Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World

[Fianna]

I thought that's kinda what they were going for with the Dean Stockwell Cylon?

[SuccubusYuri]

Yeah I think what happened there was, as the series wound down they were plotting out Caprica, and the vastly more imperialist colonial society, so having made the Cylons a sort of "democracy" they got a little too deep into Plato's Republic? To keep the Greek thing going, yeah? Kinda fits with the monotheism thing, too. And so Cavill just sort of becomes the folly of democratic society.

It just kind of brickwalls into the filial piety stuff with the Final Five. The two themes run pretty hard against each other in making the Cylons feel like a society and not like a giant high school lunch table.

Although, not having done any research into the behind-the-scenes and just speculating from what we can see (plus like a handful of the DVD extras when the show was still popular enough for those after the big reveal) it almost feels like, certainly the last half of Season 4, was very seat of the pants. Like, Moore talked about how they had committed to the Final Five plotline. THEN they sat down and made a list of who it would be, which, and I agree with him, once you started narrowing down what would cause massive headaches (like Adama and explaining away Apollo) or betraying the soul of a character (like Roslin), the list was pretty self-evident. But just that process alone feels indicative of how the end got, well, kinda doing Moffat before it was cool.

The long and short being, I kinda feel like they wanted to make one of the Final Five like a Lucifer figure? I would even pinpoint it as Tory, she served at Roslin's side so was savvy to politics, and was in Baltar's cult so was tied to his character, it made a twisted kind of sense. But her pro-Cylon stuff never really amounted to a lot I think because of that back and forth.

[AndrewGPaul]

I can't actually remember if I've seen this original miniseries or not. I know I definitely had the novelisation (one of those late 70s-early80s ones, with 8 pages of stills from the show in the middle. I still have my copy of Star Wars ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, although some of the colour pages have gone missing over the years), and when I finally did see bits of the show, it was a little disappointing by comparison. Although that could have been Galactica 80...

Anyway, the book had a prologue explaining the war kinda from the point of view of the alien alliance headed by the Cylons; IIRC, it wasn't just that the humans had encroached on Cylon dominion, but it was a little more existential than that - not explained in any great detail, sadly, as it was explaining a thousand-year war in two pages.

[Worffan101]

Yeah I think what happened there was, as the series wound down they were plotting out Caprica, and the vastly more imperialist colonial society, so having made the Cylons a sort of "democracy" they got a little too deep into Plato's Republic? To keep the Greek thing going, yeah? Kinda fits with the monotheism thing, too. And so Cavill just sort of becomes the folly of democratic society.

It just kind of brickwalls into the filial piety stuff with the Final Five. The two themes run pretty hard against each other in making the Cylons feel like a society and not like a giant high school lunch table.

Although, not having done any research into the behind-the-scenes and just speculating from what we can see (plus like a handful of the DVD extras when the show was still popular enough for those after the big reveal) it almost feels like, certainly the last half of Season 4, was very seat of the pants. Like, Moore talked about how they had committed to the Final Five plotline. THEN they sat down and made a list of who it would be, which, and I agree with him, once you started narrowing down what would cause massive headaches (like Adama and explaining away Apollo) or betraying the soul of a character (like Roslin), the list was pretty self-evident. But just that process alone feels indicative of how the end got, well, kinda doing Moffat before it was cool.

The long and short being, I kinda feel like they wanted to make one of the Final Five like a Lucifer figure? I would even pinpoint it as Tory, she served at Roslin's side so was savvy to politics, and was in Baltar's cult so was tied to his character, it made a twisted kind of sense. But her pro-Cylon stuff never really amounted to a lot I think because of that back and forth.

Yeah, I honestly think nuBSG would've been better if they either ended it with the New Caprica thing in season 2 and New Caprica was revealed to be Earth, or if they'd just skipped all the Jesus allegory BS. A lot of the ideas they had in those last 2 seasons were good, it was just the whole...Jesus nonsense and the Final Five.

IMO at least having the Cylons be sort of fumbling at democracy but subverted by a dictatorial populist who runs on nationalist rhetoric and ethnic hatred and making that the main theme of the last 2 seasons would have been about a decade, decade and a half ahead of its time when BSG came out, but it still would've made for a good story. You have Helfer to take advantage of for the 6s, so give their various permutations a decent amount of screentime, and Lucy Lawless is pretty good if you can afford her so giving the 3s a storyline too would help. Overall storyline can be something like...season 2 ends with the fleet finding that the planet they've been looking for can't support life or whatever, so no New Caprica arc, and the Cain/Gina storyline's conclusion can provide plenty of tension by drawing Cylon attention and causing a crisis on the fleet. Season 3, the fallout of that whole thing being revealed, esp. if Baltar explains that Inviere was human enough to be traumatized and broken, could lead to actual discussion on the fleet, while the Sixes experience massive internal conflict due to the event, the scattered memories that they are able to recover from Inviere, and growing questions about just what exactly the Ones were thinking of letting Karl Agathon escape with a malfunctioning/rogue Eight. The Threes meanwhile start to notice disturbing similarities between Cylon and Human societies.

Season 3 ends with the breakout of a civil war among the humanoid cylons, and the revelation that Cavill has the Centurions under his sole control via stripping their free will. Season 4 begins with rebel faction ships contacting the Colonials and offering a truce and promising to stop hunting the fleet if Galactica et al help with Cavill. Sixes are hardline anti-Cavill but are split on humanity, Threes are mostly pro-peace, Eights are split, you can introduce a couple more Cylon models in here to round out the 12 for completeness's sake.

Season 4's mostly about fighting Cavill's faction and finding a way to free the Centurions. That works out but the Cylons' ability to resurrect is destroyed, and the survivors decide not to rebuild the resurrection hub or whatever other tech lets them do that. Episode about the formation of a permanent truce, probably have the trials and/or execution of notable figures who the other side hates (Caprica-Six if her part in the nuking ever gets out, and it'd be nicely ironic if a Colonial is in trouble for betraying the rebels to Cavill out of hatred for the Cylons and hatred of Adama for temporarily allying with them), then an episode about finding Earth, they find Earth and it's <insert whatever state you like here>, and it ends with a weary truce between two peoples who are absolutely freaking sick and tired of war.

Thoughts?

[Starbug]

I'm disappointed that the remake never tried to do their own versions of Lucifer and the Imperious Leader. Sure, with their whole Cylon human models thing for leading the Cylons, it made sense they wouldn't have a single leader, but it feels like a missed opportunity.

You're not the only one, given how often they show up in fan-fiction.

[Riedquat]

All I remember from this was being really disturbed as a kid by the people being eaten bit.

[griffeytrek]

Now, "Saga of a Star World" is the only piece of the original BSG I've seen, so I don't know how the series holds up overall. But as for the remake, while it was pretty darn awesome in places (the Pegasus arc is probably the highlight), I feel like, even at the very beginning, it took itself a bit too seriously. Outside of Starbuck and Baltar, the characters were all so stoic, I often had a hard time relating to them.

BSG Old is actually an oddly charming show throughout. But you can definitely see the differences between the high budget episodes and the cost cutting ones. If you have ever seen Buck Rogers, the full BSG series is very similar. (same production and writing teams. Some speculation that Larson at least mentally viewed them as two ends of the same story.)

I look forward to getting Chuck's take on a few specific gems in the old BSG library. The next episode, a 2 parter who's name escapes me, was quite good. And had the added benefit of having a breathtakingly gorgeous Frank Frazetta painting as its main marketing in TV guide and all the newspapers and magazines.

Oh and the original version of the Cain/Pegasus story is, at least in my opinion, much much better. Yeah Michelle Forbes was great, but nowhere near as much fun as Lloyd Bridges channeling George Patton.

The follow up series Galactica 1980 must be seen to truly appreciate how bad it was... except for one episode. Which was astonishingly good.

[griffeytrek]

One interesting point that Chuck missed in this. Everyone talks about the Religious themes in nuGalactica. The ones in Old Galactica were stronger, but more subtle. Glen Larson was a practicing Mormon. And the whole show is basically an allegory to that. It was less an "end of the World" story as it was a "Wagon train to the stars. Refugees fleeing oppression seeking the promised land." Some of these themes become particularly heavy handed towards the end. So yeah Galactica was on its way to Utah!

[Fianna]

If I were to purchase some (but not all) of the classic BSG episodes off of iTunes, which ones would you say I should definitely check out, and which ones I can safely skip?

[SuccubusYuri]

One interesting point that Chuck missed in this. Everyone talks about the Religious themes in nuGalactica. The ones in Old Galactica were stronger, but more subtle. Glen Larson was a practicing Mormon. And the whole show is basically an allegory to that. It was less an "end of the World" story as it was a "Wagon train to the stars. Refugees fleeing oppression seeking the promised land." Some of these themes become particularly heavy handed towards the end. So yeah Galactica was on its way to Utah!

"Yes, now that we have joined the galactic community, Earth is no longer our name! But the name the galaxy knows us as! Space Utah!"