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Ongoing Battlestar Galactica thread of doom.

Second half isn't nearly as strong as the first half. It has moments. Apollo and Roslin's decision to abandon the non-FTL ships (although the Valley Forge/botany ship shows up for the series, but I digress), the big "SO SAY WE ALL!" speech...

Which does bring me to an important point: How much of a showman a leader has to be. And sometimes the leader has to act like he knows what he's doing even though he's just as much in the dark as everyone else. It's a difficult concept--that people would trust you more if you lied to them than if you told them the truth--but I believe it is valid. The trick is to only use it for good.
 
It just occured to me. You know who Kandyse McClure reminds me of?

Maren Jensen.

2338e8190e856a144a9b8b0be954f612.jpg
 
Realizing I'm about to the point with Galactica that I am with Stargate: SG-1.

I mean, the 2 shows don't compare. Production-wise, SG-1 feels very much like a cable TV show. While BSG milks its budget almost to film levels. Still, I'm in the same place. I want the amazing payoff episodes. The Anubis arc. Starbuck, finding her body on Earth. But I don't want to wade through the clunky Season 1 eps where we come to trust Tea'lc. Or distrust Boomer.

Ah well, it is what it is.
 
I got a wild hair up my ass a few days ago, mainly due to this thread, and broke my wife's DVDs out to watch the show. When it first came on, I watched... maybe, to the escape from New Caprica, and then fell out with it.

Now, on re-viewing, I think it holds up pretty well and certainly took character conflict to a new level for that time, IMO. I'm not through with season one yet, but we'll see how it goes.
 
A couple quick thoughts: Nope. Can't remember the other one right now. But they don't treat you stupid. They don't lay it all down for you. Specifically the scene with Angel Starbuck and her Angel Piano Man Dad. Everyone that writes about it points out that Piano Man is her Dad. But they never really nail that down the way a mainstream series would. I mean, you see the flashback scenes of Kid Starbuck, interacting with Dad exactly the way Adult Starbuck does with Pianoman. And you see Katee Sackhoff's expressions to convey the realization that Angel Piano Man is her Angel Dad. But you don't get the scene of Kid Starbuck looking up and the reverse shot, showing Piano Man is--no shit--Starbuck's deadbeat dad.

Whoops! Remembered the other thing. When Enterprise was coming out, I shouted from the rooftops that they had to make the battle sequences more "real." You know; how in TOS, when the ship got shot up, Uhura fed in comm chatter from damage reports. I felt a prequel series needed that kind of feel that the stakes were higher than "shields [hull plating] is down to 54%." Of course People told me you couldn't do that because...Reasons.

But every time someone picks up a surplus TA-1 and barks into it "ACTION STATIONS. SET CONDITION 1 THROUGHOUT THE SHIP..." It confirms the BS that you can't create a feeling of excitement and suspense beyond the Star Trek TNG and beyond formula of "put them onscreen; shields down to 45%; fire photon torpedos, pattern Epsilon Picard Buttfuck Mark III. Engage."
 
What gets me is the thing is 17 years old now and the effects still hold up today. The only parts that make me cringe a little effects wise are the early Centurion scenes, but nobody had really figured out to do those sort of humanoidal animation effects yet. It gets better as the show progresses.
 
Volpone said:
A couple quick thoughts: Nope. Can't remember the other one right now. But they don't treat you stupid. They don't lay it all down for you. Specifically the scene with Angel Starbuck and her Angel Piano Man Dad. Everyone that writes about it points out that Piano Man is her Dad. But they never really nail that down the way a mainstream series would. I mean, you see the flashback scenes of Kid Starbuck, interacting with Dad exactly the way Adult Starbuck does with Pianoman. And you see Katee Sackhoff's expressions to convey the realization that Angel Piano Man is her Angel Dad. But you don't get the scene of Kid Starbuck looking up and the reverse shot, showing Piano Man is--no shit--Starbuck's deadbeat dad.

Whoops! Remembered the other thing. When Enterprise was coming out, I shouted from the rooftops that they had to make the battle sequences more "real." You know; how in TOS, when the ship got shot up, Uhura fed in comm chatter from damage reports. I felt a prequel series needed that kind of feel that the stakes were higher than "shields [hull plating] is down to 54%." Of course People told me you couldn't do that because...Reasons.

But every time someone picks up a surplus TA-1 and barks into it "ACTION STATIONS. SET CONDITION 1 THROUGHOUT THE SHIP..." It confirms the BS that you can't create a feeling of excitement and suspense beyond the Star Trek TNG and beyond formula of "put them onscreen; shields down to 45%; fire photon torpedos, pattern Epsilon Picard Buttfuck Mark III. Engage."
Click to expand...

Also, great point. They don't go overboard with the exposition here, yet it's all there, silently waiting for interpretation. Not only the scene you mentioned, but a whole lot of it is just that way.
 
Starship Coyote said:
I got a wild hair up my ass a few days ago, mainly due to this thread, and broke my wife's DVDs out to watch the show. When it first came on, I watched... maybe, to the escape from New Caprica, and then fell out with it.

Now, on re-viewing, I think it holds up pretty well and certainly took character conflict to a new level for that time, IMO. I'm not through with season one yet, but we'll see how it goes.
Click to expand...

Stick with it if you can, many say that it goes off the rails after s2. but for my money s3 and s4 remain amongst the best TV I've ever seen, hands down. Enjoy the ride.
 
Another one: They do an amazing job of building up tensions and then giving a very rewarding payoff. It totally pushes my buttons but I don't care.

Watching the "Enemy Mine" one, where Starbuck gets shot down and has to rescue herself by capturing a Cylon Raider.

I'll just get the problems out of the way first: Pretty much everything about flying a Cylon Raider. I mean, patching the hole almost kinda makes sense. If space is a vacuum, jamming a nonpermeable flightsuit into the hole would make a decent patch. But I'd hate to bet my life on that. I mean, she starts off in atmosphere. There's nothing to keep that suit plugging the hole until she gets into space. Unless that oxygen tube is pumping out serious pressure.

Then we get back to where she first gets to the ship. There's probably an important purpose to all the meat she so casually hacks open. Then she just pulls out the brain, because she'll be controlling everything. But along with walking around and such, my brain also keeps my lungs working and my heart pumping. If a mouse just cut it out and thought it could operate my body, he'd be in for a bit of a surprise.

All that said, we get it. Build the stakes up high. Make it clear the Adamas are crazy and irrational over Starbuck. This episode is also big on making Tigh more than a weak drunk and Roslin more than a schoolteacher.

So we get a really low point. The Adamas have been pushing things to an absurd crazy level over Starbuck--using up all the vipers and fuel, pulling in the CAP, spreading out the fleet, guessing that she might have extra oxygen--and finally Roslin bitch-slaps them back to reality. We're going to write her off. BUT! A Cylon raider shows up. AND! It will fuck up Galactica's jump. AND!!! The catapults breakdown so only Maveri--um, Apollo--can launch. Then Starbuck, wobbling along on a lobotomized but amazingly still working Raider, completely outmaneuvers Apollo--"We'll hit the brakes and he'll fly right by".

And then the payoff. They don't show us Starbuck monkeying about with duct tape under the ship, but kudos for her breaking it out to tape up her knee as foreshadowing. And then everyone goes nuts. Because Starbuck's dead. And they fucked around too long and were wrong and now the Cylons are coming BUT! It's all good because it's actually Starbuck. And everyone in the CIC goes nuts and hugs and kisses each other and we get a huge payoff after building up tension and disappointment.
 
Boomer is such a manipulative cunt. Got done with the tribunal episode. The actor who plays Socinus does a great job of capturing the junior enlisted mindset. Chief is starting to get tubby by now.

On an unrelated note, you gotta include God in all equations. Coyote Boy, plug your ears. Because Angel Starbuck is able to jump Galactica to our Earth. But she can only do this because Cavil unwittingly moved the Colony to within a jump of our Earth. If he hadn't, the mission would have failed. Although then we have to ask if the perfect black hole just *happened* to be within a jump of our Earth or if it was there for a reason.
 
Volpone said:
Another one: They do an amazing job of building up tensions and then giving a very rewarding payoff. It totally pushes my buttons but I don't care.

Watching the "Enemy Mine" one, where Starbuck gets shot down and has to rescue herself by capturing a Cylon Raider.

I'll just get the problems out of the way first: Pretty much everything about flying a Cylon Raider. I mean, patching the hole almost kinda makes sense. If space is a vacuum, jamming a nonpermeable flightsuit into the hole would make a decent patch. But I'd hate to bet my life on that. I mean, she starts off in atmosphere. There's nothing to keep that suit plugging the hole until she gets into space. Unless that oxygen tube is pumping out serious pressure.

Then we get back to where she first gets to the ship. There's probably an important purpose to all the meat she so casually hacks open. Then she just pulls out the brain, because she'll be controlling everything. But along with walking around and such, my brain also keeps my lungs working and my heart pumping. If a mouse just cut it out and thought it could operate my body, he'd be in for a bit of a surprise.

All that said, we get it. Build the stakes up high. Make it clear the Adamas are crazy and irrational over Starbuck. This episode is also big on making Tigh more than a weak drunk and Roslin more than a schoolteacher.

So we get a really low point. The Adamas have been pushing things to an absurd crazy level over Starbuck--using up all the vipers and fuel, pulling in the CAP, spreading out the fleet, guessing that she might have extra oxygen--and finally Roslin bitch-slaps them back to reality. We're going to write her off. BUT! A Cylon raider shows up. AND! It will fuck up Galactica's jump. AND!!! The catapults breakdown so only Maveri--um, Apollo--can launch. Then Starbuck, wobbling along on a lobotomized but amazingly still working Raider, completely outmaneuvers Apollo--"We'll hit the brakes and he'll fly right by".

And then the payoff. They don't show us Starbuck monkeying about with duct tape under the ship, but kudos for her breaking it out to tape up her knee as foreshadowing. And then everyone goes nuts. Because Starbuck's dead. And they fucked around too long and were wrong and now the Cylons are coming BUT! It's all good because it's actually Starbuck. And everyone in the CIC goes nuts and hugs and kisses each other and we get a huge payoff after building up tension and disappointment.
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It's somewhat worthy to note that the wing waggling came from the final ep of old BSG 1978, when Starbuck and Apollo are coming back from a base star destruction mission. Nice touch, there.
 
I haven't watched the series straight through in order. So I'm going through it one last time. Trying to limit myself to 1 episode a day, 3 days a week. But I just finished up "Colonial Day" and the Website is tempting me to binge on Kobol's Last Gleaming.
 
So back when "Enterprise" was set to premiere, my roommate and I were settling in to watch it. As we're waiting for it to come on, we're talking about how long they'll wait to introduce the Klingons, because I'm hoping they really build it up and make them an interesting adversary; maybe do some Romulan War stuff first. And then the show came on and the cold open featured a Klingon being chased down on Earth. After a dumbfounded shocked pause, my roommate looks over at me and goes "I guess there's your answer."

Meanwhile, I just rewatched part 1 of "Kobol's Last Gleaming." Was considering binging and watching the conclusion for the bit where they open the Temple and they're standing there watching the constellations when I got to realizing there is a whole lot more stuff that has to happen. I mean, Starbuck and Helo have to meet Sam on Caprica. Sharon has to get them all back to Galactica. Baltar frags Helo. The Fleet splits up and then reunites. So I fire up the episode guide on Wiki. They spend basically half a season on finding the Temple and the map to Earth. Can you imagine Star Trek ever spending half a season developing a story? It would be like: "OK, we'll remodulate the deflector to open a transwarp conduit to Caprica and then use a pattern enhancer to beam the Arrow straight to the coordinates on the planet surface while we remodulate the deflector to beam tachyons at the Baseship and Picard's artificial heart will save his life when he gets shot by setting up a harmonic wave with the phaser pulse. We should be able to get 2 episodes out of this easy!"
 
I just realized all the 8s are nekkid on the Kobol basestar. I need a shipload of nekkid Grace Parks. Heck, I'll even take them at their current age instead of 16 years younger.
 
I thought I had something super-heavy, but I forgot it. Or maybe not. I dunno.

Anyway, just rewatched "Fragged." A nice example of glossing over something glaring to make the story work. I've seen this episode at least twice--probably 3 times. According to Baltar, Crashdown died "a hero's death, leading the charge..." Really? With a Colonial 9mm round to the back? Did the Centurions somehow get around behind him with a purloined sidearm? Because there was no time to go doctor the body. Apollo et al would've found Crashdown dead against a tree, shot in the back. Oops.

Then there's the "all this has happened before..." and angels Baltar and Six, in 21st century Earth. So it's a repeating cycle. Humans make robots. Robots rebel. Judgement Day. Wait, what? I'm rambling. Focus. So we've got the humans and the Cylons forming an alliance against the "bad" Cylons. Unity. The end of the cycle. And then they find Earth. Or maybe Earth 2. And dingbat President Apollo want to crash the fleet into the sun.

Astonishingly, no one has a problem with that except the centurions, apparently. So if they'd landed and started a New-New Caprica, full in the knowledge of a human-Cylon alliance, the cycle breaks. BUT because they abandon their technology, this knowledge and awareness is lost. (And how is Anders able to fly the entire fleet anyway? Never mind.) The point is, although Earthlings have earth human, Colonial human, and Cylon DNA, they don't know it. They make robots. The robots evolve and rebel and have a plan. Dingbat Apollo guarantees the cycle continues.
 
Keep coming back to Starbuck and Angel Dad playing Hera's notes on the piano. Again, they don't hammer it home and give us a shot of kid Starbuck looking up at Dad and seeing Angel Dad's face, but it's all there.

One of the standard Renaissance Christian paintings is "Supper at Emmaus." Jesus is dead. The Apostles are in hiding. And then this *guy* that they don't recognize does the blessing from the Last Supper and the lightbulb goes on that it is the risen Christ. The trick in the paintings is to capture that moment of realization, and I think they did that very well in this scene. Katee Sackhoff very nicely conveys the moment of "Holy shit, it's my Dad!" And they do have her point out it was a song she played with her Father--before noticing she's alone--to Col Tigh.

Great stuff.
 
Coming up on the Pegasus arc. Very hard for me to not binge that. That said, a couple random thoughts:

The ending loops back to the beginning. The humans are launching a surprise attack on the Cylon "Colony." They use sabotage to shut down the defense systems. Then they nuke the place, wiping it out. It's interesting that, even after the Hub is gone, Cavil would rather die than be captured by the humans. Cavil is, in some ways, the anti-Baltar. I've got a theory I cooked up on that, but I can't remember it right now and my brain is too tired to try to argue it.

The other funny thing is, in the cycle, the humans build the Cylons for servants. After rebelling, the Cylons work to build organic Cylons--for them to serve. It's too bad they never came to the armistice station. They could've just said "look, we really miss having a meat-sack to tell us what to do. Can we come back?" and avoided this whole mess instead of trying to build their own meat-sacks to serve.
 
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