Hello Gaius my old freind
October 18, 2012 8:52 AM   Subscribe

 
was hoping for the first series sound from the red eye going back and forth.
posted by Ironmouth at 8:57 AM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


Damn, now I want to watch it all again. (Except maybe the last half of season 4.)
posted by daveje at 9:12 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


All of this has happened before and all this will happen again.
posted by guiseroom at 9:13 AM on October 18, 2012 [3 favorites]


I just relieved 18 months of binge-watching and tip-of-my-toes anticipation for a new episode every week. Followed by the crushing despair that was the series finale.

AN ANGEL?!

this was great fearfulsymmetry, thank you for the link
posted by sparklemotion at 9:15 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


Yes watching it did remind me that the wounds have not yet healed when it comes to BSG.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:19 AM on October 18, 2012 [7 favorites]


I'm watching DS9 now, and participating in the AV Club review community that discusses espisodes every week. When they flashed that picture of Ron Moore I felt something very visceral, and very confusing.
posted by sparklemotion at 9:22 AM on October 18, 2012


Am I the only one who felt satisfied by the way BSG reimagined concluded?

I am not a number. Or a toaster.
posted by Wordshore at 9:24 AM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


Am I the only one

Probably. Anytime a piece of popular culture attempts to conclude* with the grand idea that we are descended from aliens (and said grand idea doesn't involve the B-Ark), it is frustrating and lame.

*or start, for that matter -- I'm looking at you Prometheus
posted by sparklemotion at 9:28 AM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


Ha! I laughed. And, strangely, found James Callis attractive for the first time ever. Silence looks good on him.
posted by Squeak Attack at 9:45 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Cylon and Garfunkle was one of my favorite Futurama gags.
posted by uftheory at 9:49 AM on October 18, 2012 [7 favorites]


I watched it on DVD years after it concluded so I had years of hearing how terrible the ending was. It seemed in keeping with the rest of the show. I mean, an exodus has to end somewhere right? There were other angels all though the show, we just didn't recognize them as such. The show was just way too serious, it could have used some holodeck episodes.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:52 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


I'm realizing that every time I run across something like this that makes me want to rewatch the series, what I really want is to be able to watch it again for the first time - to recapture the feeling of seeing it all new.

That will never happen again.
posted by rtha at 9:53 AM on October 18, 2012 [6 favorites]


"Sound of Silence" also easily applicable to the new Doctor Who series.
posted by PipRuss at 9:59 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


AN ANGEL?!

It's not like they didn't telegraph that one.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 10:00 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


Loved the first few seasons of BSG.
posted by flippant at 10:04 AM on October 18, 2012


*or start, for that matter -- I'm looking at you Prometheus

Ooh they could do a crossover: Battlestar Galactica vs. the Engineers: the Fight for Earth.

posted by homunculus at 10:05 AM on October 18, 2012


Am I the only one who felt satisfied by the way BSG reimagined concluded?

It's far from my favorite, but I was okay with it.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:06 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Cylon and Garfunkle was one of my favorite Futurama gags.

Best throwaway gag ever: kegelcizer.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:07 AM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


It's not like they didn't telegraph that one.

The more they telegraphed it, the less interesting the whole business got. They played those first couple of seasons as though they actually meant what they were saying. Watching it dissolve away into hokey pseudo-religious superstition.... well... it retroactively drained a lot of the fun out of the beginning.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:14 AM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


BSG reached for brilliance and almost got there. I miss what it could and should have been.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:32 AM on October 18, 2012 [3 favorites]


"But...but...you told us THEY HAD A PLAN."
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:33 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Ironmouth: was hoping for the first series sound from the red eye going back and forth.

By your command.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:33 AM on October 18, 2012 [3 favorites]


BSG followed the tradition of most sci-fi TV shows on the air and went out of its way to defend the military. "Final Cut", Season 2? Ugh. Ew. Yuck. It was 95% cloying propaganda followed by 5% JJ Abrams. I'm was working my way through them but I think this is going to be where I decide to stop.
posted by dubusadus at 10:35 AM on October 18, 2012


"But...but...you told us THEY HAD A PLAN."

I would have loved to have been privy to the writer's discussions about that at the moment when they realized that they didn't, actually, want to take the story in that direction. I mean, they must really have kicked themselves for having that stuck right there in the opening credits for the first couple of seasons: it's like having a gun over the mantelpiece in the first act of your play and then having the stage director sneak out half way through and replace it with stuffed fish--in full view of the audience.

Still, while the last season of BSG is far from my favorite, I think a lot of the fan outrage was disproportionate. It still did some interesting stuff: and I'm still grateful for just how terrific the show could be before that point.
posted by yoink at 10:40 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


Did they (the writers, not the cylons) start out with a plan and then abandon it somewhere along the way? Or was it a "we'll figure it out when we get to that point" thing from the beginning?
posted by ook at 10:52 AM on October 18, 2012


Did they (the writers, not the cylons) start out with a plan and then abandon it somewhere along the way? Or was it a "we'll figure it out when we get to that point" thing from the beginning?

Oh, I doubt they had a plan, but they clearly planned to think up a plan--if you see what I mean. They clearly thought "at some point, we'll figure out a grand master plan that the Cylon's were pursuing" and then once they got invested in making the Cylons more human (bickering among themselves, splitting into factions etc.) they had to toss that idea out of the window.
posted by yoink at 10:56 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


I would have loved to have been privy to the writer's discussions about that at the moment when they realized that they didn't, actually, want to take the story in that direction.

There was no discussion because there was no actual plan:
SD: "And they have a plan..." Did you feel you painted yourself into a corner with that line in the precap?

RM; David Eick painted me into a corner. When we were coming up with the precap to define the large mythos of the show, we were coming up with succinct pieces of information the audience needed to know, and David said, "and it ends with, 'and they have a plan.'" "What does that mean?" "I don't know, but it's great!" And so I got talked into leaving it in. And it became one of the hallmarks of the show, the Cylons have a plan. And I kept getting pestered with it for the rest of the show. "What's the plan?"

It will all be revealed in the DVD movie. And if you don’t like it it’s cause you’re not paying enough attention. (Laughter.)
Source: My Notes From The Ron Moore Master Class At BANFF
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:59 AM on October 18, 2012


"Sound of Silence" also easily applicable to the new Doctor Who series.

If by that you mean most of the new Doctors should shut the hell up sometimes, then I totally agree.
posted by Squeak Attack at 10:59 AM on October 18, 2012


My son, who is 8 and loves the robots, and I are watching the series from the get-go now on netflix. We are past the midway point of the first season and i still can't wait for the next episode. the lowpoints will come, but it is pure pleasure thus far this time around.
alas he will not get this, but it's cute.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:07 AM on October 18, 2012


I'm so glad that the video didn't include the Doo-doo-doo DOO-doo-doo DOO-doo Doo-doo-doo Doo-doo-doo DOO-doo dinging that happened whenever Number Six appeared in the first season. I watched the whole first season in about two days, but I kept hearing that Doo-doo-doo DOO-doo-doo DOO-doo for about two weeks in my mind.

No, this video is a beautiful thing and I love it. So say we all.
posted by Elly Vortex at 11:09 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


What kills me is not that they went off track. Or that they started with no clear end in mind from day one. What kills me is that when they did, at some point, they had to sit down and look at it. And they could have said, then, "OK, let's map out the arc to the end, along with some subplots we can mix and match to lengthen or shorten the series." But instead they seem to have said "Oh, well, let's just wing it and throw some half-assed Hail Mary pass at the end." (Just like Lost, which makes me feel just as cheated).

And I think it's relevant here, because, cute as this video is, that sort of poisons the kind of good memories this should evoke.
posted by tyllwin at 11:11 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


There was no discussion because there was no actual plan:

I answered that point in the post immediately prior to yours. It's not that they had any idea what the "Cylon plan" would be, but they clearly did, in fact, intend to come up with one at some point. And then they changed their minds. And I'm sure that entailed a great deal of discussion.
posted by yoink at 11:13 AM on October 18, 2012


Ahhhhhhh, but this is the central fault of all series that start with a snappy, well planned story arc and then get picked up for additional seasons. they all become soap operas and require ret-cons out the ass until they are senseless. there may be no easy answer (short of six seasons and a movie) but it ain't workin the way hollywood is doing it now.
posted by OHenryPacey at 11:17 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


I was on the fence about that song until it got to the sleep around with Cylons part.
posted by ckape at 11:25 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


No, this video is a beautiful thing and I love it. So say we all.

So say we all.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:28 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


It's not that they had any idea what the "Cylon plan" would be, but they clearly did, in fact, intend to come up with one at some point.

It would be good for character motivation and plot if the story says there is a plan and the writers actually have an inkling of what the plan is from the get go.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:39 AM on October 18, 2012


the weird bit about "they have a plan" for me was always that the line came after the Cylons had already nuked the shit out of all human planets, destroyed all human space fleets, and won the war. Shouldn't "they have a plan" have referred to all that? Like:

Secret Cylon Plan:
1: hide in deep space and evolve and build lots of us and ships
2: seduce some chump with the defense codes using sexy evolved model
3: coordinated nuclear first strike

But all that was done by the time "they have a plan". So then the plan had to refer to the next steps? Later we see maybe that included stuff like harvest human women's wombs to try and create a half human half Cylon. Or maybe "find earth" was in their plan as well? But seriously, how is anything they had planned more interesting than the stuff they accomplished by the end of episode 1?

...

All that said, if you pretend that "they have a plan" never appeared in the opening credits, I love the series and didn't even dislike the ending. But if you can't forgive them that, I understand that as well. Maybe it helped that I watched it long after the TV run, and fast-forwarded through the opening credits every time, and therefore wasn't constantly reminded of and dwelling on the plan?
posted by jermsplan at 11:47 AM on October 18, 2012 [2 favorites]


It would be good for character motivation and plot if the story says there is a plan and the writers actually have an inkling of what the plan is from the get go.

Maybe. There are plenty of great writers--and I'm talking books here, not serialized TV drama--who happily admit to writing "blind," to figuring out the story as they go along (and there are hosts of anecdotes of writers being "amazed" by the decisions their characters made etc.). And these are often works that seem intricately plotted and to have wonderfully rich characters. By the same token there are writers who map everything out in painstaking detail beforehand and have everything die on the page. I think one of the risks of overplanning is precisely that of having characters and character-developments that seem to exist solely to serve the purposes of the plot.

It's tricky for TV writers to plan long arcs in any detail because A) they can't be sure that the series will be renewed year over year and B) they can't be sure which actors will be available to them in the future. I think they often have to work with fairly sketchy concepts that they intend to fill in in more detail as they move forward.
posted by yoink at 11:50 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


This is probably the best thing I have ever seen.

OHenryPacey: Don't know if you've seen the series before, but it's not as kid friendly as the original and you might like to watch ahead depending on your kid. Themes dealt with in coming episodes include suicide, sexual assault and torture.
posted by Iteki at 11:53 AM on October 18, 2012


This blew my mind, one of the best things I have ever seen. I had a visceral emotional response that was completely unexpected.

Does this video work on people who haven't seen the show? Probably not, its as much the images and my dreamlike recall of the plot.

I realized that BSG has reached nostalgia level mythos in my mind. I donno if watching the last season would ruin it or not, I suspect so. I like to think that it turns out to all be a dream or personal hell of Gaius.
posted by darkfred at 11:56 AM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Thanks Iteki...I watched the show when it was first on, and am fairly aware of the themes, but have been careful with individual episodes as well. he sits and makes his lego projects and looks up when i say 'robots!' or during the space battles, he's not so interested in the dialogue or kissing parts.
posted by OHenryPacey at 12:04 PM on October 18, 2012


Seriously considering gorging on the show like this. Did a more sane version of that when watching the first two seasons the first time...
posted by aerotive at 12:20 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lego and BSG sounds like a fab combo, lucky boy!
posted by Iteki at 12:21 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Lucky boy, indeed - and lucky us.

When I first saw OHenryPacey's comment, I braced myself for the wringing hands and righteous indignation to overtake this thread.

I was a little surprised when that didn't happen. When I read Iteki's comment, I realized I was wrong to worry about mefites reading this particular thread to turn it into a brawl.

* * *

I loved this show, and clearly benefited from watching/gorging on it via netflix. Yes, the ending was problematic - all the prophecies turning into, "well, she's just this kid, you know," and the non-plan plan - but I was okay with that and our revealed heritage.

Maybe I'm cynical, or maybe I've mellowed, but I knew well beforehand that no ending could really justify the kind of buildup they had erected.

Some shows (*cough* Heroes *cough*) didn't survive the anticipation created in their first season. That BSG kept going so long is something to be happy about
posted by arkham_inmate_0801 at 12:48 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Seriously considering gorging on the show like this .

My wife and I did that with The Wire! It was an insane month, we were literally doing the "Ok, I cab get by on five hours of sleep tomorrow, let's watch another episode" thing.

Oddly enough, series finale left us about as bummed as the BSG finale.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:51 PM on October 18, 2012


I am not a number. Or a toaster.

So far as you know.
posted by charlie don't surf at 12:52 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


The problem with BSG wasn't that they wrote it blind, it's that they didn't write it based on what had already occurred on the show. They kept throwing in twists which contradicted or otherwise wasted seasons worth of previous foreshadowing... which seemed fresh and different during season 1, 2, and the early part of season 3, but became increasingly unsatisfying as the series drew closer to the end.

For example: they retconned the entire backstory for the Cylon race along with five major characters four episodes before the finale. That shattered any hope of continuity with the rest of the story, even before they decided to drop the angels/nuclear-genocide-is-awesome-as-long-as-you're-killing-baddies/back-to-the-land thing on the audience. The main problem with the back half of the last season is that it dealt with a "tension" they'd invented only a few episodes ago, rather than the tensions that had been developed throughout the series.

Gaeta's mutiny felt incredibly strong, a perfect turning point towards the ending. If they'd just gone from there into a reasonable conclusion to the human-mutiny/Cylon-mutiny parallel plot they'd been developing since season 3, I think most fans would still be hailing this series as a work of genius.
posted by vorfeed at 1:08 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Am I the only one who felt satisfied by the way BSG reimagined concluded?

You know how Adama asked “why are we, as a people, worth saving?” This is exactly what he was talking about.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:08 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


I think a lot of the fan outrage was disproportionate

To be fair, even with the full last season, BSG was one of the best tv series of the last couple of decades, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of most of the people who nerdrage about the ending the loudest.

We bitch because we love.
posted by sparklemotion at 1:17 PM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


Just like Lost, which makes me feel just as cheated

I recently discovered a song by 60's psychedelic band "The Millennium" They did a song called The Island.

Maybe I'm missing out on something everyone else already knew, but that song is basically the entire show.

And yeah, the end to BSG sucked ass. The whole show did overall, though there were some pretty good episodes. I'm sort of pissed about it, because the original was amazing to me (granted, I was 8) and loved it so, so much then.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 1:21 PM on October 18, 2012


ckape: I was on the fence about that song until it got to the sleep around with Cylons part.
I know, right? I still get excited just thinking about...

What? Why are you all looking at me like that?

It's just a Telefunken U-47. It's not like anyone's gonna miss it.
posted by IAmBroom at 1:22 PM on October 18, 2012


That's what I like about rewatching B5, I know that there was a plan for the first four seasons and they did a decent job of fulfilling it. Then of course, there's the holiest of Metafi holies, Firefly, which did have a plan and goddamn right I'm still pissed.
posted by Ber at 1:31 PM on October 18, 2012 [4 favorites]


the weird bit about "they have a plan" for me was always that the line came after the Cylons had already nuked the shit out of all human planets, destroyed all human space fleets, and won the war

You have to grant that "They had a plan" does have a somewhat better ring to it than "They did this shit on purpose."
posted by ook at 1:39 PM on October 18, 2012


It's tricky for TV writers to plan long arcs in any detail because A) they can't be sure that the series will be renewed year over year and B) they can't be sure which actors will be available to them in the future. I think they often have to work with fairly sketchy concepts that they intend to fill in in more detail as they move forward.

Yeah yeah. But if Farscape can turn its main characters into stone pebbles when series was suddenly canceled and then come back from that to write a decent series finale, there's no reason why BSG should have ended as weakly as it did. There was a lot of talent involved in producing that show and it's crazy that it went to pot so badly.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:39 PM on October 18, 2012


"The amount of negative emotion from the fanbase in the end of a series or franchise is proportional to the amount of positive emotion from the fanbase in its first half."

I'm going to call it Broom's Theorem of Expectation.
posted by IAmBroom at 2:11 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Cylon movie, those of you that have seen it, (anyone?) Is it worth seeing? I was pretty pissed, like so many others, that I snorted contempiously when it came out. But maybe the passage of time means I can rewatch and give the movie a go, if its worth it.

I was surprised too by my emotional response watching this video. Amazing how a show can worm it's way into your pscyhe. Also, my goodness, it had some great visuals. I miss my big spaceship scifi (sigh).
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:13 PM on October 18, 2012


Firefly, which did have a plan and goddamn right I'm still pissed.

If Battlestar Galactica had been cancelled after two seasons it would be remembered even more fondly than it is. Average episode quality matters. Always leave 'em wanting more.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 2:48 PM on October 18, 2012


I thought The Plan was worth seeing, but I really like Cavil and the other Cylons, so I enjoyed taking a sarcastic, subversive, and self-admittedly stupid romp through the series from their perspective. The whole thing struck me as an excuse for Jane Espenson to write lots of dialogue for Dean Stockwell, which is a bit of a chocolate/peanut-butter scenario for me. If you're not into the Cylons and/or her writing, your mileage may vary tremendously.
posted by vorfeed at 2:49 PM on October 18, 2012


Seriously considering gorging on the show like this .

You've been warned.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 3:40 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Love the video. Gave up on the show somewhere around the Big Reveal at the end of the third season.

I liked a lot of what they had going on, mind, I just felt like that reveal was... ridiculous.
posted by Archelaus at 4:24 PM on October 18, 2012


"The amount of negative emotion from the fanbase in the end of a series or franchise is proportional to the amount of positive emotion from the fanbase in its first half."

It was indeed quite good but it then got to be so bad that I can't in good conscience, recommend the show to anyone. The same is true of the Star Wars franchise and sadly, now, the Doctor Who franchise. In many ways they are like a drug that is a great rush early on and then ultimately plagues your art/entertainment life afterward.
posted by juiceCake at 6:40 PM on October 18, 2012


The whole show did overall, though there were some pretty good episodes. I'm sort of pissed about it, because the original was amazing to me (granted, I was 8) and loved it so, so much then.

Wow. It would never have occurred to me that there are people who revere the original (and, in my view, hilariously cheesy) BSG and consider the reboot to be an insult to its sacred memory. Amazing.
posted by yoink at 8:41 PM on October 18, 2012 [1 favorite]


Wow. It would never have occurred to me that there are people who revere the original (and, in my view, hilariously cheesy) BSG and consider the reboot to be an insult to its sacred memory. Amazing.

Richard Hatch (the original Starbuck, not the Survivor) was one of those people, until he saw the mini-series and was persuaded to join cast as Tom Zarek.
posted by sparklemotion at 9:18 PM on October 18, 2012


Awww. Come back, Battlestar. All is forgivHIDDEN TASER ZAP ZAP ZAP NEVER FORGET
posted by obiwanwasabi at 2:26 AM on October 19, 2012


Richard Hatch (the original Starbuck, not the Survivor) was one of those people, until he saw the mini-series and was persuaded to join cast as Tom Zarek.

Richard Hatch was the original Apollo. He was Zarek in the remake, yes.

It was Dirk Benedict, the original Starbuck, that hated the idea of the reboot and complained about it loudly and forever. He was not in the reboot.

As for the ending... I'm okay with it. I do wish the second half of season four was as strong as... the entire rest of the series. Because I think the show is amazing until mid-season four. But then came... the writers' strike. And there was a point there, as the writers' strike continued, that it looked like the show may never return. And that would have been sad. And Ron Moore has said ever since that he was glad the strike happened (well, of course, writers won some good ground) because he was able to look at the show fresh and essentially re-write the second half of season four.

I wonder what the original vision of that final run of episodes was supposed to be. I wonder how he originally envisioned the finale, since the flashbacks were a later inclusion in his concept for the ending. I actually love the flashbacks - there's something really exciting about seeing those characters again before the mini-series. But there are some weird missteps in that final ten episodes that make it stand out as weaker than the rest of the show - and I'm a fan of how it wrapped up. It's just a pity it took some weird detours to get there, ie. Starbuck's story almost makes sense but not quite.
posted by crossoverman at 5:31 AM on October 19, 2012


It was Dirk Benedict, the original Starbuck, that hated the idea of the reboot and complained about it loudly and forever.

Hatch was also against it at first. He had been championing a separate BSG project previously.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:27 AM on October 19, 2012


I wonder what the original vision of that final run of episodes was supposed to be. I wonder how he originally envisioned the finale, since the flashbacks were a later inclusion in his concept for the ending.

From a previous comment of mine:
The writer's strike really changed the story, as Moore had a lot of time to think about it and revamp it. He does a complete plot breakdown of what the original plot was. Long story short, it involved Ellen becoming enraged by Tigh impregnating Six and turning against him, breaking apart the Final Five, so the 4th season would have had Tigh leading the Cylons aligned with the humans, while Ellen, with Cavil, lead Cylons against the humans.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:01 AM on October 19, 2012




I thought it was just going to be a cheap cylon noise gag, but it turned out to be really awesome.

My poorly worded theory on why the Lost/BSG endings turned out so badly:

I think plots need to be both necessary and sufficient. That is the end needs to be a logical result of what has happened before, but also something that uniquely depends on previous events and wouldn't have made sense if you radically altered the previous episodes. I think invoking mysterious higher powers runs straight into this problem because they always get their way, regardless of prior circumstances.
posted by Erberus at 5:11 AM on October 20, 2012 [1 favorite]


The Cylons can make the perfect woman but completely botch the breast job. The actress playing the blond Cylon has the worst breast job of any actress I've ever seen and watching the original series it always distracted me.
posted by e40 at 2:38 PM on October 21, 2012


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