Ant writes "First it was off, and then it was back on. Yahoo is now reporting on a release put out by David Eick and Ronald Moore stating that they will conclude Battlestar Galactica at the end of Season 4. They said it was a creative decision, and that they wanted to end the show on their own terms. The show was always planned with a definite beginning, middle and end, unlike many other sci-fi shows and dramas. Sci Fi Channel has accepted the decision. The news had been foreshadowed this spring through statements from stars Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff. Ronald Moore himself had said that the show was heading into its final act, although he said the final act could be one or two more seasons. Now we know that the final act will last for one season. The special 2-hr. episode 'Razor' starts off the season in November. The first regular episodes of Season 4 will air in early 2008."
It was starting to drag near the middle of last season, I'm glad to see they've identified an endpoint. It'd have been a shame to have to watch that show go into the toilet -- better to burn twice as bright for my viewing amusement.
Old enough to remember watching the original series on TV, I was thrilled with the mini-series, and Season 1 was solid drama with fantastic characterization. Season 2 started strong, but aside from the odd bit of goodness appearing at random, I'd say the show got pretty sketchy after the whole Pegasus thing.
Making it worse, the entire New Caprica plot line which ended the second season went absolutely nowhere, and the spent the rest of the third season hitting a big red reset button which pretty much rewound us to the point right after the mid-season 2 Pegasus arc. Yippe, I love watching a season and a half of TV where the producers produce random plotlines, and Adama and Rosyln, who had previously been inspired characters, were written as "stupid" and thus even the character drama was removed as well.
A real shame in my opinion; however, I'm happy to hear the fourth season will be their last. Perhaps that will inspire them to tell an actual story and we'll end up with a decent finish (and I can just go on ignoring all content between mid-season 2 and the final season =).
Totally agreed. My favourite show currently in production, but Jesus, has it ever sucked the big one this season.
Tigh: I'm telling you, there's Cylon sabotage aboard this ship!
Adama: You're telling me there's sabotage? With music?
No, Colonel Tigh.
That sound you're hearing? That's the sound of the writers pissing away three years of hard-won credibility in the space of seven minutes.
I'll gladly recant if I'm wrong, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that Starbuck is the 5th of the final five, so we've seen them all.
And I think that sucks. Having 4 to 5 major characters (Okay, so Tory is not a major character and Anders is debatable) suddenly turn out to be cylons smacks of retcon to me, and it renders all their previous development with these characters flat and uninteresting. I'm mostly referring to Tigh's callous and unflinching bigotry towards the "Toasters," and the relationship between Tyrell and Sharon (Boomer/Valeri, not Athena/Agathon).
If I were to go back and watch season one and two again, this lame Shyamalanesque twist will have already polluted my perception, and those stories will seem meaningless, overpowered by the blunt graceless irony of "but HE'S A CYLON!"
I thought the end of season two was bad, but this is worse. It retroactively ruins parts of the series that were previously good.
The entire "New Caprica" plot line was pointless if you asked me. Everything in it was predictable with no real insight into the characters and avoiding any real issues. For Example, We never got to see Baltar act as the President on his own. For all the Cylons actions we never really got any insight on WHY they are doing what they are doing. They turned the cylons "with a plan" into simple thugs being brutal just to be brutal.
Frankly for me the show has never lived up to what Season One produced. The show had direction then, to me it lacks it now.
Sending pieces of paper around the ship as a futuristic method of communication??? And you gotta love how they use that 2D table top with the little plastic models of space ships to plan out their 3D space missions. Instead of using a computer for simulation, they move the ships around with their hands!
The entire premise for the show is that this museum piece, Galactica, was built in an age when humans were extremely paranoid about infected networks, as they nearly lost the previous war due to their computers being too powerful and thus, vulnerable to intelligent machines. Galactica is the only ship that survives the Cylon attack precisely because of its low-tech configuration, and it is their major playing card in strategic engagements. In their rebuilding efforts after taking damage, they struggle with this rule to keep it dumbed-down and non-networked. I take it you've missed some key episodes, like the pilot.
what about Pegasus then? How did it manage to survive? It was a modern ship and yet seemed to have networked computers. Clearly they managed to secure their networks because they survived encounters with the Cyclons.
They survived because they made a random FTL jump to the middle of nowhere and had time to figure out what went wrong (i.e. Six's virus in Baltar's program). They had also already been tipped off to the fact that something was wrong with their computers by the fact that the rest of the fleet had been slaughtered.
As implausible events go in BSG, the explanation here is one of the most sensible.
what about Pegasus then? How did it manage to survive? It was a modern ship and yet seemed to have networked computers. Clearly they managed to secure their networks because they survived encounters with the Cyclons.
Why not watch the show? They explain all of this.
Gaius Baltar devised a brilliant new command and navigation program that was installed on all computers in the fleet. Six put in a backdoor in this program that allowed Cylons to r00t the new system and disable them. That's why the entire Colo
Wow, congrats, you poked a whole in the premise behind made-up technology in a fictional universe. What will be your next trick? A thrilling deconstruction of the infeasibility of humaniform cylons? Maybe an exposition on the impossibility of FTL drives?
If they land on the planet, exhausted from battle and hoping to find a new home, only to get a snarled "The boat's full, we don't want any more aliens to steal our jobs".
My money is on "Earth is the Cylon home world" or something similarly devious.
For crying out loud. Earth is the 13th colony of Cobol, they say so all throughout the series.
The Cylons were using the fleet to find it (Kara's destiny is to find earth, that's why Leoben was so obsessed with getting her trust). And the Cylons were created by the colonies who have no idea where Earth is. There is no chance at all that it's their homeworld.
There is no chance at all that it's their homeworld.
How about this (admittedly remote) idea. First, background:
Cylons worship one God (who seems fairly adamant about His charges being monotheistic)
The 13th tribe (let's call 'em Terrans) included at least some who worshiped one "jealous" Kobol God above all others (remember the Temple in Eye of Jupiter) (I won't even mention the name this God obviously shares with another, more familiar, jealous God...:) )
The Cylons are vulnerable to a virus that humans d
(BTW, if RDM reads this and I'm close to his master plan, then I want a hat.)
The problem is that there IS NO PLAN. I wasn't sure at first but there have been enough interviews now. RDM and the writers are pulling everything out of their asses. If you think of everything JMS did with B5 to lay foreshadowing, plan payoffs years in advance, just imagine the opposite and you have the RDM approach. And what makes this so massively annoying is that RDM had previously mocked the slipshod "who gives a shit, it's just a show" approach taken by the Voyager producers.
For a show like this you can leave certain character reactions up in the air. Maybe a character will hold up through the events, maybe that character will crack. That's just like real life, you either make it or you don't. But by God, in real life your backstory is fixed. You don't find out you've got an unknown twin brother with an evil goatee, you don't find out your father is actually your arch enemy when it's already been established your mother and he weren't even on the same continent when you were conceived, etc. If there's some huge chain of events going on in the story like some massively complicated Illuminati plot, your understanding of it may change over the course of the story but the original motivation of the conspirators would not. Ok, you've got the cabal and they decide to do w, x, and y to bring about the fruition of z. That's all established. Now maybe some of the cabal decide that z ain't such a hot idea but that doesn't change what w and x were.
When you get right down to it, here are the facts about Galactica: 1. RDM assembled a great cast and crew who know how to put together a great-looking show. 2. His original idea extended no further than the miniseries 3. When the show was picked up for a full season, he set his horizon no further than the next episode 4. The only far-future plot element he had in mind for sure is that the Peggy would make an appearance. 5. Everything else is spitballing.
In other words, there is currently no explanation in mind for why: 1. The Cylons got religion in the first place. 2. What made them think attacking the Colonies would satisfy that religion. 3. What their motive is for pursuing the fleet 4. Why they want to breed when they are already capable of making clones. 5. Why the Cylons now want to find Earth 6. Why Cylons want to look human in the first place when they were fine as machines 7. How characters like Tigh, who was alive before the beginning of the first Cylon War and decades before skinjobs were invented, could in fact be a skinjob, especially when RDM already stated that skinjobs are not based on any preexisting colonial humans.
I'm absolutely convinced that when the final scene of the series finale is done, the Robot Chicken version of M. Night Sharmahoweverthefuckyouspellit will prance onto the screen and say "What a twist!" Either that or we'll get the singing/dancing alien from Space Balls.
The problem is that there IS NO PLAN. I wasn't sure at first but there have been enough interviews now. RDM and the writers are pulling everything out of their asses. If you think of everything JMS did with B5 to lay foreshadowing, plan payoffs years in advance, just imagine the opposite and you have the RDM approach.
I disagree AND agree. I don't think there's a plan with every step set in stone, but I do think they have an idea for the overall arc the story takes. And there is most certainly TONS of foreshadowing in this series. Let's start with the Cylon's monotheistic God and the fact that the Colonists worship what appear to be Greek deities for starters. How about the fact that they're searching for mythological (for them) place called Earth? How can you say there's no foreshadowing...and then get modded up?:)
In other words, there is currently no explanation in mind for why:
1. The Cylons got religion in the first place.
2. What made them think attacking the Colonies would satisfy that religion.
3. What their motive is for pursuing the fleet
4. Why they want to breed when they are already capable of making clones.
5. Why the Cylons now want to find Earth
6. Why Cylons want to look human in the first place when they were fine as machines
7. How characters like Tigh, who was alive before the beginning of the first Cylon War and decades before skinjobs were invented, could in fact be a skinjob, especially when RDM already stated that skinjobs are not based on any preexisting colonial humans.
It's getting answers to these questions that keeps me (and others) interested in the show. I don't see how you can use this as ammo against the show. The reason I was excited about the announcement was that the answers will be answered within the next 22 eps.
Having watched the Season 3 finale when it came out in the same room with Ron Moore, I can safely say that he's holding out on the things that you're mentioning point by point, and that's not the same thing as having no idea in advance at all.
Naww, earth is just every-day modern day earth. They'll find it. When they realize we spend most of our time on slashdot and obsessing about tv shows both the cylons and the humans will turn away in disgust.
If I were a writer, I'd have the following plotlines going on:
Wild Guess #1
The 4 cylons who were "activated" in the season 3 finale try to kill Hera, while continuing to enable Galactica to locate Earth (ultimately with the goal to obliterate it). The reasoning could be that the 4 were activated to "correct" the pro-human behavior that the cylons have been exhibiting, and keep the cylon goal of human extermination on track. Each of the 4 has risen to a unique position of power that allows them to ena
The entire thing has been awesome, with no detectable dragging at all. There has been, on the other hand, plenty of unjustified whining by fans who don't have and shouldn't have creative control over the show.
Unlike some people, I remember when sci-fi on TV was truly awful, for example, 1979.
I don't know what original series you were watching, but the Original Battlestar Galactica that I watched was dramatically better than the current slop they are feeding us. The Cylons looked better in the original. The ships looked better. The characters where more believable. The Cylon back story actually made sense. Heck, it took the original series until the universally panned 'Galactica 1980' for them to introduce the stupid idea of human looking Cylons. The only thing that the new series does bett
It's always good when shows like this _end_ eventually, rather than being cut once the authors run out of random reasons not to get the the goal. Four seasons is an excellent length for this series, and I hope it ends strongly.
Or we could have season 5: The cylon invasion of earth.... followed by season six: the escape from earth to find _new heavenly homeworld_... and the cycle continues.
Once they found earth the jig was up. If it was a more primitive earth, the cylons would pound them into the ground and it would all be over, a technologically equal earth and they would likely be outnumbered by the cylons and pounded again (thanks guys for coming and bringing all your enemies along!), a more techologically advanced earth would have pounded the cylons and then assimilated the newcomers onto their society. Trying to drag it out after any of these scenarios would have dragged down the series and alas, it would have sucked.
They have a chance to go out on a high note and I am glad to see they are taking it. Sad, but I was p.o.ed that Deadwood and Rome ended too. There is precious little quality TV out there and the best series are winding down. I will be sad to see the Wire go too. Hopefully all these guys will give us some new quality series.
Sure, they may have planned the series to be exactly that long, but I doubt it. After all, these great creative visions tend to go out the window when the money starts rolling in. Any series with a planned timeline will have that timeline stretched with all sorts of filler if the show is popular enough. They start talking up the timeline again when the ratings slip.
The best recent example of this is Lost. That is another show that supposedly had the entire plot (beginning, middle, end) mapped out from the beginning. However, the show became a huge hit, and everything got stretched out to where a large chunk of the episodes are basically filler that doesn't actually move the story forward at all. Now that ratings are declining, they've put an end date on it. However, had the ratings not slipped, I guarantee they would not be talking about end dates now. In my opinion, the show has dragged on at least a season and a half longer than it should have, and it still have 3 more years to go.
B5 was forced to make numerous course corrections due to funding/network shifts and the departure of at least one major actor. But in general they were as true to the arc as possible...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Brits have the right idea about tight, limited series runs.
Set out from the get-go to make the show X seasons (preferably 2-5) and end it, especially if the show involves a quest or mystery. American network TV needs to get out of that "milk it for as much money as possible, then cancel it with no resolution as soon as the ratings drop" mentality and realize that they can make a lot more money in the long run if the quality of their shows remains CONSISTENTLY
I was on the fence to whether I'd tune in again after that disastrous season finale. It all came down to whether next season would be it's last or now. If I heard they were going for five seasons, I wasn't gonna bother with the fourth. But now I'd like to see how they're going to finish things up.
This show had some great moments. Even season 3 had some good ones. Exodus Pt. II was one of the finest hours in TV history. But RDM clearly had no idea of where he wanted to go with this show. Making those people (in the finale) into Cylons, based on a decision made halfway through season 3, just kind invalidated everything that came before to me. And the idea of pulling the lyrics for "All Along the Watchtower" out of the "ethereal mix" that we're all tapped into was just too stupid for me to ever look at this as a good show again (I read that one in an interview). Some people are just blown away by any manufactured twist. I prefer a degree of coherence to my storylines.
Making those people (in the finale) into Cylons, based on a decision made halfway through season 3, just kind invalidated everything that came before to me. And the idea of pulling the lyrics for "All Along the Watchtower" out of the "ethereal mix" that we're all tapped into was just too stupid for me
1- Just because they think they're cylons doesn't mean they're cylons. 2- You just called Pythagoras [wikipedia.org] "too stupid for you".
Spoiler, BSG is nothing more than a Cylon social experiment. The 12 colonies are long dead. The first show led to the death of the humans. All the humans and cylon models are really just computers set up in a situation that happened long ago ( the first show ) to try to see if they can find earth the same way the old humans did if they really believe they are human.
Zap, theres season 5 6 7. Humans fighting future cylons. Thats the only way the series could possibly continue. New cast and all. With cameos of every character to ever be on bsg.
SciFi has really shot themselves in the foot by letting this series go.
Keeping a good series on too long can turn it to crap. I like Galactica, but I'm not as excited about it as I was in seasons 1 and 2. As an example, the long, overdone Starbuck/Apollo melodrama has worn thin for me. With a finite time span, the series will likely tighten up and regain some of the focus I feel it lost in season 3.
Also, hanging on to an idea after it has outlived its usefulness is what makes so many viewers disgusted with the studios in the first place. Instead of churning out more of the same thing ("Hey, the Die Hard movies raked in dough, so let's make another one!"), studios need to keep experimenting. If SciFi takes the HBO approach, and isn't afraid to kill off shows *before* they get crappy, they'll be doing the smart thing, rather than shooting themselves in the foot.
it was just some kind of CRAZY hallucination, like Starbuck really being dead!
We see her hand on the ejector seat lever. There's a Cylon troop transport luring her there. She's been declared dead and was saved by a Cylon ship before. One of the Leobens is obsessed with getting Starbuck to fall in love with him. Her henpit pressure had equalized to the atmospheric level due to the hole in her windshield. She holds on to the very last second, and only when her ship breaks apart do we see her throw her brace for it. Due to the documentary-style special effects, the shaking camera put her vip
It might depend on what you like about the show. I happen to think episodes like "And Maggie Makes Three" and "Lisa's First Word" are some of the best episodes of the entire series. And then there's "Homer the Great", "Kamp Krusty", and the many brilliant halloween episode skits. That was back in the day when they could pull off some insightful satire, and occasionally put out a truly heartfelt episode without it coming off corny. These days, it's mainly lowbrow humour and slapstick (though I hear, rece
No, Kara Thrace is the 5th cylon. How do you think she came back from the dead?
I don't think she did [slashdot.org]. I also don't think that the victims of cylon brainwashing (some of whom were alive during the first cylon war, before the cylons evolved into replicants) are cylons themselves.
I'll change my mind when they show me multiple copies (and not in a dream sequence).
Babylon 5 does not belong on that list. The show was planned for five seasons. Fox announced that they were canning it at the beginning of the fourth season, so the last two seasons were written into season four, then the show was moved to another network for a fifth season. The fourth season was, arguably, the best. The fifth season was not nearly as good, but you cannot blame the show being canceled when it was on the fifth season, as it had already been announced, before the season started, that the fifth season would be the last.
Good (Score:5, Insightful)
You give them more credit than I do (Score:5, Interesting)
Old enough to remember watching the original series on TV, I was thrilled with the mini-series, and Season 1 was solid drama with fantastic characterization. Season 2 started strong, but aside from the odd bit of goodness appearing at random, I'd say the show got pretty sketchy after the whole Pegasus thing.
Making it worse, the entire New Caprica plot line which ended the second season went absolutely nowhere, and the spent the rest of the third season hitting a big red reset button which pretty much rewound us to the point right after the mid-season 2 Pegasus arc. Yippe, I love watching a season and a half of TV where the producers produce random plotlines, and Adama and Rosyln, who had previously been inspired characters, were written as "stupid" and thus even the character drama was removed as well.
A real shame in my opinion; however, I'm happy to hear the fourth season will be their last. Perhaps that will inspire them to tell an actual story and we'll end up with a decent finish (and I can just go on ignoring all content between mid-season 2 and the final season =).
--
~AC
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Leave the poor guy alone, he's married. BSG is as close as he's gonna get...
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Tigh: I'm telling you, there's Cylon sabotage aboard this ship!
Adama: You're telling me there's sabotage? With music?
No, Colonel Tigh.
That sound you're hearing?
That's the sound of the writers pissing away three years of hard-won credibility in the space of seven minutes.
Parent
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll gladly recant if I'm wrong, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that Starbuck is the 5th of the final five, so we've seen them all.
And I think that sucks. Having 4 to 5 major characters (Okay, so Tory is not a major character and Anders is debatable) suddenly turn out to be cylons smacks of retcon to me, and it renders all their previous development with these characters flat and uninteresting. I'm mostly referring to Tigh's callous and unflinching bigotry towards the "Toasters," and the relationship between Tyrell and Sharon (Boomer/Valeri, not Athena/Agathon).
If I were to go back and watch season one and two again, this lame Shyamalanesque twist will have already polluted my perception, and those stories will seem meaningless, overpowered by the blunt graceless irony of "but HE'S A CYLON!"
I thought the end of season two was bad, but this is worse. It retroactively ruins parts of the series that were previously good.
Parent
This whole season sucked IMO. (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly for me the show has never lived up to what Season One produced. The show had direction then, to me it lacks it now.
Parent
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
The entire premise for the show is that this museum piece, Galactica, was built in an age when humans were extremely paranoid about infected networks, as they nearly lost the previous war due to their computers being too powerful and thus, vulnerable to intelligent machines. Galactica is the only ship that survives the Cylon attack precisely because of its low-tech configuration, and it is their major playing card in strategic engagements. In their rebuilding efforts after taking damage, they struggle with this rule to keep it dumbed-down and non-networked. I take it you've missed some key episodes, like the pilot.
Parent
Re:Ok but... (Score:5, Informative)
They survived because they made a random FTL jump to the middle of nowhere and had time to figure out what went wrong (i.e. Six's virus in Baltar's program). They had also already been tipped off to the fact that something was wrong with their computers by the fact that the rest of the fleet had been slaughtered.
As implausible events go in BSG, the explanation here is one of the most sensible.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why not watch the show? They explain all of this.
Gaius Baltar devised a brilliant new command and navigation program that was installed on all computers in the fleet. Six put in a backdoor in this program that allowed Cylons to r00t the new system and disable them. That's why the entire Colo
Re:future tech (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:future tech (Score:4, Funny)
I bet if they used SFTP engines instead the cylons would have a harder time hacking into their computers.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
My money is on "Earth is the Cylon home world" or something similarly devious.
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Now wouldn't that be funny? (Score:3, Funny)
Now that would be a way to end it with a bang!
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Funny)
Humans: NOOOOOO0000ES!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So Tricia Helfer would then be my mother? Damn you! I'll never be able to fantasize about her again!
Now, what did I do with my analyst's phone number?
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Interesting)
The Cylons were using the fleet to find it (Kara's destiny is to find earth, that's why Leoben was so obsessed with getting her trust). And the Cylons were created by the colonies who have no idea where Earth is. There is no chance at all that it's their homeworld.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
How about this (admittedly remote) idea. First, background:
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Insightful)
For a show like this you can leave certain character reactions up in the air. Maybe a character will hold up through the events, maybe that character will crack. That's just like real life, you either make it or you don't. But by God, in real life your backstory is fixed. You don't find out you've got an unknown twin brother with an evil goatee, you don't find out your father is actually your arch enemy when it's already been established your mother and he weren't even on the same continent when you were conceived, etc. If there's some huge chain of events going on in the story like some massively complicated Illuminati plot, your understanding of it may change over the course of the story but the original motivation of the conspirators would not. Ok, you've got the cabal and they decide to do w, x, and y to bring about the fruition of z. That's all established. Now maybe some of the cabal decide that z ain't such a hot idea but that doesn't change what w and x were.
When you get right down to it, here are the facts about Galactica:
1. RDM assembled a great cast and crew who know how to put together a great-looking show.
2. His original idea extended no further than the miniseries
3. When the show was picked up for a full season, he set his horizon no further than the next episode
4. The only far-future plot element he had in mind for sure is that the Peggy would make an appearance.
5. Everything else is spitballing.
In other words, there is currently no explanation in mind for why:
1. The Cylons got religion in the first place.
2. What made them think attacking the Colonies would satisfy that religion.
3. What their motive is for pursuing the fleet
4. Why they want to breed when they are already capable of making clones.
5. Why the Cylons now want to find Earth
6. Why Cylons want to look human in the first place when they were fine as machines
7. How characters like Tigh, who was alive before the beginning of the first Cylon War and decades before skinjobs were invented, could in fact be a skinjob, especially when RDM already stated that skinjobs are not based on any preexisting colonial humans.
I'm absolutely convinced that when the final scene of the series finale is done, the Robot Chicken version of M. Night Sharmahoweverthefuckyouspellit will prance onto the screen and say "What a twist!" Either that or we'll get the singing/dancing alien from Space Balls.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
How did Seven, after returning from the Delta Quadrant, get all the way to Carpica?
What caused her to forget about her Delta Quadrant adventures?
Why did she increment her name by 1?
Re:Fascinating (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Fascinating (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Earth has already wiped itself out... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Earth has already wiped itself out... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wild Speculation (Score:3, Interesting)
Wild Guess #1
The 4 cylons who were "activated" in the season 3 finale try to kill Hera, while continuing to enable Galactica to locate Earth (ultimately with the goal to obliterate it). The reasoning could be that the 4 were activated to "correct" the pro-human behavior that the cylons have been exhibiting, and keep the cylon goal of human extermination on track. Each of the 4 has risen to a unique position of power that allows them to ena
Drag? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike some people, I remember when sci-fi on TV was truly awful, for example, 1979.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently it got good again at the end of season 3, I'll probably watch season 4 to see if it truly stopped sucking. Especially knowing it's the end.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good... (Score:5, Insightful)
It was inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
They have a chance to go out on a high note and I am glad to see they are taking it. Sad, but I was p.o.ed that Deadwood and Rome ended too. There is precious little quality TV out there and the best series are winding down. I will be sad to see the Wire go too. Hopefully all these guys will give us some new quality series.
We always planned it this way! (Score:5, Insightful)
The best recent example of this is Lost. That is another show that supposedly had the entire plot (beginning, middle, end) mapped out from the beginning. However, the show became a huge hit, and everything got stretched out to where a large chunk of the episodes are basically filler that doesn't actually move the story forward at all. Now that ratings are declining, they've put an end date on it. However, had the ratings not slipped, I guarantee they would not be talking about end dates now. In my opinion, the show has dragged on at least a season and a half longer than it should have, and it still have 3 more years to go.
Re:We always planned it this way! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The Brits have it right--limited and focused (Score:3, Insightful)
Set out from the get-go to make the show X seasons (preferably 2-5) and end it, especially if the show involves a quest or mystery. American network TV needs to get out of that "milk it for as much money as possible, then cancel it with no resolution as soon as the ratings drop" mentality and realize that they can make a lot more money in the long run if the quality of their shows remains CONSISTENTLY
The Cylons Have A Plan (Score:5, Funny)
Good News (Score:5, Interesting)
This show had some great moments. Even season 3 had some good ones. Exodus Pt. II was one of the finest hours in TV history. But RDM clearly had no idea of where he wanted to go with this show. Making those people (in the finale) into Cylons, based on a decision made halfway through season 3, just kind invalidated everything that came before to me. And the idea of pulling the lyrics for "All Along the Watchtower" out of the "ethereal mix" that we're all tapped into was just too stupid for me to ever look at this as a good show again (I read that one in an interview). Some people are just blown away by any manufactured twist. I prefer a degree of coherence to my storylines.
slashdotter smarter than the father of numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Making those people (in the finale) into Cylons, based on a decision made halfway through season 3, just kind invalidated everything that came before to me. And the idea of pulling the lyrics for "All Along the Watchtower" out of the "ethereal mix" that we're all tapped into was just too stupid for me
1- Just because they think they're cylons doesn't mean they're cylons.
2- You just called Pythagoras [wikipedia.org] "too stupid for you".
SPOILER - they reach earth, but... (Score:5, Funny)
BSG Ending (Score:3, Interesting)
Zap, theres season 5 6 7. Humans fighting future cylons. Thats the only way the series could possibly continue. New cast and all. With cameos of every character to ever be on bsg.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A big whole what?
Not necessarily (Score:5, Insightful)
SciFi has really shot themselves in the foot by letting this series go.
Keeping a good series on too long can turn it to crap. I like Galactica, but I'm not as excited about it as I was in seasons 1 and 2. As an example, the long, overdone Starbuck/Apollo melodrama has worn thin for me. With a finite time span, the series will likely tighten up and regain some of the focus I feel it lost in season 3.
Also, hanging on to an idea after it has outlived its usefulness is what makes so many viewers disgusted with the studios in the first place. Instead of churning out more of the same thing ("Hey, the Die Hard movies raked in dough, so let's make another one!"), studios need to keep experimenting. If SciFi takes the HBO approach, and isn't afraid to kill off shows *before* they get crappy, they'll be doing the smart thing, rather than shooting themselves in the foot.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
parent is a [show x sucks] troll, but still... (Score:3, Insightful)
it was just some kind of CRAZY hallucination, like Starbuck really being dead!
We see her hand on the ejector seat lever.
There's a Cylon troop transport luring her there.
She's been declared dead and was saved by a Cylon ship before.
One of the Leobens is obsessed with getting Starbuck to fall in love with him.
Her henpit pressure had equalized to the atmospheric level due to the hole in her windshield.
She holds on to the very last second, and only when her ship breaks apart do we see her throw her brace for it.
Due to the documentary-style special effects, the shaking camera put her vip
Re:Crappy ending redux (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, Kara Thrace is the 5th cylon.
How do you think she came back from the dead?
I don't think she did [slashdot.org].
I also don't think that the victims of cylon brainwashing (some of whom were alive during the first cylon war, before the cylons evolved into replicants) are cylons themselves.
I'll change my mind when they show me multiple copies (and not in a dream sequence).
Re:BS (Score:4, Informative)
Parent