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Ongoing Battlestar Galactica thread of doom.

HOLY CRAP, Boomer is a manipulative cunt. It's almost better that I came in on the back half of Season 2, because now that I'm watching the Season 1 eps, I'm totally understanding why Athena frags her. And here's the kicker: I *know* she's a toaster. They explain it in the miniseries. They explain it with the Helo/Caprica storyline. But something about the storytelling is so compelling that I'm like "who's setting poor Boomer up as a Cylon?"
 
I also get why by the end of the series they figure everything is a Cylon trick where they've manipulated a human into doing something because that's kind of their thing.
 
Volpone said:
HOLY CRAP, Boomer is a manipulative cunt. It's almost better that I came in on the back half of Season 2, because now that I'm watching the Season 1 eps, I'm totally understanding why Athena frags her. And here's the kicker: I *know* she's a toaster. They explain it in the miniseries. They explain it with the Helo/Caprica storyline. But something about the storytelling is so compelling that I'm like "who's setting poor Boomer up as a Cylon?"
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Protip, it was Cavil. Dean Stockwell is great in the show as well.
 
2 more tidbits about how they got so much more out of their budget than the Trek shows did: Someone gets injured in an episode, he's still injured in the next episode. The scabs are less pronounced, but a character can be beat up for weeks on the show. And they actually took the time to make the idea that they were on a big ship believable.

TOS did it a bit with the whining/roaring noise the ship made as it went to higher warp speeds and the short clips of chatter on the radio when there would be a damage report, but one of my gripes with ENT was that flying NX-01 was just as simple and boring as flying Voyager. All they did was cross out "shields" and scribble in "hull polarization." In Galactica they do little things like have electronic distortion on radio transmissions and CO and XO ordering things and then people doing them and getting feedback that they report back. No Data looking at an Okudagram and saying "shields down to 74%."
 
And of course the most obvious: Once Baltar realizes Boomer is a Cylon, why doesn't he do the immediate "you're the humaniest human ever " stall and then run to Adama and tip him off? Kind of like "Lord of the Rings," where time is of essence and, with the Ringwraiths devastated and winter fast approaching, they fuck off for 2 months in Rivendell while everyone fucks around. Why not Gandalf ending with "I was rescued from Saruman by eagles" didn't someone say "Hey, why not give the Ring to an eagle, have the fucker fly off and drop it into Mt. Doom?" Especially given that the eagles play into the finale. But that would derail the story.

This is the thing about the whole "God did it" and the episode where Head Six(?) tries to frame Baltar for treason: Ghost stories. Jason. Freddie. We give the incredibility a pass in order to enjoy the story. "Got did it" is a literal deus ex machina the writers use to keep the story moving. And anyone who argues it was a cop-out in S4 forgets they were using it as a key story point early in S1.
 
Volpone said:
And of course the most obvious: Once Baltar realizes Boomer is a Cylon, why doesn't he do the immediate "you're the humaniest human ever " stall and then run to Adama and tip him off? Kind of like "Lord of the Rings," where time is of essence and, with the Ringwraiths devastated and winter fast approaching, they fuck off for 2 months in Rivendell while everyone fucks around. Why not Gandalf ending with "I was rescued from Saruman by eagles" didn't someone say "Hey, why not give the Ring to an eagle, have the fucker fly off and drop it into Mt. Doom?" Especially given that the eagles play into the finale. But that would derail the story.

This is the thing about the whole "God did it" and the episode where Head Six(?) tries to frame Baltar for treason: Ghost stories. Jason. Freddie. We give the incredibility a pass in order to enjoy the story. "Got did it" is a literal deus ex machina the writers use to keep the story moving. And anyone who argues it was a cop-out in S4 forgets they were using it as a key story point early in S1.
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Yeah, they did forget about that. I never quite got all the hatred for s4 (and there was a lot of it at the time, especially around the ending) when it was all right there the whole time. I'm not religious at all, but it was an interesting storytelling device I thought.
 
Really, it is just a storytelling device. Like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Or Neo in the Matrix. Whether it is ghosts or destiny or whatever, lots of engaging stories use a literal deus ex machina device.
 
Glad you're enjoying it. At some point you should seek out the extended versions of episodes. Cut for time in original broadcast. Think they're mostly only available on the box sets, or via torrents.
 
"Good artists copy. *Great* artists *steal*." Picasso. Colonial Day. Roslin: "Don't worry, I shan't kiss you." Zarak: "Pity, I shave especially close on anticipation of getting smacked by you" is lifted straight from "Patton," where Patton beats Montgomery to Messina.

What else? Comedy in otherwise dark moments. The Tighs and everyone else fighting in Baltar's lab and Baltar points how dangerous it is--there's literally a nuclear bomb there.

There were other things but that will have to do for no--OOH! The early episodes nicely capture how it is the end of mankind. Billy's outfits are always whatever he had on and/or could scrounge. Col. Tigh is about out of whisky. In later episodes everyone has fancy tailored suits and chain-smokes cigarettes while swilling whisky--although the finale has Starbuck offering up the last tube of toothpaste. In the end, one must take license to make the story work. As long as the story actually works.

I still want Arthur Dent, with his bathrobe and a rabbit bone in his beard, to accost Lee Adama for flying the ships into the sun, though.
 
At this point I'm basically chucking Comet for Peacock. I work Mondays and Fridays when the show is on. And I got roped into a stupid and useless teleconference Thursday that made me miss it. Also, they apparently don't have "Razor" in the rotation. The good news is, Monday is Labor Day, so I get to watch on Monday...when Comet has decided to instead run a Godzilla marathon. Oh, and at this point I'm close enough to having finally caught the entire series that I don't want to fuck around. Now I just wish I could figure out why the sound is so low on Peacock.

On an unrelated note, it finally dawned on me that the bathrooms are unisex.

Just like on "Ally McBeal."
 
Volpone said:
At this point I'm basically chucking Comet for Peacock. I work Mondays and Fridays when the show is on. And I got roped into a stupid and useless teleconference Thursday that made me miss it. Also, they apparently don't have "Razor" in the rotation. The good news is, Monday is Labor Day, so I get to watch on Monday...when Comet has decided to instead run a Godzilla marathon. Oh, and at this point I'm close enough to having finally caught the entire series that I don't want to fuck around. Now I just wish I could figure out why the sound is so low on Peacock.

On an unrelated note, it finally dawned on me that the bathrooms are unisex.

Just like on "Ally McBeal."
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All bathrooms become unisex at concerts. All the concerts I went to, the ladies didn't want to wait the long lines for their bathroom so they used ours. But if men try to use the ladies room, they're rapists and perverts.
 
"Good artists copy, *great* artists *steal*."
-Picasso.

Just gotta mention because I finished "Fragged," and loved the Chief's Tom Hanks "Saving Private Ryan" moment. Or a few episodes earlier in "Colonial Day," Roslin and Zarak: "Don't worry, I shan't kiss you." "Pity, I shaved especially close on anticipation of getting smacked by you." That's lifted straight from "Patton," when Patton beats Montgomery to Messina.
 
And humor! Things are dark. The Tighs and Adamas are about to come to blows and Baltar points out how dangerous a lab is "there's a literal nuclear bomb here." Or the whole Mexican standoff when Anders and the Seabucks meet Starbuck and Helo.
 
The show is quite dark, as it should be. Still plenty of humor, though. I did not think Comet had "Razor" either, or at least I never saw it there. Peacock seems to have it at the tail end of s3. Of course I'm sort of a purist now and I have extended versions where available, and I think they're mostly better. Extended Pegasus, extended Razor, extended Unfinished Business, several in the final season and s3.
 
The Braveheart music when someone is doing soul-searching and decides to do the right thing with a series of wet-eyed close-ups is especially powerful.
 
Of course when they were infiltrating the ship nothing short of an exploding bullet EXACTLY in the head could stop a Cylon centurion. But by 3 episodes later they can be pretty easily killed with a simple pistol without even running out of ammo. It is what it is. Like D&D. The DM realizes he way overpowered the Big Bad. He can fix it by just undoing it or cobble together some magic weapons to give to all the PCs.
 
Why don't centurions talk? Seems problematic. All they do is stand around sullenly with their Pong machine toaster heads, maybe flipping out their claws or flipping out their hand guns and flipping out and murdering everyone. Seems like the occasional "by your command" would make them a lot more useful to the skinjobs.
 
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