Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I'll take more realistic, flawed characters any day and feel that makes for superior drama. The conflicts - emotional, moral and physical that this last dash of humanity were subjected to - on the lam, fighting for their lives, fighting an overwhelming enemy and fighting the fraying of societies remnants - made for some of the most compelling dramatic television that I have ever seen. Never mind that this was science-fiction, this was incredible drama. I think the desire to have clearer cut heroes and villains is fine, but compared to BSG, 'The Wire', and any number of other dramatic shows where we see people at their very best and very worst is top-notch. And exploring not only individual moral ambiguity, but society wide gray areas (and becoming allegorical of the day and time that we have lived in the past few years) is what great drama and great sci-fi is made from.

I'm a huge fan of the show, can you tell?

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Not to pile on, but Kevin, you lost me when you said "you expect..." I don't want to watch a show where it gives me what I expect. I want something different that I need to figure out. In addition to the Wire and BSG, give me Deadwood, The Sopranos and Dexter where I can never be sure who I am supposed to like or dislike.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I don't know what to do tonight. Any suggestions?

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

There's always season 1 on DVD

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Catch "Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles" (FOX, 8:00 pm EDT) while you can ... it'll probably be canceled shortly ...

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Me and a buddy had the same conversation. The last 5 or 6 Fridays we've been watching BSG when it aired and now we got nothin'.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I'll be watching Numb3rs live, instead of recorded. That is, when new episodes start airing again in a few weeks...

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

i feel the same way. this morning i went to make sure my dvr on my htpc was set and i thought to myself, "oh yeah, no more bsg."

well at least it is warming up outside. i will go hang out...

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Does anyone know when the second half of season four will be released on DVD?

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Recently The Digital Bits said that it's rumored to be coming in late July. Also that's when they say that the Blu-ray series set is rumored to be getting released.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

I just picked up the Season 1 dvd, so after this was ended, I watched the miniseries that started it all. After getting over my initial shock at how young everyone looked(especially Tyrol and Gaeta, who was skinny, skinny, skinny) I paid attention to that scene where she killed the baby. And it struck me as if it was almost accidental, like she didn't mean to.

She was making small talk with the baby's mother, surprised at how tiny they were, in wonder at how that tiny neck could support such such a huge head, and then when the mother looked away toward her husband, she reached in with one finger to the side of the baby's cheek, and then you hear the crack. And then it cuts to her walking away, and she has a look on her face somewhere between sadness, being distraught, and puzzlement, like she couldn't believe what she had just done, didn't know how it happened, that she was really upset by it.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Do I have to quote Bill Shatner to y'all...?

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Good finale. The only thing that I still can't understand is everyone's willingness to forgo technology and throw the ships into the sun. Definitely unrealistic, especially for a program that depicted people so realistically. Also why didn't anyone go with the Cylons? There is always someone that refuses to settle down.

Finally the last scene left it up in the air as to whether humanity would repeat the same mistakes or not. All of that sacrifice (forgoing technology) for nothing.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Well I think the last scene indicated we are going down the same path as the colonies. Whether we will wind up with the same fate or will the numbers indicate it changes, well that is/was up in the air.

They should have landed the ships they could have and then hidden them under shrubbery, in case they needed them. Like the space cycles from Galactic 1980.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Maybe they weren't asked by the Freelons?. After all they've been through first being enslaved by their Human creators and then by their rescuers and Brethren the Final 12 Cylons it's possible they just want to be on their own and away from anything with a skin covering. I guess the Old Model Centurions were all bascially destroyed by the Colony. Any that survived if they were away from the Colony would likely be pretty limited in the amount of supplies and fuel so wouldn't be expected to have a lengthy ability to survive unless they can find a Planet of their own (or track down the new Freelons).

Probably not too many of the humans would want to be with a species that they've been at war with for 45 years. I'm surprised that none of the 6's particularly didn't go since that model seems to have the most affection of the Centurions (along with the 3's). The 8's seemed like the Raiders, but I never saw much interaction b/w the 8's or the Leoban series (? 5's) and the Toaster Models. Maybe that colony will go back and pick up D'Anna from Cinder/Cylon/Original Earth.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Sorry I have not read all the replies but what doesn’t make sense to me is why they risk a ship, a fleet,… to rescue the kid? Why she was important to the humans? Humans could already procreate.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

She's the first Cylon/human hybrid and (I believe that) the rogue Cylons see her as a miracle from God. Adama and all the volunteers didn't want to leave a child behind to be butchered by the other Cylons.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

In addition, there's the idea that they don't want Cavil to "win". It's a hail-Mary suicide mission for Galactica. They figure the ship is on its last legs (it was), and that with Earth a charred cinder, there's really no where to go (wrong about that). They're tired of running and just barely surviving. They didn't even risk the fleet -- it was about a third of the remaining crew. So go out in a blaze of glory and honor; even let former mutineers to join in.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Final thoughts on the BSG series:

BSG became a victim of its own excellence. For 2.5 seasons the show rarely made a misstep and was continually raising the bar on excellence for a TV series. In retrospect, if the series had gone three seasons instead of four it would have finished at higher level.

Post New Caprica the show started to tread water revisiting themes from earlier in the series ie the Baltar trial and the mutiny, or wandering off the main path of finding earth. Some of those segments were well done but ultimately had no impact on the major storyline.

My biggest fear was that the show would spend too much time on these threads and be in a rush to bring everything to a satisfying conclusion. And that is exactly what happened.

It is most telling the more emotionally touching beats came in the first hour of the two hour finale.

The scene between Roslyn and the doc being the most affecting.

For a show that revelled in raising tough questions and examining the consequences of actions taken, the finale veered to far into the territory of things being decided by whim, or fate, or God(s).

Sad. Just goes to show how tough endings are to write.

Still the ride was the best, for the most part. BSG deserves all the kudos it has received despite the missteps of the final season and a half.

It will be missed.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

BSG fans should check out tonight's Chuck. Spoilerized for any Chuck fans who want to be surprised:


Warning Spoiler! Click to show

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Lou, you're spot-on. Three seasons would have been perfect. The entire Baltar-cult plot line was too much, and Starbuck's adventure in the garbage scow was fruitless, and the Final Five story was ridiculous. And I never took to the Quantum Leap guy being the villain Cavil. The show did not need a personification of evil in the form of a crotchety older man, they had the entire Cylon race to serve as the enemy. And once Cavil started getting all the attention, important Cylons like Caprica Six got shafted, with hardly any story time in the last season.

In another world, there's probably a perfect 3-season version of this show that rocks. As it stands, the last two seasons diminish the first 2 seasons.

But it was good. Real good. And I am looking forward to the season 4 soundtrack (and the promise of an odd-n-ends soundtrack after that).

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

Yes I know that she's the first Cylon/human hybrid. But why should humans care and get into trouble that much?

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I'm not getting what happened with Earth..

Did they land in the wrong spot before?? (I'm guessing they checked the whole planet from Space, though).

Or are there 2 Earths in parallel universes or something??

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Because they care about more than only themselves.

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It is confusing, and I think the writers are probably guilty of a bit of "retconning" in this regard.

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I think that the first Earth was the real one. The second planet was a habitable planet they just named Earth after the first one.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

The Earth they were looking for, the Earth of legend, was not our Earth. They first found the Earth they were looking for, but found it had destroyed itself through war.

But then there was divine intervention and Starbuck jumped the Galactica to a fertile planet which they dubbed "Earth" (even though it was not). That second Earth is our planet.

Note that the first Earth did not have our moon.

Both Earths are relatively near each other though, since they both have the same perspective on the old constellations.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

That fits, I guess..

Thanks!

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

In the last conversation that Adama and Roslyn had they talked about what to call this world they found. It went something like this...

Roslyn: what should we call this place?

Adama: Earth.

Roslyn: But this isn't Earth

Adama: Earth is a dream.

Meaning that what they were all looking for was a new world they could call home. Even though they could scratch out an existense on New caprica, no one really thought of it as home. The world they ended up at was the "Garden of Eden" type world that everyone would want to settle on and call home. Earth.

Re: Battlestar Galactica Season 4

What was the point of the Daniel storyline? Why create all the issues of breaking the integrity of the 12 cylon models (a fact that dated all the way back to the miniseries) if it wasn't going to go anywhere? We never saw Daniel. Nobody ever mentioned him except Cavil and Ellen (and maybe Saul or Anders in passing - I don't remember). But why bother? Couldn't they have made the point that Cavil had betrayed and hurt Ellen by destroying the "human-ness" of the cylons in some other way?