Brad Ideas - Don't keep secrets when "It's the Characters, Stupid" - Comments

Von Daniken

brad — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:14:07 -0700

I don’t pay much attention to Von Daniken. But the “reality” of what we saw in the show as there was no connection between them and us. Their DNA, including mitochondrial DNA, is identical to that of the native humans, so they contributed nothing there that can be detected today. What Moore says happened is that they contributed some sort of “collective unconscious” which leads to things like Bob Dylan rewriting Anders’ song “All along the Watchtower” and Shakespeare writing of a pound of flesh etc. This is, of course, complete bullshit.

What didn’t happen, however, was their gods becoming the Greek gods (we know how the Greek gods “evolved” from simpler Indian forms) or their tribe names becoming our names for the Zodiac — not directly. It was all, we are told, this collective unconscious. In other words, pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Which is a great disappointment when the connection could have been a real one — ideally by setting in the future, but even setting in the past. People have pulled off “secret history” stories where a hidden society with more advanced knowledge guides our culture or evolution. But that’s not what we got here.

The missed opportunity of the Great Leap Forward is annoying. Here we have something that actually is unexplained in human pre-history. Why was there a relatively sudden flowering about 50,000 years ago? Something like Moore’s story could have fit well there. (Though they must not go to Australia or the Americas.) The GLF is not a settled theory, but it’s enough of one to do a story.

So you take the story that humans are taken from Earth by godlike aliens, put on Kobol, build a high-tech society, it goes through cycles of man/machine war, falls and rises, and eventually the remnants come back to Earth 50,000 years ago and provide language, culture and basic tech (and some synthetic DNA if you like) before fading away. That’s a much better story than Moore’s.

When I say he did it right

Dustin — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:50:19 -0700

I just mean the broad strokes of the idea- after all, they didn't have the Colonials teaching the people of Earth how to build pyramids, they didn't make the Nazca lines. It's that he did it in a way that kind of has a real contribution (like it or not, he has said without the COlonials and Hera like on Earth would be very different today) lost to the mists of time, but it's there.

Like I said, how he did it implies he does not actually believe in ancient astronaut theories. I would find it too difficult to write something like that I don't believe is true.

Tell me if you've ver noticed this- doesn't there seem to be a subtle bit of racism in Von Daniken's theories? I don't recall him ever talking about Stonehenge, just monuments built by... dark skinned people.

Well, I wish I had heard that as well

brad — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:33:13 -0700

Considering how much the debate went on about this question, I am frankly shocked to never have seen such a podcast answer brought up. Had I known about it, I would have accepted it, though it would have diminished my opinion of the quality of the show and its writing. The Chariots of the Gods thing was a 70s popular pseudo-science fad, and was indeed part of what was seen in the original show — but very clearly something well worthy of reimagining. If he can make the Cylons into sexy models, he can certainly change that element of the show if he wishes.

As to the question of whether the way it was done was the best way to do the Chariots of the Gods theme of the early show, I would strongly disagree. Charged with doing this, I would have done the following:

Kobol would have been populated by ancient humans. Either because they had an “Atlantis” that rose and fell, or because some alien force — even a god or godlike being — took humans from Earth and populated Kobol.
That force could have still led the lost tribe of humans back to Earth in the ancient past. Of course they could interbreed.
I would have worked a lot harder sewing the seeds of a luddite movement keen on abandoning technology.
I would have had non-luddite factions who go back out into the galaxy with the centurions, who make a treaty never to return to Earth
Or I just would have made reasonable explanations as to why the colonial civilization on Earth vanished without a trace. It’s hard, but doable.
The Tomb of Athena would have indeed shown the secret ancient home. I would have left out 13th colony Earth but it could still be included.
I would have had them land about 40,000 years ago, responsible for the “great leap forward” and installing elements of their culture in ours. A Cylon could still be the most recent common ancestor with a bit of tweaking of Australian DNA.

Now truth be known I would change more than that, but if forced to follow that plot, it could be done.

Interesting quote from old RDM podcast

Dustin — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:54:12 -0700

Hey, Brad, I heard this quote today when catching up on older RDM podcasts. First let me bring this quote back up, often touted here once upon a time as proof that Ron Moore was going to have Earth as the homeworld and the story in the future:

"I don't have a direct answer for this question yet. There are a couple of notions rolling around in my head as to how we reconcile the very real fact of evolution with the Galactica mythos, but I haven't decided which approach to take. However, it was a fundamental element of the orginal Galactica mythos that "Life here began out there..." and I decided early on that it was crucial to maintain it."

Now here's a quote from one of the very first podcast commentaries:

"The original Galactica series began with this short prologue in the main title sequence voiced by Patrick Macnee, which began 'There are those who believe that life here began out there.' And he proceeded to talk about that some people believe that the pyramids and the Mayan civilization and other, [b]you know, ruins of past civilizations on Earth were either built or aided in some ways by ancient astronauts- this was an idea that was very current in the 1970s- 'Chariots of the Gods' was a bestseller, there were, you know, 'In Search Of,' with Leonard Nimoy explored that issue many times. So the idea that there were past visitors to Earth that were either human beings from some other part of the galaxy, or were true aliens who came down and helped us and influenced our development in some way, shape or form was something that was built into the original series. As we approached 'Galactica," the new version, I decided pretty early on that I wanted to keep that part of the mythos.[/b] I didn't want to play it too heavily u front in the miniseries or the first couple of episodes because I felt it was more important to establish the characters, sync into the world, set up what kind of storytelling we were doing and really hook the audience into the show before we sort of start introducing these grandiose mythological concepts."

From the podcast for "Hand of God," dated 3-17-05.

I remember realizing that the quote from the blog often talked about here was a bad sign for those of us who wanted the show to be in the future, and you said that he simply applied the phrase to a Kobolian perspective, and I argued that turning the backbone of the original show and turning it into a throwaway line does not = "crucial to maintain."

So all along we had the answer that he intended for "Life here began out there" to mean the same thing as the original show. I find it interesting to look back at things like this and ponder how I would have looked at the show differently had I read this. I realized awhile back that if the makers of the original series were really cashing in on the Chariots of the Gods craze, they probably weren't saying all of humanity came from outer space, but that another race of humans came down sometime in the past to Earth. But I may be wrong I always noticed that of all the times Ron Moore talk about how things were done in Star Trek and how he wanted to do things differently (and reading between the lines, these things really seemed to bug him), he never talked about the bad science from the show (and despite how some Trekkies might howl, TNG did indeed have a lot of bad science).

I think that though he always intended it to be the past, he didn't have enough of the mechanics worked out and perhaps hadn't even yet decided to have the Thirteenth Tribe Earth be a completely different planet from our Earth. I think the backbone of this is Moore's approach to writing (which he is very open about) is that you can write something, not know what it means, and figure it out later. I think the Tomb of Athena was a "Figure it out later" thing that was later botched. I guess if asked he'll say that the sky over the first Earth of 150,000 years ago and our Earth today had identical star patterns, even if they're made up of different stars.

And looking at it from another perspective, I remember saying that you shouldn't put too much stock into what he was saying in the blog post because if he truly knew that this show was set in the future and Kobol was not the homeworld, because if that was definitely the case he would have been giving away a huge spoiler to those who could suss out the meaning. I was right that he didn't mean it was in the future- but then in an expanded version of essentially the same statement, he pretty much torpedoes several fan theories- and I never heard this repeated anywhere in the four years and three days until the finale aired. Don't you find that surprising? I do. I always thought that the crux of this blog post was flawed, as the people like yourself, Michael Hall, and how I used to be. formed a very small portion of the audience, as opposed to the near-universal theorizing about Daniel, which is the situation when Moore felt it was widespread enough that he should say somthing. But still, you'd think something that significant would get repeated in the fan community more often.

I'm not trying to stick a finger in your eye three months out- I genuinely find this discovery very interesting and wanted to share it with one of the few people who would be interested. I am glad that Moore did it the way he did (if he had to do it). We know how the pyramids were built, and such. All of the "evidence" of ancient alien visitation is not uniform across time and the world, which it would be if there was any truth to it. The ideas are contemptuous of science and academia. But by placing it in the far distant past and having it be a sort of racial memory thing- again, if he HAD to do it, that's the best way.

And it raises the interesting question- yes, Moore did say he also considered having them land in ancient Greece and inspire the Greek myths, but I get the feeling that by deciding to keep an idea from the original show that permeated the then-current pop culture and doing it so drastically different from how it was written, it seems to show that he doesn't think those ideas hold any water but that he felt he had to include them for sake of continuity with the original show.

By the way, an excellent book about ancient astronaut nonsense is "The Cult of Alien Gods" by Jason Colavito. It postulates that the writing of HP Lovecraft is the forebearer to ancient astronaut theories. Lovecraft's language was so evocative that the idea that creatures like Cthulhu were intended to be advanced aliens is often lost, and it also deconstructs and destroys the theories of individual advocates of such theories, such as Erich Von Daniken, Zechariah Sitchin, Graham Hancock, etc. Order it if you can't find it in stores.

Secret History

Quantum Iguana — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:12:01 -0700

Had they not used MSNBC footage, it would be ambiguous which of the Earths were our Earth. Parallel evolution of the same species is mind-bogglingly unlikely, but having both worlds so identical to have the same TV channel on both worlds would only make it more unlikely.

You're right, we are dealing with secret history, so we have to look at our own real history to see what impact the events must have had, as secret history gives a (fictional) explanation of how we got to where we are now. Had the Colonials reached our planet at around the end of the last ice age we could say "Ah, they kicked off the neolithic revolution". There would have been some change as a result of their arrival. But arriving when they did means that they had no measurable impact. If they farmed, they farmed for such a brief time that if left no evidence. Tools didn't change, so they simply adopted the crude stone tools of the paleolithic humans around them.

He wanted to have one impact, making Hera mitochondrial Eve. But all that tells us is that the descendants of the Colonials managed to survive and reproduce, and that their we are descended from them, at least partially. I think it was pretty clear that we are also descended from the cavemen too.

The Colonials must have died out in many places, however. Their maps show that they settled in Australia and in the Americas. Since there is no evidence of human habitation of these areas for well over 100,000 years after the events of the finale, the Colonials must have died out there.

That's one other thing that bothered me about the finale, it had a feeling of despair. The only people who seemed upbeat were Athena, Helo and Hera. Everyone else just seemed to have an attitude of "It's over, lets just lay down in the grass and die."

Mistaking it for the real world

brad — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:01:09 -0700

But as you say, Moore said his goal was to generate a strong connection to our reality. He thought the best way to do that was to make the Cylons be our ancestors.

But he got it backwards. As you say, BSG is not our world. Cylons were not our ancestors. With a story set in the future, the writer often is saying, “This is what our world could become. This starts in our real world and I extrapolate a possible future for you.” To me that’s a real connection. You are supposed to mistake it for the real world.

When you set SF in the past, you have two options. One is alternate history — this is not our past, but another one that might have been. The other, also popular, is “secret history” where you paint a past that could be, but the differences from our known past are secrets, unknown to us for some reason. An example of other attempts at this would be X files or Stargate or Baker’s “The Company” stories.

Moore was hoping for secret history. He thought that made his story more relevant. I would prefer he had not tried this, and the reason is I knew it would be pretty much impossible to pull off in a consistent manner. And it was not. But even if you like secret history stories (and I actually have enjoyed many) you want them to be pulled off well. The big secret must make sense, and here it does not.

No one is mistaking BSG for

Quantum Iguana — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:42:29 -0700

No one is mistaking BSG for the real world. We know it's a story. We know it's fiction. We know the characters don't exist. We know these things didn't happen. But BSG tries to mesh itself with our world. It's a fictional version of our world, yes. But that is a difficult task to get right.

NAAAAAA, Really? It was an

JrzRob — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:48:14 -0700

NAAAAAA, Really? It was an example.

RDM said in his podcast that

Dustin — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:47:12 -0700

RDM said in his podcast that what wasn't passed down to us in the literal sense was passed down in the collective unconscious, or racial memory, as I thought of it. When I realized the show is set in the past- which I did a long time ago.

Hera's Cylon DNA and the projection ability may be the reason behind it, if you want to find one.

This idea is hardly original

oh come on — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 07:39:45 -0700

This idea is hardly original to "Stargate."

Most of what you said is OK

N R Lock — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:36:36 -0700

Most of what you said is OK with me, but the fact that he left so much open to interpretation when it could have been explained within the contexts of what RDM wanted, feels cheap. It is always a good thing to leave things open and to have a cliffhanger at the end, but to leave things half explained is bad. He seems to have made it so the end ties up the only certain points and leaves other things hanging, when it seemed like they had a major importance. Animal Farm by George Orwell had an open ending, we don't know exactly if they did anything after they saw the humans with the pigs, so we are left to guess. Everything else in that story is explained and detailed. What RDM did was cut short many aspects of the plot, which if explained, would have made the whole experience much more satisfying.

With respects to religion, it is a major part of human history and human imagination since it is a product of our imagination and thought processes. Now to have the plot tied up with "god did it" is very lacking. I love stories that have miracles in them form time to time, but not to have god be there. In this story, god is pulling many strings within the journey, but other then that he lets it be. god could have intervened just as much during the the genocide, or on the first earth and stopped the cycle, but it makes it so the it continues it some aspects.

As I said, I liked the ending, just not it was approached. Major points in the story ended up only being minor compared to other points that seemed to be minor before, and that just doesn't sit well with me.

Well you say the series was

JrzRob — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:34:51 -0700

Well you say the series was amazing until season 4.5, others say the series started sucking midway through 3, still others think the series was always lame after the mini series, and others loved it the whole time... Who is right?

With the story happening in our past, and using Hera as the mitochondrial Eve, he is making each and every human alive today directly related to the Humans and Cylons, that was his aim. If he makes the show in the future, there is no real relationship between us and the Cylons, they are totally irrelevant to us and our existence. In addition to that, Hera has Cylon qualities that can explain away something like the culture being passed on thousands of years later. I don't necessarily agree with the whole thing, but I can appreciate where he was going with it in his thinking, I found nothing cheap about the concept. The future ending, something I originally wanted, that to me would have been cheap, looking at it in hindsight. Are there issues regarding the zodiac and all that shit, stuff that people say pointed to the show being in our future? Yeah, but we know nothing is stationary in the cosmos, we know that solar systems move, it's 150 thousand years in the past, and the location of the Cylon Earth, in relationship to our location, or the location of those constellations, was never disclosed, it is not impossible for that zodiac to have been seen from a planet outside this solar system 150 thousand years ago... Is it unlikely? No more unlikely than anything you wanted to see happen, because what you wanted to see happen still involved killer robots chasing humans across space.

And regarding the use of god and religion, and all that... Also not cheap. The real world has religion and faith, and has events that can't always be explained using science. In addition I like the fact that Ron didn't explain every little thing, it allows the viewer to use their own imagination, it allows the viewer to insert their own set of beliefs, it becomes more intimate.

It's fiction, you're allowed to use your imagination, not just a science or history textbook, to work out explanations.

I agree with you but....

N R Lock — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:01:04 -0700

Ron Moore is a writer, and coming from a stand point of a someone who enjoys literature and the art of writing, he fell flat on his ass.
He said that he came up with the idea of the finale 2 years ago. If he had the idea for the ending then, why did he screw up with loose ends and major plot holes?
Yes, writing a TV show is much different from a play, novel, short story, or movie because you don't get the time to rewrite and edit what you have written. But he gave himself two years to go over what he was writing with a fairly large group of writers and spent time at writers retreats. Did they just smoke up at those times and put off the plot?
As Brad mentioned about moore, he said "it's about the characters", but without a strong supporting plot, the characters feel weak and underplayed, unable to reach full potential.
The reason most people, like me(I never read any articles), who feel betrayed and cheated of a good ending is because we were denied a good story. This show was amazing before season 4.5 because the ease of the story, the immersion, the dark flaws of humanity played out so well. I feel that RMD throwing those good elements out just for a simplistic Eve ending, is cheap and wholly distasteful. HE could have kept all the other end points, the back to basics, nature bit, and it would have a been great. I loved that part of the finale and the quote by Lee. But as I said, having it in our past and the "god did it" bit, felt cheap.
After the mutiny, he could have done so much more to wrap it up better, but he didn't. He could have gave a reasonable explanation for Kara, He could have explained Daniel in a reasonable way.
On the Daniel, 7th cylon part, I think he should have thought it out some more before the end. He should have been able to recognize that little hole that he has had from season one and filled it in with a bit more then a pebble conversation.
RMD should himself, rewatch all of the series and maybe then he might see what he has done, and how he could have done it to tie it up better.

There's a good spread of

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:55:13 -0700

There's a good spread of perspectives, here.

Ron played with fire and got singed. He bigged the show up and got chummy. When he didn't deliver on the promise and people felt his comments were manipualtive his polls took a dive. Been there. Done that. Yes, people can get the wrong idea or be too sensitive but you have to take responsibility for yourself. As the saying goes: "Life gives the test first and the lesson afterwards". It hurts but you have to get through that. I think, there's too much hype and excitement generally. While leaders may blame the crowd they really need to get a clue themselves. A better approach, here, can better direct the crowd. Win-win.

No idea. Pass the salt,

Anonymous — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:46:08 -0700

No idea. Pass the salt, please.

Don't keep secrets when "It's the Characters, Stupid"

brad — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:54:13 -0700

Moore famously declared, when composing the end of the BSG story, that “It’s the Characters, Stupid.” He wanted to focus on what happened to the characters and their story, and the plot and mysteries took second place.

I can understand that philosophy in writing. However, I do believe that if this was truly the case, the right thing to do is not create giant mysteries for the audience.

Some of the best stories out there have revealed their ending early on. (Some are even non-fiction so you know the ending in advance anyway.) With the ending known, the story becomes about how we got there, rather than wondering where we are going. As such the story moves its focus to characters and away from big mysteries.

If this story was to be about how Hera became mitochondrial Eve (and in the end, that was the root of all the elements of the closing) then the best thing to do would have been to reveal that right up front. Play out that scene in New York with Ron Moore getting the inspiration for the story early on. Show the ancient Earth as being out there. (They did show us Earth at the end of season 3, but it was modern Earth due to poor communication with the graphics dept.)

Or, if you want to have the shock of finding ruined 13th colony Earth, reveal the truth after that.

The show had lots of big mysteries. Many people enjoyed it for these mysteries, but if the show is really about the characters, the mysteries were a mistake. And we still would have puzzled over them. Fans would have spent hours discussing just how they get to Earth, and just why there is no record of them, and how they could possibly have interbred and other things. While watching the characters have their journey.

It becomes clear that the whole ending is just there for the Eve plot. All the controversial parts of the ending, the ones that make no sense, are driven by it.

We currently date Mitochondrial Eve at 150,000 years ago. So that is when they arrive. 50,000 years ago (Great Leap Forward) makes far more sense otherwise.
For this to be true, they have to have been able to interbreed with the natives. And so the ridiculous ability to do so, explained as a miracle from god.
To have no record of their arrival they have to have discarded all their technology and ships. I haven’t read any critic who thinks this story was credible.
To have no record of their culture, it also had to vanish, which means they mostly got wiped out.

All these things that we fans have complained about are driven by this one cute little trick, “Hera is a sort of Eve.” Sadly, alien Eve is one of the more clichéd story lines of golden age SF. Editors even got tired of it. Moore gave it a twist, the synthetic (God and Kobolians together) Eve arriving and breeding with the natives, but it’s still a pretty poor, and unoriginal plot twist. It doesn’t justify having to tear apart so much that was good in the show.

A lot of fans are not understanding mitochondrial Eve very well either. Here is an article about her, and here is a later post on this blog about Mitochondrial Eve.