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Battlestar Galactica Official Final Season Thread
- Thread starter Stoney Mason
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If you guys hate the religious aspects of the show and the notion of a higher being watching over the people of the fleet you should have stopped watching the show after the mini series aired. You might not have noticed it or you even might have ignored it but the head people, who have been a core part of the series since day 1, were never going to be hidden Cylon chips. The countless visions, meetings with the dead and even one very prominent return of a dead person that couldn't possibly have survived a certain incident weren't just drug induced hallcinations. Not just that, didn't you notice how often the Pythia was used as a central storytelling device?
What about the oracles, the prophecies, the temples and the religious items?
Are you telling me that you hated the ending that presented the only logical and yet thrilling conclusion to a series that incorprated all of that?
It was never going to be a Cylon chip or a hidden Cylon faction.
I'm sorry but you should've walked away from this series after the first episode or the first half of the first season if it took you that long to realize what was going on.
What kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end was the question what the motivation and the nature of this higher power was, not the question whether it existed or not. By the way I don't believe for a second that it was the biblical god or anything like that. It's left open for interpretation.
The being(s) behind it all could also be called Q, The Ancients, Beings of Light, Time Lords, First Ones, Valar or whatever the heck these puppetmasters are called in all other sci-fi/fantasy series. Did that offend you too?
What's the difference? Baltar doesn't find better words to describe them and doesn't know their real name when he reveals their existance to everyone else at the CIC. You even can see him struggling for words on screen ffs.
Ron Moore isn't trying to convert you or to force his weird, twisted religion on your innocent souls. Even if that was the case he would have been doing it since the show started so why did you stick around if there are other less complicated shows without religious themes that are just as entertaining?
What about the oracles, the prophecies, the temples and the religious items?
Are you telling me that you hated the ending that presented the only logical and yet thrilling conclusion to a series that incorprated all of that?
It was never going to be a Cylon chip or a hidden Cylon faction.
I'm sorry but you should've walked away from this series after the first episode or the first half of the first season if it took you that long to realize what was going on.
What kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end was the question what the motivation and the nature of this higher power was, not the question whether it existed or not. By the way I don't believe for a second that it was the biblical god or anything like that. It's left open for interpretation.
The being(s) behind it all could also be called Q, The Ancients, Beings of Light, Time Lords, First Ones, Valar or whatever the heck these puppetmasters are called in all other sci-fi/fantasy series. Did that offend you too?
What's the difference? Baltar doesn't find better words to describe them and doesn't know their real name when he reveals their existance to everyone else at the CIC. You even can see him struggling for words on screen ffs.
Ron Moore isn't trying to convert you or to force his weird, twisted religion on your innocent souls. Even if that was the case he would have been doing it since the show started so why did you stick around if there are other less complicated shows without religious themes that are just as entertaining?
ScientificNinja
Member
I find that the worst sci-fi shows are the ones that show too much or explain too much. Because then the nerds have something to pick apart at the expense of pacing, character development and everything that makes a story special.
No, I'm fine for Battlestar Galactica to have an element of the supernatural. The best stories are always the ones that are open to interpretation.
No, I'm fine for Battlestar Galactica to have an element of the supernatural. The best stories are always the ones that are open to interpretation.
Purkake4 said:
In my opinion it didn't need to be explained. Every question that needed to be answered was answered by the end of Sometimes a Great Notion.
Everything that followed was a long goodybe to the characters. Back when the fourth season aired for the first time I wanted RDM to explain what exactly those beings were who manipulated the fleet but in the end I though it was classy that he left it up to interpretation. It doesn't even matter that much in the end.
Until Sometimes a Great Notion everything could've been a Cylon experiment or it could have turned out that the entire fleet is populated by Cylons who are being chased around the universe by evolved humans for entertainment. That would have been incredibly shitty of course and the backlash here would be much worse than it is now.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
ScientificNinja said:
the 'prediction' had as much value as a horoscope.
It was intentionally vague, because the symbolic link had not been written yet at that point. As a viewer, you are supposed to interpret it to a fitting form, because the creators never intended to give you one.
Furthermore, what was inserted as the endpoint of these symbolic links, were satisfactory enough -imo- and do not require outlandish links / jumps of any kind.
ScientificNinja said:
Sci-Fi nerds pick at technical details like costumes, ship specs, inconsistent technobabble, stuff like that. People who enjoy good storytelling nitpick pacing and character development issues. Those aspects are way more important and apply to all genres. Special for the sake of special does not excuse these flaws.
With regards to the supernatural element of BSG, the point many, including myself, are making is that the ending is NOT open to interpretation. There is no other explanation other than God did it. It's lazy writing at best and a total copout and destroys any sort of satisfying payoff after four seasons at worst.
BorkBork said:
"God did it" is a very simple and inaccurate way to describe the influence that this higher power had on the fleet. God/Q/Lorien/Kermit the fucking Frog didn't actually break the cycle. He guided the fleet by placing the Head Projections/Angels/Vorlons/Nox/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles among them to influence two key figures who would play a very important role in making the breaking of of the cycle possible.
Of course he also brought a character back to life because that characater died before it could complete the journey. Shit happens, even to god it seems.
You can call it lazy writing. It doesn't make any sense but you are entitled to your opinion. I would suggest that the entire series is one big piece if lazy writing though since this supernatural bullshit has been around since it started which essentially makes the entire four season run a giant cop out.
Whatever the naysayers would have come up with, now THAT sure as hell would've been lazy writing and I thank Kermit the Frog that I will never be exposed to their way of ending the series. RDM and his writing staff aren't hacks and I'm pretty sure that all of the people who complained about the ending would have produced something that would have insulted the fandom to the point where it may have cause physical pain in very sensitive regions of the body.
ScientificNinja
Member
BorkBork said:
Really? Which god? The Cylon god or the human one? Neither my wife nor I came away with that interpretation.
Does anyone here remember the Beings of Light from the Original Series?
A little fact sheet:
- Called angels by the people of Kobol even if it is obvious that they aren't actually angels
- They don't interfere directly with the fleet out of fear that they could make things worse
- Some of them speak in riddles and can appear and disappear suddenly
Ah well, let's get back to the usual stuff...
GOD DID IT LOL
DANCING ROBOTS LOL
A little fact sheet:
- Called angels by the people of Kobol even if it is obvious that they aren't actually angels
- They don't interfere directly with the fleet out of fear that they could make things worse
- Some of them speak in riddles and can appear and disappear suddenly
Ah well, let's get back to the usual stuff...
GOD DID IT LOL
DANCING ROBOTS LOL
Frenck said:
In what way did anything anyone, supernatural or not, did make possible the breaking of the cycle?
Seriously, answer that. When I think back on the plot, and look at the influences of the 'god figures,' they're so random and scatterbrained as to have roughly no meaningful influence at all. I don't think the ending was shitty because "god did it." Nor because there's supernatural influences. I dislike it because it makes no fucking sense; nobody makes decisions that are in character (again, "lol let's dump our technology and forget everything we've learned" - Lee Adama).
OptimoPeach
Banned
Seems like it would have been a lot more efficient if God just teleported their asses to Earth and said "cut out the stupid shit" instead of stringing them along for 4 years with cosmic riddlesFrenck said:
maharg said:
Hera is the key figure here and the vision of the opera house plays a part in it as well.
It's actually pretty simple. Hera represents Human/Cylon unity and the end of the cycle of destruction. Caprica Six and Baltar, guided by Head Six and Head Baltar, save Hera in the opera house sequence and Baltar initiates the breaking of the cycle with his speech in the CIC where he causes your unfounded anger by calling the being behind all of this god instead of some exotic sounding alien name.
The cycle is then finally broken because humanity and cylons become one as Hera's genetic code ends up in every modern human which essentially creates a new species. But oh the noez the dancing robot revolution may start the cycle again... to be continued in Battlestar Dance Dance Robolution: The Dancening
ScientificNinja said:
Does it matter? God or Gods, it renders all the struggles and tribulations everyone went through pretty much meaningless.
Damn I really don't want to get into this again. I've been over it for months, and to drag it out again just makes me angry.
OptimoPeach said:
It would also have been more efficient if the Cylons just killed everyone in the fleet when they had the chance (Revelations, Exodus). That would have been a shitty ending of course and instead of "god did it" the catchphrase would be "the cylons get them".
Aside from that, maybe "God" can't teleport their asses somewhere and say cut out the stupid shit. Probably because he's not god.
BorkBork said:
The struggles and tribulations along the way, especially what happened on New Caprica, influence the decision that the Colonials make at the end. They don't behave like Colonials and colonize as they did on New Caprica, this time around they blend in and give up the things that made them weak to begin with. The temptation to start it all again, to make things easier than they should be for a short time just to make them much, much harder in the end.
If "god" (RDM, give this guy a name so I don't have to call him god anymore) would just have teleported them around with the snip of his finger no one would have made that decision. They would have colonized Earth and educated the primitive humans and they would have prepared a counter attack against the Cylons (we're talking pre-33 Adama, Tigh, Lee, Baltar here).
Frenck said:
Please tell me where I ever said in all my posts in this thread that my anger comes from it being mystical. There are ways to use mysticism that are not Lazy. This is just not an example of it. This is a strawman used far too much by people who like the finale: anyone who didn't like it is just a raving atheist angry at being subjected to God. This is simply not true. The finale fails to be a satisfying and consistent piece of storytelling because it just does not follow from the events that preceded it. It's a hamfisted ball of crap that was the only escape route out of the ugly stupid corner they backed themselves into with Season 4.
frenck said:
So.... the cycle was broken except it wasn't? You're saying two things here: God led them to a method of breaking the cycle, which they followed through with. Then the cycle continues, so either God failed, they failed, or the whole show is premised on a load of poorly strung together hokum (RDM failed). You can't have it both ways.
ScientificNinja
Member
BorkBork said:
Well, that's the thing. I don't accept that any of what happened was any god's doing. That might be why the tragedy is a little easier for me to accept as a story. The gods are all imagined by all in the story; and the only remotely higher powers that come through it at the end are Head Six, Head Balthar and, to a lesser degree, Kara Thrace. Doesn't make them gods - it just makes them higher beings.
MedHead said:
People will naturally give credit for anything to the gods they believe in. Just because they do doesn't make it right; and as the disembodied viewer who is judging everything from on high, I don't accept that as the answer (assuming I wanted one) to who's in control.
Marty Chinn
Member
maharg said:
I'm not religious, but isn't one of the core things is that God gave humans the ability to choose? God doesn't just force things to happens, it's more like he influences things to happen a certain way but it still comes down to it all being a choice on our part. God used the angels to influence Baltar and Six to play their role to break the cycle by changing the outcome compared to what has happened in the past which sets up a whole new potential of finally ending that cycle but it's up to us to still choose our fate. We have a new opportunity to change that outcome because of the role that they played. So yes, God led them to a method but the cycle could still continue if we make the wrong choices, because in the end we still have free will.
Considering the characters seem to always do exactly what god intends, even when it comes down to minor details (like the really lame attempt to work the opera house in last minute), they sure don't seem to have free will. I'm not sure there's anything indicating free will on the characters' parts.
Lack of free will is also just about the only explanation for an extremely fractious group of humans apparently all unanimously agreeing to end everything they knew about their lives (not just technology, but society, law, learning, culture, *lessons about what not to do when creating life*, etc.) for a cockamamie luddite/survivalist suicide. This makes it hard to accept that there is any such thing as free will in the BSG universe. Which would be fine with a better constructed narrative. Again, the problem is that in the end the narrative is broken and lazy.
Lack of free will is also just about the only explanation for an extremely fractious group of humans apparently all unanimously agreeing to end everything they knew about their lives (not just technology, but society, law, learning, culture, *lessons about what not to do when creating life*, etc.) for a cockamamie luddite/survivalist suicide. This makes it hard to accept that there is any such thing as free will in the BSG universe. Which would be fine with a better constructed narrative. Again, the problem is that in the end the narrative is broken and lazy.
Regurgitating this thread only because I recently finsihed watching BSG beginning to end (never saw it before, once I was interested, 2 seasons went by)
I liked the Final Season. I think there was just a lot of pressure and certain things didn't meet expectations.
The Final Episode with everything being controlled by God is contrived, but enough that if Baltar was God or something else it would have been worse.
The ending itself provided closure for the series (even though we would want MORE, TONS MORE). It was good to see the evolution of things to see "our Earth" as it came to be.
I liked the Final Season. I think there was just a lot of pressure and certain things didn't meet expectations.
The Final Episode with everything being controlled by God is contrived, but enough that if Baltar was God or something else it would have been worse.
The ending itself provided closure for the series (even though we would want MORE, TONS MORE). It was good to see the evolution of things to see "our Earth" as it came to be.
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
Just fyi, "The Plan" dvd is coming out on the 27th, but it seems to have done the leaky rounds already if you know where to look.
The Storyteller
Member
Just watched it. It's good but there's far too many old scenes mixed in with the new ones. It kind of gets to the point where you just wanna get to the next new scene. Some sharper editing would have helped, perhaps the shorter version they plan to air, may actually be the better version.
Given that, the opening 20 minutes is fantastic and the rest of the movie really expands on Cavill which I really enjoyed. And aside from a few awkward retconning it all fits together pretty well.
Given that, the opening 20 minutes is fantastic and the rest of the movie really expands on Cavill which I really enjoyed. And aside from a few awkward retconning it all fits together pretty well.
Tenacious-V
Thinks his PR is better than yours.
That's good to hear. I'm about to watch it now.
While it was interesting to see the other perspective, the whole thing still screamed of desperate plot hole filling and retconning. It's like RDM was going "Look! We were planning this all along. Did you see how he had that knowing look in his eye? Yeah, he was a cylon all along, honest."
Other than that the Cavil stuff was really cool, the Cavil-that-could-have-been was actually a nice person.
Oh and apparently every single one of the human models was horribly incompetent.
Other than that the Cavil stuff was really cool, the Cavil-that-could-have-been was actually a nice person.
Oh and apparently every single one of the human models was horribly incompetent.
Well, RDM has mostly been quite honest about how they chose the final five, etc. And we *know* this entire film was made to fill the plot hole that the "they have a plan" line in series 1 dug, a line that RDM opposed being included in the opening sequence.Purkake4 said:
I think they did a good job.
That wasn't the message at all. Only Dorall was portrayed in that light. The others just didn't want to harm people they loved.
HallucinatingElvis
Banned
so....who's responsible for putting a penis in my BSG?
*edit*
not only is there a penis in BSG, the camera purposefully pans over to show it to me...:lol
*edit*
not only is there a penis in BSG, the camera purposefully pans over to show it to me...:lol
Instigator
Banned
Tenacious-V said:
They shouldn't bother with that movie.
An apology from the writers would be more meaningful.
parrotbeak
Member
Does it look like The Plan dvd is going to get packaged with the Caprica season 1 set eventually? Or is it going to go in some new "complete, really this time" BSG box set and then Caprica will be separate? I love this show but damn, I've spent a lot on it.
HallucinatingElvis said:
Yeah the close-up cracked me up. :lol
There were some nice tities as well.
Overall I liked it. It was a nice way to fill some blanks; nothing mind-blowing and as someone said I expected a lot less reused footage.
Also, its funny that Ron Moore once said that it was unlikely that we would ever know who Caprica-Six met on Caprica: http://forums.syfy.com/index.php?showtopic=1638823&st=1080 :lol
I didn't expect a VFX extravaganza but I'm glad I was proven wrong. There were a lot of quality CG shots there. Not as good as Zoic Studios and Atmosphere Visual Effects shots, but good nonetheless.
Danthrax said:
The show throughout its run had its CG made by a mixture of studios: Atmosphere Visual Effects, Zoic Studio and their in-house team (which only started to work after season 3 premiered).
"Razor", "The Plan", a big part of Season 3 and all of season 4 were made by the in-house studio. At the time Season 1 and 2 were being made they were still arranging the studio.
I don't know if this was a budget driven decision or because they wanted more control over the pipeline, but according to this artist there was something going on behind the scenes: http://www.battlestarvfx.com/bsg_tutorial_shotbreakoutandlighting.htm
In the end, while the in-house team did mostly a good job, things like composition and particle effects don't hold a candle to episodes like "Resurrection Ship, Part II", which had some of the best CG I've ever seen made on a TV show (second close for Exodus, Part II). In the studios website you can see some montages that feature some of their most memorable work.
http://www.atmosphere-vfx.com/
http://www.zoicstudios.com/#/creations/television/31-battlestar-galactica/
Cornballer
Member
"The Plan" is out tomorrow on BRD and DVD. Guess I'll Netflix it and see how it is. There have only been a couple early reviews floating around, but they're positive for the most part.
DarkJediKnight
Member
Can someone explain how Saul Tigh can be a cylon? To me, that one made no sense. So are they final five just constantly ressurected? If so, then how would Adama know Saul for 30 years? Surely he would have been young and had hair. Same goes for Ellen. Adama knew them for a long time. It's not as if they looked in the 60s all of a sudden. Adama even says: "Saul, I knew you for 30 years", but the show doesn't explain it.
Are the final five resurrected as babies for 2 thousand years with memories of their past life and resurrection secrets stored away, and the key to unlock being the cylon music?
Are the final five resurrected as babies for 2 thousand years with memories of their past life and resurrection secrets stored away, and the key to unlock being the cylon music?
PhoncipleBone
Banned
DarkJediKnight said:
The show did explain it. They even showed a flashback of Saul with hair too, but that was before he was revealed as a Cylon.
Remember, the final five (or original five technically) showed up in the middle of the first Cylon war. The only thing that is vague is the timeline after the skinjobs are made and Cavil wiping the memories of the final five.
D
Deleted member 22576
Unconfirmed Member
Yeah, the plan was really more of a "greatest hits."
At least half the footage was stuff we've already seen.. which makes me wonder if everything else was just "deleted scenes."
Anyway, still very enjoyable.
It's been a while since I've watched Battlestar, and it was quite a nice refresh.
Also, did I hear rumors a while back that there are going to be two other direct to DVD movies?
I swear I read this news after The Plan was announced.. but I can't remember the specifics.
At least half the footage was stuff we've already seen.. which makes me wonder if everything else was just "deleted scenes."
Anyway, still very enjoyable.
It's been a while since I've watched Battlestar, and it was quite a nice refresh.
Also, did I hear rumors a while back that there are going to be two other direct to DVD movies?
I swear I read this news after The Plan was announced.. but I can't remember the specifics.
The Storyteller
Member
Jtwo said:
More like 20 minutes tops.
But i can see how it felt longer, it got pretty annoying in the the second half. But thankfully most of the new stuff was pretty great.
Jtwo said:
That was Olmos saying he wanted to do two more, and that he already had ideas in his head. Everything else is just rumours.
I doubt they'll happen, because all the sets have been tore down etc.
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