Interesting links and notes on updates to my main website.



[to search, use Blogger search in top bar]

Star Blazers and Battlestar Galactica

some weird table bug makes the table appear with a ton of blank space in front of it

what's with the Gamilons being human-appearing and fat in the first few episodes, and then becoming blue and skinny?

In case you don't want to scroll down, these are the uncanny similarities between Star Blazers ("Space Battleship Yamato") and Battlestar Galactica (both versions, for the most part, but particularly the reimagining). Both SB and the original BSG were from 1978.

* home planet attacked with radiation bombs
* last remaining battleship seeking a distant planet
* last remaining battleship is only hope for humanity
* captain of the ship has lost a son who was also in the military
* main male fighter pilot lost a brother who was also a pilot in the fleet
* leader is dying and may not make it all the way
* enemies have oddly organic shaped ships and technology
* enemy carrier ship has multiple arms out of which attack fighters emerge in waves
* battleship uses a "wall" of nearby explosions to stop incoming missiles
* enemy leader insufferably smug, cruel and likes the ladies

Star Blazers	Battlestar Galactica
home planet attacked with radiation bombs	home planet attacked with radiation bombs
last remaining battleship seeking a distant planet	last remaining battleship seeking a distant planet
last remaining battleship is only hope for humanity	last remaining battleship is only hope for humanity
captain of the ship has lost a son who was also in the military	captain of the ship has lost a son who was also in the military
main male fighter pilot lost a brother who was also a pilot in the fleet	main male fighter pilot lost a brother who was also a pilot in the fleet
leader is dying and may not make it all the way	leader is dying and may not make it all the way
enemies have oddly organic shaped ships and technology	enemies have oddly organic shaped ships and technology
enemy carrier ship has multiple arms out of which attack fighters emerge in waves	enemy carrier ship has multiple arms out of which attack fighters emerge in waves
battleship uses a "wall" of nearby explosions to stop incoming missiles	battleship uses a "wall" of nearby explosions to stop incoming missiles
enemy leader insufferably smug, cruel and likes the ladies (Leader Desslock)	enemy leader insufferably smug, cruel and likes the ladies (Cavil)

Also (ROT13 spoilers)

Star Blazers: Qrerx Jvyqfgne'f oebgure Nyrk vf gubhtug gb unir qvrq va gur penfu bs uvf fuvc, ohg ur gheaf bhg gb or nyvir
Battlestar Galactica: Mnx Nqnzn vf n Plyba naq vf erfheerpgrq (va zl nygreangr havirefr)

Labels: battlestar galactica, star blazers

posted by Richard at 18:39 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

an anti-appreciation of the BSG ending

I thought Brad Templeton had already had his final word on this topic, but he did a wrap-up post last month:

Battlestar's "Daybreak:" The worst ending in the history of on-screen science fiction

As you know if you've been reading this blog, I agree with most of what he says, although I would have been more willing to accept a past scenario (even though that creates some problems) whereas he really wanted it to be a future scenario.

Labels: battlestar galactica, television

posted by Richard at 16:33 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: The Problem of the Cylon Empire, and Anders

Ok, so one tech civilization (mostly) fell, the 12 colonies.
And another fell entirely, the 13th colony, except for 5 people, resurrection tech, and a slower-than-light (but near-light-speed) ship.
And Kobol fell long ago.

That leaves one minor dangling detail: THE ENTIRE CYLON EMPIRE.

We know the Cylons were built by man and rebelled.
We know there was a first war with the Cylons.

We know The Five encountered the Colonial Cylons sometime around the end of the first war, 40 years ago. We know they built The Colony.

We know since then the Cylons have gone from "By Your Command" and a basic first Hybrid, to an interstellar empire that can produce baseships, fighters, raptors heavy raiders, nuclear weapons, mining outposts, and enough technology, food, etc. to keep everything running.

We know that Cavil knew everything that was going on. The other models, apparently nothing. We know that Cavil knew of the Colony, it's not clear if the others did. We know that their baseships were run by a consensus leadship team of models 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. (It's not clear why none of them asked about model 7, presumably they thought model 7 was one of the final Five. It's also possible that Cavil jiggered with absolutely all of their programming.)

It also seems fairly likely that the Cylons knew exactly where the fleet was at all times (witness the ability of Gina to arrive at the fleet, or D'anna to leave the fleet and report on what she had seen).

Ok so we have an entire Cylon empire.
The Resurrection Hub has been destroyed, rendering individual resurrection ships useless. One mining base has been destroyed. Somehow (undefined) through civil war ships were sorted into two groups: Cavil #1, Simon #4 and Aaron #5 versus Leoben #2, Six, and Sharon/Boomer #8, with D'anna #3 mostly out of commission due to being boxed.

Most, indeed all but one? of the 2/6/8 basestars, it is implied, were destroyed in a giant Cylon battle.

So that leaves the 1/4/5s with the Colony, a fleet of baseships, and oh the Entire Cylon Empire? Unless you want to define the Entire Empire as just the Colony - that's where all the ships are built? Where all the tech comes from? Where all the food comes from?

This is a long thread to get at the "Lee might as well have abandoned technology, since without all the infrastructure, things were going to fall apart anyway" argument.

There are only a few scenarios:
1) Absolutely everything in the Cylon Empire is at the Colony, in which case, one has to ask

1a) did the other models know about the Colony? Did they never ask questions about it? How is their creation mysterious when they know about their starting point?
1b) if they didn't know about the Colony, how did they think their Empire was running, lacking any facilities to build ships etc.

2) There is a vast Cylon Empire beyond the Colony, full of factories, assembly lines, farms, mines, etc. - all the infrastructure of a peak-technology civilization.

In which case, first of all, if killing Cavil means "peace", then why don't the Colonials go use all that tech? Otherwise, aren't all those very angry Cylons going to come and nuke Earth, very soon?

Unless you assume that somehow "the Cylons can't find Earth" which seems unlikely, unless of course, "God did it" and is protecting Earth.

3) There is a small Cylon Empire, as we know that baseships were jumping in and out of the area near the Colony, in which case again - either they're at peace and the Colonials could use all their tech, or they're not, in which case they'll come nuke the Colonials soon.

4) Even IF the entire Cylon Empire is somehow gone, that means there are two scenarios for the robotic Cylons who were freed

4a) Either they will all soon die, lacking the necessary supporting technology infrastructure, in which case it's Yet Another happy ending suicide or

4b) Since they're from a peak-tech civ and have an entire baseship and the entire knowledge of the Empire, they go rebuild the Empire. Which would seem to be pretty risky for the humans AND the robotic Cylons, what with "all this has happened before".

Additional Thoughts

Given what seem to be a huge number of risks at least in the short term - what if another very angry model 1 shows up with nukes? It would have made sense to at least fly a Sol system cap made up of Anders and the robotic Cylons on the baseship with their fighters and raiders, for at least the 40 years we know elapsed between the first and second wars.

It's also not clear why Anders agrees to fly into the sun, or for that matter to spend the rest of his short life in a bath of goo. The way they treat Anders is bizarre. Kara "loves" him and he was a key member of the Final Five, so shouldn't the other 4 at least like him? Plus which, he's a Cylon Creator, a cylon god. And yet with all that, after four seasons of learning to respect one another, both the humans and Cylons of all types alike treat Anders like a soul-less machine with no free will. Hera, oh she's a precious girl whose humanity and right to exist must be elevated above all others. Anders? Oh yeah we can plug him and unplug him whenever we want, despite the fact he's clearly aware and trying to reconstruct himself (they literally unplug him as he's saying "begin reintegration of right hemisphere subcommand routines"). There's no discussion whatsoever of him staying on Earth with Kara. Instead he's sent to "pilot" the fleet into the sun, which has got to be the easiest "piloting" job anyone ever got, an autopilot job if ever there was one. He is, in short, the only one in the show who ends up literally being treated like a toaster.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 08:31 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: scifiwire

If you want to see the range of reactions to the BSG finale, check out
The best (and worst) online comments about the Battlestar Galactica finale
(Really what they mean is the most positive and least positive comments, but whatever.)

I personally am amazed that so many critics wrapped up with a positive reaction, but I suppose it's hard for them to praise the show and then dislike the ending.

What I said on FriendFeed is

gives a good impression of the range of reactions, although you don't get a sense of what percentage of each reaction (good, bad, medium) is representative. I'm guessing something like 60% good, 20% bad, 20% medium is the overall reaction spectrum. (I'm in the bad camp, myself.)

Since I always like my perspective to be heard, I tried to post a message to scifiwire and got the following intriguing result

Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:

Text entered was wrong. Try again.

Which I thought was some AI dissing my comments but turned out to be some issue with the CAPTCHA.

Here's what I wrote:

For heaven's sake, it's ridiculous to descend into ad hominem arguments where those who liked the finale tell those who disliked it they are "incorrect". Everyone has a right to react the way they react. It's hilarious that a show whose lesson was supposed to be "we're all flawed individuals worthy of consideration" ends with fans lining up on either side telling one another they're not worthy. If you loved "God did it" and think it's a brilliant ending that was obvious from the start and beyond compare, then good for you. Glad you liked it. I personally thought it was a jarring change of genres from science fiction to religious fiction. My further thoughts on that aspect are at http://manifestomultilinko.blogspot.com/2009/03/bsg-finale-answer-to-question-we-didnt.html

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 08:21 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: Two questions for Ron Moore

Who knows, it's the Internet age, sometimes people do respond.

Dear Mr. Moore,

I profoundly respect the transformational influence you've had on science fiction, bringing us a show with complex characters that showed much of the potential for telling adult stories in this medium. I and my friends greatly enjoyed most of the series, in particular I think "33" was one of the most amazing episodes to start a series ever.

I accept that as the show creator and writer it's your right to decide on the ending.

That being said, there are two questions about the ending I have:

1) Given that you are associated with the term Naturalistic Science Fiction [a] and are reported to have said "We believe that bringing realism to science fiction is neither contradictory nor a fool's errand"[b], how do you reconcile this with what many fans consider a supernatural, deus ex machina ending?

2) I'd like to understand how you imagined the colonists' lives on Earth after the last scene with Adama and Roslin. Do they all go off and live happy, healthy lives as farmers, hunters, and gatherers, eventually interbreeding with the natives?

Thank you.

Notes:

[a] Naturalistic Science Fiction - http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Naturalistic_science_fiction

[b] "Introduction to Battlestar Galactica", February 24, 2003 - http://www.battlestargalactica.com/outside_docs/bg_outdoc0022.htm

I'm planning to post this to "Ron Posts" on the SciFi forums.

UPDATE: Posted.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 11:23 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: the natives are restless - how not to colonise

A colonising

So you have the following options:

1. Return to the 12 colonies which are full of the remains of a peak-technology civilization, but may have habitability issues (although Cylons seemed to be able to manage just fine there, and even Helo and Anders' men appeared to be surviving ok)

2. New Caprica, which initially appeared nice but which at least by strong implication turned out to be hard to colonize - not a rich or pleasant planet

3. Any other habitable planets the Cylons may have discovered in their apparently extensive exploration of space

4. Kobol, where we know humans can live fine, where there were no reports of remnant radioactivity, and which appeared to be lush, blue and green

5. Earth 1, where we were told specifically everything was radioactive

6. Earth 2, which is rich and lush but has preverbal hominids from 150,000 years in our current Earth's past

On the plus side, since it is 150k years ago, you can easily find uninhabited areas, such as all of North America, "From around 150,000 to 130,000 years ago, North America experienced colder and generally more arid than present conditions." - http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nercNORTHAMERICA.html

Out of all those choices, the Colonials decide to
1. Throw away all their technology (Ron Moore says this is because they don't want to be "gods" and because New Caprica failed)
2. Nevertheless, attempt to teach the hominids language (which is way too early in the historical timeline) and generally, how shall one put it, fuck them

This is (reportedly) Ron Moore speaking in the SciFi forums

Think for a moment of the temptations available to people of the fleet armed with all their technology as they start a new life on a world whose natives are literally living in caves and carrying spears. Would there be any way they would not be gods in that setting? Would they ever be able to avoid playing god and ruling over the indigenous peoples? As it is, he was asking a tremendous amount from the people in the fleet, asking them to bring ideas of literature, art, justice, and so on to the new world, and hoping that they would be embedded either in oral traditions or perhaps in the collective unconscious and survive down through the ages. Asking people to avoid using the massive firepower and amazing technological advantages at their disposal would be asking too much. Would any of the indigenous peoples even survive in that scenario? Is that the gift the people of the 12 Colonies would give to their new home? Complete displacement, possibly annihilation?

I'm not sure how "we're going to arrive from the sky with radically different ideas and the transformative power of language, and we're going to screw you, but you can't have any medicine" is exactly a noble act.

Plus which, Earth 2 at 150,000 years ago was a dangerous place.

Plus which, you're going to take a modern human and a skinny preverbal hominid and make a baby? When modern humans can barely give birth to modern humans much of the time? Tell me, how popular are the colonists going to be with the natives when their native wives always die attempting childbirth? I guess you could always do a C-section - oh wait, you've thrown away all of modern medicine. Plus which, children die all the time in the preindustrial world.

So the colonists are choosing to
a) probably watch their current children die in a dangerous world
b) probably watch their native lovers die in childbirth and
c) for the children that do survive native birth, probably see most of them die in a dangerous world too

Wow, God is so cool! Thanks God!

A.1 instead of the Earth 2 plan

With Cavil eliminated (and handwaving to assume this means there is no longer a Cylon threat of any kind), there is a perfectly reasonable solution:

All return to Kobol, which is afterall their original "home", and which has the advantage of being sort-of part way between Earth 2 (where they can go if they need stocks of animals or plants for some reason) and the 12 Colonies (where they can go to recover some technology). Plus which since Kobol only fell 3500 years ago and there was at least a working temple there, there may be more buried resources or tech available on Kobol.

So they can live out their lives, while leaving Earth 2 and its inhabitants free to pursue their own destinies. If they really need to sustain their population, they could bring *some* preverbal hominids to Kobol, give them the benefits of modern technology and medicine, and in return, arrange for them to provide services in the same way as a modern world - sperm banks and pregnancy surrogates. It would only take a few generations to restore the population to a level at which this was no longer necessary.

B hey baby

There seems to be some assumption that this is like colonists to North America going native, or showing up on the outskirts of a Roman village.

Yes, when the other people are *human* and have a culture and civilization and understand trading and the concept of strangers, you can establish a relationship that sometimes leads to love (which is about as generous as you can be, as in many cases the "relationship" was the colonist raping the native).

Now instead, a bunch of people from another planet full of advanced technology descend from the sky. The assumption is that the colonists "hold their noses" and make it with the natives.

Err, who says the natives will have any of it?
The hominids natives live in tiny familial groups. They may have never seen other humans, at least not up close, because other humans are almost always danger. They are pre-verbal, more like a wolf-pack with some superstitious rituals than human beings that we can understand.

So here arrives Lee Adama. He has little body hair. He has pale skin. He has strange coverings. He smells different. Every single cultural reference point that is not genetic, from the way he moves to the nonverbal signals he gives, cry out ALIEN! STRANGER! DANGER! They may not even recognize him as another hominid, and if they do, they almost certainly perceive him as an enemy. A bunch of people show up competing for the resources you need to stay alive, and bring nothing with them. Do you seriously think they're welcomed with open arms?

Plus which, lets say by some insane chance ("god did it") that one of the preverbal hominid ladies does check him out - let's see, he doesn't know anything about hunting or gathering, the shape of his body is strange - muscles in weird place, lack of strength and agility in others, he doesn't know the ancient and essential rituals, he doesn't know any of the body language, he doesn't know how to attract game and NOT attract predators, and he keeps trying to get everyone to do everything differently, trying to teach incomprehensible things for incomprehensible reasons.

Seriously? This is your fucking hope for the future of the colonists? They'll be lucky if they're not all murdered by the preverbal hominids on the FIRST DAY, let alone interbreeding with them. The only likely interbreeding candidates are colonials that the hominids KIDNAP AND RAISE AS THEIR OWN. Wow, what are great future for Hera!

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 10:39 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: more on themes, controversy and ambiguity

I'm trying to understand the pro-finale point of view. It comes from a mindset alien to me though.

1 Themes

One argument which I have already talked about is "there were religious themes".

I think this is some fundamental misunderstanding about SF and genres.

There were "gun themes" in BSG too, but it would have been pretty surprising if for the final assault they had all mounted up on horseback, put on cowboy hats, and rode in six-shooters blazing.

There were also "supernatural themes" (prophecy), but it would have been pretty surprising if for the final assault Adama had said "I've opened the chest of the ancients, here are your magic wands and spells" and Kara had gone in shooting fireballs from her glittery wand, while Baltar put on a wizard's robes and cast bolts of lightning from his fingers.

There were also "technology themes" but in the last assault, they don't say, "oh yeah, we should use those laser rifles and teleporters we've had in storage" and beam into the centre of the Colony and start firing energy beams.

In science fiction that is proclaimed from the beginning to be naturalistic, God can't do it. It's as jarring a switch of genres and removal of constraints as the three fanciful examples I gave above. It's BAD STORYTELLING.

According to BattlestarGalactica.com, the following are Ron Moore's own words in "Introduction to Battlestar Galactica", February 24, 2003

We believe that bringing realism to science fiction is neither contradictory nor a fool's errand.

Let me emphasize that: bringing realism to science fiction.
Realism.

Things have rules. Limits. Constraints. Your science fiction universe can certainly have a Creator, if that's within the rules you set from the beginning. Robert J. Sawyer did this with his book Calculating God. What you can't do is have four seasons of events within set science fiction constraints, and 45 minutes of "and god did it".

1.1 But that's no different than...

Let's choose some possible endings:
* Starbuck is [undefined]
* Starbuck is [a robot]
* Starbuck is [an alien]
* Starbuck is [a wizard like Gandalf]
* Starbuck is [angel/god/messiah]

Some people say "well it's no different to say 'a self-aware robot did it' since sentient robots also don't exist". This is some bizarre kind of category error. WITHIN THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE STORY, they do.

On the other hand, if Starbuck had said "Lee, I'm a wizard", really it would have been no different than "Lee I'm solid matter and oh by the way goodbye poof". Both answers are outside the boundaries the story set. You have to obey the rules of the alternative world. That's what fiction is about. Sherlock Holmes doesn't battle Moriarty and suddenly Moriarty grows 10 storeys tall and starts shooting laser beams out of his eyes. Fiction has rules.

Since, as it were, any sufficiently ambiguous religion is indistinguishable from magic, in the context of science fiction, saying "god did it" is no different from saying "a wizard did it". It's completely outside the boundaries of Galactica as it was set up. Even "alien space bats did it" would at least be within the same genre.

2 It's good there's controversy

No, it isn't. It would be good if there was debate.
But God is the ultimate non-answer to everything. God answers mystery, with mystery.

Why is Earth 1 like Earth 2? God.
Why are Colonials genetically compatible with Earth 2? God.
What is Kara? God.
Why [anything]? God.

That's not a discussion, that's an absolute closure of all avenues of understanding beyond faith. The ending is controversial because it's bad. Bad is not good.

And as an added bonus, anyone who questions the ending gets ad hominem attacks about being a secular atheist humanist or whatever the baloney term du jour is for rational analyst.

If the ending had been "this was mostly Cavil with some help from Lords of Kobol and Kara is [undefined]" there would have been debate about it.

This ending closes off all debate.

If the ending had brought some consistent closure to the series, actually solving mysteries in clever, unexpected ways, it might have endured as great works of art endure. "God did it" instead closes off all avenues of further discussion and renders all the time fans invested in the mysteries moot. How can you understand God? The answer to every why question is "because". That's not an answer, that's an excuse.

3 You picky science guys can't handle ambiguity

THERE IS NO AMBIGUITY.

You can't get less ambiguous than the effective Hand of God reaching down and plucking Kara Thrace up into the sky, followed by didactic lectures from angels.

It is not more complex and sophisticated and ambiguous to have "because God did it" as the answer to absolutely every mystery in the show. It is simplistic and simultaneously undebatable. How can you examine the motives of God. His motives are BY DEFINITION unknowable to man. It's a closed door slammed in the face of fans. It's not ambiguous, it's total Divine Finality.

If Moriarty goes over some falls to his presumed death, you can always debate about whether maybe he somehow escaped. If God comes and stomps Moriarty to the ground with a giant foot, followed by lecturing Sherlock Holmes with angels about how it's all for the best, there is no further debate. Case closed.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 22:40 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: solving the Ark problem

Brad Templeton has made forceful arguments against the bad science of the "oh these people on a distant planet just happen to be compatible with us on a genetic level" ending of BSG.

I've been thinking about how you can resolve this in-world.
The best I can come up with extends my alternate ending with the following:

Option 1: No aliens

When they arrive at Earth 2, there is a Ship of Light of the 14th tribe awaiting them.
Kara goes over and comes back.

She reports: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is we have a new home. The bad news is we all have to die before we can live there. I am the harbinger of death."

Through a montage and as little as possible technobabble, the following emerges:

For the last 3500 years the 14th tribe has been trying to find a new home for humanity.
After searching the galaxy they found one which was promising. They have made some genetic alterations to the existing primate line on the planet in order to make its outward physical appearance essentially human, with a human-level brain. The internal workings are however completely different, down to a genetic level.

Ellen and the remaining three work closely with the 14th tribe, we hear Ellen say something like "just as Cavil destroyed model 7 by damaging it genetically, we can use resurrection beneficially, with the help of the 14th, to alter us all to be genetically compatible with the life on this planet". (This also helps to avoid this "foreign diseases" issue.)

Of course in order to resurrect in their new, genetically-compatible bodies, the entire fleet must die. Talk about a leap of faith. So offstage, they all die, then we see a few selected shots of them emerging from resurrection tanks (looking outwardly the same). Then my alternate ending story continues on with them landing on Earth 2.

Now I know this is still really weak. This is still way too high a level of physical similarity than should be possible. But it's the only way I can think to do it without aliens.

It does get you a nice Kara leads to death bit though.

Option 2: Aliens

Otherwise, if you're allowed aliens (which Moore said were not permitted in BSG) it's easy: Beings of Light took humans from Earth 2 some x thousands or millions of years ago and seeded them on Kobol.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 06:36 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: in which I find my people

I am eccentric in many ways. I *HATE* spoilers. I love to be surprised. I invest a great deal of energy in avoiding spoilers. I also believe shows should stand on their own merits alone. Anything external to the show (actor interviews, writer podcasts) I consider non-canon, and also actively avoid. As far as I'm concerned, the TV is showing me live video from an alternate reality (I'm not crazy, I don't think that's actual, but that's how I think of it). For all of these reasons I have been avoiding BSG blogs.

Now that the show is over, however, I've been trying to find people with a similar perspective, to see whether my dislike of the ending is just me, or whether others are finding the same flaws I see.

In the general review-o-sphere, comment-o-sphere, and twitter-o-sphere it looks to me to be running something like 60% for, 10% for except hate the New York coda, and 30% against the finale.

I was therefore very pleased to find the Brad Ideas Battlestar Galactica Analysis Blog, which takes a deeply analytical approach to BSG similar to the theories that I was working out in Zak Adama is a Cylon, and the issues with the finale that I have continued to work out here in Manifesto Multilinko's battlestar galactica category.

I should also mention, for those of you who are reading the blog through a feed or some other source, that in the sidebar of my blog I have bookmarks, including I am currently tracking reviews that I find interesting or relevant (from the serious analysis perspective) under my BlinkList battlestar galactica tag.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 20:47 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: why "religious elements" is not an excuse

(Sorry this got published empty initially - if you hit return in the title box, it publishes.)

Let's remember: this was science fiction, on the Science Fiction channel.

Let me take a little detour, before I get back to that.

Let's imagine Conan Doyle pens the following Sherlock Holmes mystery:

Act 1 - a man is praying in a church
Act 2 - the man is found dead in an alley
Act 3 - Sherlock Holmes investigates and the readers follow the trail of forensic clues - along the way we discover the man was devoutly religious and prayed every day. We follow along through muddy footprints, mysterious letters in locked drawers, unaccountable blood stains...
Act 4 - And then in act 4 an angel appears to Sherlock Holmes and says "oh God did it, he was tired of listening to that guy praying"

Satisfying ending, right? All ok because, you know, it had religious elements all along.

Ron Moore's ending is no different than when you're following along with the Pip episode of South Park, a humourous retelling of Great Expectations, full of period detail... and then Miss Havisham has robot monkeys. This is hilarious, because it is ridiculous. It's would be absurd for a work of serious fiction to start off in one genre, and suddenly at the end veer off into another.

But it's even worse than that. It might have been forgivable if Moore had said "it's all about the characters, I'm not making a big deal of the science".

But in fact, Moore made such a huge deal of making a "realistic" science fiction show that there's an entire Battlestar wiki entry on "Naturalistic Science Fiction":

"Naturalistic science fiction" (NSF) is a term created by the Re-imagined Battlestar Galactica co-creator Ronald D. Moore to describe that show's esthetic. NSF is meant to be a realistic take on the SF genre, with its roots in drama rather than adventure tales. It eschews science-fiction staples such as one-dimensional characterizations, clear-cut conceptions of good and evil, so-called "technobabble" (technical-sounding terms that have mostly been made up), and "deus ex machina" approaches (in which a seemingly intractable problem in the plot is solved using a previously-unknown technical capability).

The "no deus ex machina" part is looking pretty ironic right about now, isn't it.

So basically, Ron Moore explicitly set up the expectation that his show, while having background religious elements (a realistic part of fiction, since our own society also has such elements), would never be religious fiction.

But that's what he did in the end.
He turned it from science fiction, to fucking Left Behind.

That is total disrespect for his OWN STORYLINE and the philosophy of the show.

And this is not about some people "not liking religion". I think religion can be amazing. Have all the freaking religion you want. Just don't spend four seasons depicting a natural world with some unexplained elements, and then in the last hour say "God did it". That's not about religion, that's about BAD STORYTELLING.

Labels: battlestar galactica, rant

posted by Richard at 20:27 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: whiteboard overview of series



Whiteboard overview of BSG seasons starting with miniseries, through 1, 2, 3, 4. Green = good. Red = bad. Brown = meh. Blue lines indicate points at which they could have ended the series acceptably.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 11:24 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: This is not a happy ending

You want to know what the story is in the magazine AFTER mitochondrial eve? It goes something like this:

"A body found in the mountains has been dated to approximately 150,000 years ago. The skeleton of a man in his late 30s, there were striking signs that this individual had had a difficult life. There were strong indications of starvation and malnourishment. Bone scars indicated repeated encounters with primitive weapons and possibly predators. As well there were clear indications of repeated bouts of malaria and other diseases common to the African plains below the mountain. The cause of death was probably either exposure, hypothermia or bloodloss, as the left leg was broken. Paleo-forensics experts concluded it was probably an agonizing death. What someone of that era would have been doing so high in the mountains, without modern protective clothing or sophisticated climbing gear, is a mystery. There are also puzzling reports of signs of something like modern dentistry on some of the teeth, but scientists dismiss this as simply an unusual anomaly due to high metal concentrations in the mountain deposit in which the body was discovered."

Lee Adama: "I want to explore!"

Oh do you Lee. You're on vacation are you? With the clothes on your back? With what calories are you going to get the energy to climb these mountains? How much leisure time do you think you're going to have, trying to scrape up enough nutrients to stay alive with a somewhat balanced diet, competing against hordes of very able predators and tribal angry protohumans?

God has not brought these people to the land of milk and honey, they are not going to spend the rest of their lives lounging in hammocks. They are going to die. Rather horribly and brutally. That's the reality.

You want to know how awesome colonization is, even when you have some technology, and entire empires just an ocean away, and you can actually speak to the natives who have a reasonable level of civilization?

Spain established several colonies in the area that is now the United States. Several of these early attempts failed. In 1526, Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón founded the colony San Miguel de Guadalupe in present day Georgia or South Carolina. The colony only lasted a short while before disintegrating. It was also notable for perhaps being the first instance of African slave labor within the present boundaries of the United States. Pánfilo de Narváez attempted to start a colony in Florida in 1528. The Narváez expedition ended in disaster with only four members making it to Mexico in 1536. The Spanish Colony of Pensacola in West Florida (1559) was destroyed by a hurricane in 1561. Fort San Juan was established in 1567 in the interior of North Carolina but was destroyed by local Native Americans 18 months later. The Ajacan Mission, founded in 1570, failed the next year, very near the site of the later English colony of Jamestown.

The French established several colonies that failed, due to weather, disease or conflict with other European powers. A small group of French troops were left on Parris Island, South Carolina in 1562 to build Charlesfort, but left after a year when they were not resupplied from France. Fort Caroline established in present-day Jacksonville, Florida in 1564, lasted only a year before being destroyed by the Spanish from St. Augustine. In 1604, Saint Croix Island, Maine was the site of a short-lived French colony, much plagued by illness, perhaps scurvy. Fort Saint Louis was established in Texas in 1685, but was gone by 1688.

The most notable English failures were the "Lost Colony of Roanoke" (1587-90) in North Carolina and Popham Colony in Maine (1607-8).

Wikipedia - Colonial history of the United States

Now you could certainly imagine that it was different for the colonials, except for the second ending, which by placing them so far back in our own past, tells us that:
* no bodies of the colonists other than Hera have survived/been discovered (because the modern dental work would be a giveaway)
* none of their language survives except perhaps as some ur-word-roots (certainly no written language, since that wouldn't arise for something like over 145,000 years)
* none of their farming survives (since that wouldn't arise again for over 140,000 years)
* none of their technical knowledge survived
* none of their other culture survived
* they are not remembered in the modern era in any way whatsoever
* plus trying to find a partner would have been a nightmare - preverbal tightly familial protohumans? What are you going to talk about with your sickly, illiterate, primate love for the rest of your short life? Dirt?

This is not a happy ending. They are not on safari in Africa. This is not a fucking vacation adventure. They are not all going to become humble farmers, surveying the waving grain in their fields. Baltar is a farmer is he? And how is growing up as a farmer in an incredibly advanced integrated technological society of billions going to prepare him to scrape a living out of the dirt on a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PLANET with no infrastructure and no technology whatsoever? Without even any domesticated farm animals?

After 4 years of fighting against all odds, these remnants from the pinnacle of a civilization are going to lead short, nasty, brutish lives and ultimately nothing they did will matter, they won't be remembered, they will have no impact on anything whatsoever. Roslin's board count is going to go from 39,000 to 15,000 to near 0 within the span of a few years.

Not only that, they will die KNOWING that this horrible end is God's idea of a good time.

Wow, that is quite the gift to your fans there, Ron Moore, thanks a lot.

Labels: battlestar galactica, rant

posted by Richard at 18:23 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG finale: answer to a question we didn't ask

Author's note: I am placing this ending (the "In Conclusion" piece) in the Creative Commons
Battlestar Galactica Alternative Ending by Richard Akerman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Do with it as you wish, within those constraints.

In further re-processing the finale, I realised it has brilliance in a way.

In the finale, Ron Moore answers the question: What would it mean, if god were real, if religion were true?

Unfortunately, for at least a segment of the fan base, that's not the question we were asking,
and I think it's a pretty long stretch to say that's the question the show was asking.

But I can see, if you're currently religious (like swathes of America, but unlike most of Canada and Western Europe) you could have read this as the question.

The question as I read it and as I think most in the non-religious west read it was: What does it mean to be human?

So what Ron gave us would have been, in its way, genius, if it had been an alternate ending, a surprise one-hour "side B", B-Ark special, AFTER the real ending that answered the "What does it mean to be human?" question.

That being said, if you read Ron's "alternate" finale in this way, it actually ends up in my opinion being scathingly anti-religion.

Think about the answers he gave, if the question is "What would it mean if god were real".
As worked out through
1 if the Old Testament Judeo-Christian-Muslim One God were true
2 if the Classic capricious Greco-Roman-Nordic gods who play dice with fate were true
3 if reincarnation were true

1 Old Testament
* God would destroy unbelievers
- as the billions in the colonies were swept away, for believing in the wrong gods

* God would destroy sinners
- as the billions in the colonies were swept away, for being a capitalist, spiritually corrupt society

* God would reward His Prophets
- as Gaius and Caprica Six are rewarded, and as Not-Kira-Nerys is rewarded by her boatride to see her relatives, after death

* God would test his disciples with suffering
- as in the Bible Job was tested, so the entire fleet was tested, Gaius was tested (attempting to kill himself to save the child), as the believing Cylons were tested having their numbers (literally and figuratively) destroyed by Cavil, just as Not-Kira-Nerys suffered in death

* God would lead the Ark to the Promised Land
- but not without 40 years / 4 years of wandering in the desert / space first

* it would mean that your life is in a way, meaningless. Only faith is rewarded. The only thing you can do is BELIEVE and BELIEVE and BELIEVE. The net is down - behind the scenes God can play everyone like puppets and pawns, but you have to BELIEVE he is doing it all for some PURPOSE.

* it would mean in one interpretation that your life is to be spent in poverty, shunning iconography, not pursuing scientific knowledge and culture, being a simple faith-filled farmer. Keep in mind there are many threads of religious belief that hold this to be true in our own real world today.
- when you see this played out on screen, it exposes what a horrific world that would actually be - nothing but the shirt on your back, endless lifetimes of suffering, no medicine, no art, no space travel, all because God wants us all to stay in a state of spiritually pure primitivism - this ending is an arrow right into the heart of Christian and Muslim fundamentalists who, mostly living at the pinnacle of civilization, claim this is the God and the life they actually want (while not living that way themselves)

Ultimately Moore is making a profoundly anti-religious statement: if this is what you believe, in the modern world, these are the implications: a God who from our perspective is cruel and mysterious, killing with apparent arbitrariness, giving us a life full of suffering and ignorance, changing the rules at whim, and probably going to kill us all again when He decides it isn't going according to Plan.

If this IS the true world, I think a lot of atheists would indeed be inclined to follow Doubting Cavil and say Frak This, and bang.
This world of a (from a human perspective) capricious (hmm Capric-ious) and cruel god is one a lot of us don't want to live in.

When David Plotz set out to read the Old Testament, his conclusion (as I understand it) was that God was a Right Bastard, and that in fact the only characters who redeem themselves in the Testament are the humans.

See e.g. Is God Evil?

In other words, this is basically an upraised finger from Moore, not against science, but to monotheistic religious fundamentalists, saying "if this is what you really believe, this is what it would actually mean in practice".

2 The Gods including The Fates

Classic religion has Fate as a strong element, indeed The Fates embody this, weaving out the stories of our lives. Not-Kira-Nerys articulated this view of the Colonies religion, scorning the view that Jupiter casts everyone's lot in life, picking our fates out at random, one to be happy and successful, one to suffer, all arbitrary and unstoppable.

(To which President Roslin said, "that's just a metaphor" - oh if only Moore had listened to her for the show's conclusion.)

What Moore is saying in this case is that Roman Polytheism sucked too - on the plus side, you get to do whatever the Frak you want, because there's no Christian concepts of Shame and Guilt, the gods don't care what you do, and you might as well just wander through life, since the hand of fate controls your destiny anyway.

Moore showed how abritrary, pointless and cruel this religious tradition can be when the literal dead hand of fate (Racetrack's dead hand) tumbles to hit the "launch nukes" button, and when Kara discovers her whole life of struggle was basically so she could enter some numbers into an FTL control and then disappear with a poof!

No reward, no free will - if this were the true world, many of us would follow Dualla and say "what's the point then?" and off ourselves.

3 Reincarnation

What if you really go through cycle after cycle, either numbered-Cylon style, remembering everything but in many cases (like Cavil) not changing one damn bit (or even getting worse) through each cycle?

Imagine being fated to live over and over and over again, forever. That's a kind of hell all in itself.

Or in Final Five style, you show up not remembering your past, screw up your life again, briefly discover you're doomed to repeat it when you die and Know All, and then have to start ALL OVER AGAIN, forever.

In that case, like D'Anna you might just say, fuck it, I'm just going to stay alone on this radioactive wasteland and die already.

In Conclusion

IF the show had been framed this way from the beginning, it would have been a good conclusion.
But I don't think the show was. I think the conclusion that would have been faithful to the spirit of the show would have been the exact opposite. For example I would have found it quite satisfactory to have my years of invested fan analysis rewarded with something like an actual ending "A", the real ending.

In order to do this, you can leave 4x19 and the first hour of 4x20 basically intact, just cutting out the (terrible) flashbackstories of Tigh/Ellen/Bill Adama and Roslin and Lee's "god is a pigeon" flashback. The Kara-Zak-Lee flashbacks stay and are actually critical to the reimagined ending. You might also insert a teaser "One Will Be Revealed" text at the beginning of 4x20. The big chunk of work is you need to completely reshoot the ending 45 minutes to an hour, starting just when Baltar and Six arrive in the CIC with Hera.

It goes like this:

On Kobol, there was a 14th tribe that went its separate way that did unify the Cylon and Human sides. (If you wish, you can consider "14th tribe" equivalent to "Lords of Kobol", but it's not necessary.) They have had 3500 years to develop very advanced technology and spiritual enlightenment. Although they did not cause any of the wars (Earth 1 or the Colonies) they did intervene in the small ways they could - using Cylon projection technology to send the Five visions and music, helping them to reconstruct the "organic memory transfer" resurrection tech that the 14th tribe had preserved and advanced after the fall of Kobol and beginning them on a long path to the Colonies and beyond.

Resurrection technology is based on a profound understanding of the nature of the universe, the discovery that there are underlying harmonies, a song in the mathematics and physics that underlies our reality, and that we all "read out" into that underlying song when we die - so that if you're careful and "listening" you can seize the moment to read that new harmony back in to a new body and continue.

The 14th tribe also intervened so that when Zak Adama, Cylon (model 7 Daniel) died,
he was resurrected in an old abandoned Resurrection Ship (or a specially constructed ship, a Ship of Light if you like) near Earth 1. He waited and cherished his love for Kara.

The 14th tribe transported Kara's crushed ship to Earth 1 orbit.
When Kara crashed on Earth 1, she was resurrected by Zak, he built her a new ship (hence the two month delay), he jiggered with her memories and sent her on her way. He waits for her to reach Earth 2, whereupon her memories will come back and she can come back and get him.

The 14th tribe also sent those harmonies to Kara's father, and helped shaped her destiny so that the song would lead them all to a new and beautiful home, full of life.

They sent Cylon projections and visions that can (since they are very advanced) even reach humans like Kara, Baltar, and Roslin, trying to help guide Baltar and Caprica Six to some kind of salvation, after their terrible sin (succeeding to a large extent with Six, rather more unconvincingly so with Baltar).

Hera was the symbol and the carrier of the possibility of united Cylon-Humanity that the 14th embody.
One of Six and Baltar's most important roles, guided by the 14th tribe, was to bring Hera safely to the Opera House, which turns out to be the CIC, the literal "Theater of War" against which so much of the drama of the past four years has played out.

Baltar and Six's other role is to make the case, based on their rediscovered love for one another, for final peace between man and machine, an argument based on love while the visions look on silently approving, but NOT an appeal based on faith at all, Baltar doesn't say "I see angels", he says "I have found love and redemption, finally, and so should all of man and machine".

They make the Great Bargain, Cavil says "I'm a machine of my word", the Cylons get resurrection tech again, Galen restrains himself and forgives Tori. The Colony is NOT destroyed by the hand of fate.

Sam says to Kara - "I can hear it now, the music, it's perfection... I know the answer you've been seeking Kara, you've had it in you all along" - and together they work out the coordinates to Earth 2 and Sam jumps them there.

They land on Earth 2 and Kara has her Second Revelation, of Zak Adama.

Cut and a raptor with Kara and perhaps at least Ellen & Saul but preferably all Four (out of the First/Final Five) jumps to Earth 1 and retrieves Zak Adama - oh joy for Ellen, her beloved 7 lives! and D'anna - return to Earth 2 for incredibly complex homecoming and tragedy - Kara loves Zak AND Lee AND Sam, but Sam is dying and Zak is back... so Kara and Lee can still never be together - stunning reunion for the Adamas as well, brother and son reborn and a Cylon all along. Roslin meets Zak, says "My gods, Adama is a Cylon" and then we have a painful but poignant end of her life, sitting on a hill with Bill, looking at the wonder of the profusion of life, finally back on solid ground she can let go.

Robotic Cylons are freed - each person, man and machine has a choice of the future they choose

Sam asks not to be resurrected but instead takes a new, hybrid Galactica-Baseship reconstruction to explore the universe and listen to the music of the spheres - perhaps Cavil takes inspiration from this and plugs himself in with Sam on Galactica-Baseship, exploring as the machine he always wanted to be.

Some leave to live space lives or seek out other worlds, some stay, humans and Cylons both.

Jump forward five years later - Adama at Roslin's grave atop a hill, talking to her as he does every morning, telling her there is a feast of celebration. Camera pulls back so that we see he is on a hill by her grave, his cabin is nearby, it overlooks a tidy Romanesque village, surrounded by neat fields (and some landed spacecraft) where humans, numbered Cylons and a few robotic Cylons (including some old-style classic Cylons) work side by side - cut to Galen, the town blacksmith working side-by-side with a robotic blacksmith - Galen heads out into the town centre where a long table is laid out and they're all preparing for a meal - Tigh has his eye back, clearly having decided it was worth another round of resurrection in order to see with both eyes again -

OPTIONAL SCENE
Saul and Ellen are looking on as a little boy runs after what is probably Hera - the boy runs to be swept up by Kara, with Zak beside her - Bill Adama arrives and embraces Zak - Lee shows up and they all head to the table together - together, the Five, the numbered Cylons and humans united together through Kara and Zak's son.
END OPTIONAL SCENE

pan along all the happy familiar faces, human and Cylon alike, as children run about... pan up to the sky and the stars, cue traditional (original series) music...

OPTIONAL ENDING TEXT
"Earth, Tigris-Euphrates river valley, c. 10000 BC" or
"Earth, Island of Atlantis, 10000 years ago" or (my preference) simply

"There are those who believe..."
END OPTIONAL TEXT

Fade to black.

Labels: battlestar galactica, television

posted by Richard at 07:08 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: The Last Supper

I consider external-to-show non-canon, but for what it's worth, despite whatever claims that

http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper

was "just a promotional image" for Season 4, it does seem to contain the seeds of most of the resolution of the show. Kara in the "Doubting Thomas" position, in case you're wondering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo)

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 11:06 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: we're all going to die, so just give up

SPOILO-RAMA

Fiction can be about a lot of different things.

It can be about the characters, it can be about the setting, it can be about the journey, it can be about the mystery, it can be about a message, it can be people and setting just as props supporting entertainment & humour, or it can be in visual media just about how it looks. The only thing different in science fiction is that it can also be about technology.

The big complaint against classic science fiction is that it was, in fact, more about the technology, or about the setting, than it was about the characters.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was a classic technology-driven show, all ray guns and tractor beams and particles and fields. (Which would have been ok, had it been about actual science and actual space, instead of just made-up gibberish about polarised tetrions.)

Deep Space Nine was a more character and plot driven show.

Where things can go wrong is when you start one way, and end another.
For example, The Matrix series starts out with some incredible ideas and visuals, cleanly executed plot, heroism and triumph,

and then in the 2nd and 3rd turns into a bunch of gibberish with people having underground raves, pointless special effects, and a nihilistic "all this has happened before" explanation by The Architect (hmm, sound familiar?)

Oceans 13 you think you're trying to follow a particular plot, and then at the end it's, oh audience members we were just showing you the con, suckers, thanks for paying for our vacation in Europe.

Battlestar was clearly and deliberately not about the technology, it was about the characters, the mysteries, and preserving the last surviving remnants of civilization.

Now *some* people watched it just for pure entertainment. For them an ending with "a bunch of stuff blows up and god did it" is fine.

For those of us following the story arc, the mysteries, and the survival of civilization though, Ron Moore pulls the rug out from under us.

The only thing I can figure is he had the vision of modern-day earth as his grand finale, and then he had to get rid of all the inconvenient truth of BSG in order to do his nice clean break with the past.

Why do they have to throw away all of their technology?
A: Because modern Earth doesn't have any of it

Why do they all have to (effectively) commit suicide?
A: Because nothing remains of their civilization in modern Earth

In essence, in order to tell his preachy final story about Fear the Japanese Robots!
Ron Moore had to KILL EVERY CHARACTER POINTLESSLY.

* Those characters you've been following? Essentially they all end up as different versions of Cavil, saying "Frak!" and blowing their heads off, like Dualla did earlier on when a pocketwatch made her think "well, this was all a waste of time".
* Those mysteries you've been following? Err, a wizard did it, whatever.
* The last remnants of civilization? Err, civilization sucked, let's throw it all away and all die of disease, starvation, and murder by rather more skillful native populations.
* 35,000 surviving humans, having beat impossible odds? Ah fuck em, there are already humans on the planet, so the colonists should all just go off in some tiny unsustainable scattered groups and die already.
* Faster than light technology, space travel? Yeah we better toss that in the garbage too, err I mean the sun.

The only ones who come out of it well are the (presumably) immortal killer robots. They get to keep all the technology and explore the universe.

The humans? Fuck em.

Which gets you all nice and tidy to Live from New York, this was all pointless, thanks for the mitochondrial memories, the end. PS fear the robots.

So in order to get to this final few minutes of badly written, preachy, junk,
you have to turn the ENTIRE PAST FOUR YEARS from a noble, character-driven adventure,
to an exercise in nihilism.

From a message of imperfect humans striving for survival against impossible odds to: fuck it, fate determines everything anyway, civilization is terrible, you might as well just say Frak and blow your head off suicidal nihilism.

Thanks Ron Moore.
You suck.

Labels: battlestar galactica, rant, television

posted by Richard at 07:13 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG: rational civilization sucks

SPOILERS

So BSG finale had two failings:

1) deus ex machina solution to all plot mysteries - ok fine, you can't be bothered resolving the plot points, whatever

2) Much more serious and disturbing to me, in the last two hours, a bizarre direction inconsistent with the entire theme of the show: all of a sudden it goes anti-science, anti-technology, anti-civilization

The message of BSG up to 4x20 was quite simple: the world is a dirty, real, flawed place. The war between Cylons and humans is because both sides have flaws of character and imagination. Technology is just a tool that you use.

Then I was reading Television Without Pity and thinking about this strange emphasis in the flashbacks to drinking and various sorts of debauchery, with people behaving out of character - and I saw the message, which is quite clear once you look for it: civilization itself, the modern technological world, is sinful, twisted, unclean, cruel.

Similarly, for committing the sin of being a doctor guy, and doing science stuff on Hera, and saying mathematics things, Simon gets his neck snapped. Doesn't he know that Hera is about faith and impulse and visions and prophecy and god's plan? How dare he be all rational.

Baltar's sin becomes not destroying the world through narcissism, his sin is that he was a scientist instead of a farmer. After four years of trying to hold together a technological civilization, the solution, the redemption is: fade away, abandon technology. The technology itself becomes the sin.

Redemption is: god is playing dice with the universe anyway, just accept fate, why bother with rational thought, god rewards only faith.

THIS IS COMPLETELY INCONSISTENT WITH THE PREVIOUS FOUR YEARS OF THE SHOW.

It is anti-science and anti-civilization, and I think it is reprehensible.

Do you know what life is like without the "terrible debauchery" of modern civilization? It's not some noble savage bullsh-t. It's a bunch of dirty people starving, dying of disease, spending lives in pain and ignorance and brutalizing each other unbelievably.

Civilization is good.

Ron Moore, I can't believe you changed the message of the show at the end from "we're all just flawed people in a gritty world" to "fear the Japanese robots". That's insulting. That's just plain wrong. Maybe you should try living with the clothes on your back on some island somewhere and see how awesomely redemptive the starvation, disease, loneliness and deprivation is.

Enlightenment does not come from suffering in ignorance.

Enlightenment IS civilization.

How dare you make the end of Battlestar a platform to suggest otherwise, inconsistent with the values of the previous four seasons.

Labels: battlestar galactica, rant, television

posted by Richard at 23:48 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

BSG character arcs

SPOILERS

Kara Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) has the strongest character arc, more or less consistent and well played from beginning to end - troubled, imperfect, confused, and... gone.

Adama and Roslin have ok story arcs if you ignore some of the junk backstory and bad ending near the end. The arc from sudden leaders, through terrible difficulty, to ending dead and alone is quite profound.

Baltar and Six should have the strongest arc of all, Six's arc is actually not bad except for the side trip with Saul, but Baltar's basically makes no sense.

The rest of them, quite honestly, don't have strong enough arcs to say much about.

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 07:14 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Battlestar Galactica: it ended badly

SPOILERS:

My Alternative Galactica

Acceptable Alternate ending 0

As I do with Star Trek, where I construct a new canon consisting entirely of movies that I like (e.g. movies 5 and 6 never happened), I suggest the following BSG story arc:

miniseries through to 2x19 inclusive. Then just the chunk of the finale where the ragtag fleet arrives at Earth Earth, the scene where Roslin is watching the animals and then Adama takes her for her last flight, ending with the cabin scene, Adama looks up at the stars, the end.

Acceptable alternate ending 1: add shot of Hera walking, flyover of beauty of the Earth, pan up to sky and stars, the end.

Acceptable alternate ending 2: Adama looks up at the stars, then pan back DOWN from the stars to the Earth at night classic image and show a subtitle "150,000 years later", fade to black, the end.

All of these are reasonably clean endings.

UPDATED with endings 3 & 4.

Alternate ending 3

This is not as good, but if they had just ended with 4x15 (No Exit) - basically unchanged except Cavil in one of his monologues also says "oh and I've been using projection to mess with everyone's heads", and you end with either

3.1 Hera still captive and Ellen being led off to have resurrection scraped out of her brain, The End
3.2 Ellen led off to have resurrection scraped out of her brain, but Boomer escapes with Hera, The End

Alternative ending 4

This is the least desirable compromise, but basically

4.1 end in 4x20 at false ending 0, in "the Opera House"/CIC, with less god (or at least, everyone thinking Baltar and Six are babbling nonsense), Cavil says "I'm a machine of my word", peace and reunification, and (perhaps partial or imperfect) resurrection tech. The end.

or

4.2 as in 4.1 peace and reunification, plus and suddenly Sam jumps Galactica with them all to Earth, see blue orb in the distance... The end. (no action takes place on planet surface)

Galactica, Actual

BSG was, as I said in my favorite posting about it, "a brilliant, fractured mirror of our time".

A few core ideas: take a campy show and make it cool, play with the net up ("hard science fiction" with rules - the only exceptions being FTL and prophecy), make the Cylons indistinguishable from humans and play the terrorism angle.

But it ended with some fundamental problems that are common to the "one clever starting idea" and the hard SF approach. First off, like Lost, Heroes, and Twin Peaks, it starts off with a big engaging mystery storyline. This is impossible to pull off properly without having pre-plotted the entire series, like in Babylon 5. The best you can do without preplotting is remain smart and remain true to the story.

Galactica completely blew this. The ending is deeply disappointing. For fans who have been with it episode by episode, in this new style of very long story arc television, this is a profound dishonour to the fans.

This is how it went:
net up, net up, net up, NET DOWN and Kara is Jesus, God did it all, and God is kind of a tool, the end.

To wrap up the mysteries of a hard SF show with a bunch of handwaving religion is simply bizarre. There should be a profound story arc from Baltar and Six on Caprica, genocidal plotter and self-involved accomplice, to Baltar and Six on Earth, but it doesn't work. They tried at the last minute to construct story arcs for Tigh, Adama, Roslin, Lee and Kara, but they also made no sense. The only thing you could conclude from them is that Kara Thrace is still really pretty.

I blogged the show, episode by episode, here's a list that will take you from the beginning up to 3x11. You can use Google to find more in this blog and then and check over at Zak Adama is a Cylon for the rest.

Pretty much hated from 2x20 through the entire New Caprica storyline. Razor was pretty good. Season 4 mostly limped along. And the ending characters were just weird.

Crazy Ellen, memories restored but ranting at Tigh? Cruel and drunken Adama, drinking with Tigh in front of a Viper pilot? It just didn't make any sense.

The centre could not hold, it all fell apart.

And much like West Wing made no sense after Bush was elected and West Wing's mirror-Clinton administration no longer matched what was going on, in the Era of Obama and science, we end with a bunch of deus ex machina "god did it and god-it is kind of a jerk"?

There were FOUR HOURS (the last four episodes) to wrap things up, to come to some kind of meaningful M*A*S*H "goodbye" but instead you didn't really get a sense of anything.

Shame on you Ron Moore. You tried and for a while you succeeded brilliantly, but in the end, you took a good two-season show and made it into a deeply disappointing four-season show.

Coda

I'm going to buy the miniseries, that was the strongest part of the show, the initial, revolutionary idea. Apparently there's also a new two-hour thing "The Plan", about the apocalypse from the Cylon point of view - I think it will be a long time before I can bring myself to watch that, given Galactica's recent failings.

End of Line

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand...

- "The Second Coming", William Butler Yeats

Labels: battlestar galactica

posted by Richard at 05:42 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Galactica 4x10

That was about as good a mid-climax to this madness as was possible.
Kara's magic Viper, it was obvious it was going to have the info in its nav, but it was as good a way as any to have the final 4 lead the way to Earth without knowing the way themselves.

Kara running through the ship was ridiculous though.
What, she couldn't have picked up a phone?

Also the Admiral's meltdown was a bit over the top.

We seem to have ended up at some variant of my scenario from my posting Kara's Destiny from April: "Alternate Galactica-universe Earth. Earth is already centuries or millenia into the recovery after a total apocalypse."

Well, the total apocalypse part anyway.

As you may have noticed, only FOUR heard the radio call... Deanna said only four were in the fleet... because

TWELVE CYLON MODELS
SEVEN ARE KNOWN
FOUR LIVED IN SECRET
ONE WILL BE REVEALED

ZAK ADAMA IS A CYLON

It's pretty clear that someone is orchestrating human-Cylon peace.

The final Cylon and the Plan remain to be revealed.

In case you haven't heard, the final chapter, starting with episode 11, probably won't start unrolling until January 2009.

And yes I was wrong about President's aide and Tigh. I still don't see how Tigh can be a Cylon.

Labels: battlestar galactica, review, television

posted by Richard at 23:00 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)

Battlestar Season 4.0 ends at 10

They're ending the season at episode 10?
Are you fucking kidding me?

Space is advertising "Season Finale" on TV for this Friday.
On the website, they're calling it the "Spring Finale".
SciFi is calling it "Mid-Season Finale".

MIDSEASON FINALE?
What the fuck is that?

The remaining 10 episodes will air... we don't know when.
Anyone have any info?

Labels: battlestar galactica, television

posted by Richard at 20:23 / permalink (post) | permalink (numeric)