Battlestar Galactica negativity

[WizarDru]

While I agree that it does have an "modern day" feel to it, I do want to note that artificial gravity and inertial dampening (or however they overcome inertia) is pretty amazingly advanced, too.

On the one hand, that level of gravity control is astounding and (judging from the level of tech present elsewhere in the series) inconsistent. On the other hand, it's a practical reality to keep the show's budget reasonable.

Slug-throwers may not be sexy, like lasers, masers and other techonologies...but it's very efficient and very practical. A Mass Driver is just a big rock tosser, but is one of the most effective weapons for planetary bombardment, for example. The same applies with nukes; to the best of our guesswork, things like lasers and such just aren't terribly energy or damage efficient when compared with the good ol' GUN.

Another thing to consider is that Galactica's technology is hobbled...by DESIGN. It's older-technology features were done intentionally to make them, for the most part, hack-proof against the cylons (as was highlighted by Gaeta's ploy earlier this season). Hardline phones, for example, can't be compromised like wireless signals can; they also don't broadcast, regardless of how secure the signal.

Still, that's not the main point. I agree with you that he was the only character with flaws which were that serious and that obvious. I disagree that he was the only character with flaws at all, though. Captain Picard was isolated and friendless. Captain Kirk was a womanizer, reckless, and often short-sighted. Odo was merciless and often unforgiving. Quark was a greedy coward. Rom was an idiot.

I didn't mean to imply that no one had flaws...just that they weren't presented as significant in the context of the shows, generally. Picard was distant, as a traditional captain, but I don't think he acquired anything resembling a real flaw until after Locutus occured. "Family", the episode where he returns home, was one of the series' best. His catharsis in the mud wasn't a character flaw, it was the breaking DOWN of a character flaw, his stoicism in the face of trauma that he refused to face, that defined that moment. Kirk's behavior was rarely, if ever, represented as a negative. By today's standards, he's got more than a few...but he was rarely represented as wrong, without the effect of an outside influence. Quark, Rom and Garrick don't count, IMHO, as they weren't main characters; they were there as contrast to the Federation characters. Quark was generally a missed opportunity, IMO. The episode where he chastised Sisko for mankind's arrogance (and pointed out how his race had never had global genocidal wars) was a great kickpoint that was never picked up again.

None of that really bothered me, nearly as much as Trek's capacity to 'freeze' characters. Characters would tend to ignore what could have been significant changes in the same way that major technical changes would be ignored...until season end/beginning, when they'd make their changes. That's a different style, of course...one reason it's not really fair to compare the two.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. I'd hate to see Trek veer too far into the bleak territory of the new BSG; but I'd also hate to see the new BSG become too light. The tone and stories are much different. Make no mistake, here: I still love ST:TNG and ST:TOS. In fact, I look back with great fondness on ST:TNG, and it's crew/family. But just like some days I'd rather have Pad Thai and other days I'd like a big, greasy double-cheesburger, each appeals to a different taste. Variety is good, says I.

 

[Ranger REG]

On the one hand, that level of gravity control is astounding and (judging from the level of tech present elsewhere in the series) inconsistent. On the other hand, it's a practical reality to keep the show's budget reasonable.

I dunno. Any chance that we may see energy-based weapons (i.e., laser) in more common military application (i.e., infantrymen with army-issued laser rifles succeeding the M16s) than big battlestar heavy carriers with artificial gravity plating to keep everyone "down"?

Nobody had a problem with the original BSG.

 

[ThirdWizard]

None of that really bothered me, nearly as much as Trek's capacity to 'freeze' characters. Characters would tend to ignore what could have been significant changes in the same way that major technical changes would be ignored...until season end/beginning, when they'd make their changes. That's a different style, of course...one reason it's not really fair to compare the two.

That has to do with episodic writing, which is finally giving way to more continuous plotline shows. People are finally starting to see how neat it is that something in one episode can affect what happens in a future epiosde. Back in the '80s/'90s it just wasn't nearly as common as today to see that kind of thing. I remember how neat it was in MacGyver when Pete started to go blind and *gasp* he continued to go blind in subsequent episodes!

I think producers for more mainstream shows just didn't trust viewers to keep up. It's such a shame. One of my draws to anime has been the "standard" 26 episode series that is a continuous plotline. The Simpsons is probably the epitome of episodic TV, and they even have made fun of that fact on their own show.

That's one of the great selling points of DS9, by the way, and one thing that really made it stand out from TNG. Things could happen. Sisko could lose the station to the Cardassians, then fight to take it back. Characters could actually change! Thank goodness TV is to a point now where it isn't some radical and strange idea. We've got lots of shows like Lost, The 4400, and BSG where one episode effects another.

 

[wingsandsword]

For the prior utter lack of character and setting development between episodes in TV sci-fi, I'll definitely have to put the blame on Star Trek, but only because Star Trek was never designed back in the 60's to really tell an ongoing story, it was meant to be a pseudo-anthology.

"The Making of Star Trek", a very fascinating book in that it was made during the 2nd season of the show as a guide to writers wanting to break in to the industry, has a lot of production notes and very candid statements from the production staff of original Star Trek, the sorts of honest things that are now glossed over.

One was the fact that before Star Trek, TV science fiction was always an anthology. You had the Twilight Zone as the peak of sci-fi, and the Outer Limits as well was also sci-fi. You might have some old serial or giant monster/alien invasion movie on TV occasionally, maybe, but there was no real setting or character development there. Anthologies were expensive though, since you had to start from scratch every week.

Star Trek started out as just an anthology, a show that would depict a different Earth-like world and it's problems and stories every week, with a framing device of a Starship that goes from planet to planet visiting. That way, you save money with a regular cast, and standing sets, and making all the planets Earthlike means you can go to stock props and costumes as often as possible (Miri, Piece of the Action, City on the Edge of Forever being most notable like this). That's also why there were so many inconsistencies about Earth history and things like who operated the Enterprise (Space Central, Space Command and United Earth Space Probe Agency were mentioned on screen before Starfleet Command became accepted), or what the current year was (the original writers guide just said "in the future" and refused to set a year), they thought it would never come up, the show was about the planet. Later in the show, these things started to become more relevant, so they started to nail things down a little.

However, the shows that came afterwards followed strongly in Trek's mold, a new planet/adventure every week, with the show being a pseudo-anthology of visiting new worlds or some strange quirky adventure. The later trek series (except DS9, and it did it sometimes too) were just like that, so was 70's BSG, Buck Rogers, and generally all TV Sci-Fi until the 90's.

Within the mainstream of TV Sci-Fi, Babylon 5 started to break the mold by having a predefined plot arc and significant character development and setting changes. DS9 tried that too, but it was too different from trek for many trekkies. Too many trekkies bought into the promotional/public relations mantra of "Trek is popular because it presents a positive future", when it was the first even somewhat seriously written, halfway decent TV Sci-Fi ever done with recurring characters and setting. It had a lot of flaws, but it was still a long stretch from anything before it.

New BSG has utterly shattered the mold, in many ways being utterly unlike original BSG in tone. Each episode having major character developments, setting changes, characters with major flaws, and a vast rarity of Earthlike worlds so the cop-out of "here's a new planet, let's go down there and adventure" isn't there, so far after a season and a quarter, they've only found Kobol, which was always part of their mythos.

Old BSG was happy & cheerful, the 12 colonies are destroyed, so the Galactica and the fleet immediately goes to a Disco Casino Planet, and visits a long series of planets having adventures there with the local humans who just happen to live there with the Cylons trailing behind them (the Wild West planet, the Neo-Facist planet, the Ice Planet, and so on). It was about Apollo and Starbuck as larger than life heroes saving the day. Old Starbuck was James T. Kirk as a starfighter pilot, and the arrogance and womanizing we see as disadvantages now were played as strengths then. Even as a kid I thought it was weird that they fled their homeworlds as almost all the human race is extinct, and a huge fleet is chasing them, but they always have time to stop on some tiny planet and help some nice farm family with a nasty local villain, or their biggest worry is making it back from the battle in time to play in the sports championship that night. I was watching reruns as a kid and thinking it was unrealistic.

New BSG, as well as B5, 4400 and other Sci-Fi TV shows of our decade have finally begun to step out from Trek's shadow and move away from the standard model it established almost 40 years ago. Interestingly enough, Enterprise, which was generally just a continuation of that same model, was cancelled. I wonder if audience's tastes are changing to really prefer continuing stories over episodic TV in TV Sci-Fi.

 

[TanisFrey]

Within the mainstream of TV Sci-Fi, Babylon 5 started to break the mold by having a predefined plot arc and significant character development and setting changes. DS9 tried that too, but it was too different from trek for many trekkies. Too many trekkies bought into the promotional/public relations mantra of "Trek is popular because it presents a positive future", when it was the first even somewhat seriously written, halfway decent TV Sci-Fi ever done with recurring characters and setting. It had a lot of flaws, but it was still a long stretch from anything before it.

New BSG has utterly shattered the mold, in many ways being utterly unlike original BSG in tone. Each episode having major character developments, setting changes, characters with major flaws, and a vast rarity of Earthlike worlds so the cop-out of "here's a new planet, let's go down there and adventure" isn't there, so far after a season and a quarter, they've only found Kobol, which was always part of their mythos.

........

New BSG, as well as B5, 4400 and other Sci-Fi TV shows of our decade have finally begun to step out from Trek's shadow and move away from the standard model it established almost 40 years ago. Interestingly enough, Enterprise, which was generally just a continuation of that same model, was cancelled. I wonder if audience's tastes are changing to really prefer continuing stories over episodic TV in TV Sci-Fi.

It is possable to become so comvoluted and relient on the watcher to rember the previous eps to become hard to pick up a series in the middle, think Farscape. Miss them. Shows need to find a happy balance between them and stick to it. Farscape started as antholgy and changed to total arc, that hard for TV exect. to stomick.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I wonder if audience's tastes are changing to really prefer continuing stories over episodic TV in TV Sci-Fi.

I think they are. There's a reason Soaps were (are?) so popular, and that's because of a "What will happen now?" kind of feeling you get from them, from there being a larger picture, and trying to figure out what's going to happen. People really love trying to guess what's going on. X-Files played on this tremendously before everyone figured out the writers had no idea what was going on. Even though it was only part continuous, part episodic, it paved the way for future shows. You just can't give the same feeling with an episodic series.

Maybe people are watching more TV, or are otherwise more willing to tune in weekly to keep up. TiVo probably has something to do with this. I can record The 4400 with my TiVo, and I don't have to worry about being home or remembering to do this. I can keep up at my leisure. It makes it much easier for the audience.

It is possable to become so comvoluted and relient on the watcher to rember the previous eps to become hard to pick up a series in the middle, think Farscape. Miss them

Yeah, I so miss Farscape. Thank goodness they at least made the small miniseries. But, yeah, you couldn't just pick up in the middle. When SciFi started showing Farscape again in preparation for said miniseries, I was trying to explain what was going on, and failing miserably, to people who had never seen it. It was an awesome series, one of the best out there, but soooo convoluted, possibly too much so. There are still aspects that I don't understand about it!

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I think the trend towards story arcs and continuing plot lines in TV is a really interesting thing to watch develop over time. An argument could be made that Doctor Who was one of the very first to take that route. You could draw a line from:

Dr. Who-->X-Files-->DS9-->B5-->Buffy & Angel-->Farscape-->BSG

with probably a few more steps along the way that I'm not familiar with (Stargate, perhaps?) It's a general trend, and one that I'm a fan of.

 

[fett527]

I think the trend towards story arcs and continuing plot lines in TV is a really interesting thing to watch develop over time. An argument could be made that Doctor Who was one of the very first to take that route. You could draw a line from:

Dr. Who-->X-Files-->DS9-->B5-->Buffy & Angel-->Farscape-->BSG

with probably a few more steps along the way that I'm not familiar with (Stargate, perhaps?) It's a general trend, and one that I'm a fan of.

Absolutely!! DS9 and B5 really got me hooked into that vehicle. B5 more so.

 

[WizarDru]

It is possable to become so comvoluted and relient on the watcher to rember the previous eps to become hard to pick up a series in the middle, think Farscape. Miss them. Shows need to find a happy balance between them and stick to it. Farscape started as antholgy and changed to total arc, that hard for TV exect. to stomick.

Both have their strengths...but there IS a happy medium, and one that some shows tread. The issues is this, for me: proper continuity is NOT that hard to maintain. If a character is kidnapped, drugged and then buried alive in a coffin where he wakes up and spends hours until his teammates/friends rescue him....he's going to be a little more skittish about dealing with such things later. If, in the next episode, he is investigating a person who was murdered by being buried alive and doesn't at least comment on it (or have someone else ask if he's OK with it), then it doesn't ring true.

Every show is going to have the occasional mistake. B5 had them as much as any other show...just not on the big stuff. And it's not like it hasn't been done before. "All in the Family" for example, was doing this in the early 70s. Recurring characters, acknowledgement of previous events and character development occured. If handled correctly, it doesn't have to confuse new viewers, either. Farscape was the most egregious example of being new viewer UNfriendly. I missed a half-season, and then couldn't find my place: why did this character hate that character? Why was this person suddenly so mean? I Tivo-ed the miniseries, but then ended up not watching it. I just didn't feel like decoding it, much as I liked it.

Buffy/Angel didn't always do a good job of explaining their continuity to outsiders, but it wasn't THAT hard to jump in...especially with a little well-time exposition. Episodic TV works just fine: look at how well Firefly plays out, for example.

If you ever have a chance, skim Harlan Ellisons "The Glass Teat", a collection of articles ostensibly about Television and the TV business circa 1969 or so. It's very interesting to see how some things have changed, and how some things haven't changed at all.