Battlestar Galactica (*** Spoilers! ***)

[joeactor]

Hey gang,

Since the subject came up in the Star Trek thread, here's a separate topic for BSG.

*** Warning! May contain spoilers ***

Ok, that being said, what did you like/dislike about the new series?
Any thoughts on the old series?

Chime in!
JoeActor

[Davin]

I like the old series (even BSG 1980 a bit). I really like the new one as well.

The old one is a bit cheesy, but for the time, it was a pretty dark series. The last few thousand remaining humans were just trying to survive while being hunted down by relentless machines. even with such a dark story line, it's difficult for anything to be bleak with Dirk Benedict around. If the new series had Dirk Benedict, it wouldn't have been as bad.

In the first episode of the first mini-series, they had the original theme song as fanfare during what was supposed to be the Galactica's decommissioning ceremony. The newer series seemed go more into how those kinds of situations affected the people instead of like the old series where is was just about what was happening.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I really, really liked the first couple seasons of the most recent BSG series, but they sort of lost me during the last two seasons.

And I didn't like all of the religious-ness and fatalist talk, but I guess that's just a personal preference. 

[joeactor]

I liked both the old and new series for different reasons.

The old one was good fun, cool effects and fairly action packed.
The new one delved deeper into the psychological and spiritual aspects of what it meant to be human.

[Begin Mini-Rant]
Overall, the new one started out well, then I think they painted themselves into a corner with all the plot lines.
The final episodes just seemed like a cop-out to me.  "It's uh... Angels! and, uh, cyclical!, and um... supernatural!"
Yeah. Right. Whatever.
IMHO, the series would have been better served if they stopped right when they found Earth, and just left all the loose ends hanging.  Hell, some of the plot lines still weren't tied up.
... and what was the story with "Cylons have become so like humans that we can't tell them apart"???
Uh, then, that would make them human, right?
Plus, how did the magic five live a normal life, without aging, and not know something was up? Hmmmm???
[End Mini-Rant]

I guess I really liked the new series enough to be severely disappointed when the "ending" was revealed.

Flame-Off,
JoeActor

[Tristan Jay]

I like both Battlestar shows (I won't comment on Galactica 1980 which I haven't seen), but each one fulfills a completely different function as entertainment.  The older show is more of a very fond nostalgia thing.  It sure does have it's corny moments, though.  I think I primarily prefer the first half, which I'm most familiar with; but after the Pegasus story it seems to get odd.  It finishes nicely with Apollo and Starbuck's infiltration mission in the last episode.

In some respects, the newer Galactica is an exemplar of compelling writing.  It worked best in this sense because I had seen the original show, and also was fairly familiar with plenty of the writers' contributions to the Star Trek shows of the late 80's and beyond.  As I mentioned in the Star Trek topic, a component of the new Battlestar Galactica was my impression that a lot of the writers' creative energy was stymied on Star Trek, and had an outlet in Galactica it could be expressed.  As I said, from a creative writing standpoint it's very satisfying to examine two corresponding episodes from Galactica and ST:TNG that explore military tribunal witch hunts.  The other comparison I mentioned in the ST topic was how ST: Voyager seemed stagnant, and the writers who fought against this were able to redirect it into Galactic, so over the course of that show there's a sense of gradual deterioration that very was satisfying and made a lot of sense, logically (and would have given Voyager some interesting tension if it had been allowed).

As to comparing the old and new Galactica, it was an interesting test of just how much it matters about how different each one is, for starters.  I tend to think of the newer Galactica as inspired by the story ideas of the old Galactica, but essentially being it's own show with it's own identity.  It's not so much a case of with some old school fans who took to calling it "Galactica in name only," but more a case of the writers taking the seeds of ideas, but filtering them though a lens of ruthless story logistics to find how the story worked best.  The end result is so different in tone, physical action, the very nature of the universe.  Each version of the show fit's into significantly different enough sub-genres; old Galactica is almost a science fantasy, a bit like Star Wars is (it was even advertised as TV's answer to SW); whereas the new Galactica is almost completely hard Sci-Fi, with a few rare moment scattered in dealing with higher spirituality.  I loved seeing the writing of the new show take an idea from the old show, and develop it within the new framework they established.  I was fascinated to see the one episode about Kobol become a 9 to 11 episode saga, or the two part Pegasus become a three parter, or a 15 minute "going through the radioactive nebula" from the old show's first story getting a whole episode in the new one, or "the ship's on fire" episode being reduced to a 5 minute character moment for Saul Tigh in the miniseries.

Good grief, I could just go on and on!  I'll rest here, for now...

[Medusa]

Holy Hell. This is probably one of the most complicated sci fi series around! I've never watched an episode through and through. But it always caught my eye. Thankfully Netflix has it on streaming so I think I might finally dip my toe into it. As for the old show? Omg I was so in love with it!

[Gawen]

OBSG=Old
NBSG=New

The NBSG is a near complete rewrite of the old. Consider Baltar; Old Baltar was the nemesis whereas New Baltar was a used womanising genius; a clever plot devise to introduce the Cylons to the Colonies defense mainframes (and us). In the miniseries, four things were not explained or followed up on.
1) The human Cylon's spine glows in certain situations.
2) How Baltar and 6 can communicate when separated (this was never explained throughout the entire show).
3) What happened to Boxie?
4) Ragnar Station
Numbers 1 & 3 can be easily figured out as to why they were not followed up.
#2 takes us to the last episode where Baltar and 6 are walking the streets of 21st century Earth.

Questions
So, what was Baltar?
If 6 could connect with Baltar at any time, why didn't the Cylons always know where Galactica was? Remember how the Cylons always seemed to find Sharon and Agathon in the second season? And Sharon and Agathon never had the mind link.

I liked the religious/spiritual/mystical aspect of the show. It shows how cults can indeed form seemingly overnight. But the show did not explain the Cylon "One God" concept when flying in the face of the "Final Five" or even the original 12. That was a huge gap and I was disappointed.

What was the reason, the significance of chasing Galactica through space when human annihilation was the sole purpose of the Cylons? Why have a Cylon on Pegasus and allow the humans to live, let alone link up with Galactica? It seems to me that the Cylons herded the humans so it "can happen again", speaking of the "cycle". And when the humans looked like they were going to fail (last season), with the ship falling apart, the Cylons, well, some of them anyway, decided to help the Humans repair the ship and find Earth. The whole concept sounds like a Cylon self fulfilling prophecy that the humans never heard of. This brings me back to #4 above - Ragnar Station.
Why in the world put a Cylon on that station instead of blowing it up? It made no sense whatsoever. Why let Galactica run in the first place? Why not blow up the ammo dump so that no surviving Colonial warships could have ammo? And how in the world could 2 BaseStars not take out an aged Galactica? As intelligent and devious and thorough the Cylons were, why.....

In the OBSG, we saw our heroes make ports of call to outlying planets. Remember the episode when they find the planet who's human inhabitants made Ambrosia? I was disappointed that none of this was explored in the NBSG. Sure, how lucky they were to find a fuel mining ship amongst the civilian fleet. That took care of that problem. But food and water? And what about looking up all those outlying planets, grabbing all the people and necessities they would need?

As superb as NBSG was, there are quite a few chinks in the writing.

[joeactor]

As superb as NBSG was, there are quite a few chinks in the writing.

Yeppers, totally agree (good points all around).

And what ever happened to the "Michael" plot line? (if I remember the name right).
W'sup with Starbuck anyway?  Is she blessed? Half Cylon? Psychic?

Sometimes, a simple idea is better.
(but I still liked both shows overall)

[Tristan Jay]

The NBSG is a near complete rewrite of the old. Consider Baltar; Old Baltar was the nemesis whereas New Baltar was a used womanising genius; a clever plot devise to introduce the Cylons to the Colonies defense mainframes (and us). In the miniseries, four things were not explained or followed up on.
1) The human Cylon's spine glows in certain situations.
2) How Baltar and 6 can communicate when separated (this was never explained throughout the entire show).
3) What happened to Boxie?
4) Ragnar Station

There is no doubt that the writers were not always on top of their game.  I always found it compelling storytelling, when it was good and even when it was bad.

I got the impression that they changed their minds about certain things they established early on, and ended up trying to distracting the audience with other issues of interest (doesn't stop keen viewers from still keeping track of those questions of consistency, though).  The DVD/podcast commentaries provide just as compelling insight into the development of stories as the show itself, and although I haven't listened to more than a fraction of the commentaries (nearly every episode has commentary!) I seem to recall some of those questions come up.

Glowing Red Spines: as far as I can tell, the only situation that this phenomenon happens is when a Cylon is engaged in heightened intimate activity.  The production crew remembered to do it at one point during the Helo and Sharon stuck on Caprica storyline, but they did it out of obligation because it had been established in the miniseries, yet they felt that they didn't want to do it anymore once the series got going.  So they deemphasised/ignored it.

Boxie: They had an initial direction for him, and he appears in the first couple episodes of the regular series, but afterwards disappears.  I can't remember if they were obligated to include the character in the miniseries or wanted to include him on their own initiative; he was attached to Sharon and Tyrol to form a new family dynamic.  When they developed what happens with Sharon and Tyrol, there was an abundance of material that was cluttered by adding the family angle with Boxie; Sharon and Tyrol ended up having enough issues to deal with between just the two of them.  So Boxie was phased out.  Ron Moore commented in his darkly cynical, humorous way that he felt that Boxie ended up adrift on one of the civilian starships, ended up an "Oliver Twist"-type pick-pocket, and possibly was killed within the context of Black Market related violence.

Baltar and Six communication: I got the very strong impression after a while that the version of Six that appeared to Baltar in his head wasn't really connected to the original Six he is initially seen with.  I also got the strong impression that she wasn't even Cylon affiliated.  And I think Ron Moore and his fellow creative staff eventually were strongly of the opinion that she wasn't Six or a Cylon; whatever she was, she was something that was meant to be unknowable, a mystery that you would only get hints about, some of which could be misleading.  Early on, it could easily be interpreted that she encourages Baltar's assumption that she is connected to the Cylons in some way; but eventually she disabuses him of this notion at a time and in a way that suggests she wants to keep things interesting (or maybe it was the writers who decided to up the ante and keep things interesting).  Ron Moore made a comment that he wanted the interaction between Baltar and Six to be a definite relationship with it's own quirks and qualities.  The eventual reunion between Baltar and the real-life, resurrected Six felt like a different relationship to me, separate from the "head" character.

I can't really run through the rational with the Ragnar station situation.  I got the impression that the writers were preoccupied with telling stories that were as interesting as they could possibly imagine, but they didn't elaborate on background details so as to try and avoid some problems with logic (that are nevertheless there anyway).  They started out with this intriguing tagline "The Cylons have a Plan!" but Ron Moore has said that the writers themselves really didn't.  That tagline hooks the audience with a wonder about what's going on with the Cylons, and for the bulk of the first two seasons we only see them when they are in close proximity to humans.  The Cylons are shown as wanting to try a few things out, it's almost as if they become obsessed with experimenting with their interactions between humans and human environments, yet they're schizophrenic about when they are experimenting and when they decide "Ah heck, let's just attack 'em!"  There wasn't a "Plan" (capitalization emphasized) per se.  A TV movie later on made an effort to rationalize a lot of unexplained and seemingly disconnected events from the first two seasons into a connected framework under the motivation "We're still trying to commit genocide on Humanity" and also tries to set up the schizophrenic as the outcome of two nearly identical characters from the Cylon ranks going through parallel character journeys that lead to both of them to different conclusions.  Depending on who is watching, though, it may not necessarily work as a satisfying explanation. 

I've gone off on a tangent here, but I think I'm trying to explore the idea that the writers weren't too preoccupied with a level of logic beyond the needs of an immediate story, they were just following their instincts for what made a story interesting on the surface level; they made token effort to keep the background consistent by in part not delving too deeply into the background, leaving details for the audience to make their own inferences.  The backstory that did develop was in flux and unfolded only in service to the surface level story.  I figure this is why certain oddities emerge in the larger narrative context: the nature of the Cylon's Plan, the reveal of each 12 Cylon models, which leads to the curious "Final Five" phenomenon that started as a story-housekeeping detail that eventually took on a life of it's own and ended up steering the backstory details, Baltar's astounding careers changes, and so forth.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think the show's coherence breaks down at a certain level, and even the writers say that about it.  I think the writers did feel that audiences were welcome to fill in the blanks with their imagination; lots of fans love playing the game of "make the pieces fit the puzzle" for any fictional universe where they can pinpoint the logic problems.

I did it again.  Another wall of text.

[Gawen]

And what a very good, intelligent and well thought out "wall of text" it is! There are a great deal of podcasts and blog writes from the producers and such of this show, of which I saw or read none. But it doesn't do a show...even a really good show, any bit of good if one has to watch or read behind the scenes to have something explained that makes no sense in the original.

I think the Boxie thing was a hook, a simple (but weak) link to draw in viewers from the old show. The last time you see Boxie is lighting Starbucks stogie in the pilots ready room.

(I've been wanting to watch the show in its entirety again. I'm in the first season right after the "witch hunt")

I always found it compelling storytelling, when it was good and even when it was bad.

I agree. But it really wasn't all that "bad", in my opinion. Just somewhat incoherent at times.

I don't think I'll ever understand the Baltar/6 storyline. I consider it a fatal flaw of the entire series, but like you say, compelling. Odd isn't it? The last episode did nothing to explain it. The "The Plan" did nothing to explain it. But I watched the entire run anyway. This was the one show in decades that actually wanted to make me sit on front of the TV on a broadcast night and made me want to purchase the DVD's.

And what I liked about this show compared to Star Trek was the dirtiness and grittiness of it. The ship was lighted, but dark. There were boxes and crates stacked about the passageways. There was a real sense of impending doom or death in many episodes and no Ensign Expendables like in Star Trek. Sure, we all knew Adama and company would get out if a situation some way, but it wasn't always clean. And then, we start seeing prime characters getting killed. I mean, really....

One would never see Deanna Troi captured by the Cardasian's and working for the enemy. Riker with his eye plucked out, a boozer? Hardly. Want to see Doc Crusher smoke cigarettes, talk with a cigaretty-gruff voice and about as politically incorrect as one can be? Can you imagine Crusher telling the President of the Federation that she's going to smoke in sick bay AND in front of him?...*laffin*

I love BSG! And I think what makes it so damned compelling is the lack of cleanliness and sterility one sees in all the Star Treks.
It's as if..."OH! The Romulans are acting up in the Neutral Zone again. Have the maids clean all the passageways and double up on the hangar bay. Have all the scent emitters changed to Mountain Mist in case they need to come aboard. Data, Number One, meet me in the holodeck for a quick game of 1930's poker. And Riker, bring your trombone".

Of course, the premise of the two shows are different, yet the same. One explores the final frontier where there is no sense of imminent doom and help is right around the corner. The other frantically flees the enemy into the unknown frontier. The sameness is that both know if they are sectors away from help, the smallest mistake can cascade into catastrophe. The best part of BSG is knowing that the entire series was a slowly unfolding catastrophe waiting for the end...even if WE didn't want to see it happen.

[Gawen]

As superb as NBSG was, there are quite a few chinks in the writing.

Yeppers, totally agree (good points all around).

And what ever happened to the "Michael" plot line? (if I remember the name right).
W'sup with Starbuck anyway?  Is she blessed? Half Cylon? Psychic?

Sometimes, a simple idea is better.
(but I still liked both shows overall)

Honestly? I don't remember the "Michael" thing. The Starbuck thing...those that I know who watched the show have all come up with "She's a sleeper Angel" thing. It was the same for 6. Both had revelations.
What truly grinds my nuts is it was never explained if the gods or the "One true God", 6, Baltar, Starbuck and the 12 are connected in some way. I was eagerly anticipating the revelations we were promised in the last episode, but alas, they were not forthcoming. I thought the last episode, while exciting and on the edge of your seat kind of stuff, was a total let down.

To autopilot the fleet into the sun and start over with only the clothes on their backs was waaaay beyond my comprehension.

[joeactor]

To autopilot the fleet into the sun and start over with only the clothes on their backs was waaaay beyond my comprehension.

Yeah, and the fact they all agreed to toss the ships, whaaaaat?

Also, Adama wandering off into the wilderness to die or live as a hermit... something wrong with that.

... And John Cavil's suicide (apparently Dean Stockwell's idea) - just didn't fit the character at all.
He would have preferred to take out as many others as possible at the end, not just shrug and give up.

(BTW, did you know Fred Astaire appeared on the old series? I guess he was Starbuck's father!)

[Gawen]

What truly grinds my nuts is it was never explained if the gods or the "One true God", 6, Baltar, Starbuck and the 12 are connected in some way. I was eagerly anticipating the revelations we were promised in the last episode, but alas, they were not forthcoming.

A thought just occurred to me. In short, the gods, and/or the Cylon One True God never existed at all. Only the believers of these gods existed. Never mind that one believe in Aphrodite, Athena, or all gods or one god or none at all. What better way for an alien life form to ambush a person's critical thinking skills. Take for instance the episode where the fleet needs fuel. Baltar has to guess where the critical installation is for the Vipers to destroy. 6 doesn't let on. She can't let on because she doesn't know. If Baltar picks correctly, it was Gods will to destroy the Cylon installation. If Baltar picks wrong, it was God's will to let the Cylon installation survive. A win-win scenario either way for 6 and totally mindblows Baltar into their camp.

*thinkin*....yeah. It makes sense.

[Gawen]

To autopilot the fleet into the sun and start over with only the clothes on their backs was waaaay beyond my comprehension.

Yeah, and the fact they all agreed to toss the ships, whaaaaat?

Also, Adama wandering off into the wilderness to die or live as a hermit... something wrong with that.

... And John Cavil's suicide (apparently Dean Stockwell's idea) - just didn't fit the character at all.
He would have preferred to take out as many others as possible at the end, not just shrug and give up.

(BTW, did you know Fred Astaire appeared on the old series? I guess he was Starbuck's father!)

All you've said just leads me to think the producers were trying to wrap the show up as fast as they could. Did you feel the last couple episodes were just to rushed?

Ya know, as much bitching and whinging I've done on this thread, BSG is still the best programming I've seen in a very long time.

[joeactor]

All you've said just leads me to think the producers were trying to wrap the show up as fast as they could. Did you feel the last couple episodes were just to rushed?

Ya know, as much bitching and whinging I've done on this thread, BSG is still the best programming I've seen in a very long time.

Yes, and yes.  Seemed like a rushed ending, and it was a fantastic series.  I think folks really liked the show, hence the disappointment in the ending.  Still, you're right - one bad apple and such.  Would be cool if they made more television like BSG.