Brad Ideas - Battlestar - Comments

Well, put simply

brad — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:10:25 -0700

No, this doesn’t work at all. Humans and the other life on this Earth evolved over a billion years. It did not arrive relatively recently on an Ark. That’s pretty soundly proven.

Alternative Explanation for Humans on Earth I, Earth II, Kobol

Crosby — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:17:19 -0700

I have read those comments about how humans (and other fauna) could have been abducted from Earth II originally and introduced to the environment on Kobol. I think this all sounds pretty good, but I have yet another idea.

During the series, someone read a story from the Colonials holy book which stated that after the humans on Kobol were told that they would enter a dark age sometime in the future, they build a ship, the Galleon, and left the planet to form the 12 Colonies of Man.

This says a few things about the people who lived on Kobol:

1. They had the technology to build a sophisticated spacecraft capable of carrying huge numbers of people, food, water, basic supplies, medical and scientific supplies, building materials, and manufacturing equipment. Even if the ship made multiple trips to transport everyong, it would have to be very large and durable.

2. Their civilization had survived for a significant amount of time (decades? hundreds of years?) at an advanced stage to have the knowledge necessary to accomplish such a task. At some point they had even constructed intelligent machines (or the original flesh-and-blood Cylons), had a conflict and survived in an advanced state. There would have been a lot of trial and error as they progressed.

3. Their civilization obviously had explored space sometime in the past and had continued to do so for enough years to be able to gain experience with interstellar navigation, hazards, etc., and to guage the probability of finding other habitable planets.

4. For some reason, everyone (every country, city state) on the entire planet of Kobol agreed that it was a good idea to leave. You would think that if Earth were evacuated today that at least small breeding populations would stay behind, especially if the environment was in no danger. There should be humans all over the galaxy in the universe of Battlestar Galactica!

With this in mind, couldn't it easily be possible that some group (or more) of their earlier explorers have made their way to Earth II.

This leaves more questions / possibilities. Here are a few that I could think of:

1. They could have crashed there, but only managed to create a society which failed, leaving only scattered humans alive there living as hunter-gatherers.

2. They could have landed but decided (or fought) to split into two groups with one group leaving with the spacecraft and all of its technology. Did the second group survive at all? Were their records lost to time?

3. They could have landed but split with the main group staying behind to begin a new life and the others taking their spacecraft back to Kobol with some fauna to announce they had found a new world for colonization. Did the second group make it back? Were their records lost to time?

4. They could have taken children along and crashed, leaving mostly the children to survive ala "Lord of the Flies".

5. They could have arrived, set up a society and then faced wars in the following decades that destroyed their society and sent the survivors back to square one, like the situation in "Mad Maxx" or the Eloi in the "Time Machine", continually declining.

All of their technology and buildings that were left behind would have been buried, rotted, or molded away in a manner seen on "Life After People", which shows this happening very quickly in less than 1000 years.

6. They could have met with some degree of success, built more spacecraft over the centuries and continued to explore space, becoming lost to Kobol and the eventual 12 Colonies. They could have left stragglers who declined into the hunter-gathers seen in the finale, able to survive as nature's bounty increased over time.

I think number 2, 3, and 6 could be expanded into new series to explore those ideas.

I Think There May Be a Distinction Being Missed

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:40:56 -0800

What the review actually said is that a God becoming an active character is problematic, particularly in a show that got its bones from its supposed gritty realism. I don't know that any intervention by a God has to be an automatic epic failure. Even in BSG, more subtlety could have had an effective God intervention open to multiple interpretations. The problem here is that one can argue God pretty much just takes over the entire show and becomes THE CHARACTER. I'm hard pressed to think of any clear examples where something like that works in a serious drama. Strangely, the disjointed storytelling in Season 4 simply amplifies the damage; it didn't make sense because it didn't have to make sense because the whole story turns out to be about a God and his will anyway. That's messed up, like Mr. Templeton says.

And he's also right that the BSG staff themselves gave the game away. They didn't have a clear God story in mind in the beginning. It was a bolt on. Read their interviews and listen to their own podcasts (which were probably a mistake to have ever offered given how clearly visible "that man behind the curtain" becomes toward the end).

Bolt-on and not bolt-on

brad — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:55:23 -0800

It is bolt-on from the audience’s point of view, because there were so many more natural rather than supernatural explanations possible for what was shown. Just because a show has religious people is hardly a clue that their religion is true!.

But more to the point, it was bolt-on to the writers. They have admitted they really did not know what head-six was for the first several seasons. They had her say lots of things, including angel of god, but they only decided to make the god real much later.

They had not even intended much of it. Moore threw in some lines about Cylon religion and the network write back, “Machines with religion? Give us more of that.”

Not a cop-out

chromedome — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:42:47 -0800

"God Did It" is not a cop-out--the idea of "One True God" is fundamental to the story, laid out from the very beginning of BSG. InHead Six stated openly and often that she was an Angel of God, and she was clearly manipulating Baltar.
The same concept appears in the first moments of Caprica.

The nature, intent, frequency/degree of direct intervention of this One True God/Cylon God is not at all clear, but a key mystery of the premise overall.

So, with everything in the story woven with those threads, treating as if it was a "bolt-on" plot resolution at the end is absurd. Like it or don't like it, be disappointed by the lack of details or explanations, fine--but the God element in the story arc has been present from the beginining.

The critique above invalidates itself by defining any interventions by a God as automatic epic failure, but also says BSG was great until God was used right there at the end. The concept of intervention and manipulation by God was there from the very beginning of the show.

Fast forward to 2010,

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:42:57 -0800

Fast forward to 2010, Caprica is live and it sucks ass, the story makes absolutely no sense and doesn't even tie into BSG. It may as well be a twisted version of alice in wonderland, the bastard version.

American Gods

brad — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 16:50:58 -0800

The difference is that American Gods, as overtly as possible, declares from page one what it’s going to be about. (And in addition, the gods of American Gods are not the sort of god we see in BSG, they are “just” superbeings fueld by mortal belief systems.) And American Gods is about the divine characters, which is fine, and doubly so because they are not that divine.

Your story can be about gods or about human (like) characters. But the more it is about the gods, especially all-knowing or all-powerful gods, the less the story of the human characters means. You always have to have some human characters for the audience to relate to of course, but if they are just puppets of the gods that’s not too exciting.

Religious fiction is fine, if that’s what it tries to be. It’s taking some good SF and declaring at the end, “actually this is religious fiction” that is a mistake.

in regards...

shannAnonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:06:19 -0800

You definitely don't want to read American Gods then, because thats rife with gods in a fictional book.Or Good Omens...or Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal..all have gods of some kind in em. Just wanted to put that out there so you knew what to stay away from. :)

They are human

brad — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:04:02 -0800

Our definition of a species is “can breed with successful offspring.” So the colonials are human, as they can breed with the natives.

Mitocondrial eve

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:38:15 -0800

I think the critique of the mitochondrial eve was a bit harsh. After the ending I tended to think that the colonists weren't "human" but a different species. Modern humans, or us, are actually colonial cylon hybrids dating back to Hera. This would make sense if she inherited a proportion of their strength and passed it on to offspring.

Second Gog seemed more capable of interacting with cylons then regular humans. Baltar and his ubermind aside, or regular humans in altered states. I've also wondered if such a trait could be passed on to the new hybrid humans. If that is the case then much of this could have been a sort of breeding experiment to bring things more in line with it's will. And it could be possible again, that the earth neanderthals and colonials both shared a common ancestor some how, with all the scurrying around the colonials do.

I'm going to stick with being. Not pure foresight, but great predictive power. And the only time it engages in any real action is replacing starbuck, the rest is manipulation of people. If the gods power rests mainly in being highly predictive, and in hallucinations then it need not be a real god.

The ghost busters rule "if it says it's a god it isn't" is kind of funny in that at the end H6 says it's god, and HB says he doesn't like that.

All of this needless justification aside, it was a terrible ending.

My Views

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 17:24:36 -0800

I love Battlestar Galactica but was disappointed with it,because it was better than any other science fiction in my view especially the first few two seasons,it was way to short,it should have lasted twice as long,if they can have boring soap operas lasting decades set in one street,I'm sure they could make this last at least 5 seasons ideally 8 with even a feature film attached at the end,but regarding the end of the series,

First of all earth 1 and two seam to be both the same to me,it's just occupying different parts of the same planet unaffected by nuclear war,you can clearly see this on adama's map when he's talking about distributing his people to different parts of the planet,some area's are green,while a lot are grey from the destruction of war.

The ending while Romantic is totally unrealistic,giving up all the technology to live like pre historic man when most probably can't hunt grow crops or light fires and who in their right mind would throw it all a way and start a fresh,it would be like fleeing a a war torn country in a luxury Yacht with all the mod cons and as soon as you reach a remote island sinking it and swimming a shore in nothing but what you are wearing and carrying a small bag,you wouldn't do that by choice,it would only happen if you were ship wrecked,and have no alternative,I doubt few people would be capable of surviving today let alone people from a far more advanced society then they don't explain what happened to Adama's Viper he flew out of Galactica and the seven raptors seen on the planet's surface near to the three structures,and what happened the the raptor that Launched it nukes at the cylon colony,you see the flight crew injured,but what about the assault team and then lets not Forget how Star Bucks Viper blew up in space but was found light years away on earth or the fact we didn't find out who she really was,she obviously wasn't a ghost?

I think they should have built small settlements in the various locations that people were taken to around the planet,then they could have learned the necessary skills to live on the land while still having the security of their camps to fall back on until they built up enough confident and know how to set out on their own or in family's if they so wished, much like settlers have done in our history in say America,then we could have seen 10 minutes of small scenes set a year or two in the future with how key characters lives had turned out,that would have been a much better ending,after all why rush out a half hearted effort after all the work that had gone before,that to me made no sense to me what so ever,also it should have been set in the future like the reviewer suggest,then it would have made sense.

Nausea

Anonymous — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 07:33:36 -0800

I don't watch supposedly great shows when they're being broadcast. I wait for years and then watch them all at once. I had heard BSD was great so I never watched a single episode and avoided knowing anything about it. I purchased the 4 year box set and watched the entire series over the last two weeks. I find it has incredible impact to take in in this way and can be incredibly enjoyable. There's a cohesion to the thread of a story for me; it's all fresh in my mind, the entire run. The impact on me is sometimes profound. I feel like I'm living a show (if it's a show that I can lose myself in, of course) and will dream about it every night. I did this for the wire, the Sopranos, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Shield, etc. And when a show is great, the impact can be VERY STRONG.

I am not exaggerating when I say I felt actually nauseous and sad after completing BSD last night. The first thing I did was Google <"Battlestar Galactica" "worst ending"> and found this masterful essay which echoes much of my own thoughts. It helps ease the pain. They built up numerous, seemingly connected mysteries and then spat upon every thread, tied up nothing; everything was just a deus ex machina, nothing made sense, people acted as they never would. The colonists just gave up penicillin and light bulbs and civilization and dispersed into tents on the savanna to little out some short brutal life on a world with foreign (to them) flora and fauna. I could go on and on but you've done much of it for me. Bah. I feel sick and betrayed.

I would like it to be this way

brad — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:23:41 -0800

But the problem is so much of the plot hinged on that damn song, the song that contained in it a series of jump coordinates. Problem is we are told throughout the series how fickle jump coordinates are. Get them wrong and end up very far away. And they depend both on where you are and where you are going, they are not just a coordinate for a target.

So the numbers Starbuck punches in from the song only work if the ship is in exactly the place it is when she punches them in. Not something Gog can predict if Gog is granting humans true free will — being unpredictable even to Gog.

This is the worst one, but the others are also bad. The opera house vision seems hard to accept if the humans did not need to follow a specific path. Had the vision been of some grand and general thing, it would have been fine, but in fact it was of something trivial — the arrangement of people in a room when certain people enter carrying a certain child they have been chasing.

So while I would love a Gog that is not all-knowing, that’s not what we were given here.

Of Mice and Gog

Schmoker — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:18:46 -0800

I don't want to get into a point by point defense of BSG's use of Gog (spoiler: I just reread this, and I kind of did). It was a great show that stumbled towards the end, and my problems with it came out all throughout the fourth season (which was wildly uneven, and even flat out bad sometimes), but I actually liked much of the ending, for the most part, and have a viewpoint that accepts Gog without denying free will. My view may be hogwash, but here it is for better or for worse. And don't anyone bitch about pronouns please. If I use "He" when I mean Gog, so be it. I don't really look at Gog, or God, as having gender, should He or She even exist, thank you very much. I just use a pronoun for simplicity's sake.

Think of a buggy computer program, and there you have Man. Yes, Gog can see the myriad possibilities that make up the future, but that does not mean he knows which path the future will take, because he introduced into the equation this pain in ass program he called Man. Gog designed Man, and if he wanted to design us so that we could confound him from time to time, what is so hard to believe about that? This is Gog we are talking about. Gog can do whatever the hell he wants. The idea that a Supreme Being HAS to know what every response to every action will be denies the fact that the being is supreme. Gog could make Man any way Gog sees fit, so that means that Gog could set up Man so that Gog could be surprised every once in a while.

After all, sometimes it has got to be boring being Gog, don't you think?

So, Gog knows us inside and out, and he obviously has the upper hand in pushing us in any direction He pleases, but that supposes that he even wants to push in exactly one direction. Perhaps Gog doesn't mind aiding man from time to time, but in the end let's say that Gog wants Man to stand or fall on his own, because that was why Gog gave Man the ability to confound Gog in the first place. Gog wanted to see what this new type of being he nurtured from the much and the ooze could accomplish.

So, how do you do that? Well, mostly you would think that you would stay out of the way, letting Man rise and fall on our own merits. But let's say that billions of years later Man has gotten himself into such a pickle that all of the great work that Gog did---a trillion years worth, perhaps---is about to be flushed down the galactic toilet when Man renders himself extinct. Maybe making Man in the first place was a real bitch, even for Gog, and Gog doesn't want to see all that work go to waste. Who the hell knows? This is Gog, so how could we know?

Maybe Gog just made a bet with a different God--say, the God of Lost, who we will call Gol--that Man would make it long term, and so Gog is cheating a little bit to make certain He beats Gol (who we will say is a She) out of the fifty billion galaxies they have riding on the bet.

So, for whatever reason, Gog decides Man is worth saving but only if Man is willing to meet Gog halfway. We can assume that Gog knows all the myriad outcomes of his various possible interventions, so he can easily set up markers and guides to help us along our way. But because Man is at least somewhat unpredictable to Gog (because Gog gave Man that power), maybe Gog sets up millions and millions of these markers, knowing that only a handful will be used depending on the path that Man ends up choosing to take. But since He's Gog, that is not a problem. Gog can set up an infinite amount of markers and guides should He choose to do so. He can use people, places, things, memories, dreams, visions, planets, stars, star clusters, galaxies, whatever-the-frak-he-pleases.

Starbuck the Angel-in-Training? Who is to say there weren't a hundred million potential Starbucks out there? Or a billion? Who is to say that Roslyn was the only candidate to be the dying leader? Perhaps there were many of those as well? This is Gog we are talking about. Just because the idea of how to do all of this baffles us, what does that matter? I'm just trying to set up a plausible reality where there is a Gog that can influence but still allow for free will while doing so.

Ok, don't worry, I'm getting somewhere.

So, yeah, Head Six could say exactly what Gog knows will cause Baltar to act exactly how Gog wants him to act, and there goes free will right out the air lock. But who says that is what Head Six did? Perhaps Gog had HS saying exactly what Gog knew would cause Baltar to merely walk the razor between the right action that saves humanity and the wrong one that dooms us? If Gog knows exactly what to say in order to get us to do exactly what he wants, thus negating free will, then obviously Gog knows exactly what to say to force us to make our own decision, thus ensuring free will shines through. Sure, Gog is lending a hand, but who is to say that hand was one that we had to accept? Gog may have been giving us that hand we needed while still allowing us to reject it if we choose to.

In other words, if Gog can force us to do what Gog wants, then Gog can obviously allow us to choose for ourselves if that is what Gog wants.

BSG never conclusively said that Gog made everything happen; it only conclusively said that Gog was involved and helping. Some people chose to believe that any divine intervention negates man's existence. Others believe that without diving intervention man is nothing. I tend to walk the middle, thinking that a little diving intervention is not necessarily a bad thing, and that little bit of it can go a long way and isn't necessarily cheating (unless you have a bet with Gol going on, in which case She is going to be mighty pissed if She finds out).

The song? The opera house? These weren't the most well thought out over-story points by the writers, but let's not blame Gog for the failures of Ronald D. Moore. And who is to say that these were not all things that Gog set up because he knew that IF we accepted his help, then we would eventually reach the moments where they would come in handy? And maybe there were many other songs and visions at the ready just in case one of the other (millions? billions?) of possible angels-in-training/leaders ended up surviving to the end. Who knows how many other people had lives and back stories that fit perfectly into any number of Gog scenarios but didn't survive the Fall or were never needed? Gog could have loaded the deck (again, where was Gol, and how come she wasn't watching that deck more closely??) long before the first person on Kobol discovered fire.

Anyway, just because Gog was whispering in Baltar's ear doesn't mean that what Gog was whispering was designed to force it all to Gog's preordained conclusion. It was Gog opening the door, while still leaving to us the decision as to whether or not we walk on through. Obviously, if we proved ourselves worthy along the way, Gog may decide to step up His involvement, deciding that being so close to the end merited a little extra help (thus Baltar gets his "proof" right at the end), but I still don't see how that negates free will.

Look, it's all retconning. I know that. And personally, I'm not that invested in it all, because BSG let me down that last year by not being as compelling and entertaining as the show I had loved up to that point. The show just wasn't that good all season long, but it didn't let me down because of the Gog business, and I think it is because I can wrap my head around the idea that Gog's desires and our free will can coexist if Gog decides to let them coexist. Gog may have been ready to cut bait at any time, letting humaninty go down the tubes of extinction and starting over from scratch, but that's a lot of work to let slip away without at least trying to help out a little bit wherever and whenever Gog felt it was appropriate.

Basically, there are a lot of reasons why BSG disappointed me in the final year, but that "God did it" wasn't one of them, because I do not believe Gog did do it, or at least not all of it. The existence of a God does not have to mean that Man is a puppet on a string. A puppet maybe, but I think the strings were probably cut long ago. Gog, or God (or even Gol--she who is most beautiful of all), can choose to get involved directly, indirectly, or anything in between. And it is not beyond the realm of possibility to believe that Gog also created a creature whose actions Gog could predict but not know for certain. Sort of like Man trying to predict where electrons will end up during a double slit experiment. We can chart the probability, but we can't know for certain.

Omniscience is a silly concept even for a God. But even if we accept that idea of God, that doesn't mean that every God in every piece of fiction has to be completely omniscient. And it also doesn't mean that there cannot be graded levels of knowledge that appear to be omniscience but are not. Sure, knowing something that MIGHT happen a million years in the future sure seems omniscient if it comes to pass, but we don't know that Gog hadn't planned for any number of other outcomes other than the one that played out on BSG. And just because this particular Gog could see what was probably coming down the road thousands or millions of years in the future also doesn't mean that Gog had covered every base forever and ever into infinity.

Look--I really don't think BSG's failures all boil down to the fact that God was involved (except to those people who cannot emotionally accept even the possibility of a God existing at all---Atheism is new Fundamentalism, people), but that the show itself just wasn't very good in the final season. I don't get involved with shows for mythology and over-story, but, rather, for characters and entertainment. BSG was wildly entertaining for three years, then not so much once it had to start attending to the mythology that the (occasionally) psychotic fans demanded be attended to. Just like Lost, BSG stopped being a show about a group of characters and their story (and stories), but instead became about putting all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, which is almost always a dramatically inert exercise.

Sure, it could have been better. Much better. Sure, it suffered a lot, and they cut some corners, and some things turned out to be dead ends. But the idea that you can write an essay "proving" that God couldn't have done it, or that if God did do it then God had to do it this one certain way, which then negates all free will and character, is just silly. You don't know God anymore than I do. You have a concept based on the idea that an all powerful, all knowing God couldn't intervene without forcing everyone to do exactly what It wanted, but that just doesn't make any sense. An all powerful, all knowing God could do anything he or she wanted. They could force, or they could nudge, or they could abstain. Or they could do all three, depending on what God's mood was on that particular day, or whether or not God was out of coffee and in a cranky mood.

I don't believe, but I don't disbelieve. As Heinlein said, we'll all find out soon enough, so what's the rush to come to a decision? Denying without proof is no less ridiculous than believing without proof. And trashing a television show because you believe you know exactly how a God's actions would or would not affect man is no less ridiculous than either of those other alternatives.

It wasn't entertaining, fair enough. It wasn't entertaining to me for much of the final season, either (although a good part of the finale was very moving and far better than the handful of episodes that preceded it), but don't pretend that one story point about Gog was the only reason you are not happy with the show, because that just sounds childish and petulant.

And only Gods are allowed to be petulant children.

Didn't know Walmart had a

Anonymous — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:56:31 -0800

Didn't know Walmart had a sale on rose colored glasses.

"First, I think African Americans didn't have to experience slavery itself. They experienced systemtic, legally sanctioned, grotesque treatment long after slavery was officially abolished. That is within the living memory of many African Americans today. To insinuate otherwise is silly and offensive."

In actuality, what YOU insinuate is silly and offensive, as you sit there comparing having to sit at the back of a bus to what slaves went through. And the fact of the matter is that they still go on and on about SLAVERY, about what was done to their people. So spare me the BS.

"Second, looking for Nazi war criminals to punish is a perfectly legal and legitmate activity, evan if the potential supply of targets is dwindling. The rest of the world agreed that they were war criminals long ago. That activity hardly equates to a desire to annihilate all Germans (the Cavil equivalent)."

You don't think there were Jews that wanted to kill all German's for what was done to them? NOT ONE SINGLE JEW??? Only a German could be fucked up like that, not a Jew? The U.S. and Israel is loaded with Jews right now that wanna see the Palestinians killed off for what they've done... Or are you gonna deny that?

"Third, I guess I missed the part where there are African Americans and Jewish people so pissed these days that they are actively plotting the murder of billions. If you can point them out, I would be obliged."

See above. You may wanna read up on some of the shit that has come out of Farrakhan's mouth over the years regarding Jews and whites, if that guy had the power Hitler had, he'd probably try it. You may wanna start watching late night infomercials also, you apparently missed the one called Wings of an Eagle, a program run by an Israeli Rabbi, in which they ask good Christian folk to donate money to fly "Displaced Jews" to Israel, and one of the reasons actually given is to populate the land to destroy their internal enemy... Gee who can that enemy be and what could they mean by destroy.

"So, in sum, Cavil's feelings aren't even remotely normal. They might have been plausible if anyone had bothered to create a story for him and a Plan that wasn't stupid on its face. No one did. C'est la vie."

Revenge is a completely normal desire, a completely normal feeling, wanting to punish those you feel wronged you is completely normal... The actions people take is totally different. Be a slave, be a person who's people were the victims of an attempted genocide, then see what you feel, then say what's normal or not. Cavil's desire for revenge is abnormal, but the colony's desire for revenge against the Cylons is normal? No doubt Cavil had more than 1 agenda motivating him, but at the heart of it he wanted revenge against humanity for creating his Centurian brothers to serve as slaves, and wanted revenge against his own creators for making him in the image of those he despised most, and giving him pretty much all their limitations, and on both sides they were doing things to their own kind to help their own causes... Cavil basically enslaved the Centurians, and the humans were airlocking each other over disagreements. At the end of the series, basically it's revealed that neither side was innocent, and that they were all fucked in the head and needed to change their ways.