Battlestar Galactica **Spoilers** discussion

[geoschmo]

Atrocities, honestly there is nothing available anywhere that is truely original. We've been making movies now for a hundred years, and telling each other stories for thousands or millions of years before that. Anything anyone thinks up now has been thought up before. So saying something is cookie cutter is just argumentative. Every example you suggest was derivative of somethinn that came before it. And the original BSG was derivative of stuff before that. For that matter, if the current BSG were done over closer to the original, you could say even more truthfully that it was cookie cutter.

Since it's impossible to be truely original any more, the only thing you can hope for is for the story to be compelling, interesting, and well written. I think that this was. I hope to see more of it.

Geoschmo

[gregebowman]

Originally posted by geoschmo:
Atrocities, honestly there is nothing available anywhere that is truely original. We've been making movies now for a hundred years, and telling each other stories for thousands or millions of years before that. Anything anyone thinks up now has been thought up before. So saying something is cookie cutter is just argumentative. Every example you suggest was derivative of somethinn that came before it. And the original BSG was derivative of stuff before that. For that matter, if the current BSG were done over closer to the original, you could say even more truthfully that it was cookie cutter.

Since it's impossible to be truely original any more, the only thing you can hope for is for the story to be compelling, interesting, and well written. I think that this was. I hope to see more of it.

Geoschmo

Amen to that. I definitely want to see more. As far as stories go, there was a post recently that stated there are only 5 or 10 original stories, and everthing else is just a mixture of those stories. So the "cookie cutter" method has been going on for thousands of years. And Hollywood has definitely been doing that for ages. There are very few original ideas that have come out of the left coast. Mostly now, they produce sequels or remakes. Even Star Wars was a mixture of ideas, myths, and a Japanese film. But as far as BSG, I also would have like to have more of an explanation as to why teh Cylons hate humanity to the point of genocide.

[Loser]

Original Thought Challenge: Find a story involving travel into the past prior to A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur's Court. This book beats-out The Time Machine by nine years.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by gregebowman:
But as far as BSG, I also would have like to have more of an explanation as to why teh Cylons hate humanity to the point of genocide.

Well, if you are talking about the new Version, the explanation was pretty well summed up in the Last two minutes. The cylons consider the human worlds to be their home too, as naturally they would since they oringated there. Since the two Groups couldn't live together, proven by the war that ended forty years before, the cylons had to remove the humans. Hunting them down and killing the Last of them is neccesary becuase they know if any humans are left alive they will return some day and take their revenge. It's been this way throughout our history, and is the reason the new king always kills the old kings children.

[ December 11, 2003, 17:05: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[gregebowman]

You may be right. I don't remember every word that was said in those Last 2 minutes. I'll try to catch the re-showing on Sunday.

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Loser:
Original Thought Challenge: Find a story involving travel into the past prior to A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthur's Court. This book beats-out The Time Machine by nine years.

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens! The 'Ghost of Christmas Past' does take him into the past.

[Patroklos]

Hey all,

I had some praise and critisism for the ship architecture on this one.

The Cylons -I love the new Base Star, is is sleak and deadly looking and looks alot better than that gay "calm shell" looking thing. Sot of curious why the Cylons need windows though. It seems that missile weapons used for both the Cylons main ship batteries and their prime fighter/bomber weopons. Their fighters use lasers only in fighrer to fighter combat.

Humans - Galactica puzzles me. It was pretty obvious in the first series that a "Battlestar" was a combo battleship and carrier. It had an impresive array of main gun "laser cannons" and robust carrier deck functions. This time around I am confused. It seems to have an abundace of flak weapons, a nice addition, but nothing else. Granted, in the only batle we have seen the Galactica was outnumbered and wasn't trying to engage the Base Stars, but it it truely lacks a main batrey capable of dueling with a Base Star then the series in dead for me. Also, when the Battlestar was nuked in Part one, it appeard to have shields of some sort looking at he explosion, and also since the Galactica survived.

Since it seems lasers have now been relegated to fighters only, and missiles are now the big thing to use against capital ships, the puny little viper should be rather worthless in this series.

-Pat

[Cyrien]

The fighters can carry missiles as well. And they can shoot down the missiles. As for Galactica fighting on its own. Well it was just holding back until the Civilians could flee and prior to that hadn't had any ammo. That is stated several times and the whole reason for going down to that planet base Ragnar. Picking up weapons, ammo, warheads, missiles etc.

[Klebdog]

It has been awhile since I have seen the original series, but I seem to remember them finding another BattleStar that survived. I also remeber it having a Father/Daughter team on board. The dad was the Captain and the daughter was a fighter pilot who had the hots for Starbuck. I wonder if they are going to pull that one off?

[Cheeze]

What?? You don't recall the Battlestar Pegasus and the legendary Commander Caine???

I liked a lot of this new Battlestar Galactica. I was expecting Adama to correct the President by pointing out that the humans were still at war because the Cylons wouldn't stop coming after them. Yes, the Cylon pursuit of humanity makes more sense in this re-telling, although the first one made a logical cause. In the original, the Imperious Leader executes Baltar (remember, this is the original movie), stating the human beings are a threat by their very nature. In this new Version, the Cylons feel that they are the perfect creation of God, and they must exterminate humanity in order to prove this. In the context of a religious crusade, it makes sense that the Cylons would need to kill every Last human.

I was disappointed in the final speech by Adama. Great delivery, but I rather like the Lorne Greene Adama: thoughtful, wise and spiritual. The new Adama seems a bit cynical, and even this reasoning would be hard to accept (the top command knows where Earth is, but kept it a secret). I would rather he laid it out as a quest to find Earth, and the Proforma system was a first step in that path. Even if it was, in a sense, a lie he creates to give his people a reason to live.

I thought it funny that the new production included women (as an effort to re-examine or change the characters) yet somehow also managed to eliminate the major black characters, unless you count the Athena replacement. I do agree that revealing Boomer as a Cylon seems a mistake. They should have left far more room for speculation of spies and "sleepers" in the fleet rather than reveal who it is.

The original Galactica never had much in the way of major ship to ship weapons (just point defense), and neither did this one. That was surprising, given that this Adama told Apollo that the Galactica would deal with the base ships. I expected missiles or something shooting at the base ships.

Yes, I know the Last Galactica tv episode was a duel with a base ship, but even those weapons looked like the point-defense from every other episode.