Battlestar Galactica (Reimagined)

So I've really got into the reimagined series lately. I like the way all of the different characters and plots interact, and the mystery of the identity of the 12 Cylons is compelling. I'm up to "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part I" at this point.

Have fun with it! I watched for the first time last year, and loved the first 3 seasons, which was some of the most realistic sci-fi I'd seen or read in a long time. (Realistic in the sense of examining characters, tying together cause and effect, generally not having things cleared up by technobabble, etc.)

The last season, despite frequently ticking me off with its themes and sense of a Writer on Board, was still good and certainly had its moments.

Kindly elaborate, with spoiler protection.

I started getting ticked off with the show around Lay Down All Your Burdens, where I felt like it started buying its own shit. Basically mirroring the path of Gaius Baltar. The less bullshit he believes he's talking, the more I was calling it on the show.

The ending of the second series really doesn't make sense. So they live on New Caprica for a whole year before the Cylons bother to come and invade? Why would everyone rather live in tents than nice clean spaceships?

Several reasons:

i) Not everyone moved down. ii) People moved down, it's implied, out of ennui and exhaustion. Those ships could be nice in places, but most of the civilian fleet is implied to be cramped and nasty, particularly after the destruction of Cloud Nine. iii) That New Caprica is a bit of a shit hole comes down to the fact that New Caprica is a bit shit, as is its government, and a great deal of its people are suffering post-trauma issues.

And spoilers:

And the Cylons spent most of that time engaged in philosophical debate over how to treat the humans. Boomer and Caprica Six led something of an ideological revolution, which was then capitalised upon and adulterated by the Threes and Ones to result in what we see in Season Three.

I got a little down watching s.3 onward. I felt that there were no rules to this story once Angels and ghosts got involved. It's more like an ancient myth where the ending is never really in doubt.

I made it through season three, but I still haven't bothered with season 4. It got to the point where all of the characters were so unsympathetic that I just didn't care about them any more, and didn't care if they ever found Earth.

Watching Baltar have a sex dream about Head!Six while being tortured seriously made me question what in the world I was watching anyway. I think that was fairly early in season three, so that probably started to really put me off the show.

edited 9th Aug '12 11:13:02 AM by andersonh1

Angels and ghosts were always involved. The whole series involves religion (like the polytheistic religion of the Colonials and the one god of the Cylons), and Head!Six is an angel or something.

Yeah, the religious themes were there all along, but they became really blatant whenStarbuck came back from the dead, Head!Six could have been something else at first, but after a while it was pretty obvious.

Galactica's intra-atmosphere jump was the Crowning Moment Of Awesome for the entire series to me. And every line that Edward James Olmos delivers when motivating his crew is excellent.

I was pulling for Baltar (Christ) to be executed by Roslin (Pontius Polate) by the end. His redemption arc was touching and funny.

Now that I think about it, it wasn't the angels that turned me off the show after all. I mean, sure, it was kind of annoying that the Cylon-as-Taliban stuff was just dropped, but I liked seeing the origins of "Christianity" in Baltar's fruity cult.

What annoyed me was the Cylons. In the beginning, the story riffed a bit on Dune with the Fremen/Cylons having been persecuted for so long that nothing short of a jihad would appease them. Then it started to get foggy as it turned out the Cylons invented themselves, or maybe they didn't. They all blindly follow Number One — despite him being open in his atheism — who went crazy because he hates being made of flesh. I really don't have a clue. I mean, it's not the humans fault that he's a skinjob!

edited 9th Aug '12 5:55:39 PM by johnnyfog

Well, the original series was apparently a loose adaptation of the Book of Mormon, so....

Yeah, his motivations were kind of confusing. I think it was mostly just to spite the Final Five, since they created the advanced Cylons and wanted to live in peace with humanity.

On that note, even though I recognized the religious tones from the beginning and had no problems with it, I was still disappointed, since the ruins on Kobal and the repetition of the phrase "All of this has happened before and all of this has happened again" had led me to believe in a very different explanation than what actually happened: My theory was that humans and cylons were actually the same thing, and there was a cycle of humanity creating robots, who eventually became more and more complex to the point that they were organic, and then those new robots wiped out their masters and eventually forgot their origins and came to believe themselves as human. The lords of Kobal were merely the previous "humans" in the cycle, the people of the colonies were once cylons, the 13th colony on Earth didn't forget their roots, which is why they retained Resurrection tech, Kara came back to life because she rediscovered Resurrection tech, etc. I was kinda disappointed when that didn't happen, because it felt like the entire story was leading up to a reveal like that.

I would have liked your version a lot, honestly.

Me too. Kara seemed like a shoe-in for the Fifth, didn't she?

But the viewers would have seen that coming. Ooh, can't have that.

But anyway: the stuff with the Five worked fairly well, but why bring back Ellen of all people.

Because they liked the actress? (And presumably wanted to give Saul more to do in the show — the original plan was to have her usurp Cavil as lead villain, which would perhaps have worked better. So while the military were dealing with her and the Cylons, Baltar would have been facing off with Tory and his followers amongst the civilian fleet, or something. I kind of like that version more).

I've always liked her too, so it worked for me.

... I have to admit, that version would have been very good indeed. Though, despite its many flaws, especially at the end, BSG remains perhaps my favourite sci-fi show - at least in the "adult, complex" category.

Agreed. BSG is what pulled me back to American TV after Darker Than Black and Noein and a couple other series.

I'm not entirely sure about my feelings on the show as a whole. However, I did enjoy the part where my agent called me and asked "Do you want to be on Battlestar?" A cropped screencap of my episode is on my troper page.

Is appropriate here? I don't think we have a "smug" emoticon.

I miss the theme to the original battlestar Galactica

Tell me that wasn't a cool theme.

I think they actually used that in D'Anna's documentary in Final Cut.

That's what I meant. The anthem appears at the end of the documentary in Final Cut.

edited 28th Sep '12 2:07:49 PM by JimmyTMalice

It got used in the reimagined series as well...

I thought the recycling of the classic theme was patronizing. It was patronizing when the janitor whistled it, it was patronizing when when Anders flew into the sun.

I mean, I'm a fan of both series, but c'mon. One of these shows is Battlestar in name only.

Ronald Moore confessed he completely forgot about "By your command" until a friend badgered him into slipping it in.

I used to love this series until its writing got completely out of control and it was clear that the arcs were being made up on the spot. Daybreak, Part II still causes me to fly into a frothing rage over its turd of an ending.

Blame Bear McCreary for that, not Ron Moore (the rest of the production team had very little to do with the soundtrack, I believe). Though I personally feel like the soundtrack is the only salvageable thing from the last few seasons.

This isn't quite true. From listening to Ron Moore's podcasts, he's very clear that the Ellen reveal was planned in some capacity from very early on, only the writers weren't sure how heavily they were going to commit to it and so left it open. I think you can pretty much tell when they made the decision about [[spoiler: Galen] as well, though I doubt they were as ready to commit on other issues.

They'd also have the season's planned from the first episode of that season, though they allowed themselves a certain degree of flexibility should they decide to change their minds later on — early versions of Season Four Part 2 had two mutinies, the second involving Baltar's Cult after they'd become co-opted by Ellen and various other changes that never ended up making the cut. Same with the "dying leader" deal which they changed very early in Season 4, out of restraint. They felt Roslin/Adama would be suffering enough. Though that particular element was still up in the air up to the end of Someone To Look Over Me.

That said the stuff with Starbuck was always very, very silly and extra inexplicable, the Opera House unspectacular, and Tory clearly suffered from a sudden derail 1/3 of the way into the final season. (Shame, when she was turning into particularly spectacular psychopath in the early going). But the Six stuff? She flat out states what's going on half way through the second season, and a lot of people inexplicably forgot.

I think being planned by flexible is by far the best approach to this kind of long-term plotting. It's just a shame that they over-cooked the goose.

edited 29th Sep '12 9:32:57 AM by Nicknacks

I haven't even seen the fourth season yet, and it's obvious that Ellen is a Cylon from her very first appearance. Especially the way Baltar says "I'll never tell" at the end of the episode.

Tyrol is also foreshadowed, in 'Lay Down Your Burdens' when he thinks he might be a Cylon, and in the episode where he's compelled to walk into the Temple of the Five.

edited 30th Sep '12 5:24:56 AM by JimmyTMalice

...god, though I hate what this show became, this is still one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard in a television programme.