Battlestar Galactica

[Teleku]

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.

Heh, your right, its not healthy at all (I've really put off a ton of shit I should be doing as well), but luckily easter weekend has forced a respite.  I've never seen a single episode of The Wire, and everybody raves about it, so I'm probably going to have to do the same thing with it as well now.  Ah well.

As it is, I just finished season 3, and watched the Razor movie (which seems highly pointless.  Not a bad story, was sort of neat to see the Pegasus story, but, uh, didn't advance the plot.  Kind of odd how I keep seeing it stressed that your suppose to watch it between season 3 and 4).  Season 3 actually just as quickly redeemed itself from my burning hate by episode 4, with an awesome space fight/rescue, and reset back to the norm for everybody.  They also killed off some characters I hated, including Adama's mustache.  Season 3 is a good example of why I can walk away from it all with less hate by watching the whole series the way I am now.  Most of season 3 was completely god damn pointless, mainly just character episodes/filler.  Which is fine, because my main fear was that they were going to fuck the whole plot up (I was mainly afraid a ton of the season would be spent on New Caprica, of which I completely hated).  Instead, just a whole lot of nothing happened, which is fine for me.  I can quickly bring on more episodes.  If I had waited the year for this season, then waited a week between episodes for months, only to get zero plot advancement, I'm sure I would have hated it as well.  As it is, I only hated a few of the episodes, and thought some of the other character episodes were fine, and the overall plot arc wasn't effected in any stupid way, so win win for me.

As for the ending of season 3, at first I thought it made up for any flaws the season had as well.  But then I realized this could be the beginning of real retardedry, as wtf are the chances that 2 of the final 5 were stationed on the only god damn Battlestar in the fleet to survive, and the other 2 (and obviously 3, really) being in the get away fleet.  Also, dead character coming back out of the blue.  So, it was a cool ending, but its setting off my bullshit alarms, as they are actually going to need to give well thought you explanations for all this, and most peoples reactions to the whole ending leads me to believe that's not going to happen  .

On to season 4!

[Tale]

and watched the Razor movie (which seems highly pointless.  Not a bad story, was sort of neat to see the Pegasus story, but, uh, didn't advance the plot.  Kind of odd how I keep seeing it stressed that your suppose to watch it between season 3 and 4).

That's just in line with when it was made and aired. Filled in some Pegasus blanks, didn't suck, and gave us all a BSG fix.

[Teleku]

So I actually finished watching the series a week ago.  I agree with much of what was said here as far as complaints go, and that the quality of the second half definably went down.  However, amazingly, I still walked away from it all pretty satisfied. 

The biggest problem was that the writing got very sloppy in the second half.  You can tell that they were writing the whole thing as they went, because there were so many plot lines that started and abruptly stopped (like the Tigh/#6 relationship/baby thing.  That made no fucking sense, and was pointless), and they had shitty excuses for it.  That sort of thing usually piss's me off a lot, and certainly irked me here.  But many of the episodes were actually still fun for me to watch throughout season 3 and 4.  If if they were doing wonky things with the characters and plot through season 4, almost all the episodes in season 4 were still very entertaining for me to watch, so I can't really be that mad at it.

I really wish they had done more with Helo/Athena.  Once they got the kid back, they didn't do much with them the rest of the series, which I think is a let down.  They spent a lot of time rehashing the relationships of several of the main characters over and over and over again.  It would have helped the series to have been more inclusive of the other characters, which I felt they did better in the first two seasons as well.  I think Helo was actually my favorite character, in part because he was apparently the only non-freakishly paranoid ignorant asshole left in the ENTIRE human race.

The ending was stupid for many of the reasons people listed, but after actually seeing it, I actually think the CONCEPT was actually one of the better ways to end it.  There's not many ways I can actually think of where they found modern earth, that wouldn't be cheesy/stupid.  All they had to do was change a few things and it would be fine.  First, they didn't give up all their technology, they just vanished over the course 150,000 years, like it would have (and the main city they founded was Atlantis  ).  There already more believable.  Second, emphasize that the fleet was out of all supplies and fuel, and that the ships would barely even be able to run even more (they were sort of hinting at this already).  Again more realistic in why the people of the fleet would go for it.  Hell, basically, the entire civilian government was wiped out in a coup not to long before this, I'm pretty sure all unity was gone and everybody hated each other, so even more reason for all the different bands to say fuck it and settle across the globe without trying to keep a unifying government.

So I just imagine that's how it ended, and suddenly the whole series becomes much better, and I have 1 less thing to hate 

Only way I can see an ending with them finding modern earth that would be good is if they followed what Edward James Olmos was apparently pushing for:

Eddie kept pitching me that they come to Earth in contemporary times, and everyone's cheering and happy, and cut to the White House and the President goes, "Nuke 'em!" And they destroy Galactica -- cut to credits. And people say I'm dark!

[Jain Zar]

Only way I can see an ending with them finding modern earth that would be good is if they followed what Edward James Olmos was apparently pushing for:

Eddie kept pitching me that they come to Earth in contemporary times, and everyone's cheering and happy, and cut to the White House and the President goes, "Nuke 'em!" And they destroy Galactica -- cut to credits. And people say I'm dark!

That would have been depressing as fuck.
While as stated I can understand why folks wouldn't like the ending, I did like it, if just because it made my sorry little mind do an endless what if dance.

But probably the best ending overall would have just been to have the fleet get in orbit, and fade out with them heading to Earth.  Leave everything else up to the imagination.   
Admitted, they pretty much did anyhow, but they gave just enough details to piss some folks off.

[Gobbeldygook]

I really wish they had done more with Helo/Athena.  Once they got the kid back, they didn't do much with them the rest of the series, which I think is a let down.

This was partially beyond their control.  Helo was very scarce in season 4 because he was busy filming Dollhouse.

---

The Caprica DVD goes on sale today.

[Teleku]

Oh yeah, wanted to ask about that.  Anybody see Caprica yet?  I downloaded the pilot last week and watched it.  It was pretty good, and very high production value.  It was also surprisingly graphic (topless girls everywhere...).

Seems like it has a lot of potential, but in either very good or very bad direction.  My biggest fear is that they are going to shit all over the existing lore and plot even more, horribly contradicting themselves.  Also, hopefully they keep down teen angst stuff.  But we'll see.

[Oban]

The opening scene made no sense to me and it went downhill from there.

[rattran]

BSG BluRay with new stuffs

"The final season, "4.5" -- essentially the last run of episodes from earlier this year -- includes 13 hours of extras such as three extended episodes that never aired on television, behind-the-scenes featurettes and audio commentaries by producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick."

Extended episodes that never aired could be interesting.

[Teleku]

The opening scene made no sense to me and it went downhill from there.

Yeah, I didn't get into it at all at first.  Stopped and started it several times.  But after the train bombing and introduction of maphia, it picked up.  I do think its going to be somewhat hard for them to string together more than a season of plot though.

[Tale]

[Tebonas]

Yeah, I liked the Cylon origin for purely humorous reason. The rest of Caprica I found rather crappy and too soapish.

[raydeen]

The opening scene made no sense to me and it went downhill from there.

Yeah, I didn't get into it at all at first.  Stopped and started it several times.  But after the train bombing and introduction of maphia, it picked up.  I do think its going to be somewhat hard for them to string together more than a season of plot though.

Everything made sense to me except that goddamn stupid ending/cliffhanger.

[climbjtree]

How many seasons of this show were there? I just finished Season 4. Seems like a logical place to stop. Is there another season?

[Teleku]

How many seasons of this show were there? I just finished Season 4. Seems like a logical place to stop. Is there another season?

  I mean, really?

Yes.  That's it.  Though there is also the movie they released afterwards called "The Plan" if you haven't seen that yet.

[Cyrrex]

How many seasons of this show were there? I just finished Season 4. Seems like a logical place to stop. Is there another season?

 

How did you see the last parts of the 4th season and think there could possibly be more?  Are you sure you saw what we all saw?  I don't want to spoiler it for you, but that shit was pretty conclusive.

[Rishathra]

Maybe he saw the episode before the mid-season break and assumed it was the end?  It did have a touch of finality to it, after all.

[climbjtree]

Well what happened to the Cylons that are still out there? Were I them, I'd still search for Earth and then nuke it.

[Sir T]

They're making a living in pron 

[tazelbain]

Well what happened to the Cylons that are still out there? Were I them, I'd still search for Earth and then nuke it.

I submit that Cylons never had a plan and neither did Ronald Moore.

EDIT:fuck!

[Tannhauser]

Well, his plan to play Bond for several movies seems to have paid off. 

[Venkman]

Resurrection!

Anyone catch Blood and Chrome? Made-for-Bluray thing for next February, kinda like Razor, except Machinima Prime is releasing all parts on YouTube.

Trailer
Episode 1
Episode 2

Premise: Young Adama in the earlier Cylon War. Lots of referential nerd porn all over the place.

It's very watchable. Not as tight as season 1 nor Razor, but definitely enjoyable if you liked the series.

[lac]

Love the CGI and atmosphere but everything else felt rather cliché. It's twice ten minutes, so it's not like they have a lot of room for character development but still.

[dd0029]

The first two were fun, but good lord the lense flare. I did like the clever diegetic bleeping.

[Ghambit]

I have no complaints because I'm more a fan of traditional hard(er) sci-fi than space opera.  B&C is definitely not quite space opera, so far.  It's taking more of a Wing Commander approach and me likey.

[Venkman]

The first two were fun, but good lord the lense flare. I did like the clever diegetic bleeping.

I looked that up and still don't quite get it? Isn't that just beeps that come from stuff you see on screen?

[Mrbloodworth]

For instance, when someone is about to cuss ( Other than frack ), instead of beep, a wrench falls.

[Venkman]

Oh, bleeping, as in censoring. For some reason I read that as diegetic beeping (no L). Makes much more sense now

[Riggswolfe]

B&C is kind of fun and I agree with the Wing Commander comment. Some of the acting is a bit painful but it is still a good show. It seems much more about the action and adventure than the drama/soap opera that BSG was and I like that to be honest.