the telemovie BSG: Razor to watch between seasons 3 and 4.

I watched The Wire seaons 1-4 like you're watching BSG. It's an awesome experience, but none too healthy. Tear yourself away sometimes. And if you've never seen The Wire, that's worth an epic catchup too.

[Margalis]

IMO BSG season 1-2 is the same as the original Matrix. Watch it and imagine the rest, watching it play out only dissapoints.

At the start of the show the religious mumbo-jumbo seemed like some crazy shit that only a schoolteacher high on drugs believed. And as they built up the mysteries more and more they built up the expectation that the mysteries would be explained.

I think the exact moment the show jumped the shark for me was when they were trying to get the cyclon hybrid baby and her surrogate mother off of Caprica. They built it up as a super important mission but then they put a couple of redshirts on it and their failure played out offscreen and was explained with a single "she didn't make it" throwaway line. To me that was the first really glaring example of the plot being shoehorned in at the expense of all logic.

[HaemishM]

Keep watching until the Cylon occupation ends. Then just forget the entire rest of the series never existed, because it will NEVER GET ANY BETTER. Unfortunately, it will get a SHITLOAD worse.

As for out-of-character, forget it. Season 3 is where character gets thrown right out the fucking airlock in service of the mess of an overarching plot.