Amph New Battlestar Galactica Discussion Thread - HTR Future Spoilers until east coast airing

I think the whole 4th season ruined it.

The "mitochondrial Eve" thing was pretty silly, but I took the montage as tongue-in-cheek.

I'm working through the show again with my girlfriend (who's watching it for the first time), but on my initial run through, I remember preferring Season 4 over Season 3.

While the fake Earth twist was excellent, I feel that ultimately, making the Final Five a group of "Cylons" that predated actual Cylons was sort of silly, and a move that proved very difficult to get beyond in coherent fashion. It also made the "all this has happened before" rather too literal, and engendered a number of the later problems, including both Mitochondrial Eve and the show's last minute luddism.

Not really, since Kobol and "fake" Earth/the Colonies all had deep cultural connections. That is, the Kobol Cylons (from which the Five descended) settled on Earth and made their own robot slaves. And then after Earth's destruction, they traveled to the Colonies where they were obligated to share their technological and biological knowledge (regarding the human-looking Cylons, resurrection tech, biological Centurions and Raiders) with the Colonial Cylons (who were created by people who descended from the Kobol humans). They do say that it is a sort of "natural" cycle that humanity goes through (robot slave rebellion) but it isn't that much of a stretch.

Well, you're right that it was not so unpalatably ridiculous that violated my suspension of disbelief. But I think it required a lot of weird, rather lame underling assumptions. For instance, up until that point the Cylon fixation on becoming human was presented as an odd religious quirk. The meaning and value of their endeavor was debated on the show, not the least by the Cylons themselves. The tension between Cavil and some of the more orthodox models was an interesting direction for the show, and had the potential to offer a nice subtext for sociological commentary about the interplay between religion, biology, and the broader culture. Instead, this u-turn seems to posit that, far from being unique, these Cylons wanted to become humans because basically all robots want to become human. Which, to me, sounds a bit like discussing "penis envy" as a serious psychological concept. Why does one being have to secretly "want" to be another? Why is it so unthinkable that a robot should actually the unique consciousness that is inherent to robots? Likewise, while a cascade of serial rebellions might make sense, the fact that said rebellions ended uniformly in mass genocide to be a bit heavy-handedly in favor of a cyclic view of history. Are they really proposing that the same conflict, repeated a hundred times, could never result in even a partial de-escalation or detente?

Well, we don't really know how the Kobol Cylons came about. The Kobol humans could have made them human-like. Only the Colonial Cylons were shown to want to be more "human"-- and even they weren't unanimous regarding that. And, IIRC, the angel-things that spread the monotheism around to different societies did propagate the idea that humans were "in God's image."

yeah, this is how the series should have ended:

a gigantic frozen mass of cylon poop that was once ejected from a baseship crashes into galactica (it didn't come up on dradis at all). adama is thrown onto the console and hits a button and the ship accidentally jumps to a point right in front of the colony, and crashes into it. hera is thrown through the windshield and into the colony and impales cavil. cavil says "what the fraaaaaak" and dies. galactica and the colony explode and are pulled into the black hole. nobody is able to get out in time. the rest of the fleet listens as the people on galactica die in slow motion. overcome with despair, the captains jump their ships into the black hole.

deanna wakes up from a dream on fake earth in which she saw these events transpire. she begins to laugh. and laugh. and laugh.

pull back to head baltar and head six watching deanna.

"well, i guess that's that," head baltar says.

"indeed," says head six.

head baltar smiles and puts his sunglasses down over his eyes.

*cut to black*

If it helps, Admiral Adama was resurrected as a genius serial killer. It seems.

It's amazing how EJO can span the spectrum from charismatic and inspirational to creepy and skin-crawling.

Yeah, him and Starbuck were what kept me coming back!

yes. but can we keep going?

while all this is happening chief is on the toilet. we cut to him often and he looks concerned but is clearly dealing with a serious gastrointestinal infection. we also cut away to starbuck, she is in her bunk reading self-help books and looking morose. boring!

cut to lee.

he's on viper patrol and has been for what seems like days. he makes visual contact with the piece of poop a good 90 seconds before impact, but he's feeling pretty down and his love life isn't going great, and there was that time his dad called him fat. anyway, he decides this time he's not gonna save everyone's ass. let someone else deal with it for a change. and after all the ships jump into the black hole we see lee, still sitting in his viper. torn between insane grief and mild amusement at the sheer absurdity of the whole scenario, he sets course for the nearest planet. lee adama is the last man alive.

hmm, nice!

i'd like to add this somewhere in there:

realizing time is running out, kara puts down her self-help book and heads to cic. she climbs up to anders and lowers herself into the goop tub. she begins to rub herself up against his hybridized bod. "i wouldn't do that if i were you," ellen says, her voice dripping with venom. from below comes the voice of admiral adama screaming, "lieutenant thrace, we have a serious situation on our hands! get your ass down here, now!" but his request falls on deaf ears. increasing the intensity of her movements, she feels anders beginning to respond (finally, she thinks). suddenly he blurts out "new command line: therecipientrejectsthegiftrepulsionoverwhelmsthecircuitryitwishestobealone..." the message cuts deep and kara thrace bursts into tears.

man, we need to get this stuff to singer.

forget singer, we need to develop this ourselves!

Asimovs laws should have included something about robots not being allowed to be existential.

oh i am so in.

Evan, I was just thinking about this the other day, when I rewatched Razor and the first few regular episodes of Season 4.0. As I had replied way back when, I watched several seasons of the series in parallel, and had watched the finale long before I saw much else of seasons 2 and 4. I've always regretted not having watched the series unspoiled from beginning to end in order, but especially now for not having seen the development of Starbuck's return, with the surprise at the end of season 3, then the Razor movie with the hybrids statement about her, then dealing with her return in season 4 and not knowing whether to trust her.

Jeez, I made that post nearly three years ago. I had to go back and see what else I said. Usually I end up not liking the things I say a few... days later, but I would've said the exact same thing today. Kudos, past me!

Who watches a show not from the beginning?



-sj loves kevin spacey

Hello.

Not only did I not watch this show in order, I don't there's any one in the past. . .4 years or so that I have? It's not so bad, and I've in fact found that it yields lots of unique insights about characters.