New Battlestar Galactica series is very good

[schild]

I downloaded season 1 of Carnivale. I found it unbearable after 4 episodes. If it got better, I'd be incredibly surprised.

This is coming from a guy who actually enjoyed season 3 of Six Feet Under - even though it was utter shite.

[Tebonas]

I guess thats why there are different things for different people. I never got what people liked about Six Feet Under. Watched some episodes, but was bored by the meaningless problems of uninteresting people that should be shot in the head for being stupid drama queens.

Yet I like Carnivale. Do I miss what the two have to do with each other?

[schild]

They're both very slow, very boring premium channel dramas. You'd think there'd be a cross section. But all my friends that like one hate the other.

[Big Gulp]

even though it was utter shite.

Shite?  Well, blimey, gov'nah!

Affectation, the sad attempt at making oneself interesting.

[Windurst]

A quarter-century after the original premiered on NBC to lacklustre ratings, the new Galactica has taken the Science Fiction Channel by storm, grabbing record-breaking viewership for its first episode last week.

From this article in the Calgary sun

[Sobelius]

OK -- finally got to see the miniseries and first episode today.

Wow.

Count me in on the side that finds this one of the best sci-fi drama series -- scratch that -- one of the best *drama* series, period, on television today. On all levels, truly outstanding. I have the rest of the first season on DvD's a friend made for me, and if the rest of the season is as good as the miniseries and first ep, then I'm going to savor each one while glued to the screen.

IMHO, they've done what the LOTR folks did for Middle Earth -- made this look and feel as though it really happened. There is a lot of attention to prop, set and character detail that goes a long way toward bringing a sense of realism. Added bonus is the hand-shakey-camera photography and slighlty more accurate space flight physics of the ships. This is what I had hoped for when ST:TNG first aired -- a sci fi tv show for adults. I don't think TNG really ever delivered this, but that's fine. Just glad this show has.

Side note (apologies if this already came up -- I didn't pore over all the pages in this thread). Having, like many of us, watched the second plane hit the WTC, followed by news reports and the whole mass chaos/shutdown of airspace that followed, the scenes in the miniseries dealing with the bombings of the homeworlds unnerved me a bit. I was briefly thrown back into the feelings I had that day in 2001, and I think the show deserves credit for not sugarcoating or glossing over the reality of such destruction nor the emotional impact.

Again, kudos to whoever was brave enough to make this sci-fi series emotional, tense, dramatic, and for adults rather some kind of exercise in product marketing for miniature ships, dolls and plush toys.

[SirBruce]

The first season is almost over here in the US and people elsewhere have already started seeing the next season.

While I enjoyed the first few episodes, I'm not as head over heels about the series as other people.  You haven't seen all the episodes yet, but you're quite right in calling the series a DRAMA.  In fact, my main complaint about how the 1st season has gone is that there's very ltitle sci-fi going on and a whole lot of sturm and drang.  The series is certainly not afraid to take risks, though.

Bruce

[HaemishM]

I've seen the entire first season (thanks to BT, I downloaded the whole thing before I ever knew it hadn't all been shown here yet). The season finale really pays off the whole season. I like the fact that it's a drama first, sci-fi show second. That's what makes it good, and was the same thing that made Babylon 5 great, it's all about the people. The fact that they fly in spaceships and fight robots is secondary to the fact that they are people.

The season finale was one of the first shows in a long time to make me exclaim, "DAAAAAAAMMN!"

[SirBruce]

I disagree.  I recognize the underlying value of what you are saying, and it's quite true; good sci-fi stories are just as much about people as non-sf stories are.  But I watched Babylon 5 too, and to me, there was a lot more sci-fi in B5 than there has been in BG so far.  Perhaps these are simply different points on a specture of drama.  Perhaps it's just a matter of taste.  But to me, BG has far too much drama and not enough sf.  That doesn't make it bad, just not as good as it could be for me.

Bruce

[Abagadro]

Again, kudos to whoever was brave enough to make this sci-fi series emotional, tense, dramatic, and for adults rather some kind of exercise in product marketing for miniature ships, dolls and plush toys.

That would be Ronald D. Moore, one of the best sci-fi writers/producers working in Movies/TV today.

[Riggswolfe]

That would be Ronald D. Moore, one of the best sci-fi writers/producers working in Movies/TV today.

Is he the guy that did Space Above and Beyond? For some nerdy reason I really liked that show

[Riggswolfe]

Also, if I may ask. What do you guys use for a torrent site to download stuff? I found one site called umm..torrentspy.com. Is this a good site?

[SirBruce]

That would be Ronald D. Moore, one of the best sci-fi writers/producers working in Movies/TV today.

Is he the guy that did Space Above and Beyond? For some nerdy reason I really liked that show

Not according to IMDB:

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0601822/

Bruce

[Merusk]

That would be Ronald D. Moore, one of the best sci-fi writers/producers working in Movies/TV today.

Is he the guy that did Space Above and Beyond? For some nerdy reason I really liked that show

Not according to IMDB:

http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0601822/

Wow.. some good TNG and DS9 episodes in there Yesterday's Enterprise, Chain of Command, Trials and Tribble-ations   And G vs E, which I thought was a great series and was dissapointed to see it go.  I might just break my boycott of Sci-Fi and catch Galactica.

[Viin]

I didn't realize he wrote some for Carnivale (HBO) too. That's a really interesting/wacky show, I need to pick up the whole first season here soon.

[HaemishM]

Also, if I may ask. What do you guys use for a torrent site to download stuff? I found one site called umm..torrentspy.com. Is this a good site?

I found the stuff at this site.

Carnivale is currently rocking my world. I'm just at the beginning of season 2. What do Carnivale, B5 and BSG have in common? Assloads of character development, which is why they are all such good shows.

[Riggswolfe]

I found the stuff at this site.

Carnivale is currently rocking my world. I'm just at the beginning of season 2. What do Carnivale, B5 and BSG have in common? Assloads of character development, which is why they are all such good shows.

Thanks! I found a site but the torrents never seemed to work. It made the folder and the file templates but never seemed to start downloading. I could kiss you. Except that whole, you're a guy thing and I'm not in the mafia soo...

[Evil Elvis]

The question is, is Carnivale's finale going to trump BSG's?

And is ABC ever going to air a new episode of Lost?

[gimpyone]

The question is, is Carnivale's finale going to trump BSG's?

And is ABC ever going to air a new episode of Lost?

not until the 13th

[Shockeye]

The question is, is Carnivale's finale going to trump BSG's?

And is ABC ever going to air a new episode of Lost?

not until the 13th

Next Episode:
Wednesday, March 30, 8/7c
"Deus Ex Machina"
Boone becomes concerned when Locke suffers physical problems while they try to find a way into the mysterious hatch. Meanwhile, Jack is reluctant to help when Sawyer starts to experience excruciating headaches, and Michael and Jin struggle to communicate while working together on the raft.

[gimpyone]

Thanks shockeye

[Margalis]

Is he the guy that did Space Above and Beyond? For some nerdy reason I really liked that show

I also liked Space: Above and Beyond. Maybe it was just good, nerdy or not.

[Abagadro]

I liked aspects of it. It was done by some guys who worked on the X-Files if memory serves. I liked the "Grunts in Outter Space" aspect, the exploration of the casual racism against the cloned and the one tough-ass colonel dude.  Could have developed nicely if given time.

[Riggswolfe]

I wished they had more episodes in their fighters vs epsiodes on the ground. But oh well. I like space combat what can I say? Oddly, my two favorites characters were both clones, the colonel and Hawk. I also wondered if they were going to develop the AI storyline further had the series continues.

As for Battlestar:

I've now got the first two episodes downloaded. I Really enjoy the writing and the characters. I am not real fond of the epileptic seizures the cameraman seems to have quite often. (I despise the recent trend in action movies and TV of jerking the camera around. I like to actually follow what is happening on my screen and I don't care if the new market is kids with ADD or not.)

[Evil Elvis]

Watched the Carnivale finale.  How dissapointing.  They should have left Carnivale at it's 9pm timeslot, and put Deadwood on at 10.  That way a person would have a comparable experience when watching the Doc pass a metal rod up Sweringen's urethra.

Everything felt heavy-handed and forced, just like the previous episode.  I liked one or two scenes, then it was straight down contrived alley.  By the time the inevitable plot-twists popped up, I wasn't even very interested.

At least the Pacquiao vs Moralas fight was good.

[Viin]

That way a person would have a comparable experience when watching the Doc pass a metal rod up Sweringen's urethra.

Heh, thinking about that episode continues to make me want to curl into a little ball and protectively cup my genitals.

[Sky]

Just to glom on this thread:

Crichton leads the new SG-1? Wtp?

I was pretty sure they were wrapping up MacGuyver/Tapping/Friends...but I didn't see that one coming, I thought they would just bury the show and go on with Atlantis.

[Shockeye]

Beau Bridges is the new head of the SGC.

That's because McGyver gets promoted to homeworld security and has minimal screen time next season.

Louis Gossett, Jr. is also going to be on SG-1 next season.

Stars Join SG-1, Atlantis

SCI FI Channel announced that Beau Bridges, Lou Gossett Jr. and The X-Files' Mitch Pileggi will join the casts of Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis as the two shows gear up production for their new seasons.

Bridges will join SG-1 as Gen. Hank Landry, the new head of Stargate Command, when Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) is promoted to oversee Homeworld Security. Bridges will have a regular role on SG-1 and will also appear in a few episodes of Atlantis.

Oscar winner Gossett joins the cast of SG-1 in a recurring role as a Jaffa leader who vies with Teal'c (Christopher Judge) for political control of the new Jaffa nation.

Pileggi, best known to SF fans for his recurring X-Files role as assistant FBI director Walter Skinner, takes on a recurring role in Atlantis as a hard-nosed colonel who butts heads with Dr. Weir (Torri Higginson) and Maj. Sheppard (Joe Flanigan).

Production on both Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis is set to begin in March for summer premieres on SCI FI.

[Sobelius]

Wired Magazine catches on to Battlestar

[raydeen]

Galactica 2.0 is the best thing to hit TV since B5. Nice and edgy. Space Above and Beyond was great while it lasted. And Andromeda showed much promise in it's beginning but then lost it's way. SG-1 had a strong start, but it's floundering. I love Galactica 'cause it confounds what could be construed for common religious belief (this coming after my horrible Pope post). To imagine that 'God' may prefer another race/religion/culture/species than one's own so flies in the face of any major religion... it's just delicious. I love it. My only complaint is the deviation from the original series in that the original Cylons were once humans who literaly sold their souls to the devil for eternal life. Back in the day I thought that was a great plot twist.

SCTV is coming on TV-Land. I'm locked in for the next hour.

[Triforcer]

I have watched the last five episodes of BSG, and the whole Baltar thing confuses me very muchful.  Can anyone do the tiny print on who the woman is supposed to be, what side she's on, etc.?

[Riggswolfe]

My only complaint is the deviation from the original series in that the original Cylons were once humans who literaly sold their souls to the devil for eternal life. Back in the day I thought that was a great plot twist.

Maybe the current Cylons will be somethnig similiar. I find it interesting that the humans are polytheistic while the Cylons are monotheistic.

[Otis]

I have watched the last five episodes of BSG, and the whole Baltar thing confuses me very muchful.  Can anyone do the tiny print on who the woman is supposed to be, what side she's on, etc.?

She's called Number Six. We're not 100% sure on the how, but she appears to be the Cylon agent that Baltar formed a strong relationship with prior to the destruction of civilization. Baltar contracted for the Colonial military, and that allowed Number Six to gain access to all the details the Cylons needed in order to conduct a complete and total takedown of humanity. After the fleeing the planet Caprica, Baltar started to see Six in hallucinations, and she has been guiding him (or stalking him) since.

Her end goal seems to be the religious conversion of Baltar, a selfish narcissist who believes in a logical, ordered universe with no place for an all powerful creator, and to bring him fully to the Cylon side for some purpose that has yet to be made entirely clear.

[SirBruce]

I have watched the last five episodes of BSG, and the whole Baltar thing confuses me very muchful.  Can anyone do the tiny print on who the woman is supposed to be, what side she's on, etc.?

While Baltar was on Caprica, before the Cylon attack, he was making it with that woman, whom, it turned out, was a Cylon agent.  She used him to get inside the Caprica mainframe to compromise their planetary defenses for the assault.  In this way, Baltar unwittingly betrayed his people, although he didn't know it at the time.  The woman also saves Baltar from certain death and helps lead him to a rescue ship to get off Caprica and joint he refugee fleet.

Baltar believed she was dead, although we subsequently learn that Cylons have several copies of each human agent and their consciousness supposedly gets transferred to another when they die.  So everything she knows or knew lives on in another Cylon.

Since then, Baltar seems to be uniquely experiencing manifestations of this woman again and again in his mind.  She seems to be completely beyond his control, and can force his body to do things.  It's unclear if Baltar is just insane, or if the Cylons actually have some sort of mental link or implanted device in him that allows such "communication."  If Baltar is insane, he seems to have discerned an awful lot about the motives and beliefs of the Cylons in his hallucinations, which seem confirmed by scenes of the Cylons on Caprica, so it seems more likely they have some actual mental link to him.  However, why they aren't using that link to track the fleet isn't clear, either.  Perhaps she's some sort of "virus" inside Baltar, and thus she can communicate with him but not others.  But then, her copy on Capirca seemed to know things in the finale that contradict this notion.  Another possibility is Baltar, himself, is a Cylon agent.

The Cylon's motives at this stage are quite unclear.  Their new "human" bodies seem to think they are, indeed, superior to humans, which is why they decided to exterminate all the inferior Colonies.  But they also seem driven to "prove" themselves to the humans, to prove that their emotions are indeed real.  They believe there is one God, not the many Gods the Colonials have, and that all of this was part of God's plan.  If Baltar's "hallucinations" are in fact real, and the Cylons aren't lying to him, then they seem to be keeping him alive in order to accomplish some purpose.  We see hints of it in the Season Finale.  As you can see, the Caprica storyline has similar overtones.  But it's not really clear why the Cylons decided to wipe most of humanity out, but spare a few for some very strange reasons.

The Season Finale suggests the possibility that the Cylons are simply using the fleet in order to locate Earth, but there would seem to be far less complicated ways of going about it.  They have what seem to be a variety of Cylon agents in the fleet, yet their sabotage is haphazard, and then when they succeed, they don't succeed in a way that makes sense.  If they need Baltar alive, why compromise the water supply?  If they need the fleet to continue, why make it hard for them to find fuel?  Perhaps different Cylon factions are working at cross-purposes.  Frankly, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and I don't think whatever the "Truth" is can ultimately be completely logically consistent with what has appeared on screen so far.  Not that this has ever stopped some sci-fi writers before.

Bruce

[Triforcer]

Ah, thanks.  Bruce, I had a lot of the same questions you raised in the last paragraph running around in my head as I saw the last half of the season, hence my confusion.  I hope some of it gets cleared up in July.

The thing I fear most is the series going Angel on us.  That whole Caprica storyline just seems destined to go down the "vampire with a soul" road with Sharon.  SHE REALLY FELT LOVE.