Does anyone else think Battlestar Galactica is getting kind of stupid? (SPOILERS)

[Phillycat]

***SPOILERS THROUGH THE LATEST EPISODE - YOU'VE BEEN WARNED***



I just watched the last episode last night. Doesn't it seem a little lazy for the writers to have characters randomly go crazy when they need to ramp up the dramatic tension? I'm just starting not to care. The bit with Six and Tigh was over-the-top and meaningless. I know Chief is supposed to be insane, but I agreed with him about Callie - she really WAS dull-eyed and vacant. Some random shot of Starbuck sleeping, by itself and with no meaning. Laura Roslin is dying, dying, dying...just like she's been for the entire series. No cylons, no furthering of that storyline. I'd like to smack Lee Adama (although to be fair, I always kind of want to smack him). Tori is a one-dimensional caricature of a bad guy (girl). Such a copout to make her a cylon - we didn't care about her to begin with. Gaita would have been a much better choice. Baltar's storyline is the most interesting, but even that's starting to get overwrought and masturbatingly philosophical.

They need to pick up the pace a little, especially since this is going to be the last season.

What do you think?

[zanne]

1. "Getting" kind of stupid?! nt

[NewJeffCT]

2. I'm going to try to give them the benefit of the doubt

I didn't like much of the first season until the very end... but, I hung in there and was rewarded.

I didn't even like the original mini-series all that much, but gave the regular series a chance because it was new sci-fi.

[Phillycat]

3. The season finale of the first two seasons were frakking awesome.

But you're right, it did take them a little while to get going.

Oh well, I'll keep watching. I'm too invested in these stupid characters. :D

[Connonym]

4. I'm still intrigued and look forward to my Friday night guilty pleasure

please note by Starbuck icon ;-)

[Phillycat]

5. She used to be my favorite character.

I'm waiting to see if they redeem themselves with her.

[DS1]

11. she's too unhinged to be the cool and collected 'best pilot', 'best sniper'

best fill in the blank they have.

I can't stand her character. Her and her big mouth just about blew the rescue operation in Razor.

[Phillycat]

12. Yeah, but I was willing to go with it in Season 1 and mostly 2...

because she was fun. She hasn't been fun for a long time now and she should never have been brought back from the damned dead.

[sarge43]

6. My impression, FWIW

The writers don't seem to have a story arc, a goal, an outline as it were. They're doing an Indiana Jones - making it up as they go along. There have been some outstanding episodes; I especially the one dealing with nuts and bolts problems, like food, fuel and how get more and the political/social trip wires. However, they do too many blind alley story lines, then pull a Deus ex machina to save the narrative and/or the actor - like Kara coming back from the dead, one more time.

I'm afraid that finally finding Earth will be a big yawn.

[Phillycat]

7. Hmm...

I think the overarching storyline they're going with is the whole "Cylons are the same as us, oh and by the way, religion is stupid" thing, but you're right, they're certainly not doing it in any sort of cohesive fashion. I remember all the years I spent watching the X-Files, the realization slowly creeping in that THEY had no idea what they were going, either - it wasn't just me. What a waste of time.

[DS1]

8. What I said in another thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=7689648&mesg_id=7690132


and to add to it, yes Baltar's storyline is getting tedious. If I wanted to watch movies about free speech and religion, there's much better options out there.

[Phillycat]

13. You said it very well. I want space battles dammit!

It's like the writers have been listening to Jacob at Television without Pity and started to take themselves as seriously as the wanktastic fanboys do. STOP IT. SPACE BATTLES, STAT.

[khashka]

9. I got so frustrated I gave up

It's had it's good moments. But mostly not. I would sit there thinking "You've got some good actors and a workable and interesting story. Now DO something with it!"

But, sadly, no.

Khash.

[Pithlet]

10. I've pretty much lost interest.

I missed the last episode, and it doesn't sound like I missed much. I'm with you.

[Jokerman]

14. I've always had a "love/hate" relationship with the show.

One episode will end and I'm blown away, the next one ends and I wonder why I even bothered.

[Nickster]

15. This last episode is the first one where I really went "WTF?"

[Cannikin]

16. I'm holding out hope until mid season that they are simply laying groundwork for the end(ings)

But yes, even this frakkin fanboy has to admit, aside from the Chief being reassigned, it was mostly a snoozefest.

I want to know what's going on with Dee, since she's my top candidate for Cylon #12, and I'm ready for D'anna and the other #3s to be resurrected so the Cylon storyline can continue.

If they havent improved by episode 10 (when the strike happened and the season will break).....aw hell, who am I kidding? I'll watch anyway. I have to see how it ends.

I hope they do something with Starbuck soon. I'm wondering if this secret mission was just something the writers did to give her something to do besides scream "We're going the wrong way" from the floor of the brig every week until its time for her part in the story arc.

On edit...Am I really one of the last who still has any empathy for Roslin? She sees herself as the dying leader from the book of Pythia, and she's damned determined to protect the fleet and get them to Earth. I like that they are dragging out the death. That's how cancer kills. I LOVE Mary's acting.

[Phillycat]

17. I think you might be the last one. :)

I do not enjoy the way the character acts or interacts with others. I used to, but she got very grating to me. I'm kind of at the point of "Just DIE already", but then I'm a murderous viewer, because I did actually cheer when they put Callie out the airlock. :D

[soleft]

18. So did Chief act insane to get himself reassigned

because he's afraid he may put fighters at risk? Smart move.

But I'm disappointed because I read Bamber in an article said no filler, very lean plot filled episodes. And that last one was pudding and pie filling.

[Phillycat]

19. Yeah, he was begging to be reassigned. I mean, he literally asked for it.

But I do think he's going a little nuts, too.

Filler to the point of being incoherent drivel, not just a not-furthering-the-plot stand-alone episode. Yeah.

[Orrex]

20. In the old Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Approximately 99% of the series' episodes involved some kind of doppelganger plot, wherein some important crew member was duplicated/impersonated/surreptitiously cloned in order to hatch some nefarious scheme aboard the sub. After sixty or seventy rehashes of the same device, it got a little old.

Perhaps "space madness stories" is BSG's answer to ST:VOY's holodeck stories...

[Malikshah]

21. Personally, everytime I hear the word "frak" or its derivative, I want to

pummel somebody.

Whoever thought that this "substitution" was a good idea needs to be vaporized.

And the writers who must include it in every single sentence of the script, must be slowly dissolved in battery acid.

"Mother-frakker"? I mean, really.

Otherwise, the overwrought show isn't too bad.

[Connonym]

33. oh, ack

you'd better put me on your ignore list. It's part of my regular vocabulary.

[MorningGlow]

22. I still like it

I will admit that I found last week's ep kind of boring, but that happens every once in a while. I can't even count how many times in the past seasons I've glazed over watching one episode, but then get hooked all over again the following week.

I thought the whole issue that Chief brought up regarding Callie reflected his own inner conflict--showing the stress and self-loathing of being a cylon, of course--but also finally showing the stress of what the population is undergoing as a whole--such a telling line, when he said "you don't end up with the person you want, you end up with the person who's there" (or some such) because most of the human race was killed off. I'd like to see more of that, like in the first season--how people adapt when their home planets get blown up and they're stuck in these nasty little makeshift living spaces on spaceships, in the middle of nowhere, trying to create new lives.

I also think Roslin's slow death informs her character and creates a good setup (if they follow through)--as she said, she's ceased to care about the rules. So what will that mean, with her as president? Will she do whatever she wants from now on, and democracy be damned, a la Bushweenie, or will she find that she's ethical and moral at heart?

And as a devoted student of the history of religion, I'm finding the "one true god" upstart system going up against the "many gods" tradition a nice touch. Makes me wonder--was it like this for the early Christians? I'm a proponent of one-god-in-the-guise-of-many (and also "do whatever the hell you want" philosophy), so I'm amused to find myself rooting for first one side, and then the other.

And of course any storyline that gets Baltar in front of the camera as much as possible is all right by me. Rowrr.

[JoDog]

25. I want to see a little more about people

adapting, too. It was hinted at in the refinery ship episode last season. I'm curious about how the survivors had to learn new skills or adapt old ones to the problems at hand. Probably not worth an entire episode, but come on, what was Romo Lampkin doing with his time before the legal system got set up? Feeding his cat?

[HeresyLives]

23. I wanted to know when it ends

Owing to production delays caused by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike, it has been reported that the fourth season will be split into two 10-episode pieces, the second part of which may air as late as 2009.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category=2&id=...

But I never did get an answer.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7689648

[DS1]

24. we don't know either

[Love Bug]

26. It's starting to jump the shark for me

Making Tigh, Anders, Tori and Chief cylons is too much. All I can say is they had better come up with a good explanation on how these people were seeded into the population and how they just happened to show up in the only group OUT OF BILLIONS to survive. My disbelief is suspended for now, but one more such "revelation" will probably put me over the edge.

[DS1]

27. btw, I'm such a BSG geek, I'm entering this in an upcoming fark photoshop contest

the grill is the new element. took the screengrab myself


/geek

[Phillycat]

28. I...don't get it.

:cry:

[DS1]

29. this grate

http://pics.livejournal.com/grobik/pic/00177hsd


is now the front grill of the raider

/if you have to explain.. great, i'll probably lose :cry:

[Phillycat]

30. Oh, no, I get that part.

I don't get why it's funny. Or maybe it isn't supposed to be funny?! Are you just supposed to add an element?

Don't worry about me, I'm a :dunce:, judging by your GD-P post anyway. :D

[DS1]

31. nah, they don't all have to be hilarious

and that post was purely popcorn fuel :D

if you read the full article, it pretty much balances out anyway

[Phillycat]

32. It totally does, it pissed everyone off equally.

But then I wouldn't expect anything less of you. :D

[Zavulon]

34. It hit "stupid" the moment Kara came back.

A previous poster says she should have been left dead. I couldn't agree more.

The episode when Cylons attacked Cylons and Cally was blown out of the airlock was great. The rest of the season has bored the living shit out of me - so much so, in fact, that I'm past the point where I don't care how it ends. I'm now hoping the Cylons destroy every last trace of mankind so that there is no chance of a movie.

If there's a movie, my girlfriend will drag me to it. She's the only reason I sit through this shit at all anymore. I'm going to have a tough enough time slogging through this season; I don't think I can take a movie.

Such a shame, too - the first two seasons were really good.

"All will be revealed?" How many more secrets could there be to justify the number of episodes left? If you think it's slow now...

...in fact, I'd be willing to bet that I could skip every remaining episode until the last two and not miss anything of significance.

[Phillycat]

35. Well, they've got one more cylon to reveal...

So that'll take, uh, 30 seconds or so.

They need to find earth, so we're sure to get about 2 more hours of Starbuck flying around aimlessly until she gets some sort of (possibly cylon inspired) brainwave.

And then...er...maybe 40 more hours of random people going space-crazy, interspersed with rambling, meaningless "metaphysical" philosophy regarding religion and free speech?

Yeah. Sounds awesome. :eyes:

[Zavulon]

36. We can't even count on that.

They may reveal that the final skinjob model was destroyed in this raid or that one, or that the rumors of the final model are in fact nothing more than rumors - that the Twelfth Cylon is in fact God.

If that happens, I can only hope that anything within throwing distance of my TV is made of foam rubber.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

37. What this show needs is more washed up sci-fi celebrities.

They've already gotten people from the old BSG, Quantum Leap, Xena: Warrior Princess.

Now all they is Gil Gerard, Walter Koenig, Bruce Boxleitner, and Joan Rivers reprising her role as Dot Matrix.

[Orrex]

41. I'd like to see Leslie Nielsen make an appearance

[NewJeffCT]

42. Gerard, Koenig & Boxleitner were all

in a Sci-Fi channel movie together not long ago - Bone something or other. Boxleitner was the "star" of the movie and Gerard and Koenig had cameos. Gerard has not aged well.

[GreenPartyVoter]

38. I tuned out partway into season 1, so I couldn't really say

[JTG of the PRB]

39. With all due respect, I disagree.

I think some of the stuff in the last episode was great. Tyrol and Tigh were both struggling with what it means to "feel" human - whether they can just switch off their feelings - with or without their consent. They were both worried about losing their grip on their remaining humanity - without our feelings, we cannot feel, and if we cannot feel, how can we be human?

They took different routes to figuring out what it was - Tyrol was visibly distracted, and when he frakked up, he didn't want special treatment - he wanted them to tell him that he seriously frakked up. He got angry when they didn't, because without telling him that he screwed up, he didn't have the validation that he could still be human - that he could still make mistakes and do stupid things and feel bad about them. Even if he felt bad, he still wanted - and needed - to feel SOMETHING. Everybody was trying to make him feel better, and he didn't want to feel okay. He wanted to to feel bad so he could keep at leeast one thread of humanity.

Tigh was a little more complicated - he wanted to understand the nature of his feelings, so he did so by speaking to the one person who could tell him what he needed to know without forcing him to reveal why he wanted to know it - another Cylon. Tigh needed to know how he could learn how to understand his feelings, so he went to Six to find out - and she told him that the other Cylons learned about humanity and their feelings when humans were in pain. So, she beat the crap out of him. Then, she made out with him.

Okay, so that didn't really make a lot of sense, but it connected with me. I'm just having a hard time putting it into words.

Tori is a bit one-dimensional, and it is the fault of the writers, for the most part. She just wasn;t important enough until she became a Cylon, then - WHAM! - all of a sudden, she's a Cylon and she's VERY important. They definitely could have done a better job with her.

I don't know. I think the season is just great so far. :shrug:

[RoyGBiv]

40. Nope ...

I think there's an actual story here. And I enjoy it.

I am quite pleased this is not a predictable sci-fi storyline.

[Mojambo]

43. Not at all.

I thought the Chief/Adama and Tigh/Six scenes were awesome.

I love the way these characters are struggling. They shouldn't be okay.