137 replies to this topic

[Maia]

I'll start the ball running (hopefully) by re-posting what I posted in the "watching order" thread and Calibander's answer:



#50  Maia  

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Ihave just watched BSG in a weeks-long marathon and I have to say thatIMHO they really dropped the ball on depicting Cylons as, well,creatures who are partly technological and therefore have extra senses,abilities, particular needs, genuinely different views on the universe,etc. Then the whole issue of acknowledging them as sentient creatures,possibly having souls, etc. could have been done in genuinelyinteresting ways, rather than just falling back on well-worn racisttropes.
And the process of awakening of a covert Cylon could have been reallyamazing. They started well with it, but they never really followed up,which is a great pity, IMHO. One of the reasons why revelations of allthe Cylon models just weren't as exciting as they could have been.

This is one of the reasons that I don't particularly like the NewCaprica arc - I get it that the writers wanted to comment onneo-colonialism, international military intervention, etc., but really,would machine intelligences have handled it this way? They are supposedto have amazing technology, after all, and networks are supposed to betheir particular skill.

And for that matter, the only good Cylons seem to be those that give upwhatever vestiges of their own identity that the show-runners threwtheir way in favor of all tropes and foibles of humanity. Which is justboring.
I mean, what's the point of trying to come to terms with the Other ifyou can only manage if the Other not just looks like you, but muststrive to be like you in every way before you manage to do so?
So, because we can't have immortality, then it must be evil foreverybody, because we can't build biological networks at will ditto,etc.

And the ending... sigh. No wonder that it happens again and again, eh?

Is anybody interested in spoilery discussion at this late point? Should I start a new thread?
       
  #51   Calibandar

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Posted Yesterday, 04:37 PM

I agree with some of those points, and always up for BSG discussion.

I would say that one of my major beefs with the series was how theCylons were depicted. It seemed to be more proof of the old "don't showthe monster, it'll be scarier if you don't see it" trope. Theminiseries and the first two series were great in this regard becausewe'saw them more as an enigmatic enemy, but as we learned more, it wasmy experience that the writers were not inventive or plain interestingenough in their depiction of the Cylons, and I mean that in a physicalsense as well. They would be as strong as a human in one episode andthen easily overwpower ( as one would expect ) in the next. Therevelation of the Final five would always be lame because they'd neverthought it through and only came up with that idea last minute.

It was always a main draw for me in this series, man vs robots, and howrobots are different, Other, than us. What differentiates them, how dothey show it. I do not feel that that ever developed in a way that feltsatisfying or deeply intriguing to me. I think the truth, or part ofthe truth, is that it proved too difficult for the writers to work thisthrough, it's tough enough for real science fiction writers whodedicate books to it, let alone screenwriters. The Cylons did not feelwell developed in the sense of how would an artifical intelligence ofsuch power develop. Would they really be this similar to humans in somany ways? Feels like wishful thinking to me, or maybe it was all donelike due to budget constraints. I did feel they made for an veryinteresting enemy for a good part of the series though, but undoubtedlythat faded as we went on into later seasons.

Still, I thought the final season was mostly a return to form, with a few very strong episodes.

Edited by Maia, 26 June 2011 - 08:38 AM.

[Maia]

Wall of text warning: I really need to get some Cylon stuff off my chest :

Calibandar, on 25 June 2011 - 03:37 PM, said:

The miniseriesand the first two series were great in this regard because we'saw themmore as an enigmatic enemy, but as we learned more, it was myexperience that the writers were not inventive or plain interestingenough in their depiction of the Cylons,

Well, yes and no. The whole stupid hybridization plot-line was already introduced in season 1 and season 2 was a huge missed opportunity to follow up on exploration of what makes the Cylons tick after a very solid build-up with the Boomer plot-line. It could have been dolloped out slowly, keeping up the mystery tension,  since Boomer's Cylonness was clearly very strongly repressed/blocked.
It would make perfect sense to learn stuff about them in bits and pieces, as her gear slowly came on-line more and more, as various crises would require.
Could have been deliciously angsty, too, with occasional visuals of how her POVs change as she starts to see in broader light spectrum and sense electrical currents, etc., with the ever-present  fear that her "human" identity could just dissolve at some point.

Would even excuse inconsistency of strength/senses depiction if she wouldn't be able to always access her Cylon capabilities at will for some time due to the block/fear.

By comparison, Athena/Helo story is just about an enemy national coming over and having to grovel and be a saint and completely reject her origins/nature to get accepted. Yes, yes, power of love is there too - but Athena is just not depicted as Other enough for it to be as significant as it could have been.
Also, it constantly bugged me that even when they began to trust her, they never asked her any of the really important questions about the Cylons.  

Quote

The Cylons did not feelwell developed in the sense of how would an artifical intelligence ofsuch power develop.

Well, why wouldn't they develop? Evolution may work with AI too, for all we know. The 7 could have started their existence as defense/administrative mainframes of some colonies, which achieved sentience once they got to a certain level of complexity.

Of course, it was all fudged when it turned out that the Final Five somehow "created" or at least heavily modified them too. And that the 7 have somehow forgotten that they used to be able to transfer to and from mechanical bodies just fine before the Five turned up and thus couldn't be wholly dependent on the Five and their secret technology for serial immortality.  

Quote

Would they really be this similar to humans in somany ways? Feels like wishful thinking to me, or maybe it was all donelike due to budget constraints.

Well, you know, that's where if the Five have been done properly - and now that I think about it, they could have been, with relatively few changes, even, it could have all made sense.

To begin with, ditch the whole bunk notion of a Cylon civilization that is indistinguishable from human civilization - I mean, how implausible, boring  and what's the point?
Make the Thirteenth Tribe human  and, unlike, the 12, oriented more towards biological  research. Make the reason for their exodus be their religion. They never created their own Cylons or FTL, and eventually destroyed themselves, just as the Five invented their biological serial immortality - to achieve which they had to change themselves in some ways. When they arrive these changes and/or chance is enough for the Cylons to strike a deal with them.
The Five may have been pretty fed up by humanity at this point too, since after their own holocaust they arrived just in time to see the Colonies almost self-destruct by Cylons.

Why would the 7 want such a deal? Well, to understand humans better and to maybe overcome their greatest problem - namely, lack of diversity. There are just 7 of them and all the rest are pre-sentient.
It makes zero sense for them to want to sabotage development of sentience in the tin-cans. On the contrary, it would be plausible that they were afraid of humanity because they knew that quickly as they evolve, the humans wouldn't give them enough time for enough sentient entities to develop and make the Cylons into a true, robust civilization. Biological bodies may have been intended to try to help the 7 to have enough variation through new sets of experiences to provide at least some badly-needed variety.

I don't see, BTW how and why hybridization of biological bodies with humans would solve this problem, particularly since at the start of the series Cylons rightly saw that they were different from and in some ways superior to humans, so why would they just want to give it up?
Also, didn't CapricaSix or HeadSix tell Baltar at some point that  Cylons could digitize human minds? The notion was never mentioned again, but it was a cool concept and would explain how they were able to create such perfect cover identities for their agents.

I also don't see why the 7 would completely cease downloading into mechanical bodies/machinery. Could have provided some interesting battle encounters/threats to the fleet, too, as well as maintained the Cylon creepiness.

Anyway, back to the Five - they give the Seven biological bodies, somehow convert them to their religion and also possibly tinker with their consciousness templates, giving them certain capacity for emotions, etc. Or maybe experience of biological bodies gives the Seven emotions. However, the Five don't (can't?) go full Cylon - they don't have multiple incarnations, don't interface with networks/machinery, etc.

But humans, who never actually accepted or admitted that Cylons are sentient, conscious beings and their equals, continue to push and are already gearing for the next war. Both machine logic and religion suggests that Cylons must strike first.

The Five vehemently disagree and wouldn't abide by the vote,  but the Seven, already  not-quite-trusting because the Five paternalistically retained the secret of their ressurection technology, pre-emptively put them away. Blocking the Five's memories and placing them in the Colonies and then the Fleet under covert identities is not some petty human revenge, but the Seven's empirical proof to the Five that the Five were  wrong. And an intended learning experience.  

IMHO, this would have made for a much more compelling story than what the show actually dished out and the one that underlined the Cylons Otherness, rather than basically wiped it out.

Oh and I am firmly convinced that the whole story with Kara's death and ressurection was aimed at  her, rather than Ellen, being the Fifth and there being a  functional ressurection/production facility remaining on the Moon, but a lot of fans reacted very negatively to the notion, so they  went and changed it and decided to just leave things unexplained.

[felice]

Yeah, all that sounds good to me.

[red snow]

Anyone doing a rewatch or watching for the first time, should ask a friend with a little bit of editing know-how to remove a 0 from the text in the last 10 mins of the show. It turns a bad ending into a predictable end, which isn't nearly so bad.

[Maia]

red snow, on 27 June 2011 - 01:41 AM, said:

It turns a bad ending into a predictable end, which isn't nearly so bad.

My problems with the ending (and a lot of stuff in the last 2.5 seasons really) are bigger than that. Namely, that alliance with the Cylons, the created race evolved from machines, was supposed to finally make possible a truly hybrid civilization that could live in harmony with it's technology. Whether you add or subtract zeroes to/from the ending, or even go with Atlantis, that's clearly not where the show went.

I couldn't care less that either Hera alone or  the colonists and biological bodies of the Cylons  are supposed to be our ancestors - we are still back on the cycle.
Everything that made Cylons different from humanity, everything that they could have contributed to the real solution, was abandoned.  Makes me think that Cavil was right, really, and all those Sixes, Eights and Leobens were wrong and deservedly died out. Cylons would have been much better off making it a clean slate and hopefully trying something new, rather than succumbing to a Pinocchio complex. Humanity really turned out to be deadly for them. Well, at least the tin-cans got this chance.

Also, the ending makes me think that the only chance for a truly meaningful solution was at New Caprica and therefore makes me dislike even more that Moore intentionally used the set-up to comment on US involvement in Irak.  I mean, I already thought that while interesting and well-done, this segment didn't fit the overall story at all and was full of really huge plot-holes, but once I saw the ending - duh!

The resistance and rescue and 2 years more of wandering and suffering  just condemned the Colonials  to a brutal and short existence on a beautiful, but deadly planet and they have abandoned everything that made them who they were and vanished, leaving nary a trace.  

This ending manages to hit all the hoary SF tropes on the way out and to be both boring in the extreme and depressing ditto. Give me the grandeur of a truly tragic ending, rather than pretend that _this_ was a happy one and/or made any kind of sense.

[red snow]

Don't get me wrong, I thought the show was a mess from the the episode after they escaped New Caprica but I may not be as picky as many and there were still some good episodes in there it's just the arc and logic of the show went out the window. I don't think i could watch the show again unless I stopped at the aforementioned point. It's a bit like how if i ever watch lost again I will stop with the ending of season 5 which was a far more satifying ending in my opinion.
It's a lot trickier to try and convinve a new viewer to stop at that point though as they'll be running on the high of watching some of the best sci-fi seen on tv.

[Gingerly Grumkin]

Great show! The first and second season was phenomenal. The ending however was dreadful, Adama never banged, Caprica 6 also has visions, Starbuck ends up with Lee. Actually apropo Starbuck, she was what, an Angel? Thats so lame, so... so so lame. And why did they have to kill Boomer? I didn't like her, but Chief deserved to be happy. What do you guys think? Did you like BSG?

    So say we all

[Pliskin]

A great show, maybe my favourite one.
Until we understand at the end that they were making fun of us all that time. Pretty much like Lost.

[Calibandar]

Superb first two seasons. Consensus is that the show took something of a nosedive in season 3 and 4. I'd agree with that, but I did like how the show ended, the final 10 episodes or so were very good.

Definitly a hallmark of SF TV.

[Kaldaur]

Ron Moore gave an interview near the end of season four that basically said he came up with the ending in the shower a few weeks before it was time to write the episode.

Quote

I went home and had an epiphany in the shower and said, "It's the characters, stupid!" And it really always has been, and I went back the next day and said, "Let's forget about the plot for a moment and just trust that it will work itself out, because it always does. What do we want the characters to deal with; let's talk about the individual stories and resolutions." I just had an image of someone in their house chasing a bird from the room, I didn't know what it meant but it's an image and let's put it on the board. I think it was [David] Weddle who said he was interested in seeing where the characters had come from before we got to the end, and then we kind of came up with this structure of flashbacks to show you where they end up after seeing where they came from and that formed the backbone of what the finale was going to be.

http://www.tvguide.c...on-1004256.aspx


I adore this show. I can't stand that man for ruining his show's tagline: "And they have a plan." Apparently not, Moore.


This show was Lost in space.

[Black Wizard]

Calibandar, on 06 February 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

Superb first two seasons. Consensus is that the show took something of a nosedive in season 3 and 4. I'd agree with that, but I did like how the show ended, the final 10 episodes or so were very good.

I loved the ending to season four. A lot of TV shows have trouble wrapping things up at the end but I thought the writers did a great job with Battlestar Galactica. Enough questions were answered to satisfy me but enough was left mysterious to provoke thought and discussion.

[Arrogant Bastard]

I really enjoyed the show for the most part. Great first two seasons with only a couple stinker episodes--black market episode for example. Third season was mostly good, but it's also where I no longer trusted the writers knew what they were doing. In other words, it really seemed like they were just making shit up as they went along. The reveal of the final five (or four of the final five) was pretty lame in my opinion (especially with Tyrol, who had a son at the time, so in the fourth season the writers just wrote it that it wasn't his kid after all, because if it was Hera would no longer be unique. Tyrol then promptly forgets he ever cared for the kid and just ditches him easily).

I hardly even remember most of the fourth season except for the big plot points; I remember being mostly bored by the first half of season 4 until the midseason finale. But I will say I HATED HATED HATED the series finale.

[Underfoot]

The first 2 and half seasons were fantastic. Really, really good stuff. Unfortunately, season 3.5-4 were truly awful, at least compared to the first half. The only good part of season 4 was the mutiny arc and the finale was IMO the worst ending to a television series that I've ever seen (didn't watch Lost though).

[Derfel Cadarn]

I'm rewatching it now, currently at episode 6 season 3.

I have to admit, I like the ending.  Not how I'd have ended it, but I still liked it.  I know some hated the angels bit, but head 6 said from the beginning she was an angel of god, so its not like it wasn't telegraphed.

I'm not sure how else they could have ended it.  They either had to end it with an abandoned Earth, and them repopulating it, or with them populating ancient Earth.  No way they could have met up with an advanced Earth people.

[Tobin]

Yeah, the whole Cally cheating on Tyrol thing never tracked with me - it would have been totally against her character. She's been in love with him the entire time we know them, even stays after he beats the shit out of her and obviously loves someone else. A one-night stand with Hotdog (Papa Adama's real son too! )? not likely.

[Ser Hippie]

Stuff like that bothered me too, but the story/plotting was all over the place at times as the show went on. I really enjoyed a lot of it, but my interest waned as time went on. I thought the ending was okay, although I wonder how the fleet's population actually felt about the plan.

[Shryke]

Some of the plotting was really wonky, but overall I loved the show.

Some parts of the ending were bad, but I don't agree with a bunch of the complaints about it (especially re: Starbuck) and it doesn't destroy my love of the ending, even if it does tarnish it.

Frankly, the whole "Final Five Monologue" episode is a far far far far worse offender then the finale is "ruining" the series.

[Gingerly Grumkin]

Did you guys see the robot chicken ep? "Even Billy's replacement it a Cylon" lol

ever thought that Saul looks like Mccain?
http://dailycandor.c...-col-saul-tigh/

[Jojen]

Anyone go to either of the auctions they had here in LA? I was fortunate to go to both. Got to meet Michael Hogan (Saul Frakkin' Tigh)--who was one of the nicest, friendliest, and most appreciative guys--and Luciana Carro (Kat)--who is hot, btw, when she's not done up like a Viper jock. I also won a bid and walked out with a sketch of the Temple of Aurora from the ruined Earth.

[Tears of Lys]

Seasons 1 and 2 were the best of any television show i've ever seen.  Gritty and exciting - unlike anything else.   (I even didn't mind "Black Market".)  I started watching Season 3 and something changed.  Tried watching every now and then, but the thrill was gone.  I decided to leave it at that and not let the series be ruined.  I prefer to think of it as it was.   In my mind, BSG is still jumping one step ahead of the Cylons.

Edited by Tears of Lys, 06 February 2012 - 08:06 PM.