Brad Ideas - Battlestar - Comments

The show ended horribly, but

Domonic — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 16:22:22 -0800

The show ended horribly, but it never was all that good to begin with.

It wasn't realistic. The fighting was mostly WW2-style with missiles and unexplicably rare nukes. The Cylons were inexplicably able to transfer astronomical amounts of data across lightyears of space instanteneously without any form of detectable trasmitter. Thousands of sentient minds repeatedly reached concensus despite diverging experiences because they were of the "same model".

The characters were horrible and unbelievable. They included virtually no role-models, and generally seemed far worse than the average person today. They were genocidal, racist, hypocritical, childish, brutal, stupid, and petty. Modernity has many flaws, but it has also made significant moral advances that this civilization, supposedly more advanced than our own, lacks. The characters weren't inspiring, they weren't reflective of an honest accounting of us, they were instead repulsive extremes. Repulsive extremes exist, but modern society is very diverse and contains many angels alongside its demons.

The show was not particularly intelligent. It included many long scenes with no dialogues and not much happening. The plot was self-contradicting, emphatic, all over the place, and undersegmented.

That's Depressing

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:08:23 -0800

In some sense it's much worse than the show's ending. Here's a technically educated man with the intellect and wherewithal to know the facts, and he's spewing inanity.

There's a place for inanity in science fiction. The field has always been divided between pure entertainment and more ambitious things that use a real technical scaffolding. Pure entertainment gets away with a lot of junk because its honest about what it is and what it's trying to do. It lacks pretension. But when you invoke real scientific concepts to try and claim deeper meaning/art, you really have to get it right. The deeper meaning/art comes from getting it right, from crafting a viable fictional junction between the technical and the artistic. That's a true skill, and the people who have it are rightfully lauded. You don't get to just take a well established concept like Mitochondrial Eve, say it means the exact opposite of what it actually does, and then claim you're a genius for misrepresenting it in a way you find cool (and conveniently gets you out of a nonsense plot you can't otherwise bring to any kind of closure).

Sadly, he does

brad — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:25:43 -0800

Check out the book (you can also read that section free using Amazon’s look-inside-the-book I think.)

You've Got to be Kidding Me

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:44:36 -0800

He didn't really say Mitochondrial Eve is the sole ancestor of people today, did he? I mean, Grazier has real degress and stuff. He's not an idiot.

Surely he was talking about the show's lamebrained construct and not the actual Mitochondrial Eve concept.

One of the most offensive

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:11:42 -0800

One of the most offensive aspects of the ending was the twin heavy-handed, father-knows-best Public Service Announcements shoved down our throats by the writers:

* Technology is evil!

* Pantheism is the one true religion!

And best yet, if we (primarily) Americans and Westerners embrace these bulletins, we can prevent a robot-wrought apocalypse in the future and break the cycle!

Suck it, writers.

Truth.

Che — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:52:12 -0800

I just want to say: WORD. That is a great summation. While Brad has listed many flaws, and I myself have outlined some major character issues, this is a brilliant point. Creating a "big bad" -- and one that manipulates everything... well, within Gog's framework, I guess -- robs the show of its original, wonderful shades of gray. The episode where Starbuck tortures Leoben was brilliant. The show both offers justifications and critiques of torture, and makes a reasonable argument for both (along with the airlocking). Afterwards one finds oneself thinking about one's own opinion on torture. IS there ever a time when it's a great idea? Is it justified? Isn't it? And in order to ask those questions, one must ask whether or not this Cylon, this thing, is actually a person. And this is fundamental to human conflict. The dehumanization of our enemy. You can't ask non-sociopaths to keep slaves unless you dehumanize them. The show was great at examining this stuff. And then... shades of gray disappeared. The whole, "does humanity deserve to survive?" question is less relevant, or maybe completely irrelevant when the challenge they're faced with is a petulant child of a Cylon who pulls the strings of every other cylon and plots his revenge from the get-go. It's almost more contrived and damaging than Gog who pulls the strings and plots its plan from the get-go. Eesh.

Not "always"

brad — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:02:46 -0800

BSG was based on mormon mythology, and the creator, Larson is LDS. However, Moore and the new crew are not of that faith, and while the names and a few of the plot points come from that, the 2nd show was not really reflective of mormon mythology.

Resurrection

DotWrong — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 09:49:18 -0800

Not having been able to confirm it, I always thought resurrection was developed by Humans (specifically, the Elders of Kobol) three thousand years prior to the First Cylon War. The first Cylons to leave Kobol (skinjobs) took Resurrection with them and subsequently reduced to twelve models. Resurrection died as a viable technology for them as they evolved through procreation rather than organic memory transfer, but they managed to resurrect resurrection through Graystone with the covert assistance of the "Final Five". Following the rebellion and the First Cylon War, the Neo-Cylons (Toasters) took Resurrection as part of the Armistice agreement on condition that they leave Humanity alone - thus causing them to forget who made them in the first place (the skinjobs, with a little help from Graystone) and further reinforcing their idea of the One True God who blessed them with the ability to resurrect.

To clear up any confusion, I have a theory on a timeline:

>3000BCW1 (Before Cylon War One): Kobol technology is advanced to the point of humanoid cybernetics which are not only self aware but appear human and come complete with human foibles (such as paranoid delusions, psychosis and thoughts of patricide). There may have been a rebellion at this point, when the 13th Tribe (consisting entirely of Cylon skinjobs) left Kobol for Earth Mk. I.
>CW1: Daniel Graystone et. al develop robotic Cylons which resemble walking chrome toasters, mainly for military but also several lines for domestic and industrial aides. Thus the generation gap and apparent confusion in the evolution of not one but TWO entirely disparate lines of Cylon culture come into being (to later form an uneasy alliance entirely for the benefit of the Kobollian skinjobs). Graystone develops NeoResurrection as part of the development programme for his Toasters without even realising it - his dead daughter Zoe is the catalyst for NeoResurrection.
CW1: Chrome Cylons attack the 12 Colonies of Kobol, causing severe damage to the Human race - yet at the point where it seems that Humanity is about to be wiped out, the Cylons sue for peace, take NeoResurrection as part of the deal, and sail off into deep space.
40YCW1: Toaster fleet nukes the Colonies. Later the general consensus is that this was an error on the part of the misguided younger skinjobs who planned the operation.

BSG is Mormon Myth

Anonymous — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:46:03 -0800

BSG has always been based on Mormon myth. This is no secret and can researched on google by anyone who cares to know what BSG actually is.

woops

che — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:46:00 -0800

That was me. I didn't mean to be anonymous.

"I actually don't mind a

Che — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:45:18 -0800

"I actually don't mind a good religious story, but in this case it seems obvious that God is simply the last refuge of the bankrupt storyteller."

God and flashbacks, buddy. God and flashbacks.

Not just Gog, but everything...

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:02:33 -0800

This is a great blog. I have spent, in the past three days, quite a bit of time reading about a show that hasn't been on for over two years. A show that during its initial run -- at least until the escape from New Caprica -- I believed to be the best show broadcast on American television.

And I found that you really nailed one of many cruxes of the shows ultimate failure. While logically, I agree that the idea that A Wizard... er... God Did It should invalidate the struggles of the characters, this wasn't the final dagger in the heart for me. I've enjoyed reading the debate on whether this Gog knows ALL futures, THE future, chooses to ignore the future while simultaneously planting specific visions and coordinates in the past that will come into play in the future. But the biggest failing in the final episode, to me, was the stupid flashbacks.

I want to say more about the Gog stuff, but I have to bring up this flashback business. Here are character's we've followed for four seasons and a miniseries. Until the final season, they mostly behaved as we'd come to expect, and their relationships and sense of self were clearly defined. The drama of these characters came largely from the "our civilization just got toasted and we're stuck in space without a home" set up of the show, though back story like "My actions led to the death of my lover/your son/your brother," and "I've never been a leader, but here I am... also, I have cancer," provided for more personal drama within the "OMG, we're out of water and fuel and we're getting attacked by our own creations again and again and again," plots.

During the last two episodes, we are given all these looks into the characters before the start of the series, in moments that one is meant to assume are important to who those characters are today, where they are, the choices (assuming they have a choice) that they've made. But they waited until literally the last two episodes of the show to give us this back story. That means, for four seasons we've been working under different assumptions about who these characters are. That means for four seasons we've had an idea of how these relationships should resolve and why they're important, but suddenly, well past the 11th hour, we're given new information to consider, that is meant to hold weight, that is meant to make the conclusion emotionally satisfying on a character level. If these flashbacks AREN'T important to the resolution of the story, then why are we seeing them? And why are we seeing them at the last possible moment? The revelation of Laura Roslin losing her sisters and mother in a car accident doesn't ACTUALLY mean anything to me in the context of the series. Does knowing that make her motivations or character more meaningful? No. It feels like sloppily inserted extra drama that holds no baring on the impending confrontation and last huzzah of the Galactica. It can only be there, in my opinion, to try to add some sort of emotional resonance to a season that just couldn't get it together.

Then we have ol' Bill Adama considering taking a private sector job. What on... Earth(??) is this sequence for? When the show begins, Adama's already got enough going on. He's commanding an old bucket of bolts that's about to be decommissioned, he has an estranged relationship with his family, and a dead son. During the course of the show, this good old soldier assumes command of a fleet, struggles with his role as commander of a single ship and as protector of the human race, butts heads with civilian leadership and military leadership about philosophy and command and theology, makes up with fights with and makes up with again and fights with his son and his "adoptive daughter," lets go of his ex-wife and struggles with feelings for the president, moves from hating those THINGS to making one of those things an officer and a trusted confident... this guy has no shortage of drama and choices to make. Why give us this irrelevant scene about some career quandary? It doesn't make the man more complex, it's just a waste of time. Was this really just to remind us about Caprica so we might tune into that train wreck of a show? Frankly, I was far more interested in how Bill Adama was feeling knowing that his ship was just about at the end of the road, getting ready to go into one last battle, assuming it was a suicide mission. He had finally accepted love from Roslin. His best and oldest friend is not only a toaster, but is an ancient cyborg/alien/thingy from a mythical 13th colony planet (which was destroyed by war in the distant past). And that trouble-making, unconventional, hell of a pilot he bonded with after the death of his son? Yeah, she's back from the dead. Inexplicably. And they decided to spend time showing me a guy who wasn't sure whether or not to leave the military, YEARS AGO!? WHAT?

And then of course there's the Lee/Kara scene. This scene suggests there's been something between the two all along. That's not impossible. They obviously have chemistry, which we see in the miniseries, the moment Lee visits Kara in the brig. And they have a complex back story. But this scene... I can't help but feel like they're setting up the idea that "these two just never seem to connect" so that the eventual resolution of that relationship -- which I might add is Kara "Starbuck" Star of the Show Thrace simply disappearing after a cut -- might fit into the larger pattern. I'll be honest, if Kara is going to be an angel and disappear at the end of the series, fine (not really, but, okay), but resolving that relationship with basically a cut-away shot? That's it? I followed these two characters for four years for that? You couldn't even hold on the shot of her looking at him before the cut away, give some effing gravity to the moment? Anyway, I feel like the flashbacks of this scene are designed specifically to get you ready for that scene, and/or to give you SOME kind of moment of Apollo and Starbuck on-screen together... which, incidentally, happened about four times during the entire season. Lame. If you want my theory, it's that the staff was feeling abused by all the complaining and hating on the "marital issues" arc during season 3, and in an attempt to get away from that, they eschewed all relations between Kara and Lee for the final season. Despite the fact that the first two seasons of the show were built heavily on the web of relations between Kara and Lee and Roslin and Adama (and of course Gaius and Six). Heck, in general it seems like they couldn't figure out how to use Starbuck during this season, and my understanding is even Katee Sackoff didn't know what they were doing with her character. It's a bad sign when your actress comes to you and says she doesn't know what's going on with her character.

I'd say that about 50% of my disappointment with the season finale came from the above mentioned stupid flashbacks.

Now, let's get back to Gog...

The Opera House. That's IT? That's what the vision was referring to? That's so... disappointingly... pedestrian. It's not even metaphoric, it's just like a straight simile or something. A literal translation. A synonym. Something. That's the vision they've all been having? It's sooooo meaningless. It's just, "oh, you guys will get that baby, and then you'll all be standing around in the same place." Wow. Way to take the wind out of the mystical sails. It completely reeks of "crap, we put this thing in there, we didn't really know what it was going to mean, and now we're forced to write something that it could be about."

The people who have had the visions. Initially Baltar had the visions. Okay, the guy was touched in the head. Either he was literally being visited by a sexy-angel, he had contracted some sort of nano-insanity-virus, or he was just a mad scientist. He's allowed to have visions. And we're allowed to never really know what those were about (frankly, if Baltar had eventually converted to belief outside of science based solely on his imaginary friend, his ego, and his interpretation of extraordinary events, I would have liked that better). Then, Roslin starts having the SAME dream. Whoa... freaky. She's on crazy drugs, and becomes an ardent believer in the prophecies. She also gets a cylon blood transfusion. I don't want to be the guy that brings up the cylon STD theory again, but, up until that point, everybody having the dream has had exposure to cylon bodily fluids. Sharon also has the dream. The dream is still open to interpretation at that point and could either be a vision or the result of some sort of programming. Which is nice. I liked that the show was doing the "this could be science, this could be god" thing. It was also leaving its own prophecies open to interpretation. Were the "serpents, two and ten" the snakes Roslin saw, or the Viper squadron Baltar guided to the tyllium refinery? Was the dying leader Roslin? Or were Baltar's psychotic episodes symptomatic of a brain tumor? Dementia? Was he to be the leader? Was the Galactica itself? Everything was open-ended. The way that mysticism should be handled in a sci-fi show that's meant to parallel our own existence. If there is DEFINITELY beyond the shadow of a doubt a Gog, then I find that the link between their world and mine is a bit more tenuous.

The Song. Oh man. I can't blame season 4 for this. I have to blame Season 3. During the season finale, there's some excitement afoot, and suddenly they start playing Bear McCreary's version of All Along The Watchtower. I give him credit for designing a version that is neither the Dylan nor the Hendrix version. But, every BSG fan in the world at that moment knew something had fundamentally shifted in the BSG world. There was earth music. What could it mean? As you pointed out, this made the idea that the series took place in the future almost a certainty, which surprised me, as I assumed they were going to do the "in the past" angle. More importantly, it introduced a MYSTERY (tm) that they would then have to resolve. WHY did all the cylons hear that song? Why THAT song? It was a mystery the writers did not seem to be up for. Perhaps this was part of Moore's famous "we're making it up as we go" style (as this season seems to be where they strayed from the series bible). But it was a huge mistake. It became one of the biggest contrivances of the show. Brad has already fully explained how coincidental and/or indicative of a predetermined fate this song is. The jump coordinates. In a song. That was played by Sam Anders (the biggest RetCon character since Jengo Fett/Boba Fett). Thousands of years ago. That against all odds, when punched into a Colonial nav computer will take the ship to Earth. Seriously. That's some hand of Gog ish right there. Or it's the biggest coincidence ever. But given the bizarre fixation on the song, it seems unlikely to have been set up as a coincidence. Given that the woman who punches in the coordinates is back from the dead, and has remembered her father playing the same song from thousands of years ago on a distant planet, that could only be located by way of finding a resurrected Viper and its pilot floating out in space.

Ugh.

Yeah. Unlike some fans, I was fine with the show including some mystical and paradoxical elements. Humans are constantly dealing with the need to balance what we observe with what we believe. And with the fact that so much is unknowable. A show that portrays a set of events that can be read from a variety of perspectives is a show that is doing well to acknowledge that. As it did with political and social issues, where often the area was gray, and major characters would come down on both sides of a debate, one would hope the show could be equally interpreted when it came to issues of belief. I would have loved it if one viewer could say, "there is no god nor are there gods in the Galactica universe" while another could say, "Of course there is." And they could have a lengthy debate on how the different elements could be interpreted in support of one thing or another.

But the show began to take sides. It brought Kara back from the dead, but insisted she wasn't a cylon. It even for a moment suggested that maybe she was HALF Cylon, but then axed that. Indeed, having Starbuck as a Cylon would have been a predictable, but workable revelation. If she dies. And resurrects having been to Earth, it might stand to reason that there is some sort of resurrection facility on Earth. The Final Five are then somehow linked to Earth. This was initially my theory, though I hadn't expected them to be ancient cylons, but rather cylons from part of the 12 that just split off on their own. Though, to be fair, in order to be more in keeping with the "All of this has happened before..." line, it should have been one, 13th model that was the one they never spoke about, and that split off.

As far as I'm concerned, the show ended after Unfinished Business.

Word.

Good TV Sci-Fi Endings

Thomas — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:28:07 -0800

I thought Star Trek: Next Generation's ending was good; it seems fitting that the series began and ended with Q, whose final line seemed to summarized humanity's real challenge nicely.

Quantum Leap's ending was also pretty good; the last line always leaves me a little shocked and sad.

Can't think of any other good sci-fi series endings, which is sad in a way.

Think I'll Google great sci-fi endings to see if I can find any more.

Couldn't watch past the first few episodes

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:27:39 -0800

I can't give BSG the credit you do.

His character driven story might have worked if I didn't hate them. A number of the characters were so lame it was painful to watch. If I want to watch lame people I can find all I want down at the bus stop.

Mostly I think the geek boys just wanted to see the blonde naked. The rest they just invented as justification

Nice article. I confess to

Kauphaart — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:48:27 -0800

Nice article. I confess to watching and enjoying SOME of BSG, even though its simply a retelling of the mormon mythos; 13th tribe, kobol/kolob, and so forth. Enough with the gawd damned religious bullshit already....