Battlestar Galactica Ends Next Season

[Spertallica]

The Cylons *aren't* just "genocidal machines" anymore. Caprica six and Athena have shown us that the humanoid Cylons are so similar to humans that they have the same broad emotional spectrum that humans do. Obviously the war with humanity didn't turn out as simple as they initially thought it would be.

Besides I always figured they were heading to Earth not so they could interbreed, but so they could cleanse the Earth of humanity and live there themselves... kind of the final victory over the human race, knowing that there are no more humans left in the universe.

Then why do they bother with the whole interbreeding program, or having that one male cylon come on to Starbuck like 453 times in season 3? (and getting killed almost every time for his efforts!) Or the prison camp? Or keeping Baltar alive? I'd like to think there is a schism between the cold, rational, machine cylon mind and the unpredictable, emotional biological cylon mind... it's the only thing that could explain half the senselessness of the second half of the series.

 

[LeHah]

Caprica six and Athena have shown us that the humanoid Cylons are so similar to humans that they have the same broad emotional spectrum that humans do.

"Broad" would be the best way to describe the writing, as the show paints all its characters in broad, comic strokes. Everyone is generic, everyone is stereotypical. Its like watching cardboard cutouts discuss grass growing.

To coin a quote by Alan Moore, having a bad leg isn't a character trait - nor is being a cigar smoking female pilot or an alcoholic leader. These are things that are suppose to support good characters, not define them. What BSG has deligated the sci-fi entertainment world down to is a bunch of do-nothings that no one with a functioning synapse would give two shits, a fuck or a goddamned about if they were in the real world. No character has levity, no character has defining traits or talents beyond those that serve the plot.

The same goes for the vauge idiot morality or pesudo-religion ideas that they try to make as subversive but instead come off as an albatross around the neck of the writer. I believe it was LOAF who said that "If you need to listen to the commentary track to understand the show you're watching, the writers are not doing their jobs."

Truer words.

Obviously the war with humanity didn't turn out as simple as they initially thought it would be.

In all honesty, the only way BSG could turn out well is if the last episode ends with Anne "Sheba" Lockhart waking up and finding Patrick Duffy in her shower.

 

[Shaggy]

I'm kind of sad to see it go. The first season kind of irked me more often than not, though there were some genuine diamonds in the rough that hooked me. The second season really got me going for the rest and the early part of 3 got my hopes up, only to fall off in the second half.

The rescue from New Caprica was probably the most expensive thing they have ever done, maybe only being surpassed by the miniseries, but it was laso the most enjoyable. They had nice easy build up, explaining events and motivations, the character develop worked and the differential between insurgent mentalities and the fleet mentalities were well illustrated, and then it paid off in a massive battle that was probably the best TV battle sequence since DS9 Dominion War arcs. The only thing that annoyed me was how quickly Boomer turned "evil" between season 2 and 3 with not much of an explanation.

If Season 4 is the end of the series I hope they set it up to where the fleet battles its way to Earth and finds it at the end of the season. Because if they get to Earth midseason it raises a bunch of questions that they won't have time to fully answer but if they get there at the end it leaves a bit of a question mark but also leaves the possibility of a proper motion picture franchise open.

 

[Spertallica]

Eh, I wouldn't be so passionate on the subject if I didn't think the series started off great but then progressively went down the sewer- 33 was freakin great, as was the whole dilemma of what do you do with a ship full of convicts- and the initial idea that there were scattered pockets of human resistance left was cool too (enter Pegasus and the Caprica resistance)- even the religious junk wasn't so bad when taken in the context of "wow, here's a civilian leader that borders on madwoman trying to lead her people down the road to destruction based upon drug induced religious hallucinations." It's a good parallel to leaders throughout history that were crazy- but I'm totally with Quarto on the "roflbbq democracy in a military convoy" issue- when your entire species is reduced to a convoy that is basically constantly under attack, martial law doesn't just seem appropriate- it's necessary for survival.

The problem is that the writers chose to shift focus from survival in the war against the Cylons to overdo the cheesy philosophical discussion on where humanity begins and machination ends- turning the Cylons into sex-hungry soap opera charicatures that act inconsistent with earlier BSG episodes and creating "forced" ethical conflicts in the Galatica convoy as the plot vehicles for the show.

 

[AD]

Eh, I wouldn't be so passionate on the subject if I didn't think the series started off great but then progressively went down the sewer- 33 was freakin great, as was the whole dilemma of what do you do with a ship full of convicts- and the initial idea that there were scattered pockets of human resistance left was cool too (enter Pegasus and the Caprica resistance)- even the religious junk wasn't so bad when taken in the context of "wow, here's a civilian leader that borders on madwoman trying to lead her people down the road to destruction based upon drug induced religious hallucinations." It's a good parallel to leaders throughout history that were crazy- but I'm totally with Quarto on the "roflbbq democracy in a military convoy" issue- when your entire species is reduced to a convoy that is basically constantly under attack, martial law doesn't just seem appropriate- it's necessary for survival.

The problem is that the writers chose to shift focus from survival in the war against the Cylons to overdo the cheesy philosophical discussion on where humanity begins and machination ends- turning the Cylons into sex-hungry soap opera charicatures that act inconsistent with earlier BSG episodes and creating "forced" ethical conflicts in the Galatica convoy as the plot vehicles for the show.

This reminds me of another thing that irks me... They have roughly 40 to 50 thousand humans, and thats it. I live in a community roughly that size, and the BSG makers keep treating them like a community of one million. They have the whole freaking dynamic wrong.. Stuff like their whole press corp is retarded. The total amount of educated reporters in any scene should be a fraction of what we see... And it gets worse from there. The writers aren't actually thinking of what would be a true crisis in a group that size but rather write in crap just to serve each epidode, and especially in the more political episodes it gets very annoying.

 

[Edfilho]

The weird thing is that the books from the original series are actually a lot less silly than the series itself. There were some pretty gruesome ones. Like the book where they send the convicts in a nearly suicidal mission on a frozen planet.

In the books we actually had a glimpse into the whole Cylon military, and there were some pretty interesting antagonists.