Battlestar Galactica, anyone?

[Bandit LOAF]

But... I only discussed that one specific point you made. I never even touched the specific stuff LeHah was talking about - and not because I was trying to ignore him, but because I had nothing to disagree with there. Heck, even if I had for some reason been ignoring LeHah on purpose, though I certainly wasn't... it boggles me that anybody could possibly come to the conclusion that not talking to somebody could be interpreted as trying to pick a fight with him. Nor did I interrupt anything - how could my post addressed to you ever affect LeHah's own ongoing conversation? Many, many threads involve multiple conversations that have no bearing on each other...

I'm pretty incidental to the whole thing - I wasn't the one who brought up the ethnic music and I didn't make any original point. I just agreed with LeHah, which seems for all the world to have horrified you.

Please don't misinterpret what I say just to make me out into some egotistical maniac . I said it can't possibly be as jarring as you make it out to be. I'm not a completely perfect critic, and I certainly don't think my point of view is more valuable than yours or LeHah's or anybody else's - but if I watched a show, and I didn't even notice at all something that you seemed to imply was some huge hole in the show's logic... then I can only conclude it can't have been as huge as you claim. Not because my particular failure to notice is somehow hugely important, but because if it was a problem as big as you seemed to suggest, then everyone would have noticed.

Then I'll just go right out and say it: you're completely wrong. If you saw the episode in question and didn't notice the music then you *are* a bad critic. Whether you agreed with my argument or not, there's no reason in the world that you *wouldn't notice* it. It's beyond belief, it seems like you're protesting too much. The show goes to slow motion and the music completely changes while a whole song plays. It's the emotional focal point of an episode. If you didn't notice it then there's a flaw in how you're watching the show, since making you take note *was* the point of the sequence regardless of whether you liked it or didn't like it (and the Battlestar Galactica production people are *not* subtle geniuses).

(Similarly, other 'Earth' music bits discussed above are placed in a glaring manner. Bob Dylan showing up in space isn't even only the score... it's literally something you watch the characters react to and which causes the season finale.)

No... what I was getting at is that you appear to be suggesting that the Irish music is especially terrible because of the hundreds of other flaws that add up to make BSG an irritating show. In other words, that the Irish music wouldn't bother you as much if it was in an otherwise good show, but because it was in BSG on top of all those other things, then somehow it becomes excruciatingly painful.

Then you're missing the rest of the thread out of some need to attack me - I was explaining my problem with the specific music issue which was already being discussed. I do think it's a good example of where the show cuts corners and how it gets away with some pretty crummy stuff... but I wasn't the one who brought up the topic.

If there were a thread about the music in Prophecy and someone complained about the 'sim music then I would have no problem agreeing with them for similar reasons - even though it doesn't ruin or even really effect the whole of the game. The topic at hand was addressed, I'm not sure why you've decided to be crazy about it.

I certainly can know, based on previous threads discussing this subject. This isn't the first time you're complaining about BSG's music, you know .

Yes, we talked about it once before - and people then knew what was being discussed. Your claim doesn't even approach reasonable. You keep layering this in terrible ways - you've apparently remembered *what* is being discussed for years but also you've specifically never even heard of such a thing and are horrified that I'd be allowed to talk about it? Ugh.

 

[Bob McDob]

Everyone else discussing the topic right know has made reference to the sequence - LeHah, Bob, Toast, myself...

I need to call 'out' on this point. I have little to nothing to say on Battlestar Galactica's music. Everything I have to say was said in the original post in this thread, where I noted my thoughts on the music in the miniseries; the implication (though apparently I didn't make it clear) was that I have watched only the miniseries, and have no knowledge or right to judge the series itself. Which is more or less true; I have seen the pilot precisely once, and although I watched the first regular (two?) episodes, I have never seen any others. My first (and only) impression of the music has been "hey, that's kind of neat, I wish they'd use something other than drums though". (Even that's not completely true; I've heard bits and pieces of the score since then, but as that's been outside the context of the show, I can't consider it in relation to the show itself.)

The point I took issue with was the implication that one sort of music was intrinsically better suited in relation to *space war*. Again, I have to say that the point strikes me as absurd - we don't have any experience in fighting in space, so who's to say that there *wouldn't* possibly be a context where that makes sense? My (admittedly provocative - isn't that the point of debate?) rebuttal to LeHah was that it didn't have any more worth on its own than did the Wagner-inspired Romantic scores that have since dominated sci-fi (and cinematic scores in general) for the past thirty years regardless of type, to which he used my reference to Wagner to tie "space war" to "space opera."

If you want me to argue the niceties of that point later, I will - but my point here is that my argument was not really about Battlestar Galactica in general (though in my defense, we've derailed our own share of threads in our time, haven't we?) or about Irish music in particular. I don't even have any memory of Irish music in the episodes I watched. My memory of the music in the miniseries is that of being 'tribal', which without the benefit of memory I conceded could have been Celtic.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

That's an awful lot of words for telling people you were intentionally misleading them before.

 

[Bob McDob]

That's an awful lot of words for telling people you were intentionally misleading them before.

My assumption was that the purely 'Battlestar Galactica' part of the thread was more or less concluded, that everyone realized that, and that this was a chance to take the thread on a more interesting tangent towards musical styles. Obviously these were all mistakes.

I wasn't intending to mislead anyone - but, looking closer at where the thread was and where it went, the imprecise manner in which I started things off, and the fact that I was apparently arguing against a point that nobody was standing for, I'll plead guilty to misleading them.

 

[Tigerhawk]

Just played the demo of Sierra's Battlestar Galactica game, and what can I say: It felt like Arena on a diet. (And if anyone thought Arena's demo was meager, he should try the BSG demo. By the way, I couldn't stand that cutscene anymore after having to watch it the fourth time without being able to skip it. Arrrgh!):

Hmm...then I guess I'll probably end up skipping shelling out $20 for the PC version of the game. I only just saw it on the shelves last week, so it's not that big of a deal.

As for the "warring" on the rest of the thread, as it were...I'll only put in my own perspectives. (I apologize in advance if some seem loopy, as it's 12:30AM here as I start writing this)

I've seen all of the eps so far, and there are times where I go Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot (i.e., most of the third season), and I really think that some of their stronger episodes comes in on character conflict (self and others in-house), along with, obviously, Cylon conflict (spaceborne, and not necessarily against the human variety all the time)...this kind of drama seems inherent in most shows, and when they start going off on tangents that make you wonder just where in the hell they're going with anything at all is when you start wondering about why you're watching the show in the first place. This is what happened for me during most of season three, and where I thought that things were going to start upwards with the storming of New Caprica, I was disappointed, as it went right back down the tubes, and the end of season three was BeenThere/DoneThat territory. StupidWeird. In the end, for me, most of the first season and about half of the second was good. The rest made me contort my face in that "WTF" kind of way.

As for the music, save for a dance during season three and the end of a battle during season one (which, from my perspective, has historical overtones in old Celtic traditions), the Celtic tunes seem largely confined to scenes connecting Bill and Lee Adama, either loosely or face to face. But any way it goes, given creative freedom, with a name like McCreary for your composer, is it really a surprise that Celtic music shows up here and there?

Just from my perspective, I think they're just trying to cut from the mainstream of shows in more ways that one, for better or worse. Granted, a lot of the episodes are wayward, especially after the most recent season. Overall, though, I like it...yeah, so I'm in the minority here, and I'll take my lumps for it...that's fine.

Either way, just thought I'd add in my two tarnished cents.

 

[LeHah]

the Celtic tunes seem largely confined to scenes connecting Bill and Lee Adama

Because that is SUCH an Irish name

a name like McCreary for your composer, is it really a surprise that Celtic music shows up here and there?

Ancestory has absolutely nothing to do with what a composer is assigned to do on a project. He was asked to put in music there and what kind, otherwise he wouldn't be employed. Similarly, two of the best examples of celtic music in film were writte by Jews (Bernstein and Goldenthal, respectively), so there is no creedence to heritage having anything to do with it.

 

[Tigerhawk]

Because that is SUCH an Irish name

Yeah, well...

Ancestory has absolutely nothing to do with what a composer is assigned to do on a project. He was asked to put in music there and what kind, otherwise he wouldn't be employed. Similarly, two of the best examples of celtic music in film were writte by Jews (Bernstein and Goldenthal, respectively), so there is no creedence to heritage having anything to do with it.

*shrugs* That's just my take on it, and I take it that he's got freedom to compose as he feels a scene moves along. I own the soundtracks, and by reading what he's written in the CD covers, his freedom seems a lot more likely than not...I certainly don't know that he has absolute creative power over everything musicwise, but I think Eick and Moore have given him a lot of latitude in any case.