BSG: Season 4

[Torrid]

I'm stupid for giving a shit about plot, apparently.

All the religion, magic, divine will, and angels crap doesn't belong in sci fi, or at least not this much. It's enough to make me want to watch Picard spend an hour trying to convince those primitive fucks that he isn't God in the TNG episode that surely was not written by Moore.

They painted themselves into such a corner that they couldn't have given us an ending that wouldn't be lame. It was obvious that they were sort of shooting from the hip for the entire series.

It was a good show, but when I hear Olmos tell me that the show "will be better understood in 25 years" it makes me

Caprica looks to be shit, too. I shall mourn the death of Friday night television.

[Daerath]

Originally Posted by meStevo

I actually had to look that up before I posted a nitpick about it so I wasn't wrong, they call it the sun, which is a generic term for a star with planets orbiting it.

Your education has failed if you had to look that up. While "The Sun" is used more frequently than "Sol" which is the actual name of our star, "The Sun" or "Sun" is a generic term for the star(s) in a solar system.

As for the last episode, I enjoyed the end of the series. It reminded me of the ending to the BBC TV Miniseries of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy that was released back in the late 80s / early 90s.

Caprica looks like it is going to suck and die off after a season.

Stargate Universe on the other hand... That could be interesting. =)

Oh, and what the fuck was with the shitty CGI they used in the final episode? The new model cylons looked different from previous episodes, the raptors and vipers looked different, the background colors for the black hole were shit. It was like they ran out of money and couldn't finish polishing the effects.

[Sylverlokk]

Originally Posted by Malakriss

In direct response to Tabris, or anyone else confused about Cavil's actions..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Recall that they did still have a resurrection pools that were not on the hub but on Cavil's basestar and potentially others. The problem was is that the technology used to create it was only known to the Five and they obviously could not reverse engineer it on their own, or else Cavil would have done it after reprogrammed the Five.

Why did he shoot himself? He was expecting to resurrect back in the colony after the raiders finished off Galactica. So he shot himself expecting to get resurrected asap and hunt down the rest of the fleet. This was made null by the "act of god" that nudged the dead raptor pilot to trigger the NUKES AHOY button and destroy the colony, or at least damage it enough that it would lose orbit and the black hole would do the rest.

Cavil and the evil cylons are gone. Our centurion allies willfully joined us in the fight to do this, there was no threat from them whatsoever. Thus they got their freedom. They now become the "old models" and 150,000 years we would create the new ones and potentially start the cycle over. What would be really creepy is if the centurions saved Anders and he would become the hybrid for the "ancient cylon ship" that first told Kara she was the harbinger of death and would lead them all to their end. Assuming the cycle starts again of course

I disagree, I think cavil shot himself because he was an arrogant control freak who saw the end coming and couldn't stand the thought that anyone but he should be the final arbitor of his fate.

[Tabris]

Oh, and what the fuck was with the shitty CGI they used in the final episode? The new model cylons looked different from previous episodes, the raptors and vipers looked different, the background colors for the black hole were shit. It was like they ran out of money and couldn't finish polishing the effects.

If you read the interviews about the finale, they did in fact run out of money, and Sci-Fi ended up ponying up some more so they could finish it. Obviously not enough to make the hand to hand combat scenes look good, as the humanoid Cylons looked terrible. The space combat looked good though.

[Sylverlokk]

Originally Posted by Phoenix

I think the problem is the fact that 8 of the past 10 episodes where complete filler with no action or anything going on. That and the fact they never properly planned this thing out. I mean, wasnt their dozens and dozens of Cylon baseships out there? What happened to them? What happend to Kera being the "harrold of the apocalypse"? What happened to Hera being the savior of the cylons and humans?

Too many questions left unanswered for my taste. I know they where shooting for closure on the characters themselves instead of the story, but even there they had some blank spots.

She was the Herald of the Apocalypse. She brought them to the place that their civilization and society died and a new one was born. I don't know if Hera was the savior of the human and cylon races but she was the start of the next cycle, the oldest known "current cycle earth" Human, who just happens to have a little bit of the cylon in her.

The cyclons are irrelevant, this story was never about the Centurians, or the machines who had no doubt and acted more like machines, it was about Humanity moving to a place where our spirit and heart was equal to the technology our brains can produce. The cycle of rebirth, death and rebirth will continue, ad infinitum, under the watchful eye of God or the final evolution of the Cylon/Centurians until we humans are aware enough that we move on to whatever happens next.

[Simas]

Like others I loved the first hour or so. But just about everything from Cavil walking down the hall on was stupid. Cut to CIC and theres just a bunch of dead cyclons but "oh shit cavil's still alive, watch out!" wtf, then one hallmark talk from boltar and dude is like ok lets trade. Then chief goes batshit and clearly no one knows whats goin on but "its a trap!" and start shooting? Then Cavil shoots himself 10 min after he was going to kill Herra (and then he would be killed) instead of trying to take some people out with him?

Then we have lolangels and everyone just agrees to give up all comforts and go play survivor man? With no debate? And so God or the Gods or whatever are ok with having angels jump through all these hoops to achieve the desired outcome? He/it/they couldnt come up with a cleaner plan? Then after all of that were shown stock footage of robots to imply the whole cycle isnt even broken.

Whole thing felt like a rushed cop out.

[Arative]

Originally Posted by Simas

Like others I loved the first hour or so. But just about everything from Cavil walking down the hall on was stupid. Cut to CIC and theres just a bunch of dead cyclons but "oh shit cavil's still alive, watch out!" wtf, then one hallmark talk from boltar and dude is like ok lets trade. Then chief goes batshit and clearly no one knows whats goin on but "its a trap!" and start shooting? The Cavil shoots himself 10 min after he was going to kill Herra (and then he would be killed) instead of trying to take some people out with him?

Then we have lolangels and everyone just agrees to give up all comforts and go play survivor man? With no debate? And so God or the Gods or whatever are ok with having angels jump through all these hoops to achieve the desire outcome? He/it/they couldnt come up with a cleaner plan? Then after all of that were shown stock footage of robots to imply the whole cycle isnt even broken.

Whole thing felt like a rushed cop out.

Well there will be probably 20 more minutes in the extended version. Although I am surprised that sci-fi wanted them to cut anything out, I figured they would have milked the show for all it is worth.

Did anyone get the impression that red dress six represented evil (devil with the red dress on) and Baltar represented good?

[Dynalisia]

The series finale was fine, like other people I just don't see how it could've been satisfactory after how seasons 3 and 4 turned out.

The whole trouble with BSG is that they make use of very powerful plot points and symbolism and then end up turning them into cardboard cutouts. The harbinger of death, the dying leader, all the religious connotations, the opera house, the lords of kobol and everything related to them that served as plot devices, the ancient cylon faction and lots of other stuff I can't think of right now. All those things were epic and they've remained either unresolved or got resolved in a very lame way.

And I don't buy into the survivors ditching their technology either, that really was a huge disappointment. But it's the same thing again, when you write scifi on such an epic scale, there will be lots of questions and ifs and buts. These things should have been dealt with over the course of the last two seasons, shit was just out of control now.

[Arative]

Originally Posted by Dynalisia

The series finale was fine, like other people I just don't see how it could've been satisfactory after how seasons 3 and 4 turned out.

The whole trouble with BSG is that they make use of very powerful plot points and symbolism and then end up turning them into cardboard cutouts. The harbinger of death, the dying leader, all the religious connotations, the opera house, the lords of kobol and everything related to them that served as plot devices, the ancient cylon faction and lots of other stuff I can't think of right now. All those things were epic and they've remained either unresolved or got resolved in a very lame way.

And I don't buy into the survivors ditching their technology either, that really was a huge disappointment. But it's the same thing again, when you write scifi on such an epic scale, there will be lots of questions and ifs and buts. These things should have been dealt with over the course of the last two seasons, shit was just out of control now.

I could buy them ditching their technology. If you remember the mini-series. Doral said that Galatica was built without networks because people were looking to go backwards because their technology got them into trouble. They've spent 4 years crowded into ships, seen their technology try to kill them. Seen their dream of Earth die because their technology killed them. So I could see them wanting to go backwards to a simpler life, as Adama said a clean slate.

But I do agree on some of the unanswered questions. Like what were the Lords of Kobol, more on the 13th tribe. Maybe the extended version will answer some more questions. Maybe the Plan will answer some more.

[Tabris]

Well - after what happened with New Caprica, I could plausibly see the colonial survivors wanting to try things over without their technology - but then again, if it wasn't for their technology, they would have been completely fucked/dominated for all time by the Cylons on New Caprica.

Really, it's pretty much a bullshit hippie liberal ending. "Return to nature/end the cycle of violence/give up our weapons and technologies!" Only a bunch of idiots with no idea how things really work would want to return to primitive times. Do these people have any clue how hard it is to cultivate food without modern pesticides/even just 19th century level tools? Do they know how much it sucks to build shelter/housing without even 20th century tools? Without their weapons to intimidate the natives, why in the world would they not all get slaughtered?

I'm guessing that's the reason why only "mitochondria eve" passed on her genes - the other 38k survivors died of starvation/exposure/being fucking retarded.

[feezy]

Starbuck's ending was the only thing that truly disappointed me in the finale. I was hoping she would fly back to Galatica and ride shotgun with Anders till the end.

Cavil offing himself was kind of a surprise at first, but I figure he'd rather do it himself instead of die to a human.

[Mist]

After sleeping on it, I'm coming around to the fact that the ending was bullshit. The huge continuous undercurrent of the show was about trying to preserve their civilization and their democracy, and then they throw all that away to go live in the bush? It would have made a lot more sense for them to have arrived ~2500 years or so ago, and covertly assimilate into the civilizations of the Mediterranean, the Orient and the Middle East. Adama could have buried Roslin on the top of Mt. Olympus and lived out the rest of his days there or some shit.

Also, didn't the ending basically say that Hera died before reaching adulthood? How could she be the mitochondrial eve?

[Kreugen]

Damn, I'm a tard. I didn't connect Baltar getting choked up about the farmer bit at the end until I read the interview. "You know, I know about farming.." Duh, he mocked his dad for being a simple farmer and here he was, uber genius, having to rely on skills he was once embarrassed by as if he were meant for it all along. All his knowledge of technology and science were useless in the new world.

Anyway, that was a cool bit and I missed it the first time around.

[Tabris]

Another thing about the bullshit return to nature ending: There is absolutely no fucking way that they would give up distillation technology given how much alcohol the characters drink.

[Havelock]

Originally Posted by Arative

I could buy them ditching their technology. If you remember the mini-series. Doral said that Galatica was built without networks because people were looking to go backwards because their technology got them into trouble. They've spent 4 years crowded into ships, seen their technology try to kill them. Seen their dream of Earth die because their technology killed them. So I could see them wanting to go backwards to a simpler life, as Adama said a clean slate.

They didn't get rid of their networks out of some generalized fear of technology. Galactica was built without networks because the Cylons could take over networks. It's not like they gave up their Vipers, or their nukes, or their dradis.

And there's a big difference between leading a simpler life and giving up on shit like running water, medical equipment, and climate control. They led a pretty non-technological life on New Caprica, did it look like they were enjoying that?

The writers hit on some epic themes early on and teased with them throughout the series, but they never had a clear idea of where the story was arcing and they faked it as best they could. In the end, they couldn't fake it well enough. Ronald Moore is a hack, not a genius.

Originally Posted by Kreugen

Damn, I'm a tard. I didn't connect Baltar getting choked up about the farmer bit at the end until I read the interview. "You know, I know about farming.." Duh, he mocked his dad for being a simple farmer and here he was, uber genius, having to rely on skills he was once embarrassed by as if he were meant for it all along. All his knowledge of technology and science were useless in the new world.

Anyway, that was a cool bit and I missed it the first time around.

That part was pretty sweet; the Baltar flashbacks were more worthwhile than the rest (I really liked the Boomer one, too). And apart from the resolution of the Head Baltar/Six (you know, the huge mystery they've been teasing us with since the beginning of the damn show), I really liked how Baltar and Caprica ended. The character endings were, apart from Kara's, pretty good. But the story ending was a steaming pile of shit. BSG went from epic show to epic fail in the last 30 or so minutes. And now Moore is out spinning it with all the "It's the characters, stupid" thing to deflect attention from the fact that the story crapped out incoherently.