Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World

[Fianna]

Also, during the first season, nuBSG didn't establish itself as a world where the supernatural exists. Characters had religious beliefs, and claimed certain things were acts of God or gods, but we weren't given any objective evidence of it, no moreso than when an NBA player claims God helped their team win the game. Head Six was still claiming to be the product of a Cylon computer chip in Baltar's brain, and Roslin's visions could, at that point, have just been drug induced hallucinations. Combine that with the show's ultra-realism, where it kept only the bare minimum amount of sci-fi weirdness needed to make the premise work, and you can see why later seasons introducing explicit magic into the setting seems at odds with what the show initially set itself up as.

Though, speaking of nuBSG's realism, that was always kind of an odd fit with the premise of Battlestar Galactica, which is based on the idea that humanity originated on another planet and came to Earth on spaceships, something that fossil records of human evolution give a big fat "No".

[FaxModem1]

The old series had a bit of a tonal problem. It's a fun series, but the people seemed to be in deep denial over the fact that they had lost every family member and friend who wasn't a part of the fleet. Instead, it's "Ooh, a casino planet, let's try and win cash to spend in an economy and civilization that no longer exists. Oh, wait."

That said, it was still a fun show, and seemed to be having fun with its premise.

The remake, which invites comparisons just because it's there, made some decisions that changed the tone. As noted, the Cylons are creations of humanity, as opposed to a long dead alien race. Great, so we can have a bunch of stories about machines and where we belong. Except, no, the CGI for the Cylon robots is too expensive, so let's make human-Cylons and make this all about Cylon infiltrators, and have all scenes featuring a few Canadian actors. Well, then these aren't Cylons or robots, are they? They're clones.

So, because of costs, and because of Moore's fear of machinery and keeping things as grief-stricken as possible, it's something entirely different in some shades of different packaging.

It was NuTrek before NuTrek.

That said, it worked, until it didn't.

[Fianna]

Why did they use CGI for the Centurion Cylons, anyway? Surely making some Cylon costumes would have been much cheaper?

[griffeytrek]

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

ROFL. Weird bit of crossover. The actual Vipers used in the show were a last minute replacement. The original model for the Vipers was rejected at the last minute because some of its lines and movement was too close in profile to the Cylon Raiders so there wasn't enough differentiation on TV. The original Viper model would later become the well known Buck Rogers "Thunderfighter" in Larson's next SF project.

[Starbug]

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

ROFL. Weird bit of crossover. The actual Vipers used in the show were a last minute replacement. The original model for the Vipers was rejected at the last minute because some of its lines and movement was too close in profile to the Cylon Raiders so there wasn't enough differentiation on TV. The original Viper model would later become the well known Buck Rogers "Thunderfighter" in Larson's next SF project.

Well, there was supposed to be a crossover between BSG and Buck Rogers in the works before both shows got canned

[SuccubusYuri]

Why did they use CGI for the Centurion Cylons, anyway? Surely making some Cylon costumes would have been much cheaper?

I think because they really loved the "wispy hands turn into machine guns" thing, it was a way to demonstrate how outclassed the Colonials were, tech-wise. And if you're going to you might as well make the whole model CGI as it's not going to be significantly jarring. After all the Centurions mostly show up on Caprica and in Helo's story, which wasn't planned til after the miniseries was over, so even if there were nuggets of a series in mind, the first season didn't need Centurions a lot, as far as they knew.

[Madner Kami]

I doubt it's hard to find an actor or (former) stuntman who lost one of his lower arms or an entire arm, stick him in a costume and construct a transformer-armcannon-thing for him. In a way, that might have been even cooler. So I agree with SYuri's assessment. The Centurions are, at most, guest stars in the show.

As far as CGI goes, they could've done a lot better. I always found the nBSG's Centurions rather underwhelming both in terms of design and application.

[Beastro]

The grimdark makes sense for this series though, given that it's the apocalypse.

To me the issue with the grimdark was that everyone had skeletons in their closet and wreck in someway or another except for maybe Adama.

Ty was what bugged me the worst with his drinking problem, but then they had to throw in his wife and have others have tons of personal issues.

And frankly, I think a good number of people's complaints about the show can be answered simply by looking at the reality of their situation and just how damaged these people are. The cataclysmic event serves to ultimately produce and showcase the best and worst that they have to offer- from unrepentant brutality to forgiveness of criminals who don't at all deserve it.

I'd correct you in saying that it's what the makers of the show think would be produced in people. Like much TV with disasters and tragedy, people rarely act like such messes in such situations. They either stand up or become apart of the passive mob. Malcontents either die quickly or get roughed up until they learn their lesson - Age of Sail discipline and how most sailors were for corporal punishment because 99% of the time it was meted out to the known trouble-makers, not the professional seamen.

to the best of my knowledge, humanity has never been almost annihilated by robots of their own creation

Look to terrible events and the accounts of soldiers and civilians: They either maintain a somewhat stoic resolve and work through or die off. One Holocaust survivor comes to mind and how her sister simply did not have it in her to live through the grinding day to day ordeal and gave up (giving up in a way analogous to the medical terminology behind infants "failing to thrive").

They didn't do everything perfectly, obviously, but I love that Ron Moore and company actually went after it and tried to communicate something artistically meaningful. Sometimes this was at the expense of plot or even common sense, but I'd give extra credit for the effort.

One bit I found as novel inversion of things was the issue around abortion and Agathon's line about his child.

Though, speaking of nuBSG's realism, that was always kind of an odd fit with the premise of Battlestar Galactica, which is based on the idea that humanity originated on another planet and came to Earth on spaceships, something that fossil records of human evolution give a big fat "No".

Something similar there was explained well given its setting in Xenogears where the Theory of Evolution turns out to be a con championed by the Ethnos (the games ersatz-Cathoic Church) as part of their efforts to maintain the conspiracy blinding everyone to the truth behind life on their little world.

As for the Soldier Cylons, they didn't bother me nearly as much as the Raiders. Make a space fighter and then stick a good old Cylon head in the middle of it wasn't a good idea and brought to mind Thomas the Tank Engine's silly faces on vehicles.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

And frankly, I think a good number of people's complaints about the show can be answered simply by looking at the reality of their situation and just how damaged these people are. The cataclysmic event serves to ultimately produce and showcase the best and worst that they have to offer- from unrepentant brutality to forgiveness of criminals who don't at all deserve it.

I'd correct you in saying that it's what the makers of the show think would be produced in people. Like much TV with disasters and tragedy, people rarely act like such messes in such situations. They either stand up or become apart of the passive mob. Malcontents either die quickly or get roughed up until they learn their lesson - Age of Sail discipline and how most sailors were for corporal punishment because 99% of the time it was meted out to the known trouble-makers, not the professional seamen.

I don't think you're giving the show nearly enough credit. People do largely come together at first, and the show portrays that in a way that's similar to any number of disasters and tragedies throughout history. Unlike so many other tv shows, however, BSG recognizes that you don't just get over it and the events of the past do change you. A classic real-life example is the soldier who handles everything very well during combat and then surprises everyone by coming home as an alcoholic. The characters aren't constantly crying and breaking down, but they do react to long-term trauma in different ways, and they change as people for both better and worse.

Another important point is that it isn't just the apocalyptic events, but their change of status. A lot of them do well enough when they are allowed to continue with their familiar jobs and maintain a sense of normalcy- but most of the already damaged, suffering characters we follow are forced into positions of power that they aren't qualified for (certainly not technically). Inconsistent, and seemingly irrational decisions should be expected under that circumstance. After all, we see it happen often enough when seemingly normal, stable people are put into positions of power.

I'm not saying that "trauma" should be used as as an easy explanation for everything, but the show's themes and tone are on point and pretty profound, imo.

I didn't really have a problem with any of the religious themes in the re-imagined series. My only issue was that it was often a cop-out: We're going to pull random plot twists out of our ass and just say "God did it." It's not interesting.

For instance, they decided to pretend they were killing off Starbuck. It was ridiculously telegraphed since the very episode in which they killed her off they set up a character arc for her

The way I see it, the religious themes were established from season 1, and probably most other sci-fi series have some sort of powerful, mostly unexplained being- including B5, every Trek series, and many more. So it's only when characters start calling this being "God" people suddenly have a problem with it? I don't get that.

I do get your point here though, although I'd disagree slightly. To me the problem mostly isn't that "God did it." After all, sometimes Q solves problems for the Enterprise, and the stories are usually structurally sound. I think the problem is simply that the payoffs at the end of the series were generally lackluster. In the case of Starbuck, they include all the elements of a fulfilling storyline- there's the mystery, foreshadowing, symbolism, all of that. From a thematic perspective I don't think there's really any illogic to it, but the story pretty much just fizzes out at the end. The same could be said for the whole All Along the Watchtower thing, the set up has a lot of cool moments, but the moment itself ends up being far smaller and less meaningful than the audience expects. I see that as a much bigger problem than the involvement of God per se.

[bronnt]

I do get your point here though, although I'd disagree slightly. To me the problem mostly isn't that "God did it." After all, sometimes Q solves problems for the Enterprise, and the stories are usually structurally sound.

I'm struggling to think of any episode where Q solved a problem when the episode was about the problem. He solves the issue in Deja-Q at the end, but whole episode was about the crew dealing with Q amid their current crisis, which is generally unmemorable. Q-Who might be as close as you get, but that's still a situation created by Q and it was about demonstrating that the Enterprise wasn't ready to deal with everything they encountered.

God comes into BSG as a bit of a deus ex machina. There's a lot of things happening that make no sense, which set up a mystery. How does this happen, and what's the payoff going to be? It denies any attempts at logical analysis in the end because God is mysterious and we'll just never know. It's pretty unsatisfying...just like it would be unsatisfying if you watched "Cause and Effect" for 38 minutes, following the crew's attempts to deal with the recurring timeloop, problem solving and learning about the threat...only for Q to suddenly show up at the end and say, "Oh, you guys are caught in a time-loop? Here let me fix that for you." That's essentially what happened with certain things in BSG. We're much more interested in the human element of these characters dealing with the situation, and then the situation gets resolved for them.