Battlestar Galactica

[Johny Cee]

When Dee shoots herself it seems to be nothing more than an attempt to upset the viewer. It's not interesting. Horrible horrible.

That was the most realistic suicide I've seen on film or tv.  She basically spent an episode making amends and mending bridges, then did it.  It very much rang true to when I've had friends do the same.  It worked in show to underline the disappointment and depression of the characters who, after years of looking, find Earth and it's a radioactive wasteland.

The last two seasons of BSG were full of that kind of shit, though. Things that just made no sense to the character, like Gaeta's mutiny or that shit where he got his leg hurt in the first place. Or the Starbuck angel shit. Or that entire boxing episode.

Gaeta was hurt because Starbuck is a fuckup, and then Zarek used that to talk him into the anti-alliance with the Cylons faction.  Gaeta was an obvious tragic figure in that whole mess.  Years of taking abuse and being ignored, including letting the people who cripple him off scott free, leads him to an alliance that blows up in his face.

[Teleku]

The modern BSG series was great as a plot driven show until the writers realized they ran out of plot and attempted to turn it into a character based show, except the characters were nothing more then devices to drive the plot and had little to no internal consistency. Then magic space angel hallucinations stopped being hallucinations and  

Err, from the very beginning, I thought BSG was a character driven show, with a vague overall plot to tie it together (we are traveling in space till we find the holy land!).  It was fairly obvious they were making the overall plot up as they went, and it always relied on the character drama as the primary draw.  That was a big draw for me at least.  Watching their development.

When Dee shoots herself it seems to be nothing more than an attempt to upset the viewer. It's not interesting. Horrible horrible.

That was the most realistic suicide I've seen on film or tv.  She basically spent an episode making amends and mending bridges, then did it.  It very much rang true to when I've had friends do the same.  It worked in show to underline the disappointment and depression of the characters who, after years of looking, find Earth and it's a radioactive wasteland.

The last two seasons of BSG were full of that kind of shit, though. Things that just made no sense to the character, like Gaeta's mutiny or that shit where he got his leg hurt in the first place. Or the Starbuck angel shit. Or that entire boxing episode.

Gaeta was hurt because Starbuck is a fuckup, and then Zarek used that to talk him into the anti-alliance with the Cylons faction.  Gaeta was an obvious tragic figure in that whole mess.  Years of taking abuse and being ignored, including letting the people who cripple him off scott free, leads him to an alliance that blows up in his face.

Agree with all of this.  I thought both Dee and the mutiny were some of the highlights I mentioned before about the 2nd half.  I really liked the Mutiny concept.  It made a ton of sense, and gave realism to the show.  They were at the end of all their supplies, had traveled through pure hell for years, and now they find out their big hope is all ash.  It makes total sense that a large amount of people would decide on a leadership change, including characters we know.  Or decide there's no reason to continue to suffer, and just end it.

[Hoax]

I never forgave BSG reboot for when the other humans showed up and they were comic book character levels of evil. Its lazy and shitty and stupid. Stopped watching never tried to pick it back up and finish it.

As for B5 I liked the shadow war stuff a LOT, as a child I thought the huge multi-race battles were cool. The Vorlon were my kind of mysterious edge. Good times. I doubt it holds up beautifully but at the time (remember that TV was so much shittier back then) at that age it for sure broke the 50% crap barrier for me. I owned B5 spaceship miniatures for fucks sake. Several big chunky Narn ships in pewter or lead or whatever. Good times.

[HaemishM]

My problem with both the Dee suicide and the Gaeta mutiny was that I didn't buy their turns, nor their reasons for doing what they did. It just didn't ring true, and I didn't think any of the reasons Johnny Cee gives for those character turns rose to a level worth doing what they did.

[Johny Cee]

I dont really get the "Ripped off X" arguments. Every writer steals stuff from previous writers, hell I've seen places talk about where Tolkien ripped off previous writers. What matters to me is if its well done. And in general B5 did it fairly well. Hell the B5 movie "Thirdspace" basically ripped off Lovecraft, but that does not stop it being a really good movie.

There's a difference between borrowing elements and borrowing wholesale.  The Ring of Power is heavily based on the Ring of Gyges parable and Germannic cursed artifact folklore, but you take it and then do your thing.

Basically most of the overarching story beats in the Shadows-Vorlons arc were directly adapted from LOTR, right down to the Elder Races sailing off into the West at the end and leaving the setting for Man the Younger Races.

Sheridan (Frodo/Aragorn) goes to Xahadum (Mount Doom) with an actual nuke instead of an allegorical nuke, is saved by Eagles (Vorlon), gets to marry Arwen the half-elf (Delenn the half-Minbarri) but pays a terrible price and doesn't get to enjoy his victory.  Kosh echoes Gandalf, including resurrection...  The envoy from higher powers that goes out into the world to prepare against the coming of the enemy.  Londo is Saruman (using tools of the Enemy leads to being an antagonist) but props to JMS, this is a really interesting take and Londo is a much more nuanced character.

On the other hand, you have Martin's ASOIAF which is basically War of the Roses combined with subverting fantasy tropes and hero's journey expectations to make something new.

My rewatch of B5 is here: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=18379.0

[Johny Cee]

My problem with both the Dee suicide and the Gaeta mutiny was that I didn't buy their turns, nor their reasons for doing what they did. It just didn't ring true, and I didn't think any of the reasons Johnny Cee gives for those character turns rose to a level worth doing what they did.

Yah man, fair enough.

Dee's last episode was pretty classic "saying goodbye" if you have ever seen it before, and I hope you haven't.

Gaeta was repeatedly fucked by the main characters over and over.  Almost airlocked by secret trial? Being crippled and the people who did just get to run around and fuck more stuff up?  The lies and bullshit Adama/Roslin fed the fleet to keep hope up?  I could definitely see why he decided to do what he did (and immediately regret it when he realized the fucking psychopaths he was allied with).

[Rishathra]

Yeah, suicides would be happening after finding Earth like that, but not hers.  Was it a good portrayal of what someone who is suicidal would do in their last moments?  Sure.  It still didn't make sense that Dee would do it.

Gaeta, on the other hand, makes perfect sense.  Maybe some of you have forgotten just how hard that poor dude got unjustly shit on by EVERYONE.

[jgsugden]

BSG was a good show, but where it began to fail, IMHO, was when they started to look at destinations and then try to figure out how to get to the destination rather than letting the characters' stories develop and see what destinations might flow from those actions.  

The difference between the two approaches: If you preselect your destination, you often have to force a character to change in order to get them where they need to be.  If you let the character be themselves and then look for interesting destinations and events to put in their path, the characters experience less pressure for alteration in unnatural ways.  The worst BSG moments were the ones where you found yourself saying, "Really?  Why did they do that?"

[Teleku]

What exactly about Dee makes you guys think it was out of character for her to off herself?  Most other people would be horribly fucked mentally by finding earth like that, but not her!  

Also, maybe we should put a spoiler tag on this thread.   

[Mandella]

Yeah, writers ripping shit off of other writers? Every writer ever has done that whether they know it or not. There are innovations on story structure and what not but for the most part, thousands of years of human civilization has produced an inability to be truly unique and original. I'm not going to ding a writer for being unoriginal unless it's so derivative that there doesn't seem to be any reason for the story to exist on its own.

"You're only as good as who you're ripping off."
                                                   -- Little Steven, ripping off someone


I've always found it interesting how one person's favorite part of a creative work can be someone else's least favorite -- says a lot about human nature doesn't it?

As for me, BSG was a character driven show that always had something to keep me going, every episode, all the way to the end. And honestly I've known too many people to act "out of character" in real life to expect anything more from the fictional ones...

As for the new reboot, I'll judge it on its own merits, but it's got a pretty high bar to clear to even match the best of the last one.

[HaemishM]

Gaeta, on the other hand, makes perfect sense.  Maybe some of you have forgotten just how hard that poor dude got unjustly shit on by EVERYONE.

One of the things I really really liked about Gaeta through the first few seasons was his undying loyalty. Maybe that makes less sense than his turn into mutineer but it was what made me want to know more about the character. When they saddle him with the limp, none of that was portrayed forcibly enough to make me think it would be a reason he would listen to the asshole mutineers (who really were fucking assholes whose own motivations should have seemed suspect to Gaeta). In short, I thought Gaeta's character was a lot stronger than they portrayed him once they started him down the path to mutiny.

[Margalis]

For me the show jumped the shark in the scene where the 5 (?) crew people who are cylons follow the sound of music and meet up in some hangar.

The whole "you'll never guess who else is a Cylon!" thing was silly and uninteresting, and then the reveal was also silly and uninteresting, and they didn't seem to know what to do with it.

It seems to me that they ran out of story at the end of season 2. They did a season of flying around searching for earth, and a season of insurgency stuff, then needed something else. The idea of people thinking they are human but really not, and how that affects them and how they integrate into society, could be interesting but it just wasn't in execution.

[Merusk]

It didn't help that the whole idea of who was a secret cylinder was literally hackdom in its planning.  They drew names from a hat. There was no grand plan, no overall gotcha and the fact that they drew Tigh and didn't immediately realize what a clusterfuck they'd just created only underscores the hack. 

[HaemishM]

Yeah, idea of the final 5 Cylons was a good one. Who they picked was so incredibly stupid and random that it stuck out like a sore thumb. And "The Plan" that they tried to graft onto that situation made no goddamn sense either because it literally did seem like they picked the characters out of a hat rather than with any real intent.

[Teleku]

Nah, I thought the entire final five concept was terrible.  It was literally something they ran with because in the first season they gave an exact number of models, but by the start of the third season, they had put everybody into a situation where there was no way they just hadn't seen them all yet.  No matter who they picked, yet entire concept was silly, and that major plot point is the number one thing I wish hadn't happened.  It was that one plot point that ruined the second half.

[Venkman]

I give the a lot of BSG a pass because of the writer's strike, which iirc timed with the episodes aired at the end of the second and into the third season. And also iirc, things really started picking up again around the mid-third.

What I never liked was the creeping doom of the whole thing. Nobody knew where they were going, and even after the Cylons stopped chasing them, they still offed themselves right good. Didn't the original refugees go from like 60K down to like 30K survivors?

In another timeline, there was a consistent arc well executed by writers. Or everything leading up to New Caprica but done better (except Scar. That was dumb).

We'll see about these movies. Will watch one at least.

But yes, them arriving at Earth in the future with crazy tech that blows the shit out of the Cylons but then adopts the BSG refugees not so much in the District 9 way but neither in the V way, that I'd love. My "I'm still 10 years old" mind keeps seeing a heavily damaged BSG holding back to give coverage to the colonists get to Earth, Adama about ready to give up all sad he brought death to yet another planet, and then a quick cut to some future Parliament/UN thing on Earth with Bill Pullman turning to some weapons engineer saying "let's show 'em what we got" all Riker "Mr LaForge, fire." style. Fade to-be-continued.

[eldaec]

For me the show jumped the shark in the scene where the 5 (?) crew people who are cylons follow the sound of music and meet up in some hangar.

It lost it way before that for me.

Everything before New Caprica was great, New Caprica was ok, nothing after that worked.

The final five I had no particular objection to, after the fact it felt like they were the only 5 characters left who could reasonably be chosen, which was weak, but they at least allowed the cylons an ending. By season 4, cylon motivations were entirely about resolving tension between the cylon models, the final 5 gave a focus for that. It wasn't great, but at least it meant you had a conflict that you could watch the reactions to and the resolution of.

The problem was the human ending. All spiritualist bullshit had no payoff and provided nothing characters could meaningfully react to, it wasn't really a clue to anything important, just a few overliteral prophecies turned out in the least interesting way possible without granting agency to any of the supposed heroes (dying leader will guide you home.... through guesswork apparently). Then they found a planet without earning it, and blew up their spaceships for no reason.

I struggle to see how Galactica can have a satisfying ending for the humans if they don't establish a more tangible problem to be overcome - a way for the crew to earn Earth. I also struggle to see how you can write a satisfying ending if the relationship with whatever Earth is, isn't built up for more than the last 20 minutes of the story.

[palmer_eldritch]

I enjoyed the stuff with Gaius Baltar and the Cylons after New Caprica even if it made no sense. When the Cylon is torturing Baltar and he's screaming "I love you!" and she's confused (and I think falls in love with him there), it's really powerful even though it's completely batshit.

Gaius is actually talking to head-Six in that scene. I understand that the big reveal is that head-Six really is an angel from God just like she said she was but never really understood why that meant she kept on taking Gaius into a headspace where they had sex together. Or why she manipulates Baltar into giving a real Cylon a nuclear bomb to blow up a spaceship full of people and lead the Cylons to New Caprica causing death and misery to human and Cylon alike, beyond just saying it's God's plan and God works in mysterious ways.

[Ironwood]

In fairness, if I get a head angel, I really want her to look like that and actually, you know, give head.

[Jeff Kelly]

BSG could never establish a real story arc because of how SciFi (nee SyFy) had to handle it.

It was a backdoor pilot that only exists because Universal Pictures sponsored it which led to a series order that only exists because BSkyB co-funded production. That's why the serie premiered on Sky One in the UK 3 months before it launched in the US. SciFi constantly struggled with the production budget of BSG. Most of the key production choices like human looking Cylons and the low tech Battlestar have been made to keep costs managable, as has been the choice to film in Vancouver.

Even then Moore and Eick regularly ran over the alotted budget per episode and had exhausted the series budget usually thee quarters into a season. That's why there's so many low-fi episodes. The whole New Caprica arc is basically a consequence of the writer's strike and also a symptom of the constant budget overruns basically requiring them to make a whole bottle season.

Without the huge DVD and Blu Ray sales the series would have been cancelled after the first season and without the coffers of Universal Pictures and BSkyB SciFi would have never had the money to bankroll it. Even so showrunners usually didn't know if the series would be renewed or how many episodes SciFi would order until very much to the last moment, making planning out an arc for a season a fool's errant. Also the constant budget overruns almost always required rewrites or restrcuturing of seasons a necessity to keep the production from running out of money half way through.

The Cylons might have had a Plan, the writers clearly didn't though and so they fell into the same trap Lost did by oversexing the mystery aspect of a show they made up on the fly.

That it turned out as amazing as it is for large streches of the show is a small miracle

[Khaldun]

They got the show off to a great start simply by thinking, "Ok, what would this really be like, to be the desperate survivors of a robotic apocalypse (e.g., a disaster that's ultimately your own fault)?"

I think if they had settled early on with the idea, "And ok, to make the Cylons more interesting than Terminators, let's establish that they actually have a religion--that they believe that they're God's chosen, instead of the human beings. Because if it's a religion, that leaves room for some Cylons to dissent, and it leaves room for them to misinterpret or change or debate their own doctrines". So the baby factory, for example, didn't have to be part of a methodical Plan that all Cylons hold to, it could just have been one faction or group of religious Cylons believing that God wanted them to find out how to make babies in their own synthetic bodies. etc.  Just deciding that was the basic take would have made the show much stronger.

Then you drop some of the unearned or poorly considered mystical stuff. That was where they tried too hard to make a "mystery hook" to keep the narrative tumbling along. I would have been perfectly happy with the idea that Baltar's "head Cylon" was some sort of neurological nanovirus that the Cylons were experimenting with that he couldn't get rid of no matter what he did--maybe they were looking for ways to control human beings and couldn't do more than just inject their consciousness into an existing consciousness, that could have been played with a lot as the show progressed.

New Caprica was fine. Even the idea that eventually some religious dissident Cylons and the surviving humans end up working together to flee some sort of Cylon Orthodox Church could have been great.

The basic thing is this: no showrunner ever, ever should hint at answers to hidden mysteries that they haven't thought of yet. It is always, always a bad idea that ends up making people angry when it's all over.

[Merusk]

A good theory, but it ignores that the religion was always a part of the series, not an afterthought for motive rationalization.

http://www.mormonthink.com/glossary/battlestargalactica.htm

[Johny Cee]

They got the show off to a great start simply by thinking, "Ok, what would this really be like, to be the desperate survivors of a robotic apocalypse (e.g., a disaster that's ultimately your own fault)?"

I think if they had settled early on with the idea, "And ok, to make the Cylons more interesting than Terminators, let's establish that they actually have a religion--that they believe that they're God's chosen, instead of the human beings. Because if it's a religion, that leaves room for some Cylons to dissent, and it leaves room for them to misinterpret or change or debate their own doctrines". So the baby factory, for example, didn't have to be part of a methodical Plan that all Cylons hold to, it could just have been one faction or group of religious Cylons believing that God wanted them to find out how to make babies in their own synthetic bodies. etc.  Just deciding that was the basic take would have made the show much stronger.

Then you drop some of the unearned or poorly considered mystical stuff. That was where they tried too hard to make a "mystery hook" to keep the narrative tumbling along. I would have been perfectly happy with the idea that Baltar's "head Cylon" was some sort of neurological nanovirus that the Cylons were experimenting with that he couldn't get rid of no matter what he did--maybe they were looking for ways to control human beings and couldn't do more than just inject their consciousness into an existing consciousness, that could have been played with a lot as the show progressed.

New Caprica was fine. Even the idea that eventually some religious dissident Cylons and the surviving humans end up working together to flee some sort of Cylon Orthodox Church could have been great.

The basic thing is this: no showrunner ever, ever should hint at answers to hidden mysteries that they haven't thought of yet. It is always, always a bad idea that ends up making people angry when it's all over.

I mean, the mystical/religion stuff was in from day one.  Even if there was a chip/nanos in Baltars head, it gave him actionable information more than once (she pointed out the weakness or whatever in one of the early base assaults?  fuzzy memory).  That's what I mean by the scifi fig leaf.  "Oh, its a chip".  I mean, a chip/nanos that are undetectable and work over vast differences, that are somehow able to give Baltar necessary information at just the right moment?  As long as you maintain a possible SF explaination, even if its obviously magic or just a filming crutch, some people roll with it.  If you say, "yah its God/magic" then whew boy!

It's like Star Trek replicators.  They are literally magic boxes that can produce anything, except when they can't.  Hang some technobable on it, people don't question it too much.  (And yes, in reality they are a crutch for filming a TV series so we don't have to watch our main characters go through stores, or the excitement of regularly picking up freight of food and supplies.  Just like teleporters were a filming crutch to eliminate shuttle travel time and allow actors to swap scenes between ship and planet instantly).

Head Six was going on about religion pretty much from day one.

[Jeff Kelly]

The 12 colonies believe in the Roman/Greek pantheon and Balthar is basically Saul/Paul. He got saved from Armageddon because he renounced the old pagan gods and pledged his soul to Head Six's God. God saved him from a nuclear blast and made him a prophet/agent. In the mini series/pilot. They haven't been subtle about it either.

The series itself is styled on the exodus of the 144,000 and Mormon scripture.

Religion has been the core of BSG from the start.

[Khaldun]

I think it's fine for characters to have religious motivations.

It's also fine in SF to argue that their religion has a point and to build that into the world. But not as a figleaf for plotting mistakes--any more than it's cool to have tech cover for plotting mistakes or bad character development.

[eldaec]

The 12 colonies believe in the Roman/Greek pantheon and Balthar is basically Saul/Paul. He got saved from Armageddon because he renounced the old pagan gods and pledged his soul to Head Six's God. God saved him from a nuclear blast and made him a prophet/agent. In the mini series/pilot. They haven't been subtle about it either.

The series itself is styled on the exodus of the 144,000 and Mormon scripture.

Religion has been the core of BSG from the start.

Yes, but saying a god did it isn't a sufficient replacement for a story arc.

The overarching human plot in season 3 and 4 was just a stream of unintelligible pointless god-themed gibberish until they trip over planet earth. Twice.

[Margalis]

I concur. Being about religion is different from having religious explanations for things. But even if you are going to create a fictional universe in which religion is real there are still better ways to do it than "lol she came back as an angel or something we guess - shrug!"

"Every shitty aspect of this show was just God's plan" is a terrible way to handle things, even inside the context of religion being real, angels existing, etc.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't disagree.

I was just replying to someone saying that BSG wasn't about religion at first and later turned into a religious show. Themes of religion had been in it right from the start.

If the way they handled it was great or not is another issue alltogether.

[Khaldun]

What I was saying was it would have been better if they had not done the vision stuff at the end of the first season and then all the stuff with Starbuck coming back later on--that they should have steered clear of that kind of "religious" material, because they hadn't thought it through.

[jgsugden]

Does anyone disagree that the show started strong but ended as lost as Lost? They didn't have a well fleshed out ending in mind and it showed. Sadly, Caprica had a plan, but lacked the early quality and never had a chance to walk their path. I'm sure that had the show conyinued, it would have been one of yhose shows we laclusterly followed to the end...

[HaemishM]

Lost had a better ending (of course, I liked Lost's ending for the most part). I think the part about the angels in BSG pissed me off the most not because it used the religious angle that had been in the show from the beginning, but because it went from religion to magic with no real explanation and no set up. The Cylons views on monotheism vs. the colonists' polytheism was an interesting dynamic rife with story potential. Starbuck returning from a wormhole as a schizo angel was just random WTF, didn't earn any of its mystery and didn't serve any good story purpose other than providing a "God did it" explanation for shit that wouldn't have made any sense otherwise.

[Ironwood]

Lost was a shitshow of making it up as you go along.

[NowhereMan]

Lost had a better ending (of course, I liked Lost's ending for the most part). I think the part about the angels in BSG pissed me off the most not because it used the religious angle that had been in the show from the beginning, but because it went from religion to magic with no real explanation and no set up. The Cylons views on monotheism vs. the colonists' polytheism was an interesting dynamic rife with story potential. Starbuck returning from a wormhole as a schizo angel was just random WTF, didn't earn any of its mystery and didn't serve any good story purpose other than providing a "God did it" explanation for shit that wouldn't have made any sense otherwise.

Yeah, religion as a story element can work well and the basic set-up in BSG was really interesting (especially having Cylons with a religion the viewer could probably identify more with). Hell it can even work really well with fortuitious events as a 'maybe that's God's will' reading possible (and even lean heavily on coincidence if that's an angle the writers want to push i.e. God is real and influencing events). With the basically Sci-Fi setting though, suddenly coming out and having just plain impossible miracles seems like 1) lazy writing and 2) Like the writers had no fucking clue what was meant to be happening and just made shit up last minute after a bender the night before.

[Jeff Kelly]

The way TV handles series means that basically all of TV is making shit up going along. Many showrunners don't know if they get renewed or not right until production has to start for the new season and most showrunners don't even know the final episode orders for a season until Episode 12 or so.

Producers of most shows - NCIS et al nonwithstanding - can't plan anything that involves more than a few episodes in detail because they might not know if they still have a job next season or if the network will order 12, 18 or 24 episodes.

Even today if a producer tells you that he/she has worked out season spanning arcs and knows how the series will end he/she is mostly bullshitting you.

[Fordel]

Which is why all the netfilx stuff is so strong in comparison. They give you X episodes and put your narrative into that.