Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World

[Rose Garden Witch]

Was it me, or was Chuck calling Vipers ‘Starfuries’ part way through? Got some B5 reviews on the way have we!?

I noticed that as well.

And those double face woman
Dear God those things were horrifying and what the hell was up with them?
Were they aliens? Mutant humans?

[Kamdan]

So we got this instead of the Return of the Jedi review?

[Beastro]

I also preferred this version of Starbuck and Baltar, but didn't prefer this Adama and Ty.

I like Green's Adama, but not as a military leader but as what would have become Roslin's position.

[Darth Wedgius]

So we got this instead of the Return of the Jedi review?

Yes, SFDebris is a bit under the weather and the doctor told him not to talk. Few enough of the viewers understand sign language that he put this in since it was already done.

Details are at viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1445 .

[CrypticMirror]

Say this for the uncanny valley showgirls, that was an impressive piece of effects work for the time.

I like this show better than the reboot, but what do I know; I even liked Galactica 1980 with the flying motorcycles and the space scouts. I watched the show with my late grandfather, and I think my fond nostalgia for it is heavily tied to the happy times I had with him. I miss you grandpa, always will.

[Cybershaman]

Was it me, or was Chuck calling Vipers ‘Starfuries’ part way through? Got some B5 reviews on the way have we!?

I thought I was going crazy, so I actually googled "battlestar galactica starfury". I then thought is was maybe a joke or something. I wouldn't put it past Chuck to do that.

[bronnt]

I'm confused at why the writers had an issue with the Cylons having a plan.

Isn't the Plan an easy one?

"We track the Battlestar Galactica to Earth so we can wipe out all humans everywhere."

The problem is they wanted to have "the plan" somehow integrate their decision to keep Karl Agathon in the series, after they were so impressed with his performance in the miniseries.

It became a stumbling block: they didn't want to just discount the fact that he sacrificed himself to stay on Caprica by having him cheaply finding a ship and getting back to the fleet, but they also didn't want to portray the Cylons as so bumblingly incompetent to allow a lone pilot to survive a one-mar war against them for weeks. So they came up with the weird idea that they were intentionally letting him live for some reason, and then had to make that part of the whole story.

It actually mostly works, since it gives the Cylons ambitions beyond "Destroy all humans." It humanized them sufficiently to allow character development.

Where it went off the rails was when they decided to have the whole fleet land and establish the New Caprica colony. That created a whole slew of logic-defying failures that required them to come up with increasingly implausible explanations.
"Why did they only see the same 7 Cylon models during that whole occupation? Because even the Cylons don't know what the other 5 models look like."

"Why don't the Cylons know what the other 5 models look like? Because the other 5 are the original 5 who designed them and then Cavil erased their memories and then made it a taboo religious thing to investigate who the final 5 are."

"How did those final 5 inexplicably survive the destruction of humanity to end up in the fleet? Because it was all an extremely convoluted revenge plan by Cavil."

Not to mention the ridiculously headscratching themes that came from the occupation plan, where humanity (which is already teetering on a population small enough to be on the verge of extinction) starts using suicide bombers to blow up Cylons who can't die. That's literally their plan.

The series would have been so much better if that occupation idea had never come into it because it derailed so many things.

[Robovski]

I'm a long-time fan of the original series, but then I was 4/5 when it was originally broadcast. My father liked the show; but my mother wasn't so it was BSG if my father was home and Archie/Alice when he wasn't. As I grew up I watched this in syndication and eventually as an adult I had the whole series in a DVD box set. The effects were to-the-minute at the time but some of the footage and sound effects have been reused in other movies and shows as to be almost unoriginal if you weren't familiar that this came before all the later recycling.

I agree it would have been better as a series of mini series or TV movies and just be an on-going event TV that is seasonally put into the lineup; ABC's Roots had just been a huge success in 1977 so it's not an unknown idea at the time even in the same network. Additionally such items could be readily packaged into movies for overseas distribution and/or syndication (home video is really at its infancy here).

As for which I like better, I like the original best. The 2004 series was grim, grittier and frankly suffered from LOST syndrome of not knowing what they were doing and coming up with contrivances that look unplanned. Beyond that it lacked hope, and escapism without hope isn't something I set a higher bar for when it comes to my enjoyment.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

If the opening credits are ignored, nu-BSG proper doesn't say all that much about the cylons having a plan. The cylons themselves don't spend a lot of time talking about a plan, and later we see that they are/become an incredibly fractured and dysfunctional group. So in hindsight, throwing in the line about a plan in the credits was a pretty bad move in terms of setting up unfulfilled expectations. I think that those, like myself, who started watching after the series ended benefited a lot from not spending months/years speculating on what "the plan" might be, and therefore were spared disappointment. I won't get into defending every nitty gritty detail, suffice it to say that to me it's a fantastic series with a lot of depth, nuance, and humanity, and it's a show that far outstrips the original in every meaningful department... but I'm a fanboy.

What impresses me about the original is how many elements could be lifted wholesale to the new series and still feel really innovative and fresh. Some of the design elements, some of the stories, and so on. The basic plot is a great one that will be remade in some form in the future. I don't think that any of the episodes are in the same league as the remake or other top tier sci-fi, but there's some pretty fun stuff there.

[Beastro]

Where it went off the rails was when they decided to have the whole fleet land and establish the New Caprica colony. That created a whole slew of logic-defying failures that required them to come up with increasingly implausible explanations.

That was bad enough, them getting free again and then bothering to put Baltar on trial instead of just putting a bullet in the back of his head was when I dropped it.

Add in fact that them all standing around with him on trial felt more like a reality show set ala The Bachelor and my patience since they dropped the pure survival episodes early in the first season left me with nothing more to want to see and every reason to walk away.

I too also didn't like the reboot from the start given how much was changed and dropped form the original. what annoyed me the most was when it came to the human Cylons, the grimdark angle that I loath has been so influential and imitated since then and the stereotypical things nonetheless kept in like martial law being establish and then Adama giving into Roslin that annoyed me given their situation just as badly as the same tripe being repeated in its own way on the Walking Dead.