Tumbleweed on 29/3/2009 at 10:24
The lesbian bartenders at my local managed to convince Katee Sackoff to come to the bar last night, but I was otherwise engaged with smoking a joint with my sister so I missed it.
Aaargh.
I thought the end was totally rad. It occurred to me that the prophecies were just instructions on how to repeat the cycle, and they managed to avoid it. I totally teared up when Roslin died.
Also Cavil's death was perfect. He realised that the Cylon race was doomed so he chose to end it on his terms. He didn't want Ellen having a victory over him.
Fringe on 29/3/2009 at 15:47
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
But then, Mr. Moore doesn't much like to explain things. All the other wildly improbable events (including the parallel evolution bit at the end) he hand-waved with an almost literal "A wizard did it." BSG is supposed to be a faux-realistic science fiction show, not smegging Lord of the Rings.
This has been my frustration with the show. It's tense, often moving, and populated with well-acted characters that we care about a great deal--so on that score, it's successful television. Individual episodes rock. But the long-term plotting has just been so obviously made up on the spot (and holes filled in with direct writer-to-character exposition) that it derailed the show.
Despite the military SF trappings, it turned BSG into a fantasy. That by itself wouldn't necessarily be bad--though overdone ever since Star Wars--but even as a fantasy, it's incredibly simple. It's more of an Aesop's fable. It tries to explain a little bit about where we come from, and tacks an over-obvious moral onto the end: "Be nice to your Roomba... or it'll
killllllll you." And that's it. Everything the characters we loved went through, reduced to that.
Oh, and that God is a bit of a prick.
The Onion AV Club review had a killer closing line. After discussing all of the complex ideas and questions that the show has raised throughout it's run, and how they could tie into the finale, Chris Dahlen wrote:
Quote Posted by Chris Dahlen
But even though I can look back at the last four years and see all of that, I'm actually really scared that Ron Moore thinks his AIBO is out to fucking kill him.
I could go on with my other dumb questions (if there are miraculously already humans on this planet, why do they need the Colonials at all? Can't they develop cities and war and robots all on their own?), but I'm just tired, and I want to move on to other things. I'll still buy the season 4 soundtrack when it comes out, because Bear McCreary is fucking awesome, but otherwise that's it. I'm done. I have trouble imagining
Caprica will be a good series.
Banksie on 30/3/2009 at 01:24
Quote Posted by Mr. K.
As opposed to BSG's "God did it all", which is much more satisfying. :D
That is kinda my point. Both series had major plot point wrap-ups that left a lot to be desired. I am more of the opinion that both series are about equal in terms of wonderful things they accomplished and ways in which they fell short.
Quote:
Also, what's with the prophetic opera house dream which was suppoused to be a glimpse of super awesome stuff which in the end turns out to just be a metaphor of people walking down Galactica in an utterly pointless way, seeing that everyone lands on "earth" ten minutes later without problems and in friendly terms, thus making the whole scene trivial and vacuous? Man, THAT was a disappointment.
It is a side effect of the way the series has been made. Moore didn't have an overall plan and threw symbology out there that he often admits, listen to the BSG podcast, that he really doesn't know what it means. He is very into the intuitive and flexible story telling method. This gives him the freedom to roll with what the directors, actors and fellow writing staff come up with and I think is a large part of what allowed the characters to shine through because they had the freedom to evolve them in whatever direction they wanted. Contrast that with jms' method for B5 where he knew exactly where he needed to go and what he wanted to say. Problem was the characters often suffered for exigencies of the plot - look at Sinclair back in season one who was the fulcrum of so many earth shattering events like halting the battle of the line, becoming Valen and having been present with Garibaldi on Mars when a Shadow vessel is uncovered by the Psi Core and he originally was fated to be married to one of the explorers of Zha'ha'dum. Talk about press-ganged into plot service.
The downside of Moore's method of course is that signs and portents get thrown into the mix that then don't get explained satisfactorily. Like Hera's importance - she really wasn't all that important by the end of the series. Starbuck's status as "Harbinger of the Angel of Death" who was supposed to bring all the humans to their end. Now the finale argues that she brought them to their end destination so job done, but travel guide just doesn't quite seem to be what you expect from an agent of the angel of death....
And the less we speak of the series abandoning it's cherished fractured, flawed nature of humanity stance for a completely unanimous and somewhat nonsensical decision to abandon all technology - the better. Thats one where the plot won over characterisation in BSG in a bad way.
fett on 30/3/2009 at 02:55
Quote:
And the less we speak of the series abandoning it's cherished fractured, flawed nature of humanity stance for a completely unanimous and somewhat nonsensical decision to abandon all technology - the better. Thats one where the plot won over characterisation in BSG in a bad way.
I think you have to also consider where this idea came from. Apollo has grown increasingly despondent about techonology throughout the series, from Baltar's Cylon detector all the way down to leaving the military for politics. His goal in assisting Roslyn was to help humanity find it's way - he was truly idealistic by the end, so it made sense to me that he would look at the pattern of growth and destruction and decide the best thing would be to abandon it all. For the other main characters (Adama, Tigh, Starbuck, etc.), I can see where they would be so sick of living on a ship, fighting against and with machines, that they would want to abandon the whole shebang and "get back to nature" as it were. The question of politics, communities, democracies, etc. would be overwhelming considering the confusion, mutinies, and blurred lines between the military and government over the course of five years. I would definitely have been like Tyrell - get me the hell away from all this!
ZylonBane on 30/3/2009 at 03:22
Quote Posted by fett
I think you have to also consider where this idea came from.
Where the idea came from is beyond irrelevant.
fett on 30/3/2009 at 04:45
Hey ZB! Is this another one of those threads where you hate the subject matter, but post only to piss on the conversation? Don't let us down buddy! :thumb:
Banksie on 30/3/2009 at 04:50
Quote Posted by fett
I think you have to also consider where this idea came from. Apollo has grown increasingly despondent about techonology throughout the series, from Baltar's Cylon detector all the way down to leaving the military for politics. His goal in assisting Roslyn was to help humanity find it's way - he was truly idealistic by the end, so it made sense to me that he would look at the pattern of growth and destruction and decide the best thing would be to abandon it all.
I agree, it makes perfect sense as a character choice that Apollo would make. I just don't see it being a choice the entire fleet would embrace, especially when the series has been at pains to show our self-destructive nature where we will fight against something even when it is the entirely sensible thing to do - most recent example being the adoption of cylon jump technology throughout the fleet. I'd have been happy if the majority went along with it but a couple of ships decided to go their own path and jump away.
Quote:
For the other main characters (Adama, Tigh, Starbuck, etc.), I can see where they would be so sick of living on a ship, fighting against and with machines, that they would want to abandon the whole shebang and "get back to nature" as it were. The question of politics, communities, democracies, etc. would be overwhelming considering the confusion, mutinies, and blurred lines between the military and government over the course of five years. I would definitely have been like Tyrell - get me the hell away from all this!
It is a romantic view of the idea of noble savagery where you get back to living close to nature. What invariably gets forgotten is that a lot of things in nature finds humans remarkably tasty and that a low to no technology lifestyle requires a lot of hard work to make happen.
The stupid thing is, they are 150,000 years in our past. They could have landed the whole frakking fleet on the planet and it wouldn't matter. Pretty much any man made structure isn't going to survive that length of time and you can happily work in the myths of places like Atlantis or Lemuria to explain what happened to the culture they bequeathed to the future.
It is just a plot contrivance that undermines a central part of what series has been about to explain away a problem that not only doesn't need explaining but also could easily have been answered in better ways.
Mr. K. on 30/3/2009 at 10:32
Yep, and abandoning technology is real nice towards all the people with asthma, diabetes, prosthetic limbs, pacemakers and such. Not to mention you're doing it in an unknown planet where you don't know what's edible and what's poisonous, with a full troupe of city rats whose closest contact with nature survival would be TV shows, or whatever they had on Caprica.
Yes, it's pointless to argue about that, it just pisses me off that such a nice show gave so little consideration to things it should have.
I gotta say, I totally understand Cavil, with a couple of exceptions, humans in BSG don't deserve the air they breathe. His mistake was interfering in their unstoppable way to merry self destruction.
ZylonBane on 30/3/2009 at 12:22
Quote Posted by fett
Hey ZB! Is this another one of those threads where you hate the subject matter, but post only to piss on the conversation? Don't let us down buddy! :thumb:
You're repeating yourself. Don't get all pissy at me just because the BSG finale blew chunks.
fett on 30/3/2009 at 15:23
i no u are but wut am i
