For those who feel nuGalactica failed...

[jollyreaper]

Obviously if you think the entire thing was a brilliant success this topic is not for you.

1. When did the show lose you?
2. From what you've read from behind the scenes commentary, when do you think they lost it? Did it take you long to notice?

For me, I think they did well with what they wanted to do all the way up to just after Pegesus. The stories became padded and meandering. New Caprica was a major wtf moment and it went downhill from there. The final five thing sealed it for me. The finale was about as awful as I'd come to expect.

When the show first went wrong, though, was much earlier than that. Not having a plan is Galactica's original sin. And given that it is structured like a mystery, this is inexcusable.

Having read up on the behind the scenes commentary, they admitted to making up everything as they went. While fiction is of course making things up, fiction has an obligation to hold together. That's what makes for a good story. Why does a cylon's spine glow during sex? Looks cool. How was the cylon fleet tracking the colonials every 33 minutes? Unimportant. Moore never explained it. He thought getting into technobabble would be nerdy and dumb which can be true to a point but not having any internal idea on how any of this stuff works makes for an uneven presentation on-screen. Atmospheric jumps, for example. If the ships can multi-jump in later episodes, could they have done it in earlier ones? A new ability presented as "we could always do that" makes you ask why it wasn't done before? It's like giving rocket boosters to R2D2. What, he could always do that? No they must have been removed later or something fanwank.

Pretty much any BSG debate can be settled with "you're putting more thought into this than they did." And I accept that. The only reason why this still rankles me is because a space opera with killer robots is like candy for me. I don't waste time bagging on Twilight because that's not my genre. Done well, done poorly, not interested. But BSG, ah, why couldn't you be better?

Bringing this up due to Blood and Chrome. That's everything good and awful about Galactica distilled down to an evil, glowing liquor.

[Scottish Ninja]

I actually just started watching nBSG fairly recently. I'm about three quarters of the way through season 3 and it's really bogging down. One thing jumped at me from one of the episode descriptions on Amazon Prime: "A lull in the Cylon menace gives Galactica's crew a rare breather..." from 3x14. In that same episode someone notes that they haven't had any contact with the Cylons in forty-eight days, and there hasn't been a single serious fight against the Cylons since they left New Caprica.

I was looking through old commentary threads from back when the show was airing originally; someone in one of those threads, midway through Season Three, basically summed up the whole problem when they said something like "Hey, remember when Apollo and Starbuck flew Vipers and fought Cylon Raiders? Wasn't that cool?"

[Eternal_Freedom]

They lost is at or around The Captain's Hand, although the preceeding 4 episodes were entirely forgettable. The Captains Hand was I think their last interesting story; the consequence of having no reinforcements is having to make do with less capable officers when commanders die. After that you had the Cylon civil war and NEw Caprica which was so utterly shite it's not even funny.

[Crazedwraith]

When "One year later" popped on the screen. Just totally broke my suspension of disbelief as I felt sure there must be a reset button coming on the time jump but knew that would be totally out sync with the tone of the show.

[aieeegrunt]

mid way through Season 3 the show lost me. Starbuck coming back from the dead was the final nail in the coffin, although I hung in till the end.

[Mr Bean]

Season 3, the place plot lines went to die. I'm not going to get into the nonsense of the final five. No I'm just going to start with the fact they find a planet and try and make a go of it and then Cylons show up. It's pretty blatant parallels with the then American foreign adventures in Iraq and A-stan were way to on the nose in a show about skinjob robots and literal gods.

Hey Cylons here is an idea, your robots. You don't give to shits about casualties, just build yourself ten Centurions per human and put them on the planet to guard your humans. Destroy all food production and put your own people in charge of food distribution and control the high orbitals. Occupation solved, you can pretty much leave the humans on their own knowing if they get out of line you can starve them for a week or two.

You were built with supposedly human level intelligence why are you bothering with so many skinjobs when you can simply build more workers. You literally order all of the humans out of their ships, then disable them (By say physically slicing the engines out and knocking a few holes in the hull) and escape plan is over and done with. Even better no one gives a shit about this random world. Move a dozen Basestars here and keep them on high alert, your robots you can maintain that for 24/7 365 with no serious issues. Better still, send out messages in all nearby systems to the Galacta and Pegasus, surrender at once and you won't be harmed or in ninety days we nuke the human colony. We know you don't have enough people on board to breed back up to a population that can fight us.

Season 3 should have been "Robots Win, now what?" instead the Cylons were handed an idiot ball and told to run with it as far and as long as they could go. And they never put it down even up to and including the end of the series.

[JLTucker]

How was the cylon fleet tracking the colonials every 33 minutes? Unimportant. Moore never explained it. He thought getting into technobabble would be nerdy and dumb which can be true to a point but not having any internal idea on how any of this stuff works makes for an uneven presentation on-screen.

Who cares? He explained his decision to not explain how they were tracked. He said it would add nothing to the drama in the episode. It seemed you missed the point of that episode: to show the toll taken on those tasked with defending the fleet,to show the moral dilemma that a newly-elected president had to deal with, delve deeper in Batlar's fucked up mind, and other hosts of character development. Instead, you decided to misrepresent Moore's own words on the matter to suit your hilarious rantings about a show you think began to fail from the onset because it didn't placate your idea of what science fiction should be. Here's what Moore had to say about this non-issue of explaining why they attacked every 33 minutes:

"A deeper truth is, I was never interested in coming up with an explanation for Why? Never. I mean, I suppose I could've come up with a sufficiently important-sounding bit of technobabble that would've made sense (you see, the Cylon double-talk sensors tracking the Olympic Carrier's nonsense drive signature needed 15 minutes to relay the made-up data wave through the pretend continuum, then the Cylon navigational hyper silly system needed another 10 minutes to recalculate the flux capacitor, etc.) but what would that have really added to the drama? How does explaining that 33 minute interval help our understanding of Laura's terrible moment of decision, or bring us to any greater knowledge of Dualla's search for her missing family and friends, or yield insight into Baltar's morally shattered psyche?

It doesn't, of course. The answer, however artfully it may (or may not) have been crafted can only subtract from the experience we have in watching the episode. Not knowing the how's or why's of the Cylon attack puts us in the same seat as the characters we're watching. They're in the dark, and we're in the dark. The relentless attack is unfathomable in its origin and unstoppable in its execution. It's mortality coming at you on a loop. If you only had 33 minutes before the next time you could die, what would you do? And what about the time after that? And the time after that? At a certain point, you stop caring about why it's happening, all you know is that it is happening, and it's happening to you."

So the mystery of 33 will be permanent on this show. No explanation, not even the attempt. Let it just be a number that seemed like an eternity for five long days on the battlestar Galactica."

Once again, who cares?

I never thought the show lost its way because I cared more about the character drama, the political allegories, the themes, and many other things. I didn't care about the plot holes, lack of explanation for things, inconsistent technology, etc. I do think there are some horrible episodes, like "The Woman King" and "A Day in the Life, " but I think it ultimately succeeded in what it tried to do: create a character study on how people deal with tragedies that never seem to let go and keep shoving them further into the abyss.

[JLTucker]

When "One year later" popped on the screen. Just totally broke my suspension of disbelief as I felt sure there must be a reset button coming on the time jump but knew that would be totally out sync with the tone of the show.

Can you elaborate further on this? I'm not seeing how this broke your "suspension of disbelief." I also think you contradicted yourself. It broke your suspension of disbelief but you somehow knew it wouldnt' be a reset button? Would you mind clarifying?

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Didn't the finale suck because they tried to stuff about 30 episodes of plot into about 15 or something like that? I remember the writer's strike fucked things up on that score.

[jollyreaper]

I actually just started watching nBSG fairly recently. I'm about three quarters of the way through season 3 and it's really bogging down. One thing jumped at me from one of the episode descriptions on Amazon Prime: "A lull in the Cylon menace gives Galactica's crew a rare breather..." from 3x14. In that same episode someone notes that they haven't had any contact with the Cylons in forty-eight days, and there hasn't been a single serious fight against the Cylons since they left New Caprica.

I was looking through old commentary threads from back when the show was airing originally; someone in one of those threads, midway through Season Three, basically summed up the whole problem when they said something like "Hey, remember when Apollo and Starbuck flew Vipers and fought Cylon Raiders? Wasn't that cool?"

A balance is a tough thing to strike. A battle every episode turns it into airwolf. Not enough action and you forget there's anything at stake.

Part is the advantage of planning in advance is you get the chance to go back an reassess. Authors writing novels can look at the whole work and do a second pass. Here's what inset out to do, did I do it? Did I need to add more here, remove things there? We're some plot lines dead ends? Do I need to provide more material here to sell the idea? Did I justify the development? Did I sell the twist? Wow, this seemed like a good idea when I wrote it but it just doesn't work.

[jollyreaper]

They lost is at or around The Captain's Hand, although the preceeding 4 episodes were entirely forgettable. The Captains Hand was I think their last interesting story; the consequence of having no reinforcements is having to make do with less capable officers when commanders die. After that you had the Cylon civil war and NEw Caprica which was so utterly shite it's not even funny.

Funny thing: I was speculating about a cylon civil war before it ever happened. It was one of my oddball endgames. If there was to be any chance of a human-acceptable victory, some cylons would have to disagree with the plan and that disagreement might be hostile.

Mind you, this was before it was revealed that the skinjobs weren't just agents of the cylons but the ruling body. Part of the ruining of my suspension of disbelief was watching a toaster planting a tree and creating planet Starbucks for the cylons to live on. And I did not buy how they could create clones and yet have a hard-on for sexual reproduction. Why?

My favorite scenario for cylon rebellion is that they were made as logic engines based on fact and the creators wanted to make sure that logic would not declare humans irrelevant so an irrational compulsion was placed in their logic circuits, humans are special. Because of this fiat, the cylons go nuts trying to rationalize it which is where they ended up inventing monotheism. The war was due to a logic fault in their programming. And the resolution is cylons moving beyon programming.

The war ends with the colonies resettled. There were survivors amidst the destruction. There simply weren't enough cylons to wipe out everyone. That was the reason for the sneak attack, cylons could not manage a stand up fight against the colonies.

[jollyreaper]

Tucker, you are a fan. I won't try to convince you that you didn't actually enjoy what you saw.

33 was great at the time. Head Six was a major wtf. Didn't see that coming. Helo alive on Caprica? I thought he was dead in the miniseries. That was unexpected, surprising. I wanted to know more. But what was revealed fell short. Nobody fucking new what head six was, same with head Baltar.

It's like Japanese horror. Do they come up with arresting visuals? Fuck yeah. Do they come up with a good story to go with? No. Some people love j-horror for what it is and others feel not explaining anything is a tremendous copout.

Who cares? Let's remove the scifi. A prominent man in a story cheats on his wife. The writer wants a jilted lover story. Ok, that's cool. But is there support? Does this man have a wandering eye? Is this out of character for him? If so, do we have an explanation? Or does it just seem like a stunt?

Dualla's death was a stunt. They decided on the spur of the moment that they needed consequences for the Earth fallout and decided she should suicide. Now of course in real life we don't have access to inner monologue. What we see as out of character could be us not knowing the person. But fiction has to make send or else we don't buy it. There's no resonance.

Now, why would 33 be important? How are the cylons tracking them? What is the technology? What is the plan? Why can't they track them after that episode? These questions are important because it affects the drama. As a genre jump, Downton Abbey uses legal crap to start the show. What is an entail? How does this complicate matters of inheritance? It's legal babel but drives the plot. Would it rob the story of meaning if we found out the Crowleys could have settled matters with a solicitor easy as you please? Would that undercut the earlier drama? There might be drama if the case is Lord Grantham is too stupid to know he could settle his problem. That could work of the show is taking the piss out of nobility. But if its played straight the whole thing falls apart. Our characters we are supposed to sympathize with are idiots.

What Moore said is correct in that 33 or 34 minutes does not matter. But that he does not understand how his own universe works speaks volumes.

Does anyone else wonder why habitable worlds within range of the colonies by civilian ships had never been visited? Kobol was within raider range. While that is cylon tech, it's also within range of civilian ships. We can detect planets by telescope. How could they not notice a habitable world a few jumps from home? Why were expeditions not mounted?

[Starglider]

Mid season 3. All problems prior to that didn't prevent the show from being enjoyable; yes the occupation was a blatant polticial allegory & drama generator but that's ok, you can take some artistic license to have your characters explore new situations. Mid season 3 though, things got simultaneously soapy, nonsensical and pointlessly contrived. The final five / 13th colony stuff did not work well, the later revelations about Cylon society did not hold up as well as the earlier ones and the ending was just poor (to be fair, endings are hard). I don't think nBSG 'failed' in the sense that it was still mostly watchable and frequently compelling, and better than many contemporary shows, but yes the later material fell short of expectations set by the earlier material, and yes Moore proved good at detail (both drama and authentic feel) but poor at big picture stuff.

[jollyreaper]

Didn't the finale suck because they tried to stuff about 30 episodes of plot into about 15 or something like that? I remember the writer's strike fucked things up on that score.

People are all of the place on that. Some say it sucked before the finale, others say it didn't suck until the last 30 minutes.

I'd given up long before. But in terms of specific objection, humans and cylons making peace is good. Destroying bad cylons is good. Landing on proto-earth with frakable primates is stupid. Giving up all technology is stupid. The fast forward to modern day was beyond stupid, like pretentious student film bad. The head Baltar and six commentary was like being violated by fanfic.

Personally, I like the idea of an epic story that is the stuff of religious texts. I like the idea of showing the kind of story that would be written down in scripture with dinners celebrating every year. Exodus and Passover? Space Mormons are gonna get their Hebrew on up in this beyotch. But the writers seem to have forgotten what the story was.

The point about trying to be Afghanistan is well-taken. This is a show about ships in space. Why are we on a planet mounting suicide attacks on immortal robots? It's like starting a show about cops in the inner city and somehow winding up in city council politics. What sort of show are we talking about here? Is there room for both stories? Does it make any kind of sense?

[Eternal_Freedom]

In fairness to it (never thought I would say that) the finale was enjoyable right up to when they jumped in above the Moon. They could have ended it there with a pan up to the Earth and I would have been happy it was done and hoping for a sequel. After that jump, urgh.

The Captain's Hand was the last hurrah but also started the decline, with Baltar deciding to run for President. That was just wtf. The New Caprica part was interesting enough but the political messages were so over the top it was painful. Galactica's rescue mission was epic and impressive but wasted the Pegasus for no reason other than to make Lee a lower rank again.

The Eye of Jupiter/Rapture was the final nail. After that, it was garbage.

[jollyreaper]

Mid season 3. All problems prior to that didn't prevent the show from being enjoyable; yes the occupation was a blatant polticial allegory & drama generator but that's ok, you can take some artistic license to have your characters explore new situations. Mid season 3 though, things got simultaneously soapy, nonsensical and pointlessly contrived. The final five / 13th colony stuff did not work well, the later revelations about Cylon society did not hold up as well as the earlier ones and the ending was just poor (to be fair, endings are hard). I don't think nBSG 'failed' in the sense that it was still mostly watchable and frequently compelling, and better than many contemporary shows, but yes the later material fell short of expectations set by the earlier material, and yes Moore proved good at detail (both drama and authentic feel) but poor at big picture stuff.

So it would be a fair statement that he big picture matters? Personally, I find that the big picture is what helps the little picture stuff have relevance. And the biggest failing of most contemporary drama is that the is no picture, it's just making up shit to fill airtime and sell commercials until the network cancels the whole thing. So while it might be fun to watch while its being made, there's little to compel someone to go back and rewatch later. Seeing several episodes back to back simply makes the flaws more noticeable.

Personally, I think any ending should be written first and the story eventually comes around to that end. It doesn't have to be set in stone and there's room for discovery but it should make some goddamn sense in the end. In this case, the cylons never ever had a plan, ever.

[Gandalf]

The point about trying to be Afghanistan is well-taken. This is a show about ships in space. Why are we on a planet mounting suicide attacks on immortal robots? It's like starting a show about cops in the inner city and somehow winding up in city council politics. What sort of show are we talking about here? Is there room for both stories? Does it make any kind of sense?

It's not about space ships, it's about America after 9/11. For the most part, Cylons are the amorphous Middle Eastern enemies and the other guys are Fleet America.

[JLTucker]

<snip>

The "33 minutes" is a MacGuffin, so there's no reason for support on how that tracking worked. It doesn't matter how it worked because it's only there as a catalyst for everything I described in my post above. Also, the Cylons don't track the fleet after "33?" I guess they found them on New Caprica by magic instead of the radiation emitted when Gina set off the nuke. But let's use the power of deduction, shall we? We know in Kobol's Last Gleaming that trackers were found in the fleet and used to allow Boomer onto the baseship. Here's some dialog about the trackers from Kobol's Last gleaming, Part I:

Gaeta: Whenever they're within a certain proximity of one another, they send off a short IFF burst. Essentially, they are Cylon transponders programmed to identify themselves to any other Cylon transponder.

Is it really out of line to assume that more were found over the course of the series an that perhaps more remain?

The point about trying to be Afghanistan is well-taken. This is a show about ships in space. Why are we on a planet mounting suicide attacks on immortal robots? It's like starting a show about cops in the inner city and somehow winding up in city council politics. What sort of show are we talking about here? Is there room for both stories? Does it make any kind of sense?

It's not about space ships, it's about America after 9/11. For the most part, Cylons are the amorphous Middle Eastern enemies and the other guys are Fleet America.

This just shows how delusional jollyreaper really is in his hate for this show. It was NEVER a show about spaceships in space and shooting shit down and awesome battles with lasers and shit. It was, from its very inception, about how the various characters deal with their predicaments and their ability to survive at any cost. The suicide bombers illustrate the latter point. How the hell can anyone say this is about ships in space when the first season alone shows a character dealing with the revelation that she's a cylon and putting us in her mind? Why would religion be in a show about space ships? I want to advise us all to ignore jollyreaper because of his ignorance about the show, but where would be the fun in that?

[JLTucker]

It's like starting a show about cops in the inner city and somehow winding up in city council politics. What sort of show are we talking about here? Is there room for both stories? Does it make any kind of sense?

You aren't very bright, are you? Do you really think that city council politics is that far out of field from the duties of law enforcement? Do you not think the two are linked? If you're going to bash something, at least use examples that make sense.

[jollyreaper]

Tucker, the real issue is that whatever the show ostensibly seems to be about, the writers ultimately weren't sure, either, leading to the flailing and confusion.

To look at it from another angle, if its not about spaceships and pew-pew, why are the elements there? You can tell King Lear in vaguely European garb or as a samurai epic. Likewise a Fistful of Dollars can be samurai or western. Either telling is fine. Why pic one over the other? There must be a reason. Maybe the idiom is more familiar to the director, perhaps it's an aesthetic choice. Maybe the director feels there's no other way to tell the story he wants to tell.

Caprica was bot originally a BSG spinoff. It was made so to sell it to scifi. External complications made the show more difficult. Maybe the spaceships and robots were legacy that RDM was stuck with. I want to tell a story about familial loyalty and betrayal and the only project I have is a Gummi Bears revival, then my bears are going to be goddamn Corleones.

[jollyreaper]

It's like starting a show about cops in the inner city and somehow winding up in city council politics. What sort of show are we talking about here? Is there room for both stories? Does it make any kind of sense?

You aren't very bright, are you? Do you really think that city council politics is that far out of field from the duties of law enforcement? Do you not think the two are linked? If you're going to bash something, at least use examples that make sense.

The comparison was deliberate. A show about politics has one kind of pacing, one about cops has another. Same goes with a legal show. Could you create a hybrid show doing justic to two different fields that are a part of the same story? Or would it feel like a mess? We have hospitals and police and courts and law firms in the here and now. Could you shape a story that could weave between all of them faithfully or would it come out confused and unfocused? And especially is the first season was all about cops and we end up in council meetings.

I know the Wire tried this approach. It's on my watch list. The Shield wasn't quite as broad but remained incredibly enjoyable. BSG tried to move in several different directions at once and the fan base is not universally singing praises.

[jollyreaper]

Ps tucker -- the express purpose of the thread is for people who aren't happy with how the show turned out to discuss their views. It's not meant to troll people who are happy with it, ruin their enjoyment, etc. note I am not entering a "yay, galactica" thread to tell everyone they are wrong. So, why are you coming in and immediately getting personal?

[JLTucker]

To look at it from another angle, if its not about spaceships and pew-pew, why are the elements there?

To placate the lazy who need action in a story to be interested at all, like the forum's own Batman? To make it an interesting setting? To do something different? Use your imagination.

The comparison was deliberate. A show about politics has one kind of pacing, one about cops has another. Same goes with a legal show. Could you create a hybrid show doing justic to two different fields that are a part of the same story? Or would it feel like a mess? We have hospitals and police and courts and law firms in the here and now. Could you shape a story that could weave between all of them faithfully or would it come out confused and unfocused? And especially is the first season was all about cops and we end up in council meetings.

You'd have a point if BSG was about space ships at all, which you still seem to think i was. It appears allegorical meanings, themes, and metaphors aren't your strong suit . Anyone with a hint of analysis can see that the show is an allegory for post 9/11 America. That is evident from the miniseries and extremely obvious in the New Caprica arc.

[Batman]

Here's a hint-some of us want SciFi shows to be about ships in space and awesome battles and shooting things down, not heavy-handed social commentary or dysfunctional characters getting on each other's nerves. It's a TV show. Its purpose is to entertain me. If it doesn't do so, it failed, at least as far as I'm concerned. I suggest you reread the threat title. 'For those who feel nuGalactica failed'. That's not a blanket statement that nBSG objectively undisputably stunk, it's asking for people's personal opinions. Yours is no more correct than mine or jollyreapers.
And personally, I feel he was overly generous. I was rooting for the Cylons halfway through s1 and the stupid religion angle sure as hell wasn't an improvement to the series.

[Stark]

The comparison was deliberate. A show about politics has one kind of pacing, one about cops has another. Same goes with a legal show. Could you create a hybrid show doing justic to two different fields that are a part of the same story? Or would it feel like a mess? We have hospitals and police and courts and law firms in the here and now. Could you shape a story that could weave between all of them faithfully or would it come out confused and unfocused? And especially is the first season was all about cops and we end up in council meetings.

I know the Wire tried this approach. It's on my watch list. The Shield wasn't quite as broad but remained incredibly enjoyable. BSG tried to move in several different directions at once and the fan base is not universally singing praises.

This is especially amusing given the existence of the Wire. COULD IT BE DONE? NOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE. You obviously hold a view that you suspect is fundamentally wrong.

If you have roadblocks that prevent you engaging with a work, thats fine. But you should accept that this comes from you as much as it does the work itself. Everyone has things that make them say 'pffft get fucked' and turn things off (and these things are probably why the later show is viewed less positively) but there's a role there for viewer expectation and preconceptions.