Brad Ideas - Kevin Grazier apologizes for Tomb of Athena, etc. - Comments

Does THE PRODUCER know where

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 15:41:26 -0800

Does THE PRODUCER know where he plans to end the show after S1?

i second that, it seems some

Anonymous — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:12:30 -0700

i second that, it seems some people just watch it over and over again to pick out the flaws,
i really dont care if its not scientific and correct me if im wrong, but not only does science change, this is fiction!
i didnt see much breaking of the fictional worlds rules, maybe its because i didnt sit there picking over every little bit of it! The ship was damn litteraly breaking apart at the end,unlike star trekky stuff which is not only filled with overly complicated and boring techy sciency explinations, but has magical ships that never seem to take any damage even with the magical shield 'down'.

i thought it was a great series and i really dont feel the need to nit pick and over anaylse everything, it was about the characters and the story, not the science!

0.00infinite0s0001 is in

Anonymous — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:56:26 -0700

0.00infinite0s0001 is in fact 0, inasmuch as it makes any sense to suggest such a number.

I FOUND IT , I FOUND IT... alternate ending for BSG

Mr_Hertz — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:03:27 -0700

Guys, at least you have to agree with me. This ending will solve all problems listed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhH1UDpKyyg

Thanks JrzRob. Some other notes too...

Mr_Hertz — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 07:58:54 -0700

I guess that SCIFI broacasted a series which had to do with scifi "themes", but not EXACTLY scifi as they got used to.

Its impossible to make 100% people happy, so you find many controversials around the topic.

While some guys DEMAND everything as they want it to be, real physics, real bla-bla-bla, others simply can be more flexible and understand that "it was a good show", despite of its flaws.

To ask you (my reader) to consider some points while you´re criticizing other´s work, I´ve come with a short story about what happened to me once...

--------

Once I participated of an academic work, a short video clip. And I remember all planning we made, the script, post effects and the desired final result.

I ran (holding a camera) in the middle of the cars at 12:00 PM, completely on a rush, almost getting caught by one or 2 cars, just to shoot my friend running on the sidewalk in the middle of people, cuz we didnt have the right lenses to get closer. It was funny, curious, all people looked at us. Then we had difficulties along the days, some things were modified, some scenes were deleted (even on this VERY tight budget production we had deleted scenes, what the hell :)

In the end the result was exactly what we wanted. Still, it was incoherent in some parts. While some others could be rewritten. But as we were on a tight deadline, like everyone else, we didnt mess with it no more. Still we got 10 (here in brazil is like A++ to USA), for the kinda work with many variables, creative hardware usage and some tech research.

Still the teacher gave us that 10, cuz he knows that NOTHING IS PERFECT. So we had a credit for that.

--------------

Then I remind you to give the deserved credit to Moore and his writers, because he did an excellent job on all these 4 years.

Of course Im not asking anybody here to "see no evil", but to give him the right credits, in a way to rationalize before starting to madly criticize the series.

Some people are saying that the whole series was a mess, a waste of time, and all by 1 episode. Does that seems true or fair?

To those of you who are thinking like that, GET YOUR HANDS ON, and start any production. A cartoon, a short-clip, anything... and you´ll get what I mean.

THANK YOU Mr. Hertz

JrzRob — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:39:21 -0700

For a minute there, I thought I was the only person who watched the show, without playing it over and over, pathetically analyzing each and every frame for clues, answers, and mistakes.

The show was absolutely more about the relationship between the characters and their struggle, than it was the science fiction.

Basically what ya got is a bunch of science geeks pissed that a show didn't end the way they wanted it to, so they will now attempt to use real science to attack the show and it's writers. And of course they'll now act like RDM pulled the religion card out of his ass at the last minute, when religion was always a part of the story. And you know damn well that if Kara didn't just disappear, like everyone is complaining about, but instead had this huge sendoff with angels carrying her up to heaven or her family shown waiting for her, or something like that, it would have been picked apart.

Well, considering this is my

gabirol — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:15:06 -0700

Well, considering this is my first fan wank, ever, I am rather pleased with myself, but I do realize that I still have much to learn. Devil's in the details, eh?

anyone who feels the need to

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:13:10 -0700

anyone who feels the need to insult someone's written english skills on the internet is covering for the fact that they can't argue with that person on any meaningful level and feel the need to belittle them instead

Seriously enough

Mr_Hertz — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:05:59 -0700

Seriously, give me some credit, cuz Im a brazilian living in brazil. So I couldnt live outside here.

My listening practice is like 90% of everything I listen to.

So Im sorry if my english isnt perfect, but for many times people didnt believe me as I told them I never visited USA, nor any other country.

Im like a self-taught guy, so consider that and give me some credits. After all, você entenderia ao menos pouca coisa, se eu falasse em portugues contigo? (would you understand at least a bit if id talk to you in portuguese?)

By the way I consider myself a nerd, and im quite happy with it. But im not that old fashioned ALIEN TYPE NERD.

Oh right. There's no

Odysseus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:04:35 -0700

Oh right. There's no certainty whatsoever. Why don't you jump out of a window ? That uncertainty might kick in and you'll find yourself flying...
Yes, I *will* find one day facts that evolve our knowledge - *evolve* is the operative word here, because the set of things that we already know must be contained in the new theory. Just because Einstein gave us General Relativity, it doesn't mean we scraped Newtonian Mechanics. It just became a special case of the former.
I don't take the position that our knowledge is complete, far from it. But it's positively a long shot from "nothing is certain", specially in certain areas, like engineering and physics.

Actually the point is really

Anonymous — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:32:09 -0700

Actually the point is really simple, you just can't seem to get passed your own arrogance, which is also the point. Nothing is 100%. Nothing. By establishing a position with 100% certainty, you are no different than those who have faith in a god and creationism. It is the same arrogance and lack of humility.

So, your argument is: "since science can't provide an undeniable

Odysseus — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:21:41 -0700

So, your argument is: "since science can't provide an undeniable and definitive explanation for origin of life on Earth, it must be on the same level of religion, in which requires faith" ?
If that's right, I don't think I can be clearer than http://ideas.4brad.com/battlestar/kevin-grazier-apologizes-tomb-athena-e....

PS: Life's origin and evolution are orthogonal issues. What I meant by compatible is that you don't have any scientific theory positing that life sprung in the past the way they are today. All of them assume some sort of unicellular/molecular type of life that *evolved* into the species we have nowadays.

equally fallible

brad — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:26:55 -0700

Science is quite different from religion, and far less fallible. Which is why we trust its models to design the airplanes you fly in, the cars you drive, the buildings that hold you up and a million other things you trust your life to every day. Because it is vastly, vastly less fallible.

Why? Because science’s perhaps most fundamental tenet is repeatability. Somebody proposes a theory, and an experiment to test it, and they do it, and then others must be able to repeat it. Again and again. You don’t trust the other people. Eventually you trust a group of people who all repeated the experiment and showed the result to be true.

Then science adds another test. Prediction. Its theories must predict something we didn’t know. Then people go out to try to test the prediction. If it predicts correctly again and again, and never predicts wrongly, we start to trust it. Eventually we trust it with our lives.

Many people put their lives in the hands of their religion too. Many more of them die.

Stay in school

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:11:50 -0700

You need to pay more attention to your written English skills than you do about nerds and television. Seriously.

That is incorrect

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 23:08:03 -0700

Science never claims to be 100% infallible. Science proposes theories that can be tested. If you perform an experiment and it confirms your theory, then you accept that perhaps your theory is correct. If it doesn't, then you discard that theory. Religionists cannot test any of their God theories. There are no experiments one can perform to confirm or refute the existence of God (who I happen to believe in, I'm just not a crazy, blissfully ignorant fundie).

Years, decades, even centuries of observed factual evidence give credence and weight to some scientific theories. It would take only ONE counter-example to shoot them down. None have been forthcoming. To compare science and religion is like comparing apples and oranges. There are no valid comparisons. Only religious fanatics are threatened by what they perceive as "evil" or "atheist" science. It is neither. Not that every scientist is unscrupulously honest and ethical, but that's another ball of wax completely.

Kevin Grazier apologizes for Tomb of Athena, etc.

brad — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:02:28 -0700

Well, I had to pull my hair out a bit to read this post-series interview with BSG Science Advisor Kevin Grazier

In particular he is asked what he regrets getting wrong. One regret is boring, but the other floored me. It was only the climactic scene of the first season arc, where they come to Kobol looking for a clue to Earth and find, in the Tomb of Athena, the map of the stars of Earth and the realization that the flags of the 12 tribes have constellations from the Zodiac of Earth on them.

Most of us viewed that scene as a big revelation. It said, without equivocation, “This show is in the future.” Kobol’s culture and flags came from Earth. It was a big deal. Later, it was revealed it was the sky of the “first Earth” or 13th colony, but it still demanded a secret history to Kobol.

The other (regret) is I wish I would have been more instant with the constellations in Home Part 2. Because when you start thinking about those constellations, who put them there? Wasn’t the Kobolians. Those aren’t seen from the original Earth, so where did those constellations come from?

He may be saying he knew but could not convince Moore, or that perhaps he realized later. Either way, the show could have thrown us a bone. You don’t want to tell fans your secrets, but if you make a mistake, and fans are interpreting the show differently because of it, throw something in. Have somebody ask, “Isn’t it odd how our flags are those constellations?” And Ellen Tigh says, “Oh, that. In our history, we learned that the founders of the planet stretched and played with the flags to figure a way to draw them in the sky, since it was a cute idea to name our new constellations after our lost makers.” Something. Anything.

I take Grazier to task for two other things: Participating in the horrible ending, and his statement that you would not be able to find a star given photographs of the constellations visible from it. He declares that to be np-complete, ie. you can’t do it in a time that goes up in a polynomial way with the number of stars in your database. I contend you can, and in fact it’s one of the simpler polynomials.