BSG 4.5: Sometimes a Great Notion - Place your bets....

[The Yosemite Bear]

of minor note the title is both a Ken Keasey novel about incest and insanity* or a Leadbelly lyric about a guy in prison for statutory rape contemplates scuicide.

*actually the relationship is between an adult man who hates his father and his stepmother who now also hates her husband both because of his abusive nature and his insanity.

Now the reason I say that goodnight Irene involves statutory rape, is because the older (not cleaned up) library of congress version of the song has the lyrics state:

I asked your father to marry
he said you was too young
I wish I never had met you
I wish you never was born.

followed by lyrics describing life on a chaingang.

[Coyote]

So far, none of the religious/prophesy stuff has seemed to be spot-on, all of it is stuff that can be "interpreted creatively" and made to fit the circumstances. Also, Uraniun, bear in mind that Roslin's cancer was initially cured by something from Hera (blood transfusion?), it wasn't "magic", and it came back (as cancers sometimes do).

Some you young'uns don't remember the first show, waaaayyy back during the Caesar Administration in the 1970's, but the first show was problematic for precisely the opposite reason that's being whinged about here-- back then the show was too goddamn perky. 99.99% of humanity got wiped out, and the survivors rush off for grand adventures and escapades that include casinos and meeting friendly aliens and building lovable, cuddly robot doggies for their kids, and all that pap. Moore and the others involved in the show are very aware of that and are trying to avoid that sappy-happy weekly dollop of sweetness that the old show was later criticized for.

Now, true, they may be over-compensating on the grimdark aspects, but I don't think so. The survivors are obviously traumatized, compartmented off in crappy ships, there's black marketing, squabbling and crime, human trafficking and child prostitution, ineffective and unelected politicians, military coups and martial law with civvies getting shot, prison riots, and what do they have to look forward to when their day is done? A luxury liner with a casino and a simulated outside that gets blown up, and beyond that, a brief hardscrabble village in quasi-medieval conditions on a rockball planet, a chromatically-filtered rockball planet with yummy algae paste, and that's about it.

I think there's just about the right level of grimdark bitching. People crack under pressure, especially after 3 years like that with nothing concrete to look forward to or hold onto. No days off, no vacations, holidays a limp shadow of what they used to be if they're celebrated at all (and typically just reminding you of all your dead friends and family)... oh, yeah, the enemy that started the whole thing is still coming to try to kill you.

All in all, I think it was a pretty good approximation of people deteriorating under immense stress. You've basically had your whole species and society formed into a weird refugee wagon train/concentration camp with maniacs in charge. What would make it more real? If they made Fridays "Hawaiian Shirt Day" or something? Seriously.

[Sarevok]

It is not the dark atmosphere that is the problem.

The problem is the show stopped making sense long time ago. It is not like season one was a perfect paragon of scifi but then every episode kept you wondering what happens when the oxygen runs out or water recycling breaks down. It was pretty cool a scifi version "what if lone warship had to fend for itself" scenario.

But fast forward to now and it is almost overfilled with nonsensical magic and religious crap that makes no sense. Why not just admit it and show a Force like magic is really driving Galacticaverse instead of pretending it's all "gritty realistic drama" ? At this rate Starbuck using telekinesis would make more sense than leaving us wondering how the fuck characters read minds, see the future or communicate telepathically.

[weemadando]

It is not the dark atmosphere that is the problem.

The problem is the show stopped making sense long time ago. It is not like season one was a perfect paragon of scifi but then every episode kept you wondering what happens when the oxygen runs out or water recycling breaks down. It was pretty cool a scifi version "what if lone warship had to fend for itself" scenario.

But fast forward to now and it is almost overfilled with nonsensical magic and religious crap that makes no sense. Why not just admit it and show a Force like magic is really driving Galacticaverse instead of pretending it's all "gritty realistic drama" ? At this rate Starbuck using telekinesis would make more sense than leaving us wondering how the fuck characters read minds, see the future or communicate telepathically.

Thank you for putting it way better than I have been able to.

[Uraniun235]

Also, Uraniun, bear in mind that Roslin's cancer was initially cured by something from Hera (blood transfusion?), it wasn't "magic", and it came back (as cancers sometimes do).

An injection of Cylon baby blood somehow made Roslin suddenly way better for about a year. The same Cylons which allegedly are so close to human that we can't medically distinguish them? It may not be a wizard waving a wand but it's still effectively the same thing - the writers didn't want Roslin to die just yet so they fiated a way to save her.


I've actually come to not mind the show being rather dark - no, I don't want BSG79 all over again - although that doesn't mean I don't find some of the characters (i.e. Starbuck, or Helo, or Apollo) grating. Yes, harsh conditions will likely throw individual neuroses into greater contrast, but that doesn't necessarily make some of them any less aggravating to be subjected to.

That said, there does ultimately need to be some sort of hope to cling to - not only for the audience so that it's not entirely one big exercise in "woe be the ragtag fleet" (that's bordering on the sado-masochistic there), but also for the crew so that we're not left questioning just why there haven't been mass suicides yet or at least why they even bother to keep following orders any more. I didn't mind the completely understandable aftermath of discovering Earth as a (fiated) unlivable cinder (I loved the scene with Adama), and in fact I'm really glad the writers avoided inserting a ponderous speech about how humanity (or Cylonity or whatever) is so dumb and destined to destroy itself blah blah.


I will admit that I wouldn't mind if we never saw any combat again, or if the only remaining battle was fatal to Galactica. It's absolutely amazing that that ship is still operable, let alone can continue to present a threat to a Basestar.

[Uraniun235]

To elaborate...

An injection of Cylon baby blood somehow made Roslin suddenly way better for about a year. The same Cylons which allegedly are so close to human that we can't medically distinguish them? It may not be a wizard waving a wand but it's still effectively the same thing - the writers didn't want Roslin to die just yet so they fiated a way to save her.

Remember that neoBSG began with the premise (promise?) that this wasn't going to be just another space opera - that they were going to break away from a lot of the standard cliches and be rather more hardnosed about consequences and the big picture and what-have-you. Commander Adama wasn't going to operate in a vacuum - the Quorum and the President would be very real and they would insist on having a say in where the Fleet was going to go next, since it's Important that the Colonials have decided to maintain a democratic-esque form of government. Fighters weren't going to go pew-pew, they were going to go brrrrpt and shoot tried-and-true bullets and missiles rather than space beams. The ship was going to fight its way out of problems through sheer will and force and it would cost dearly in lives and resources, not through clean bullshit technobabble solutions to wrap the episode nice and neat.


So, from the perspective of someone who's just seen 33, the idea that someday Roslin's cancer would be miraculously cleared up (for at least a year) by injecting her with some blood from a Cylon baby would seem preposterous. 'No, that's not how neo-Battlestar Galactica will do things. If Roslin's got a terminal disease, she'll die of it, they won't pull a rabbit out of Baltar's ass to save her.'

But they did.


I think the same could be said for the crazy radiation storm they had to fly through which took Kat's life. Does that sort of space phenomenon actually occur? Is it even really necessary to the show?


The crew encounters a mysterious artifact on the planet below. But just as they're about to discover its secrets, the star just happens to start to supernova, and the Galactica jumps out just at the nick of time. If you'd told this to someone right after 33 they'd say "Sorry mate, I think you've got this show confused with the 1979 Battlestar Galactica" because it sounds like the sort of corny space opera cliche the producers told us wasn't going to be part of the new series, that in fact it was the sort of thing audiences did not want and therefore the new series was going to appeal to that audience with a refreshing lack of such space opera cliches.



I think at least part of the disappointment with the series, for some at least, has to stem from the fact that the show really has deviated from what it originally promised, and that there have been times when the writers have blatantly reached in and used writer's fiat to shove the show out of a path they didn't like. That, at least, is how I feel. I think at times neoBSG really has failed to live up to the expectations it set early on and I think that is where the real frustration lies.


(This of course is not to say that neoBSG has been a total failure and a complete waste of time. For example I think the writers did a very good job of taking the "democracy is vital to their society" aspect and really running with it to the conclusion of "well sometimes democracies fuck up and make bad decisions and we just have to live with the consequences", when they could have taken a much more cliche'd way out. But at the same time I don't think neoBSG can be said to have never fumbled at all, and I think we should be direct and even brutal about both what the show has done well and what it has done poorly.)

[Zac Naloen]

Zac whined about how there's no evidence of the writers intending to leave things unanswered but my retort is where is the evidence that they actually do intend to resolve many of these questions they brought up? Or rather, where's the evidence that they will do so in a manner that's actually satisfying and thoughtful and doesn't just superficially gloss over everything they've built up over the run of the series? To be fair we've got D'anna being unboxed following the civil war, but that's not enough to really convince me.

The only person whining here is you buddy.
It's pretty rich of you to ask for evidence for something that hasn't happened yet.

They've already answered some pretty major points and i'm not seeing any huge contradictions in the show.

Just wait till the end then you can fucking complain that they haven't answered the question of who the grand planner is and I'll complain along with you.

[Coyote]

I didn't think the cancer arc was so badly done; the Cylons genetically engineered themselves and --ta-daa-- they added something in their blood that filters out cancer. Wouldn't you? "No, I'm going to become the pinnacle of genetic engineering, but I think I'll keep cancer. Makes me humble, ya know." The do a transfusion and sure, it clears up Roslin's cancer, but after awhile the transfused blood is replaced with her own natural blood from her marrow, and, whoops, that means cancer comes back.

See, if it was a one-time-fix-all cure I'd be irritated. In order to stay cancer free, you either have to be a Cylon all the time, or regularly bathe in their blood or something. "Magic" would be "I once got a transfusion, and now I'm good to go, forever".

What else was "magic"? Visions by themselves I don't see as "magic", people have visions (especially if they are religiously pre-inclined to accept such things, and the Cylons certainly qualify) and they then retrofit those visions to square with what happened, and then declare that 'prophesies have been fulfilled'. Shared visions are more difficult, I'll give, but since mass hallucinations can happen on Earth, I'm willing to cut some slack. Again, you have a group of people (Roslin, 6, and Athena) who subconsciously are seeking out visions.

The funky temple experience where they were "teleported" to Earth was, I thought, a holo-image. It might have been a super long-range Star Trek transporter that worked only in the confines of that room. The idea that they are dealing with a formerly great technology which they've lost makes either a possibility in standard sci-fi.

What other "magic" was there? Starbuck's death and return? Starbuck was human, but she crashed on Earth which was, apparently, equipped with its own resurrection hub (or conveniently close to one) since the Final Five also died on Earth and came back. No one knows what will happen to a human who goes through a res; no one's tried it. But the Earth resurrection hub apparently works on automatic and will download any organic matter and teleport it back to its known point of origin-- apparently even fabricating a new ship for her as well. I'm not saying this is what happened, but it's a theory-- automated factories and teleporters can be found in a lot of sci-fi, so I am willing to hold this in abeyance until a canon answer is presented, then pass judgment.

[Turin]

Because Season 1, Episode 1 ("33") wasn't almost entirely about Baltar giving himself over to God or anything (oops, character-driven inside an overall story!).

So, what does that mean? What did we ultimately get out of Baltar giving himself to God? From his perspective, things seemed to get better... but at the same time it could just be coincidence. See, that was good television because it left the question up in the air and similar writing - like the issue of whether or not Roslin was hallucinating when she saw the ancient lost city on Kobol when she looked at the recon photos - allowed for some excellent conflict between Roslin the faithful and Adama the atheist.

But it's been years since that point and we don't have anything more on just what Head-Six (or, now, Head-Baltar) means, or why or how she's there or what her (it's?) true motives are. Nothing. Well, there was an ambiguous scene where she appears to lift him up, but it's still ambiguous so we're no closer to an answer. Is one really going to be forthcoming? I'm not optimistic on that, although I'd love to be proven wrong on that count.

Now you're just being funny. You're bemoaning that the writers can't possibly wrap up all the loose threads in one minute and then in the same breath bemoaning that they've actually been moving some of those lines (those associated with the "spiritual" aspects of the show) forward. We really knew nothing in the beginning, and the writers have apparently decided that these elements are more true than not, while still keeping us guessing. I think the problem is that you just don't like how they've decided to move the spiritual aspects of the show forward. That's fine if you don't, but don't pretend that everything is still totally up in the air.

I'm also not sure what your jab there is supposed to mean, I'm not saying neoBSG has always been total shit, nor am I even saying character-oriented storytelling is a bad thing. Which aspect of my post did you think your jab cleverly refuted?

Your insistence on using the tired term BSG Live Journal. It's like you're complaining that the characters in a show that is about what happens after the destruction of civilization aren't cheery enough for you. Maybe you should throw in some more complaints about how Kara-Harbinger-of-Death-Destroys-Everything-She-Loves-Thrace is apparently so blessed in the show? I don't think we've seen that in this thread yet.

No I'm not trolling on purpose, I'm basing this on the series writers' habit of both making the series up as they go, and employing blatantly contrived events in order to fiat their way through particularly sticky points.

Gasp! You mean an episodic show that, like all shows, mostly doesn't even know if it's going to be picked up in the next season has to write from episode to episode and leave things somewhat open and flexible. Say it ain't so! Predestination has been a huge element of the show from the very beginning, which means gives the writers a useful tool to make this work in a way that can be expected and makes sense (to everyone but you, apparently).

[Bilbo]

I didn't think the cancer arc was so badly done; the Cylons genetically engineered themselves and --ta-daa-- they added something in their blood that filters out cancer. Wouldn't you? "No, I'm going to become the pinnacle of genetic engineering, but I think I'll keep cancer. Makes me humble, ya know." The do a transfusion and sure, it clears up Roslin's cancer, but after awhile the transfused blood is replaced with her own natural blood from her marrow, and, whoops, that means cancer comes back.

One transfusion saves her for a year but they do not try it again? That is what does not make any sense. Was there some line in an episode I did not see where they mentioned that the treatment could only be done once?

[Gaidin]

One transfusion saves her for a year but they do not try it again? That is what does not make any sense. Was there some line in an episode I did not see where they mentioned that the treatment could only be done once?

Did you see the look on Roslin's face when 3 made her think she was a cylon for ten seconds? Roslin was incoherent when this was done to her. The odds are fairly good, given what we know of her, that she would refuse the treatment.

[Coyote]

Hmm: "In order to stay healthy, you must regularly drink bathe in[/i] accept transfusions from a baby."

No, I can see her nixing that macabre thought right there.

If you're searching for nuggets of goodness in the hell that is their existence, there's one right there: Roslin isn't yet so far gone that she is willing to vampire a baby in perpetua. Maybe it is because she is still "decent" (or wants to be decent), or maybe it's just selfish because in order to fill the role of the dying leader/prophet she must, indeed, be dying and not cannibalizing babies. But either way, there is at least a lower limit to the depravity she's willing to resort to.

See!? Happiness!

[Bilbo]

Hmm: "In order to stay healthy, you must regularly drink bathe in[/i] accept transfusions from a baby."

No, I can see her nixing that macabre thought right there.

If you're searching for nuggets of goodness in the hell that is their existence, there's one right there: Roslin isn't yet so far gone that she is willing to vampire a baby in perpetua. Maybe it is because she is still "decent" (or wants to be decent), or maybe it's just selfish because in order to fill the role of the dying leader/prophet she must, indeed, be dying and not cannibalizing babies. But either way, there is at least a lower limit to the depravity she's willing to resort to.

See!? Happiness!

So instead of a once a year blood transfusion we instead have the President taking a hallucinogenic drug while remaining in office? I dont see either being all that great a choice. If these are the two options either let her die or remove her from power.

[Gaidin]

So instead of a once a year blood transfusion we instead have the President taking a hallucinogenic drug while remaining in office? I dont see either being all that great a choice. If these are the two options either let her die or remove her from power.

Actually the second time around they caught it early enough that the hallucinogen was a supplement and never taken in a large enough dose to cause snakes to appear on her podium. Most of her treatment was their standard treatment.

[Bilbo]

So instead of a once a year blood transfusion we instead have the President taking a hallucinogenic drug while remaining in office? I dont see either being all that great a choice. If these are the two options either let her die or remove her from power.

Actually the second time around they caught it early enough that the hallucinogen was a supplement and never taken in a large enough dose to cause snakes to appear on her podium. Most of her treatment was their standard treatment.

Not sure that would make me feel any better if I was in the fleet. The President who used to have delusions because of her meds "says" she is no longer havign delusions. Hmmm, nope. Can't say I would feel all that safe with the President on the meds and still in power, even if they were just supplements. In the end you still only have her word that she is not seeing things.

[Gaidin]

Not sure that would make me feel any better if I was in the fleet. The President who used to have delusions because of her meds "says" she is no longer havign delusions. Hmmm, nope. Can't say I would feel all that safe with the President on the meds and still in power, even if they were just supplements. In the end you still only have her word that she is not seeing things.

True enough. But I made no comment on how the people felt about it. Apollo tore her a new asshole quite effectively in court over it. Thing is, from the position of an observer, she was not taking the level needed to hallucinate. This can be told by the fact that the show was quite blatant about her hallucinations when they happened. The closest you get here is a dream about the play house when she's asleep...and dreams happen to a lot of people.

[Coyote]

Remember, there was quite a stir of controversy when it was revealed again. No one just smiled and accepted it, and since she wasn't 'incapacitated' there was no reason to oust her, technically... she was certainly no more incapacitated than anyone else in that fleet. They experimented with one other President, Gaius Baltar, and they saw how well that turned out. Roll the dice with Roslin again... it's not like anyone with any damn sense would want that job, really...

[Bilbo]

Not sure that would make me feel any better if I was in the fleet. The President who used to have delusions because of her meds "says" she is no longer havign delusions. Hmmm, nope. Can't say I would feel all that safe with the President on the meds and still in power, even if they were just supplements. In the end you still only have her word that she is not seeing things.

True enough. But I made no comment on how the people felt about it. Apollo tore her a new asshole quite effectively in court over it. Thing is, from the position of an observer, she was not taking the level needed to hallucinate. This can be told by the fact that the show was quite blatant about her hallucinations when they happened. The closest you get here is a dream about the play house when she's asleep...and dreams happen to a lot of people.

The difference being that you and I can tell she isnt. Everyone in-show has to take her word for it. So for quite a while we have had a fleet being torn apart between two different women with Messiah complexes.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Hey, I'm glad to see you enjoyed the present I left in your Cheerios.

That tasty marshmallow? OM NOM NOM!

Seriously though it's not like I only just coined the term yesterday. And to be fair, I've warmed up to the 'wrecked Earth' development quite a bit since then (I don't like the development itself but I do like the opportunities it affords for character development and I do appreciate the simplicity of the writers not having to devise an Earth civilization for the show), although I still think I should get a pass on using the term "Battlestar Livejournal" since I termed it that way back before anyone could have known that's what would be found. Seriously, what's wrong with mocking the show for being grim and dark? Is 'grimdark' also unacceptable in a neoBSG thread now?

Grimdark is a genre as far as this show is concerned. At times they seem to go in the total opposite extreme to the original series, but when I consider the rampant jollity of the '70s show, I have to say I prefer gritty, darkness for delivering the drama, even if that means some fairly overdone supr srs business goes down, and not a bit more light-hearted stuff.

Yeah but in the first season as someone else pointed out it was a lot more vague and open to interpretation. Okay so Roslin saw an ancient lost city when she looked at the recon pictures of ruins - did she actually have an actual vision or did her mind imagine/hallucinate that based on her memory of reading their holy texts before? It wasn't definite - we could go either way. Similarly, was Head-Six actually a Cylon implant (like maybe a mental computer virus or something) or was she a hallucination or was she actually some sort of angel/devil being? Again, it could go either way. Even after taking the Arrow of Apollo to the holodeck Tomb of Athena, there's still the ambiguity of "so was that really advanced technology or was that holy magic". (I'm inclined to favor technology)

I feel the responses before mine on the religious angle, especially Maya's, cover this without me retreading.

But where it started to crumble was Athena saying "we know a lot more about your gods than you do". Okay... like what? And how did you find out? You'd think this would actually be a relatively simple question to answer, but we never got anything more on that. Are we ever going to hear anything about the Lords of Kobol again, or on why exactly Kobol was abandoned? I'm betting we won't. I mentioned the Head-Six issue before, and how we haven't gotten anything further on that. Now there's Head-Baltar - what's that about? And what about the Operahouse? Again, used to be this nice ambiguous "vision or hallucination? actual thing or just Head-Six toying with him?" conflict to it. But now we've got Roslin and Six seeing the same thing at the same time - is that telepathy? Is that angels/devils/magic telebeacons planting images in their heads? We haven't gotten anything about that either. The Cylon/Human hybrid used to be a big deal - where did that go? The Cylons kept mentioning someone having programmed them and how important it is to follow the programming - who did it, what was their motive? How does the Basestar Hybrid know so goddamn much? How did the human oracle on New Caprica know stuff? Why did the supernova cook off just in time for D'anna to figure out the Eye of Jupiter but still leave Galactica just barely enough time to escape?

The problem isn't that they keep tossing new shiny balls up into the air, or even that they haven't been completely resolved, it's that those old balls just seem to stay up there and never get any progress or new clues. The problem isn't that there's a lot of religious/prophetic talk, the problem is that it doesn't seem to mean anything except "oh hey this sounds cool". I'd like to take it on faith that they've actually got this really spectacular grand plan of how it all fits together and that all those ominous Cylon portents actually meant something, but I can't because I know they've just been playing it by ear for the past few years, so it's hard for me to just believe that they've managed to bang out a stellar conclusion to the series.

Zac whined about how there's no evidence of the writers intending to leave things unanswered but my retort is where is the evidence that they actually do intend to resolve many of these questions they brought up? Or rather, where's the evidence that they will do so in a manner that's actually satisfying and thoughtful and doesn't just superficially gloss over everything they've built up over the run of the series? To be fair we've got D'anna being unboxed following the civil war, but that's not enough to really convince me.

I agree with you on that, and while I'm not writing off the rest of the season as being totally unable to explain even a good chunk of these instances well, I don't expect everything to be resolved, nor, indeed, would it automatically make the story that much better if everything was explained away with intricate detail. A little mystery is good, and without deities or the 13th Colony obeying Clarke's law, you'll be hard pressed to get a satisfactory explanation now anyway. They could explain it as being God or what have you, though this could be seen as a cop out anyway and not everyone will be pleased however you cut it. It's now a toss-up between divine intervention, or not-so-divine intervention.

And again like I said earlier, I'll be happy to be proven wrong and I'll watch the episodes as they come out because I want to see how it unfolds, but I fail to see what's so inappropriate about expressing skepticism over the quality of the finale of the show based on what's come before.

With no Cylon war and very few characters to have love triangles or sulking matches now, the rest of the season will focus on rounding this whole thing off to as fine a finale as can be done now. If they deviate from that course, then I don't see them pulling it off. As of now, they can do it with some season one writing, albeit, with the caveats mentioned above about not giving a satisfactory ending to everyone.

And seriously as much as I whined about "nuked earth = battlestar LJ" in that thread I linked to above, I think a deliberate "Battlestar Evangelion" ending would be even more absurdly awful since from what I've heard, NGE's "religious symbolism" was also just an assortment of random shit that "looked and sounded cool".

That was more a case of Japanese culture relishing a novelty such as Christian imagery and Anno going batshit insane halfway through. The inclusion of a pantheon and a omni-god like Jehova is a nice touch, though it's more the prophecy and the way humanity works in these extreme situations of survival, with some tricky moral questions thrown in, that drives the story.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Speaking of '33', both as to the sudden end to the attacks and their exact 33-minute frequency, that's another thing that's never been explained and, I will place my bets, never will be. Even now that we've seen the Cylon echelons of command.

And my guess is that the Cylon 'plan' of the first two seasons was probably something along the lines of 'Uh kill moar humons lulz'.

EDIT: And I feel that it is hilarious on this board in particular that a bunch of people jumped on Uraniun to say 'HOW DARE YOU BE PESSIMISTIC BASED ON RDM'S PREVIOUS HABIT OF THROWING BULLSHIT INTO THE AIR WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT OF EXPLAINING IT LATER'.

[Vympel]

The 33 minute thing doesn't need explanation, that's minor - we can assume that's how long it takes the signal from Olympic Carrier to reach wherever the Cylons are.

I will spit the dummy if I don't get an explanation for Starbuck's brand-spanking new Viper, though.

[McC]

Speaking of '33', both as to the sudden end to the attacks and their exact 33-minute frequency, that's another thing that's never been explained and, I will place my bets, never will be. Even now that we've seen the Cylon echelons of command.

Er, does there need to be a deep explanation? It took them 33 minutes to calculate the fleet's position based on their jump. Why does a deeper explanation need to exist?

[Coyote]

EDIT: And I feel that it is hilarious on this board in particular that a bunch of people jumped on Uraniun to say 'HOW DARE YOU BE PESSIMISTIC BASED ON RDM'S PREVIOUS HABIT OF THROWING BULLSHIT INTO THE AIR WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT OF EXPLAINING IT LATER'.

Are you referring to DS9? How much of DS9's trouble was Moore's and how much of it was just Star Trek being Star Trek?

Bear in mind it was one of the best Star Trek shows, and it was canceled abruptly by the network, meaning that a lot of stuff was left up in the air because there was nothing that could be done without massive deux ex machina.

[Mayabird]

If I wanted to be silly, I would blame Voyager for the stupid stuff. RDM was prevented from doing what he wanted to because of B&B and he took those ideas over to nBSG. (It makes me think of Chuck's daydream of Commander Adama beating Neelix to death with a flashlight.)

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

I was referring to nBSG, with several mysteries which were just quietly dropped and never mentioned again for multiple seasons.