# Battlestar Galactica 3/20/2009 (S04E20/21) "Daybreak, Parts 2/3"



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

That was just painful to watch.


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## packerfan (Jan 8, 2002)

So....what happened to Starbuck?

I can't imagine that everyone would want to give up all of their technology and start from scratch.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

So the first planet was earth, but it wasn't earth, but this is earth now, but not really earth. And Kara was a ghost and Bob Dylan knows the way to earth (not that earth, but this earth) and we today can find Hera's remains but not a frakkin spaceship that the Admiral flew around and Galen's heading to Scotland and Wow, aliens!

Honestly, I don't have a problem with the show ending in this way. But it would have been nice had we been heading in this direction and not just "Oh, wow, we're out of episodes...here's earth!"


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## Pralix (Dec 8, 2001)

For some reason I thought I would hear Louis Armstrong singing and Baltar and Six playing a homemade game of scrabble.


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

Wtf?


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## Spiff (Mar 1, 2004)

Sorry, this wasn't here when I posted the other thread.

I really enjoyed the finale. It was a satisfying end to the series. I've also enjoyed most of this season. 

I'm also in a good mood because my Tuning Adapter came yesterday from Time Warner and I got to see this in HD.


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## Pralix (Dec 8, 2001)

doom1701 said:


> Honestly, I don't have a problem with the show ending in this way. But it would have been nice had we been heading in this direction and not just "Oh, wow, we're out of episodes...here's earth!"


Isn't that how the original BSG ended and Glactica 1980 began?


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

So we never got an answer as to how Earth was all Cylons, what the hell Starbuck really was, or well really anything.


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## Southcross (Nov 28, 2008)

I'm sad and depressed now 

some of the way they ended it, deserved a "wow". What "Earth" stood for, what it was, and what it is now... FRACKING GREAT!


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## Southcross (Nov 28, 2008)

Figaro said:


> what the hell Starbuck really was, or well really anything.


the hybreds knew.... she was the harbinger (child of the 13th, a hyrbred, is my guess)


> A harbinger is a sign of things to come. Throughout history and literature, harbingers and omens figure prominently, and are responsible for major decisions which have altered the course of both.
> 
> An example of a harbinger is that of Constantine the Great, who, as legend goes, saw a vision in which either (depending on which version we read) a cross, a fish or a Labarum monogram was emblazoned in the sky. A loud, steady voice then allegedly told him, In hoc signo vinces ("By this as your standard, you will conquer"). He used that standard in battle, and conquer he did, bringing Christianity to the Empire.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbinger


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

doom1701 said:


> So the first planet was earth, but it wasn't earth, but this is earth now, but not really earth. And Kara was a ghost and Bob Dylan knows the way to earth (not that earth, but this earth) and we today can find Hera's remains but not a frakkin spaceship that the Admiral flew around and Galen's heading to Scotland and Wow, aliens!
> 
> Honestly, I don't have a problem with the show ending in this way. But it would have been nice had we been heading in this direction and not just "Oh, wow, we're out of episodes...here's earth!"


OK, the rational side of me has to agree about the rabbit out of the hat ending. And gods know I've been critical of BSG ploting post season two, but ever since I decided to shut off the analytical portion of my brain evolved say in the last 150,000 years, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the finale. Great music and scenery.

Sure folks would abandon technology and live short miserable lives working 12+ hour days of backbreaking labor trying to grow crops. But hey, it's drama.

Again I really loved it. Just trying not to do much thinking.

And I gots to admit, the space battles were fantastic. I never paid much attention to that aspect previously but a well done to the effects people and everyone for the finale.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

There's a threadcrapping rule I think, right? (haven't had the need to make sure - haven't posted in a BSG thread here before).

Ok, that being the case, I'll say all I can: I'm glad they used that pretty music from the season finale from a few seasons ago again.

There ya go, that's all the rules let me say.


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> There's a threadcrapping rule I think, right? (haven't had the need to make sure - haven't posted in a BSG thread here before).
> 
> Ok, that being the case, I'll say all I can: I'm glad they used that pretty music from the season finale from a few seasons ago again.
> 
> There ya go, that's all the rules let me say.


Dude, it's the journey, not the destination.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

I thought it was pretty good. Better than I expected anyway. I could have done without the "150,000 years later" ending though.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

Oh, forgot to ask...what the HELL kind of missiles was that raptor carrying that it blew apart the Cylon colony? Huge explosions and stuff all through the rescue, and one raptor somehow had the firepower to blow a giant something-or-other to kingdom come?


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Biggest bag of suck that ever sucked.

Truly, that was bad.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

doom1701 said:


> Oh, forgot to ask...what the HELL kind of missiles was that raptor carrying that it blew apart the Cylon colony? Huge explosions and stuff all through the rescue, and one raptor somehow had the firepower to blow a giant something-or-other to kingdom come?


I assumed it was nukes, but I can't remember if Raptors carry nukes.

Speaking of Raptors, did I see a whole slew of them jumping from within Galactica at the beginning of the battle, when just a couple of episodes ago one jumped as it was leaving Galactica and tore the whole side out of the ship?


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## maharg18 (Dec 4, 2002)

I actually enjoyed it very much, especially compared to some of the other episodes this season.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

jking said:


> Speaking of Raptors, did I see a whole slew of them jumping from within Galactica at the beginning of the battle, when just a couple of episodes ago one jumped as it was leaving Galactica and tore the whole side out of the ship?


Yeah, I'm trying to forget about that...


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## bigray327 (Apr 14, 2000)

I liked it.


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## Legion (Aug 24, 2005)

jking said:


> I assumed it was nukes, but I can't remember if Raptors carry nukes.
> 
> Speaking of Raptors, did I see a whole slew of them jumping from within Galactica at the beginning of the battle, when just a couple of episodes ago one jumped as it was leaving Galactica and tore the whole side out of the ship?


Oh dont go down that road. I got a physics lesson when I brought it up a few episodes ago.

So......thats it then?

My two biggest issues are with Kara and the ending. Was Kara a figment of Lee's imagination? I find that just crazy.

And the Baltar-Six couple at the end.....they knew the story. They commented on the "eve" skeleton had a cylon mother and human father. Then when they got around to talking about god....Baltar says "It doesnt like to be called that". It? So is god a cylon and Baltar and Six were supposed to be archangels of some kind?

My head hurts.


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## capriz (Aug 4, 2003)

Fan - freakin' - tastic


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## shaown (Jul 1, 2002)

When the flock of raptors jumped from inside the the museum side drive bay, they showed that entire side of the ship blowing out /venting ... so they kept continuity .. They also hinted at it earlier when they shifted all the raptors to the museum side.


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## pjenkins (Mar 8, 1999)

YEAH a space battle!!! 

the rest - meh, whatever.

earth 2 - the sequel.

earth 2 - human electric boogaloo

earth 2 - attack of the clone...errr. cyclons...



oh oh oh and before i forget, did anyone other than me expect to see Baltar pull a Neo and do his flying thing at the end? Thank the Gods I wasn't writing on that show or I'd have finished with the end scene from The Matrix and some Rage Against the Machine


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## speedy4022 (Nov 27, 2000)

The ending seemed a little predictable to me I had it figured the minute I saw the new planet they were orbiting. I figured it was earth however it was to easy an ending seems like the writers got lazy. I also think they left too many loose ends


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Legion said:


> And the Baltar-Six couple at the end.....they knew the story. They commented on the "eve" skeleton had a cylon mother and human father.


It wasn't a skeleton.

Then again, who knows if the writers have any clue what Mitochondrial Eve is?


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## michad (Sep 9, 2002)

I can't believe it was that satisfying! Someone said it earlierthat the show excels with the space battles; and to be sure there was a good bit of that.

Really I'm just shocked that they didn't completely frak it up.


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## speedy4022 (Nov 27, 2000)

Well it was an ending but I guess I was expecting more after 5 years. However it wasn't the worst ending in tv series history. I have no hope for the Lost series finale though.


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## scandia101 (Oct 20, 2007)

I liked it.
They never showed the continents or the constellations of the scorched earth so I assumed they'd end up on the planet we call Earth, I wouldn't have guessed that it was that long ago though. 

Did anyone else catch that the guy holding the magazine with the pic of the fossilized skeleton at the end was Ronald D Moore, the exec. producer/writer?


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## emandbri (Jul 5, 2004)

I liked it. I was prepared for something really crazy at the end, like the whole planet was a projection of Hera's. 

I don't get why Bill didn't stay with Lee. 

I really thought Helo was dead so that was surprise.


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## J4yDubs (Jul 3, 2002)

Bad, just bad. I'm not even willing to discuss all the bad stuff. I'm done, and truly OK with the series being over.

I liked the original series music though.

John


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## ahartman (Dec 28, 2001)

jking said:


> I assumed it was nukes, but I can't remember if Raptors carry nukes.


It was clearly stated that the raptor crew wanted their nukes hot as they went in.



Legion said:


> And the Baltar-Six couple at the end.....they knew the story. They commented on the "eve" skeleton had a cylon mother and human father. Then when they got around to talking about god....Baltar says "It doesnt like to be called that". It? So is god a cylon and Baltar and Six were supposed to be archangels of some kind?


Yep, that's what I took away. I assumed Kara was something similar but am getting caught up in her interaction with real items.

I'm undecided on the 150,000 years later ending. It was necessary to explain HeadSix/HeadBaltar and indicate things might be different this time around. It would have been more poignant if it ended with Adama at Roslyn's grave.

I'm curious if the Final Five^h^h^h^h Three lived out their lives Highlander-style.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

ihatecable said:


> Actually I was thinking that exact thing last year... well not the Baltar=Jesus. More like the Cylons find earth early (say 2000 BC) interbreed with the locals and establish a monotheist religion. Hey you never know


OK I was off by 148,00 years but I called this two years ago,lol


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## f0gax (Aug 8, 2002)

I don't know yet...

It's something I'll have to chew on for a while. But it could have been worse I think.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

Legion said:


> Then when they got around to talking about god....Baltar says "It doesnt like to be called that".


Kind of like Father Cavel didn't like being called John.... hmmm


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

J4yDubs said:


> Bad, just bad. I'm not even willing to discuss all the bad stuff. I'm done, and truly OK with the series being over.


Amen, brother. When I think back to the amazing mini-series that kicked this off to where we are now, I can only shake my head.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Brilliant just to balance the crappers.
It was obvious that Kara was an angel/ghost who came back to fulfill her unfinished business to come back and lead them to their destiny. Plenty of movies have done that.

The ending kind of reminded me of Lord of the Rings. In that it was many endings.


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## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

Overall better than I expected it would be. but it was obvious that the writers really did not care too much about the plot. It was interesting to see how they shoehorned all the explanations that they did such as the temple being CIC.

Still too many question unanswered:

What was with the Six/Baltar being there 150,000 years later? For that matter why were they in the whole series to begin with? I was really hoping to get an explanation on them.

So who or what was Starbuck? She obviously was not the harbinger of the end of humanity like the hybrid said.

<SIGH> It could have been so much better.


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## rgr (Feb 21, 2003)

Do cylons age? The only old one I'm aware of was Cavel (and why did he blow his brains out?) and he resurrected old. If they don't, could any of the cylons from 150,000 years ago still be walking among us?

And since it was a long, long time ago, the centurions could have gone to a galaxy far, far away and become the droids in Star wars.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Craigbob said:


> Overall better than I expected it would be. but it was obvious that the writers really did not care too much about the plot. It was interesting to see how they shoehorned all the explanations that they did such as the temple being CIC.
> 
> Still too many question unanswered:
> 
> ...


Six/Baltar in New York were the angels AKA Head six/head Baltar and as a result live forever.
The interesting part about them was they could be seen interchangably versus everybody else that saw angels could only see their own so to speak.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

scandia101 said:


> Did anyone else catch that the guy holding the magazine with the pic of the fossilized skeleton at the end was Ronald D Moore, the exec. producer/writer?


We all did, and let out a collective groan, as if the episode couldn't be any more masturbatory on Moore's part, he had to show his ugly mug. Frakkin' moron. Oooooh, I wonder what bourbon he'll be drinking for his podcast this time.



Craigbob said:


> Overall better than I expected it would be. but it was obvious that the writers really did not care too much about the plot. It was interesting to see how they shoehorned all the explanations that they did such as the temple being CIC.
> 
> Still too many question unanswered:
> 
> ...


Craigbob, my buddy, why can't we erase the memory of ever seeing Babylon 5 so we could experience the joy of watching it for the first time? Instead we're stuck with this sort of garbage.

Furthermore, why can't we erase the memory of ever seeing what BSG devolved into? Pah.

Greg


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## latrobe7 (May 1, 2005)

I actually kind of like the ending. It just would have been much better if they had known this is where they were going all along.

ETA: By "ending" I mean the last 30-45min; the part about ending up on our Earth 150,000 years ago and the individual ending/epilogue stories. I can even accept the Kara and Baltar/6 were "angels". 

There where several guffaws and eye-rolls in the first half, though.


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## brermike (Jun 1, 2006)

I thought it was great. I didn't get why some of the flashbacks were there but other than that I was satisfied with how everything ended up. Not sure what is up with Kara but at the same time I don't mind having to discuss the different possibilities. I really liked the angels/fates being head-Six and head-Baltar. Anyway, sad that it has ended but happy with the way it went out.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

Eh. It was better than a lot of episodes this season (I've been pretty critical of them this season).

I wouldn't necessarily call it a 'valentine for the fans', but it worked okay for me. I'm honestly glad that the show is over, though. I've been wanting to get to the end for awhile.

I do feel like things were a bit rushed, but oh well.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Glad it's done.

Wait..."The Plan?"

Frak.


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## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

hefe said:


> Glad it's done.
> 
> Wait..."The Intention?"
> 
> Frak.


*FYP*


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## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

gchance said:


> We all did, and let out a collective groan, as if the episode couldn't be any more masturbatory on Moore's part, he had to show his ugly mug. Frakkin' moron. Oooooh, I wonder what bourbon he'll be drinking for his podcast this time.
> 
> Craigbob, my buddy, why can't we erase the memory of ever seeing Babylon 5 so we could experience the joy of watching it for the first time? Instead we're stuck with this sort of garbage.
> 
> ...


Greg,

I didn't know that was RDM until I read it here. But I don't see that any different than JMS turning out the lights on B5.

And to answer your other questions... This points out the difference between actually having a whole story plotted out from beginning to end and merely pretending to.

I had high hopes for the series when it started but those went bye bye around the 3rd season.

I would not trade B5 for anything however. Despite it's flaws.


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## pjenkins (Mar 8, 1999)

hefe said:


> Glad it's done.
> 
> Wait..."The Plan?"
> 
> Frak.


ha, THEY didn't have a plan at all, Neo had the plan.. errr, the angels had the plan....


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

so all Caville really wanted was the plans to have resurrection? he already HAD resurrection years ago!

loved how they landed on earth and only had one set of binoculars to share 

or the perfect, immaculate, launching bay as Adama left Galactica for the last time...

or...

frack...who cares...it's over...loved the extra 45 minutes of everyone saying goodbye...that was riveting stuff...


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

I enjoyed it.

I can't claim it was anything other than pulled out of a hat to slap on the end of the series, nothing more than an deus ex earth ending out of nowhere. It didn't really wrap things up, it just sortof ended them all with a heavy handed hand-of-god approach. So I guess I can't call it 'good'.

But I inexplicably enjoyed it nonetheless.



ahartman said:


> I'm curious if the Final Five^h^h^h^h Three lived out their lives Highlander-style.


No, just Galen. He moved off to a little highland area on the northern side of a continent, with just the right music over the dialog to make you think of Highlander. He's a little pudgy for an immortal, but you've got to start somewhere. (Would have been better if they didn't used that same music to death over the next 30 minutes.)



pjenkins said:


> oh oh oh and before i forget, did anyone other than me expect to see Baltar pull a Neo and do his flying thing at the end?


No, not just you. I got the exact same vibe at the end too.

But at the same time, I got the old cliche 'Angel and Devil guiding humanity' vibe as well. But I couldn't figure out which was which.

-Ken


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Galen is not immortal...all cylons live and die...


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## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

I liked the finale. I don't think they could have done it much better, given the corner they painted themselves into.

I HATED the flashback to Caprica crap though. What was the point? Did I totally miss the relevance? IMO that was not finale material. That was first or second season material.

But all the other stuff I totally enjoyed. The final battle. The Chief strangling Tory. Cavil offing himself. Finding Earth 2, but in the past. Hera being the "mother of humanity."

It just worked for me.


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## kdmorse (Jan 29, 2001)

Anubys said:


> Galen is not immortal...all cylons live and die...


Sorry, Highlander movie reference only. Based on his departure scene, we can only assume that Galen settles in the highlands of Scotland, works on his swordplay, declares there can be only one, and his legend gives birth to a movie franchise consisting of one good movie, and, others....

-Ken


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

shaown said:


> When the flock of raptors jumped from inside the the museum side drive bay, they showed that entire side of the ship blowing out /venting ... so they kept continuity .. They also hinted at it earlier when they shifted all the raptors to the museum side.


Yep... It was interesting they did that anyway, knowing it would cause severe damage.

They screwed up though when Galactica jumped out. Shouldn't it have damaged the colony even more?


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

scandia101 said:


> I liked it.
> Did anyone else catch that the guy holding the magazine with the pic of the fossilized skeleton at the end was Ronald D Moore, the exec. producer/writer?


Yep, it was definitely him.



Peter000 said:


> I liked the finale. I don't think they could have done it much better, given the corner they painted themselves into.
> 
> I HATED the flashback to Caprica crap though. What was the point? Did I totally miss the relevance? IMO that was not finale material. That was first or second season material.
> 
> ...


I'm in almost complete agreement with you on all of the above. I liked the combat and the effects. It still makes no sense that they'd risk so many lives just to go rescue Hera. I guess it gave them an excuse for combat and to blow stuff up.

At least it was far better than the filler episode crap they've had on and off.

I wonder if Galactica broke its back because of the pre-existing problems, the combat damage w/the colony, the ramming, the damage from ships jumping out from the landing bay, them not retracting the flight pods before jumping, some/all of the above or as a plot device.

What a bizarro idea that everyone would agree to abandon all their ships, creature comforts and technology. I sure as heck wouldn't. Oh well. I guess it in the name of the story.

Luckily I recorded both airings and was able to extend the 2nd showing to end 30 minutes late to catch it all. There must've been some last minute schedule changes (read about it being 2:11 this morning) that DirecTiVo didn't pick up. My first recording started on time but ended at 2:03 (I padded it to end 3 mins late). The second recording started at 9:11 pm PST and thus missed the first minute but I caught everything due to the 30 minute padding.


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## caslu (Jun 24, 2003)

Absolutely 100% satisfied with an amazing end to an amazing series. My hat is off to RDM.... thanks for the ride.


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

Well the morning after and I feel like I beer googled the skanky chick in college again.

RDM attempts to explain this excrement.

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/03/battlestar_galactica_ronald_d.html


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Figaro said:


> Well the morning after and I feel like I beer googled the skanky chick in college again.
> 
> RDM attempts to explain this excrement.
> 
> http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/03/battlestar_galactica_ronald_d.html


Man, that interview capsulizes everything I have come to hate about this show.


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## ThePennyDropped (Jul 5, 2006)

I think I can accept some of the inconsistencies and oddities of the plot, the first "earth" versus the second "earth", for example. I kind of like the idea that Hera is the mitochondrial Eve. I can accept (soft of) the Head Six and Head Baltar as angels, maybe even the same for Starbuck (although less so, because she was so human in her doubts about herself and her mourning for Sam).

But what I can't swallow is the writers' lack of understanding of how human beings work. There's simply no way Galen would head off on his own. Nor would Adama, especially given the fact that he was leaving Lee. And there's no way everyone would completely abandon their technology. These people had suffered through a lack of sufficient food and medical care in their recent past -- they simply wouldn't willingly choose to abandon it on their new home world, even if they were agreeable to settling in to a rustic farmer's life.

A question for those of you who are more observant than me -- when the Colonials reached the first "Earth", the nuked one, weren't we shown that it was the real Earth, that is, our Earth? Didn't we see parts of our solar system and identifiable continents? If so, then were the coordinates that Starbuck entered for that final FTL jump actually returning to the same planet, but in a different time period? If so, how can we find out only in the finale that the Colonial fleet's FTL drives can jump to different times, not just locations?


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

"oops! Somethings broken!" Indeed.


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## ahartman (Dec 28, 2001)

Anubys said:


> Galen is not immortal...all cylons live and die...


Can you provide some examples of this? I don't recall ever seeing a cylon age and/or die of natural causes.

When I said "I wonder if they lived Highlander-style" I was really asking if they were immortal.


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## Schmye Bubbula (Oct 14, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> It wasn't a skeleton...


Huh? What was it, Rob? Please elaborate; I thought I saw a skeleton. Thanks!


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## Spiff (Mar 1, 2004)

I sort of disagree with ThePenneyDropped. When someone like Adama and Galen go through a catastrophic loss, it's conceivable they would withdraw from the world, especially when that's so easy to do, with so many places to go on the new planet. Galen, in particular, has had nothing positive come with his interactions with people. It's always ended in tragedy.

As for the question asked, the first Earth matched up to the records they had of the original Earth's solar system. But that Earth was never our Earth. They don't have time travel on the ships, they just jumped to a different planet that was hidden in the code programmed into the Cylons, a prophecy if you will.

My only complaint about the episode was the preachiness.

I loved:
-The actual battle.
-Baltar being something other than the sniveling twit he's been the entire series.
-Baltar firing on the returning party in sheer terror. "FRIENDLIES!"
-The cinematography and effects after finding Earth.
-How the storylines wrapped up.
-The scene on the bridge after Galen realized how Callie died.
-Returning to the opera house and having the scenes line up.

This season reminded me of the last season of Sopranos. There has been so much negative everywhere about it. I actually enjoyed that season, too. BSG has been the only show I will watch live. Maybe that makes me less of a Sci-Fi nerd than I should be, or maybe I have an easier time suspending disbelief. But I enjoyed the show, and am satisfied with how it turned out. 

Oh, and despite RDM's explanation at the link above, I prefer to think that the "Angels" in the series were simply projections from the One True Cylon, which was so effective at Cylon Projection that the projections themselves became self-aware. Once Kara's prophecy was fulfilled, she didn't need to be projected any more. She was projected into Everyone's brain, unlike 6 who was projected into Baltar's alone.


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## pkscout (Jan 11, 2003)

The best thing I can say is that it's over. I feel like I deserve a t-shirt that says "I watched BSG for 5 years, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt."

I said on twitter that Moore wouldn't tie up any of the loose ends and create five more. I think I nailed the first part. I'm not going to go back and count, but I think I got pretty close on the second part too.

I will certainly not be watching The Plan, Caprica, or anything Moore is involved in ever again.

Oh, I did like the nostalgia of the original theme music.


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## davezatz (Apr 18, 2002)

Figaro said:


> Well the morning after and I feel like I beer googled the skanky chick in college again.
> 
> RDM attempts to explain this excrement.
> 
> http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/03/battlestar_galactica_ronald_d.html


"Kara, I think, is whatever you want her to be."

"There's loose threads and things that don't quite work"

That emphasizes the issues I've had. They largely made it up as they went, backing themselves into some strange corners they couldn't extricate the show from. And why I generally prefer movies or miniseries to serials. Although, we did have some fun MST3000 moments in our household thanks to BSG this season.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

As I stated earlier, I thought the finale was pretty good. Although it wasn't ideal by any means. I think the flashbacks were only there as an advertisement for Caprica, to preview what the world will be like when that show gets here. I personally could have done without the scene of Adama throwing up all over himself.

I will say that something Moore said in "The Last Frakkin' Special", which I watched before this episode, explained to me why and how they backed themselves into so many corners during the course of the series... something along the lines of, "the plot doesn't matter, it's all about the characters." He was speaking in regards to writing the finale I think, but I think it applies to their philosophy of the entire series.

What I don't think he understands is that you can't do that with a show like this. You can't create this big mythology that you created in the first season, and then say the plot doesn't matter.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Schmye Bubbula said:


> Huh? What was it, Rob? Please elaborate; I thought I saw a skeleton. Thanks!


You saw a skeleton, but that has nothing to do with Mitochondrial Eve, which is simply a theoretical genetic construct--molecular biologists traced mutations in human mitochondria, which is passed from mother to children without mixing with paternal genes, to see how different populations are related; if you track the mutations back to the earliest common matrilineal ancestor, you come up with a woman who almost certainly lived in East-Central Africa, probably about 140,000 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

There's also a Y-Chromosonal Adam, but the Y Chromosome is a lot harder to track and the results are more controversial. But if true, then the earliest common patrilineal ancestor was around 60-90,000 years ago. Thus, Adam and Eve never knew each other. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

But Moore et al. can't be bothered with all this science stuff, so they just took the name and pasted it onto a photo of a skeleton.


----------



## Sacrilegium (Dec 14, 2006)

I've not been on the BSG-bashing bandwagon. I think a lot of things about the series improved as the show went on and I've been happy not to overanalyze and just sit back and enjoy the ride. I've tried to have faith that it would all make sense in the end.

However, now that it's done...well, I guess you don't have to keep tabs on plotholes when God himself is your dues ex machina. This was just lazy and disappointing. I don't think I'll bother with _Caprica_.

On the plus side, it was pretty.


----------



## Mars Rocket (Mar 24, 2000)

ThePennyDropped said:


> A question for those of you who are more observant than me -- when the Colonials reached the first "Earth", the nuked one, weren't we shown that it was the real Earth, that is, our Earth? Didn't we see parts of our solar system and identifiable continents?


No, they never showed anything that was positively identifiable. That's why many people, including me, were convinced it wasn't Earth. They must have known back then that they would *eventually* reach Earth, but that wasn't it.

So is "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" a miniseries or just a one-shot movie?


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

Mars Rocket said:


> So is "Battlestar Galactica: The Plan" a miniseries or just a one-shot movie?


From the ad, it sounded like a two-hour movie.

Buckle yourself in, it's going to be a wild ride of retconning.


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

Erich Von Daniken was right!


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Man, that interview capsulizes everything I have come to hate about this show.


After reading your post I decided to read that article. It made me want to throw something heavy at my tv. Damn!!! If someone had shown an earlier me those comments, I'd have stopped watching a long, long time ago. You want good and evil simple easy-to-write concepts? Ok, here's one: their idea of PROUDLY "making it up as they go along" is EVIL, and writing an actual story that goes somewhere intended is GOOD!

If I had more enthusiasm of any kind after that part of the article, I'd have laughed out loud about the comment that it's about the characters and not the plot. Why? Because almost every week i'd loudly proclaim "I DON'T CARE AT ALL ABOUT THESE PEOPLE!!!".. There were very few times when I cared about any of the characters, but that even changed from week to week as they changed who those characters were! Saying it's about the characters only works WHEN YOU ACTUALLY FOCUS ON THE CHARACTERS!!!

Sorry, forgot. I agree 100% Rob.

I almost feel like making a spoof video of the writing process for this, like someone naively tried doing for Lost.

Maybe BSG needed a big magic turtle..


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

What was up with the Adama vomit? I really didn't need to see that.

Where was the HMS Strip Club for the last five years?


----------



## jones07 (Jan 30, 2001)

I would imagine the Centurions are really advance after 150K year of being on their own/freedom. So many question and so few real believable answers


----------



## Sacrilegium (Dec 14, 2006)

cheesesteak said:


> What was up with the Adama vomit? I really didn't need to see that.


Yeah...and was it just me or was there a different amount of vomit on his face from different camera angles? Seemed like there was next-to-none if you looked at the head-on shot, but from the back/side, there were still chunks on his face.

Sometimes maybe it's best not to watch in Hi-Def.


----------



## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Wow, what a fantastic bohica to the series. Hopefully, Moore will never find work again. Yeah, the space battle was awesome, then it went to sh*t.

Kara was a ghost? No explaination? Are you kidding me?

Adama leaving his son? Forever? Seriously? I could never do that.

The remnants of the human race all splitting up? I'm not talking about across the globe, but even the ones "sticking together" were going off on their own in couples. That's a phenomenally bad idea.

Such a stupid ending. So sad to waste so much potential. And the "Hollywood ending" with its "message" was so unnecessary. It even looked tacked on. The Adama-on-hillside with swelling music was the ending. No need for the extra scene.

:down:


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## jones07 (Jan 30, 2001)

gchance said:


> We all did, and let out a collective groan, as if the episode couldn't be any more masturbatory on Moore's part, he had to show his ugly mug. Frakkin' moron. Oooooh, I wonder what bourbon he'll be drinking for his podcast this time.
> 
> Greg


Dude, you have to past get your man-hate of Moore


----------



## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

Craigbob said:


> I didn't know that was RDM until I read it here. But I don't see that any different than JMS turning out the lights on B5.


It's very different. In B5, the guy who turned off the station would always be there. It wouldn't matter if he were played by JMS or someone else, the effect would have been the same. To someone who didn't know who it was, he would have said, "This guy just shut down the station." To those of us who did, it was, "JMS just shut down the station."

In BSG, there was a guy reading a magazine. If he'd been behind Baltar & Six, it would have been a guy in the background reading, but instead, he's right there, not only in FRONT of Baltar & Six, but in focus, for altogether too long. Someone who knows who it is says, "What the hell is RDM doing there?" Someone who doesn't (like my wife) says, "Who's that guy?" It's blatantly obvious, which is what RDM wanted. It was his way of saying, "Look at me!"



ThePennyDropped said:


> But what I can't swallow is the writers' lack of understanding of how human beings work. There's simply no way Galen would head off on his own. Nor would Adama, especially given the fact that he was leaving Lee. And there's no way everyone would completely abandon their technology. These people had suffered through a lack of sufficient food and medical care in their recent past -- they simply wouldn't willingly choose to abandon it on their new home world, even if they were agreeable to settling in to a rustic farmer's life.


Not to mention that while they've arrived in what appears to be springtime, weather is a funny thing. They've lived in space however long it's been since they were under Cylon rule, and the 3 years before then. On Caprica they lived in huge cities. These aren't exactly outdoorsy, live off the land people, for Galen to just go off by himself is certain suicide.



Spiff said:


> I loved:
> -Returning to the opera house and having the scenes line up.


Question: would you have felt the same way, had the opera house scene only been in the "previously on" segment, rather than intercut with the current scene? Because as cut, it shouted to me, "Hey, you're too stupid to realize the scenes match up, so let us show it to you frame by frame. Remember? You don't? Okay, here, let us continue the same pattern for 10 minutes and use small words so you'll be sure to understand."



pkscout said:


> The best thing I can say is that it's over. I feel like I deserve a t-shirt that says "I watched BSG for 5 years, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt."


After watching the last season I feel the same way. I actually feel pretty good that I don't have to watch it anymore.



> I will certainly not be watching The Plan, Caprica, or anything Moore is involved in ever again.


:up::up::up:

I was looking forward to Caprica when it was first announced, but not now.



> Oh, I did like the nostalgia of the original theme music.


Totally with you there as well, and I did like seeing the oldschool centurions in the battles. I also LOL'ed when the new centurion grabbed the old one by the neck, put a blaster to his head, and pulled the trigger.

Greg


----------



## Legion (Aug 24, 2005)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> You saw a skeleton, but that has nothing to do with Mitochondrial Eve, which is simply a theoretical genetic construct--molecular biologists traced mutations in human mitochondria, which is passed from mother to children without mixing with paternal genes, to see how different populations are related; if you track the mutations back to the earliest common matrilineal ancestor, you come up with a woman who almost certainly lived in East-Central Africa, probably about 140,000 years ago.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
> 
> ...


Thats fine and all, but the VO said:

"At a scientific conference this week at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the startling announcement was made that archeologists believe they have found the fossilized remains of a young woman who might actually be mitochondrial eve".

Said the joker to the thief.

You think Adama would of been so heartbroken if he had known her final minutes she was thinking back to her cougar days when she was banging her former student?


----------



## pex (Oct 21, 2002)

Well, I loved the finale. I suspect part of the reason I could enjoy it is that I realized early on not to get hung up on plot details, or I'd drive myself crazy. I just let the shows wash over me, like I'm listening to improv jazz. They managed to reel in the majority of the plot lines--that's enough for me.

A couple of thoughts:
_The faithful rarely love a show finale._ Intricate plot-driven shows are especially problematic--the longer the show runs, the more internal inconsistencies crop up, and the more loose ends are left unresolved. Six Feet Under was the only quality series in recent memory to expire leaving fans satisfied, but it hardly is comparable plot-wise.

_A good television series is like crack cocaine._ Once people sit up and take notice that a show is _really_ good, they are hooked. Seasons 1 and 2 of this series were sensational, enough so that fans start jonesin for more and more. The grumbling that you read here about BSG during the last couple of years is just a result of folks going through withdrawal. It was simply impossible for the writers to maintain the level of creativity and intensity that we were treated to during the earlier seasons.

Battlestar Galactica was about as good as television gets. The visuals were stunning, "the look" unique. The acting wasn't as horrible as the usual sci-fi fare, and a few of them were quite excellent. I don't know where they dug up the young composer, but the scores were consistently superb. I'm going to miss it!


----------



## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

Not sure with all the confusion on Adama leaving Lee. It's not like he hasn't done it before. He intended to leave the whole fleet when he stayed behind in the Raptor last season to pine away for his girlfriend. It worked out that time that she returned and they were reunited with the fleet, but he didn't know that would happen at the time.


----------



## sbourgeo (Nov 10, 2000)

ahartman said:


> Can you provide some examples of this? I don't recall ever seeing a cylon age and/or die of natural causes.
> 
> When I said "I wonder if they lived Highlander-style" I was really asking if they were immortal.


I'd say all Cylons became mortal when the resurrection technology was destroyed.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

gchance said:


> Question: would you have felt the same way, had the opera house scene only been in the "previously on" segment, rather than intercut with the current scene? Because as cut, it shouted to me, "Hey, you're too stupid to realize the scenes match up, so let us show it to you frame by frame. Remember? You don't? Okay, here, let us continue the same pattern for 10 minutes and use small words so you'll be sure to understand."


That was probably my favorite part of the episode.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

And Cavil killed himself...why?

He wanted resurrection, so when he didn't get it, he gave up? Huh?


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> You saw a skeleton, but that has nothing to do with Mitochondrial Eve, which is simply a theoretical genetic construct--molecular biologists traced mutations in human mitochondria, which is passed from mother to children without mixing with paternal genes, to see how different populations are related; if you track the mutations back to the earliest common matrilineal ancestor, you come up with a woman who almost certainly lived in East-Central Africa, probably about 140,000 years ago.
> 
> *But Moore et al. can't be bothered with all this science stuff, so they just took the name and pasted it onto a photo of a skeleton.*


Another example of "not bothered by the science stuff". RDM has a science advisor yet he let's them say they found themselves "a million LY away" in the finale. Well that puts you in intergalactic space between our Milky Way spiral and the roughly 2.5 Million LY Andromeda spiral. (For the astronomers out there, yes I'm aware of the much closer Magellanic Clouds and obscure tiny dwarf galaxies). All he needed to say had he talked to his advisor (obviously he doesn't) was "We're 50,00 LY from where we were" or some rational # like that. I mean it WAS a show that took place in outer space.


----------



## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

Legion said:


> You think Adama would of been so heartbroken if he had known her final minutes she was thinking back to her cougar days when she was banging her former student?


Hah! I got a great laugh out of that one, hehe. However, I don't think the flashbacks here were what the characters were thinking at the time. They were just flashbacks, to show the viewers how the characters got to that point. It was the death of her sister and the cougar moment that made Roslin ultimately change her mind about politics and eventually become President.



pex said:


> _The faithful rarely love a show finale._ Intricate plot-driven shows are especially problematic--the longer the show runs, the more internal inconsistencies crop up, and the more loose ends are left unresolved. Six Feet Under was the only quality series in recent memory to expire leaving fans satisfied, but it hardly is comparable plot-wise.


I dunno. The Shield was a pretty stinkin' good finale.



> Battlestar Galactica was about as good as television gets. The visuals were stunning, "the look" unique. The acting wasn't as horrible as the usual sci-fi fare, and a few of them were quite excellent. I don't know where they dug up the young composer, but the scores were consistently superb. I'm going to miss it!


For much of the series I agree, it just really lost its way, flailed for the longest time, then got ruined by the fact that they didn't plan things out ahead of time. Add to that a producer who didn't give a rat's ass about the show or its viewers, and you get what we got in the end.

Greg


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

hefe said:


> And Cavil killed himself...why?
> 
> He wanted resurrection, so when he didn't get it, he gave up? Huh?


From the RDM interview, the actor playing Cavil thought it would be way cool to shoot himself and true to his philosophy of favoring coolness over logic, RDM let him impulsively shoot himself. Q.E.D.


----------



## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

Figaro said:


> Well the morning after and I feel like I beer googled the skanky chick in college again.
> 
> RDM attempts to explain this excrement.
> 
> http://www.nj.com/entertainment/tv/index.ssf/2009/03/battlestar_galactica_ronald_d.html


It's nice to know that all the stuff that was unexplained, RDM freely admits he didn't have an explanation for.

I do agree that you don't have to always know where you're going with a show. But you better damn well know why you went where you did. RDM didn't need to know in the first season that he was going to kill and resurrect Starbuck, but he sure should've know what she was when he brought her back from the dead. If this was a one time lapse it would have been forgivable, but this was the modus operandi of the show.


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## routerspecialist (Jun 19, 2008)

That's my view of the ending. One of the best I've seen.

Perfect? Hardly. The whole Kara thing was far from perfect for me, yet it fitted within the storyline that the writers created for her. I think they made a bad choice in "killing" her originally, because they had to bring her back with little explanation. Perhaps they were trying to introduce more of the religious, or monotheistic God concept to human development, and the Kara that came back was only an agent of God introduced, from a story perspective, to bring that thread into the storyline, while also allowing Kara to fulfill her purpose; leading them to Earth. 

Was I enthralled with that choice? Nah. But did the ending kind of work for me? Yes, it did.

I also had some questions about them leaving all of their technology. Interesting choice, but highly impractical. Building cabins without power tools? And what about heat? You don't build a stove without metal. How to get metal? They're going to mine it with not much but the clothes on their backs? All Very, very difficult, very hard work, very unpleasant. That part of the ending I viewed as more allegorical. But these are just quibbles.

The idea that there have been many Earths, as this "system" plays itself out over and over, I bought it. Seemed like a nice way to explain how we attempt to move towards perfection, over and over again and again.

And the ending where they showed the robots, to me, reminded us that if humans wish to create sentience (as in artificial life), we shouldn't be surprised if those we create don't agree with us, with our way of living, or make their own decisions about everything.


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## EchoBravo (Apr 20, 2002)

Craigbob said:


> it was obvious that the writers really did not care too much about the plot.


RDM said right in The Last Frakkin Special that he didn't care about plot... That it's about the characters, so the following is absolutely true.



philw1776 said:


> the actor playing Cavil thought it would be way cool to shoot himself and true to his philosophy of favoring coolness over logic, RDM let him impulsively shoot himself.


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> Such a stupid ending. So sad to waste so much potential. And the "Hollywood ending" with its "message" was so unnecessary. It even looked tacked on. The Adama-on-hillside with swelling music was the ending. No need for the extra scene.
> 
> :down:


I have to agree with that, yes I was disappointed, yes I've been watching this season on autopilot, and it wasn't as much a big BOS as it could have been, but Moore and team went from a great ending, to utter crap, when they continued after Adama on the hilltop.

Diane


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

ahartman said:


> I'm undecided on the 150,000 years later ending. It was necessary to explain HeadSix/HeadBaltar and indicate things might be different this time around.


Head Six/Balter tried to indicate that things might be different this time around, but the scene as a whole, with the Japanese robots, etc., seemed to be indicating that eventually it may *not* be different this time around.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

That's another stupid thing - they never explained the head Baltar and Six.


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## Talon (Dec 5, 2001)

Liked it, very much. Guess I'm just not that big on plot details. After the first season or so I was watching primarily for the characters anyway. Thats how most shows go.


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## gthassell (Apr 22, 2003)

jones07 said:


> I would imagine the Centurions are really advance after 150K year of being on their own/freedom. So many question and so few real believable answers


Hmm... "We are the BORG. Resistance is futile...."


----------



## TheSlyBear (Dec 26, 2002)

jking said:


> Speaking of Raptors, did I see a whole slew of them jumping from within Galactica at the beginning of the battle, when just a couple of episodes ago one jumped as it was leaving Galactica and tore the whole side out of the ship?


If you rewatch that scene you will see that the side of the hanger deck is being blown out as the ships jump.


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## angel35 (Nov 5, 2004)

EchoBravo said:


> RDM said right in The Last Frakkin Special that he didn't care about plot... That it's about the characters, so the following is absolutely true.


O.K. Good Bye.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

RDM says in the interview that this is the same Earth but 150,000 years in the past...

yet Adama tells Roslin that this is a different Earth...

and how did they time travel?

and if this is the same Earth but 150,000 years ago, then we already know what the future is like...so why imply that it can turn out differently?


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Maybe it's just me but in the triune final episode it seemed as if most every flashback to Caprica scene involved drinking to excess. Roselyn drinking and then a drunk driver killing her family, the strip club scenes where Adama, Tigh & Ellen pound 'em down (we needed more strip club flashbacks, but I digress), Adama barfing in the gutter, Lee and Kara's near drunken frak as Lee's brother slept in a drunken stupor. Is RDM's family in the booze business or am I missing the point and is this a 'too deep for me' message against drinking hard liquor?


----------



## Oldandslow (Nov 8, 2002)

ThePennyDropped said:


> I think I can accept some of the inconsistencies and oddities of the plot, the first "earth" versus the second "earth", for example. I kind of like the idea that Hera is the mitochondrial Eve. I can accept (soft of) the Head Six and Head Baltar as angels, maybe even the same for Starbuck (although less so, because she was so human in her doubts about herself and her mourning for Sam).
> 
> But what I can't swallow is the writers' lack of understanding of how human beings work. There's simply no way Galen would head off on his own. Nor would Adama, especially given the fact that he was leaving Lee. And there's no way everyone would completely abandon their technology. These people had suffered through a lack of sufficient food and medical care in their recent past -- they simply wouldn't willingly choose to abandon it on their new home world, even if they were agreeable to settling in to a rustic farmer's life.


ThePennyDropped, I couldn't agree more. Technically, the finale was brilliant, especially the "space battle". But the story line sucked, big time.


----------



## dtivouser (Feb 10, 2004)

I don't think anyone has mentioned that we saw "classic" Cylons in battle-- that was a lot of fun even if their CG wasn't quite as good as what we're used to.


----------



## Sacrilegium (Dec 14, 2006)

gchance said:


> I did like seeing the oldschool centurions in the battles. I also LOL'ed when the new centurion grabbed the old one by the neck, put a blaster to his head, and pulled the trigger.





dtivouser said:


> I don't think anyone has mentioned that we saw "classic" Cylons in battle


I believe that's called smeeking around these parts, innit?

For all I disliked about the finale, I did like some things. Seeing the old centurions was one of them.


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## dtivouser (Feb 10, 2004)

I gather that the Caprica backstories were meant to show how corrupt and immoral the Colonies had become. Caprica 6, as witness to Baltar and his father, certainly had reinforced her resolve to complete her mission and purge humanity much like Noah and the flood.


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## ThePennyDropped (Jul 5, 2006)

Another character inconsistency: Remember last week (and in the "Previously on Battlestar Galactica...") when Six stepped in to find a new home for Baltar's father, one where he would be happy? Wasn't this at about the same time that she snapped the neck of a human infant just for the entertainment value? Why would she be so kind to the old man (and to Baltar) and apparently randomly attack a baby?


----------



## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

ThePennyDropped said:


> Another character inconsistency: Remember last week (and in the "Previously on Battlestar Galactica...") when Six stepped in to find a new home for Baltar's father, one where he would be happy? Wasn't this at about the same time that she snapped the neck of a human infant just for the entertainment value? Why would she be so kind to the old man (and to Baltar) and apparently randomly attack a baby?


Perhaps an inconsistency, but perhaps simply because she needed Baltar to complete her mission and being nice to his father would be a way to gain his trust. She didn't need the baby for anything.


----------



## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

Anubys said:


> RDM says in the interview that this is the same Earth but 150,000 years in the past...
> 
> yet Adama tells Roslin that this is a different Earth...
> 
> ...


From the episode, I got: Earth is not the original name of our planet, if indeed it had a name already. Adama just named it after the planet that was their "Earth that was".

To them, it is a different Earth, to us, it's the only Earth we know.

And Caprica, Sagittaron, et al, were all "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away"


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## appleye1 (Jan 26, 2002)

ThePennyDropped said:


> A question for those of you who are more observant than me -- when the Colonials reached the first "Earth", the nuked one, weren't we shown that it was the real Earth, that is, our Earth? Didn't we see parts of our solar system and identifiable continents? If so, then were the coordinates that Starbuck entered for that final FTL jump actually returning to the same planet, but in a different time period? If so, how can we find out only in the finale that the Colonial fleet's FTL drives can jump to different times, not just locations?


Something to do with the black hole (or naked singularity or whatever it was)? I'm not sure you can jump through a black hole (maybe in RDM's universe you can) but perhaps it affected the jump enough to cause them to go to an parallel universe or backward in time. (Or even forward in time - a long long time ago maybe? Note that the interview with RDM implies two earths not one earth at a different time.)


----------



## nrrhgreg (Aug 30, 2003)

IndyJones1023 said:


> That's another stupid thing - they never explained the head Baltar and Six.


Yeah they did, they really were angels/demons/agents of God and drove the humans and cylons to their destinies, ending this cycle of the whole "it's happened before and will happen again" thing.


----------



## shaunrose (Sep 13, 2001)

If they actually cared about plot, instead of doing whatever they happen to find "interesting", they could have worked that finale into a rather satisfying story. There were a lot of interesting elements with "repeating the cycle" and the decision to abandon the technology to allow humanity to be more mature this time around. It just seemed so sloppy and disjointed. 

And I'm sorry, but I cannot deal with the Starbuck / Head 6 and Head Baltar things. There was too much left unexplained. They never explained Daniel, what happened to him, or how he was related to Kara. 

Finally, there seemed to be way too many elements stolen from other well known stories. People have already mentioned the Matrix style final scenes. The Terminator has the same type of "we have to stop the machines from becoming self aware" theme. Star Trek Nemesis did the same 'ram the bigger ship and then pull back out' plot. 

The people behind this show just became so self-important and lazy. I think they got so big headed and full of themselves that they thought everything they did was artistically fantastic. They could take elephant dung and spread a smear on a canvas and say "Voila! Isn't that interesting?"

I don't normally bash shows, and there have been plenty that kind of ended up being letdowns after strong starts (Stargate and Stargate Atlantis come to mind), but I guess I never got very frustrated with those because I never proclaimed with them that they were one of the best shows on tv like I did with BSG. I wasn't listening intently to their podcasts, and reading all of the threads I could about other insights in the show. And I wouldn't complain this much if the ending just left me unsatisfied or left a few things unanswered. I think it is the arrogance of the people behind this show that they just did not seem to care anymore and gave no thought to the plot or constructing something that made sense. 

Now they want me to invest my time and interest in their next creation? I just don't think I could trust them again.


----------



## ahartman (Dec 28, 2001)

sbourgeo said:


> I'd say all Cylons became mortal when the resurrection technology was destroyed.


Maybe immortal is the wrong word... not immortal as in "never able to be killed" but more along the lines of "if nothing intervenes to kill them, they live forever".

If they fall down a mountain and die, they're gone (no resurrection). If they sit on a hill by themselves forever, they live forever.


----------



## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

One other problem I had with this finale, comes from Hera being Mitochondrial Eve. She can't be Eve. 

There were already humans on Earth, not to mention the 38,000 other colonists that came down many of whom were women. So once again RDM is in love with a phrase and just has to work it in to the show.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Craigbob said:


> One other problem I had with this finale, comes from Hera being Mitochondrial Eve. She can't be Eve.
> 
> There were already humans on Earth, not to mention the 38,000 other colonists that came down many of whom were women. So once again RDM is in love with a phrase and just has to work it in to the show.


Not to quibble, but if the scientific analysis is correct, SOME*ONE* was Mito Eve. The very same objections you cite against it being Hera would apply to any putative Eve. Were we to believe the analysis it HAD to be some*one*.

What happened to every one else's offspring would tell a tragic tale.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

ahartman said:


> Maybe immortal is the wrong word... not immortal as in "never able to be killed" but more along the lines of "if nothing intervenes to kill them, they live forever".
> 
> If they fall down a mountain and die, they're gone (no resurrection). If they sit on a hill by themselves forever, they live forever.


I'm pretty sure that Six said that they would once the resurrection ship was destroyed, that they can now grow old and die just like humans...

the cylons on the "other Earth" also grew old and died...the 5 only survived because they rediscovered resurrection and saved themselves...


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## Peter000 (Apr 15, 2002)

Craigbob said:


> One other problem I had with this finale, comes from Hera being Mitochondrial Eve. She can't be Eve.
> 
> There were already humans on Earth, not to mention the 38,000 other colonists that came down many of whom were women. So once again RDM is in love with a phrase and just has to work it in to the show.


That's the thing about science, it can't be more than the information and facts that are there. WE know where the skeleton came from, but to the scientists who found and analyzed the skeleton, it is the earliest human. There are no remains of the others. If the show's scientists were to find an older example it would be "Whoops! guess we were wrong. Here's the real Eve."


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

Anubys said:


> RDM says in the interview that this is the same Earth but 150,000 years in the past...
> 
> yet Adama tells Roslin that this is a different Earth...
> 
> ...


He said that it is our Earth 150000 years in the past.

Whatever happened to Lucy Lawless?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Craigbob said:


> One other problem I had with this finale, comes from Hera being Mitochondrial Eve. She can't be Eve.
> 
> There were already humans on Earth, not to mention the 38,000 other colonists that came down many of whom were women. So once again RDM is in love with a phrase and just has to work it in to the show.


Mitochondrial Eve isn't Eve. You might want to read the wikipedia article I linked to earlier; it explains the concept in more detail than I did in that post.


Peter000 said:


> That's the thing about science, it can't be more than the information and facts that are there. WE know where the skeleton came from, but to the scientists who found and analyzed the skeleton, it is the earliest human. There are no remains of the others. If the show's scientists were to find an older example it would be "Whoops! guess we were wrong. Here's the real Eve."


But showing a skeleton at all displays complete ignorance of the concept of Mitochondrial Eve. There's no way of telling from bones whether they belong to ME. It's not about bones; it's about Mitochondrial DNA.


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## Mars Rocket (Mar 24, 2000)

Craigbob said:


> One other problem I had with this finale, comes from Hera being Mitochondrial Eve. She can't be Eve.
> 
> There were already humans on Earth, not to mention the 38,000 other colonists that came down many of whom were women. So once again RDM is in love with a phrase and just has to work it in to the show.


Maybe all existing human lines eventually died off and the only ones that survived were descendants of a human-cylon hybrid.

Also - the nuked planet they referred to as "Earth" was *never* shown to be our planet. The closest they came was showing a gas giant in the same solar system that could have been Saturn. They never showed any recognizable continents, mountains, buildings, etc. At the time I thought the deliberate obfuscation of the identity of the planet meant that it was almost certainly *not* our Earth.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Why didn't Galactica create a lot of damage when it jumped away from the colony?


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## Mars Rocket (Mar 24, 2000)

IndyJones1023 said:


> Why didn't Galactica create a lot of damage when it jumped away from the colony?


Because they blew their effects budget on other parts of the battle?



I wondered the same thing.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

shaunrose said:


> There was too much left unexplained. They never explained Daniel, what happened to him, or how he was related to Kara.


They never said he was related or connected in any way to Kara.


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

I gotta say, I went into this finale with my suspension of disbelief dial cranked to the max and expectations down to the minimum, and managed to go along with most of it, except for one thing - Kara's end. No explanation at all. I just can't deal with that. And I'm someone who LOVED the ending of The Sopranos!


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

It's just a total lack of caring that they end a space opera with angels and ghosts. WTF?


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Overall I liked it. It tied together a bunch of the more pointless episodes from earlier in the season. There was also a bunch of tributes to the original series thrown in.

I liked the eye candy space battle, even in "Comcast HD".

I liked how hybrid Anders responded to Galen when Galen asked him to pull back on the ACS. 

Galen finally got revenge for the killing of his wife.

That's not to say there weren't some negatives/mistakes:

The fact that they stated that Hera was the common ancestor to all modern humans would mean that only cylon-human children survived. That would mean none of the native inhabitants of Earth survived and neither did any of the pure human children. I'm pretty sure this isn't what they were going for.

I agree that it makes no sense for everyone to suddenly give up technology and become nomads. Or for them to disperse around the globe (some by themselves).

I'm not sure who or what Kara is supposed to be. Was she supposed to be an angel the entire time or just after she "died". She did mention that she learned that song from her father and the song turned out to be the coordinated for Earth 2.0 so how did her father get the song? Is Kara supposed to be Jesus or something? She obviously wasn't the "harbinger of death" that the hybrids said she was.

A lot of other questions went unanswered.

A few other nitpicks:

1. The raptor fired about 10 nuke missiles at the Cylon colony. The colony was gigantic, several thousand times larger than Galactica. Galactica could withstand a nuke so I would assume the colony could withstand the 10 nukes. Also Galactica was only supposed to have only 1 or 2 nukes left at some point in Season 2. How did they build more?



Legion said:


> And the Baltar-Six couple at the end.....they knew the story. They commented on the "eve" skeleton had a cylon mother and human father. Then when they got around to talking about god....Baltar says "It doesnt like to be called that". It? So is god a cylon and Baltar and Six were supposed to be archangels of some kind?


Those weren't the real Baltar and Six and the end and yes they are supposed to be angels or something similar. As to who god is, obviously it's Xenu. Or possible this guy.


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## wprager (Feb 19, 2006)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> It wasn't a skeleton.
> 
> Then again, who knows if the writers have any clue what Mitochondrial Eve is?


So with 38 thousand people plus the locals, Hera is the "mitchondrial Eve"? She always liked running around as a child, I suppose.


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## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

Just a thought, anyone care to list those aspects of this episode which refer back to other works of literature? I'll start:

Kara Thrace: Keller from James Herbert's 'The Survivor' (Person who died, retains life until they can solve a puzzle)
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, The BBC TV version, Arthur & Ford almost ending on the recreation of Earth in it's prehistoric period, like the fleet finding our planet in the same period.


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## Polcamilla (Nov 7, 2001)

The other colonists and cave people don't need to die out for Hera to be Mitochondrial Eve. They or their decendents just had to, at some point, breed with Hera or one of her female descendents. 

We know that with only 38,000 surviving humans from the Colonies, there'd be some significant concerns about having sufficient genetic diversity with which to repopulate. Even adding in the caveman population, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe that at some point in history, someone in all the other surviving lineages bred with someone female in Hera's lineage. It doesn't matter if it was 150,000 years ago or 500 years ago, if they produced offspring, those offspring would carry Hera's mitochondrial DNA and not that of her contemporaries.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

wprager said:


> So with 38 thousand people plus the locals, Hera is the "mitchondrial Eve"? She always liked running around as a child, I suppose.


Some one has to be.

It's all about what happens to your genes in the millennia after your death. Over time, in a limited population, more and more lines will die out while others grow. Eventually, one completely takes over, and once that happens it's permanent (since there's no source of new mDNA), no matter how much the population expands later.

There's something of an analogy on Pitcairn Island, where Bounty mutineer Fletcher Christian settled. He had only one son, but over time the Christian family grew until, many generations later, a substantial percentage of the island's population were Christians (name, not religion). If not for the fact that the island was later reintegrated into broader human society, eventually everybody would have been named Christian.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Polcamilla said:


> The other colonists and cave people don't need to die out for Hera to be Mitochondrial Eve. They or their decendents just had to, at some point, breed with Hera or one of her female descendents.


Excellent. This corrects a mis-statement and bad phraeseology on my part earlier.


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## getbak (Oct 8, 2004)

morac said:


> As to who god is, obviously it's Xenu.


I was expecting them to destroy the Raptors by flying them into volcanoes.



Sherminator said:


> Just a thought, anyone care to list those aspects of this episode which refer back to other works of literature? I'll start:
> 
> Kara Thrace: Keller from James Herbert's 'The Survivor' (Person who died, retains life until they can solve a puzzle)
> Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, The BBC TV version, Arthur & Ford almost ending on the recreation of Earth in it's prehistoric period, like the fleet finding our planet in the same period.


When Cavill was going through Galactica, dressed all in black following the cylons who were shooting the humans. I got a definite Star Wars/Darth Vader vibe. Then, they cut to Hera running through the ship with Roslyn hobbling after her, and all I could think of was that Roslyn was C-3PO.

On Earth, when Adama and Roslyn are flying over the water and the flamingos were scattering away below them, the Miami Vice theme was going through my head:


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Watching Ros near the end on the velt with the wildlife made me think of the excerable "Dances With Wolves"


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## ThePennyDropped (Jul 5, 2006)

Another not-so-burning question: Would any of the Colonials really want to breed with the so-primitive-they-don't-even-have-language (much less deodorant) primitives?


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## Talon (Dec 5, 2001)

BobB said:


> I gotta say, I went into this finale with my suspension of disbelief dial cranked to the max and expectations down to the minimum, and managed to go along with most of it, except for one thing - Kara's end. No explanation at all. I just can't deal with that. And I'm someone who LOVED the ending of The Sopranos!


Wasn't there a scene in a recent episode where Baltar pretty much questions what Kara is. Didn't he come to the conclusion she was an angel.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

ThePennyDropped said:


> Another not-so-burning question: Would any of the Colonials really want to breed with the so-primitive-they-don't-even-have-language (much less deodorant) primitives?


I found myself wondering, if you can get past the moral negativeness of such an act and were to snatch a primative baby to raise in the advanced Colonial way, would said baby be able to grow up as a Colonial? Or would the baby's brain be too underdeveloped to grasp speech and technology?


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## ThePennyDropped (Jul 5, 2006)

IndyJones1023 said:


> I found myself wondering, if you can get past the moral negativeness of such an act and were to snatch a primative baby to raise in the advanced Colonial way, would said baby be able to grow up as a Colonial? Or would the baby's brain be too underdeveloped to grasp speech and technology?


I assume the latter, that the baby still had some evolving to do before it could learn language. OTOH, perhaps the better answer is that the baby would do whatever the hell Ron Moore told it to do.


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## Talon (Dec 5, 2001)

Anubys said:


> RDM says in the interview that this is the same Earth but 150,000 years in the past...
> 
> yet Adama tells Roslin that this is a different Earth...
> 
> ...


The first Earth was not really Earth.

They did not time travel.

The cycle could end this time they imply. Are we going to war with the Cylons in our future? How do you know this?


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

morac said:


> I agree that it makes no sense for everyone to suddenly give up technology and become nomads. Or for them to disperse around the globe (some by themselves).


I don't think they gave up all technology. I'm sure they kept some basic tools around. They just decided to live simpler lives instead of trying to build giant cities again. For a group of people that had been on ships for the past 4 years running from technology that was trying to exterminate them, I can see how they might want to get rid of some of that. And with all the political issues they had, I'm sure breaking up into smaller groups was desirable.

But I agree that Adama and Galen running off to be hermits didn't make much sense. At least get settled and figure out how to live this new life before trying to run off and mope.



morac said:


> 1. The raptor fired about 10 nuke missiles at the Cylon colony. The colony was gigantic, several thousand times larger than Galactica. Galactica could withstand a nuke so I would assume the colony could withstand the 10 nukes.


From the RDM interview:



> Moore: The final (edit) came out a little less clear on that level than I sort of intended... The idea was that when Racetrack hits the nukes, they smack into the Colony and it takes it out of the stream swirling around the singularity, and it fell in (to the singularity) and was torn apart. But as we were cutting the show for time, and taking out frames, one of the things that became less apparent was that the Colony was doomed. The intention was that everyone aboard the Colony perished.


So the nukes didn't destroy the Colony; they just gave it a big push.

As usual, I enjoyed the episode on its own, but not how it fit in the greater scheme of things. _Caprica_, being a short mini-series, will probably actually have good continuity, so I'll watch that. _The Plan_ I might watch just to see what their definition of a "plan" is.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

ThePennyDropped said:


> Another not-so-burning question: Would any of the Colonials really want to breed with the so-primitive-they-don't-even-have-language (much less deodorant) primitives?


I doubt they started breeding with them right away. The Cylons and Colonials probably bred amongst themselves for a while, then slowly over generations introduced the primitive humans to their culture, and eventually the two societies merged together.


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## whitson77 (Nov 10, 2002)

It was what I expected. They could create fantastic action scenes consistently. But the writers attempts at being philosophical and sophisticated were just laughable. They never had a clue at what they were crafting and it showed with the ending, and it showed throughout the series. Good riddance. And I won't be watching Caprica.


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## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

Sherminator said:


> Just a thought, anyone care to list those aspects of this episode which refer back to other works of literature? I'll start:
> 
> Kara Thrace: Keller from James Herbert's 'The Survivor' (Person who died, retains life until they can solve a puzzle)
> Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, The BBC TV version, Arthur & Ford almost ending on the recreation of Earth in it's prehistoric period, like the fleet finding our planet in the same period.


Ooohh. One More.

The Colony in a stable orbit around a singularity, then getting pushed out of that stable orbit only for the 'Bad' Cylons to perish in said singularity: Doctor Who (new) Season 2 episodes 8 & 9, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Sherminator said:


> The Colony in a stable orbit around a singularity, then getting pushed out of that stable orbit only for the 'Bad' Cylons to perish in said singularity: Doctor Who (new) Season 2 episodes 8 & 9, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit.


You realize that the very premise of this game is that Moore has considerable familiarity with science fiction? Something for which there is no evidence whatsoever in the show itself?


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## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

I know, I am hoping to compile a list which will contain the entire episode with no originality whatsoever.


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

Talon said:


> Wasn't there a scene in a recent episode where Baltar pretty much questions what Kara is. Didn't he come to the conclusion she was an angel.


Just 'cause he said that didn't make it true. Especially since we have the "in your head" versions of Baltar and Six as examples of angels in the show - not corporeal, perceived only by the select, always appearing to be operating on some higher plane of knowledge, and always gorgeously dressed and coiffed - none of which characteristics apply to Kara Thrace. Even after she came back from the crash on Earth v1.0 she was manifestly corporeal. Nothing in any of this show's years of constantly-changing mythology allows for a person to simply disappear into thin air like she did.


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## magaggie (Apr 9, 2002)

I have to admit, when they landed on earth and Lee suggested they should abandon their technology, I sat right up on the couch (Demandred can back me up on this) and said "I've TOTALLY read this book!" (spoiler tags because it may ruin the enjoyment of the first 2/5 books in the series)



Spoiler



The Homecoming Series by Orson Scott Card



Anyone else who has read it agree?


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Figaro said:


> Whatever happened to Lucy Lawless?


She stayed back on (the 13th Colony) Earth. This was explicitly stated in the first episode back from break, in January because she was so 'disillusioned' by finding a scorched Earth.



BitbyBlit said:


> As usual, I enjoyed the episode on its own, but not how it fit in the greater scheme of things. _Caprica_, being a short mini-series, will probably actually have good continuity, so I'll watch that. _The Plan_ I might watch just to see what their definition of a "plan" is.


Where are you getting this notion of Caprica being a mini-series? It's not meant to be, as far as I know.

Also, The Plan is simply from the Cyclon point of view. I'm very curious to see what they do with that bit.

I think the term 'boxed into a corner' was invented (by an ancestor of Mitochondrial Eve) to define what Ron Moore and company did here. I thought BSG was _terrific_ up to and including the New Caprica arc, then totally fell apart. The notion of the final five cylons (that they're special, etc), I'm convinced, ruined the show.

Didn't hate the finale though.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Talon said:


> The first Earth was not really Earth.
> 
> They did not time travel.


how come?

the cylon Earth they were looking for matched our earth as far as the constellations they saw at the temple in Kobol...that is how they verified where they were when they found it...

RDM also said at the time that this was our earth...

so the only way this new planet could be our earth again if time travel is involved...

what am I missing?


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

whitson77 said:


> It was what I expected. They could create fantastic action scenes consistently. But the writers attempts at being philosophical and sophisticated were just laughable. They never had a clue at what they were crafting and it showed with the ending, and it showed throughout the series.


The funny part is that IIRC, in one of the podcasts back around the Pegasus timeframe, RDM said that he doesn't really like writing battle (or action?) sequences.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Anubys said:


> what am I missing?


Everything.

Because you're being logical.

Turn off your brain.

See? Doesn't it all make sense now?


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

pkscout said:


> I feel like I deserve a t-shirt that says "I watched BSG for 5 years, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt."


Anyone willing to bet they'll be on sale somewhere by Monday?

The entire run still makes BSG the best thing on TV, IMHO.
The suckiness that was the last year or so isn't enough to undue the first 4.

The Miniseries and first season was so radically different than anything that had come before.

Galactica jumping into the atmosphere above New Caprica and launching vipers as it fell will be the scene of all scenes for quite a while.

phox


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## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

Anubys said:


> ...RDM also said at the time that this was our earth...
> 
> ...what am I missing?


You're missing the fact that RDM made the show up as he went along, so at the end of the 1st half of this season, in his mind, the 'Earth' that they found was our earth, but with his ADD, he must have forgotten that he said that, and made the final one, our Earth.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Sherminator said:


> You're missing the fact that RDM made the show up as he went along, so at the end of the 1st half of this season, in his mind, the 'Earth' that they found was our earth, but with his ADD, he must have forgotten that he said that, and made the final one, our Earth.


Heh.


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## jbppsu (Jun 2, 2008)

As someone who has been very critical of this show I have to start by saying I was pleasantly surprised. It wasn't the huge ball of suck I was expecting. It was just a small ball of suck. 

We had our normal completely illogical list of things that happen just "because it would be cool":

- Why the frack would the raptors be armed with nukes? I mean I know the real answer is that RDM thought it would be cool to have the colony pushed into the singularity and this was the only way he could think to do it. Why the frack would the raptors with a mission to land marines on the colony and drop off an assault team be armed with nukes?

- The 6 (?) raptors jumped from the bay? And the damage isn't that big of a deal? But one Raptor jumps *close* to the ship and it causes almost catestrophic damage?

- There was zero indication that Kara was anything but a living breathing person. But now we're supposed to believe that she was an angel/ghost all along? Umm, ok, but she did real things! She moved objects, she jumped the ship, but she wasn't real? Huh? But if she was an angel all along why was it such a struggle for her to find the coordinates for Earth2?

Plus all the other things that have already been mentioned by everyone else.

The battle scenes weren't bad though. All in all the finale exceeded my low expectations.

Still I'll be sitting out Caprica and BSG: The (lack of a) plan. Actually anything RDM is involved in for that matter. RDM: :down::down::down:


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

I'm looking forward to Caprica. Just because BSG had certain flaws doesn't mean Caprica will have them. Some of my favorite musicians follow turd albums up with great works of art. Maybe lessons will be learned.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

cheesesteak said:


> I'm looking forward to Caprica. Just because BSG had certain flaws doesn't mean Caprica will have them. Some of my favorite musicians follow turd albums up with great works of art. Maybe lessons will be learned.


Seriously? Caprica looks like they're retconing the whole made-up-as-they-went-along story. Plus, what's up with Adama's name change? Or did they remove that because they thought of something cooler?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

cheesesteak said:


> Just because BSG had certain flaws doesn't mean Caprica will have them.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

cheesesteak said:


> I'm looking forward to Caprica. Just because BSG had certain flaws doesn't mean Caprica will have them. Some of my favorite musicians follow turd albums up with great works of art. Maybe lessons will be learned.


"It has all happened before, and it will all happen again..."


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## Crrink (Sep 3, 2002)

Regarding the Raptors jumping from the museum bay - I didn't notice the bay being damaged as they jumped away, but even if it was, the Raptors didn't all jump at the exact same time, so as the first one jumped away it would have severely damaged the Raptors that hadn't jumped yet. If one Raptor jump was enough to cause so much damage to Galactica as was shown in that episode, how much damage would one do to another Raptor??

Also, I don't know if any of you watched the commercials for Caprica. I did, and while I strongly doubt I'll bother with the show, I thought it was interesting that the people living on Caprica in BSG's past had much fancier technology than was usually shown on BSG.

But hey, who cares, as long as it's "cool" right?


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

Crrink said:


> Regarding the Raptors jumping from the museum bay - I didn't notice the bay being damaged as they jumped away, but even if it was, the Raptors didn't all jump at the exact same time, so as the first one jumped away it would have severely damaged the Raptors that hadn't jumped yet. If one Raptor jump was enough to cause so much damage to Galactica as was shown in that episode, how much damage would one do to another Raptor??


There was an explosion and it rocked the ship. You could also see the venting afterwards.

I too wondered about the Raptors damaging each other... but maybe if they did it all in sync, there'd be no damage to each other?


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## Sherminator (Nov 24, 2004)

As Caprica (the spin-off) has been mentioned...

Was I right in seeing that Caprica is going to be straight to DVD/Digital Download instead of a series?


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## dianebrat (Jul 6, 2002)

cheesesteak said:


> Just because BSG had certain flaws doesn't mean Caprica will have them.


"It has all happened before, and it will all happen again..."


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## BeanMeScot (Apr 17, 2002)

Glad it's over. I only watched this season because I knew it would be over. It was largely a big bag of suck. Parts of the finale were good. Can someone retcon it and get rid of the Caprica crap? It might actually approach decent.


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## phox_mulder (Feb 23, 2006)

dswallow said:


> Price: $26.98
> Selection Number: 61109037
> Running Time: 1 Hour 33 Minutes
> Layers: Dual Layer


$27 for an hour and a half?

Nah, don't think so.

If I do decide to watch it, I'll wait till SyFy airs it and FF through the commercials, thank you.

phox


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## Kamakzie (Jan 8, 2004)

ThePennyDropped said:


> Another character inconsistency: Remember last week (and in the "Previously on Battlestar Galactica...") when Six stepped in to find a new home for Baltar's father, one where he would be happy? Wasn't this at about the same time that she snapped the neck of a human infant just for the entertainment value? Why would she be so kind to the old man (and to Baltar) and apparently randomly attack a baby?


She snapped the baby's neck because she thought she was being merciful so it wouldn't have to suffer through the attack on Caprica.


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## KellyR66 (Sep 11, 2004)

I just finished watching the finale, all two hours and eleven minutes of it. I enjoyed it up to the last 30 minutes when I realized that all the unanswered questions would remain UNANSWERED! 

All the years I watched BSG I purposely avoided reading forums, news articles, or listening to podcasts because I didn't want to come across spoilers. I watched assuming that the producers and writers had a plan from the beginning. All the religious stuff, Kara's visions, the President's dreams and illness, Baltar's "virtual sex", the interrogation and torture on New Caprica, THERE MUST BE A REASON FOR ALL OF THIS!

Then I watched the BSG "Last Frakkin Special" and find out that the whole "Final 5" was made up last minute. I followed the link to the RDM interview and find out how much more of the storyline was manufactured because an actor thought it would be cool or whatever. 

I was lead to believe that the nuked Earth 1.0 was our Earth. Why? Maybe because when Starbuck reappeared she said she had been to Earth and would lead the fleet there and then there was a scene showing all the planets in our solar system including Earth!

Then in the finale here is a planet which sure looks like Earth. It even has one moon that they show. It happens to have humans on it which have compatible DNA with the BSG folks. Flash forward 150K years and it is our Earth. There is Six and Baltar - are they angels? Who knows? Most angels don't have realistic SEX with people do they?

Why is Hera important? Is she the first human? If so then I guess the rest of the fleet died out.

What's the deal with Kara? She just disappears. At least she apparently knows what she is at the end. I wish I did.

Everybody spreads out at the end. It seems that they would all be lonely. I guess they plan on getting busy with the natives which seems pointless if Hera is supposed to Eve.

What exactly is "God's Plan"?

Why did the cylons gouge out Saul's eye?

Not to be totally negative, here are some things I liked about the series:
The music
The special effects
the drinking
the women
the mystery
the misery


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## Mars Rocket (Mar 24, 2000)

IndyJones1023 said:


> I found myself wondering, if you can get past the moral negativeness of such an act and were to snatch a primative baby to raise in the advanced Colonial way, would said baby be able to grow up as a Colonial? Or would the baby's brain be too underdeveloped to grasp speech and technology?


150,000 years is near when **** sapiens first appeared. Assuming the baby was **** sapiens it should adapt just fine. There were a few other genus **** species living 150K years ago (including Neanderthal), but they would look very different and I think the colonists would be less inclined to try to breed with them (although they are almost as similar DNA-wise as Doc Cottle said the people they saw were to the colonists).


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## kjnorman (Jun 21, 2002)

jking said:


> I assumed it was nukes, but I can't remember if Raptors carry nukes.
> 
> Speaking of Raptors, did I see a whole slew of them jumping from within Galactica at the beginning of the battle, when just a couple of episodes ago one jumped as it was leaving Galactica and tore the whole side out of the ship?


Yes, but what I saw (unless my mind made it up) was that after the rapters jumped, parts of the POD kind of buckled and (I think) imploded from the shock.


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## Delta13 (Jan 25, 2003)

So this Caprica DVD is coming out months before they start production, and a year+ before it will actually air? Uh, that's interesting.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

what I find really ironic (or hypocritical) is that RDM professes that the plot does not matter and scoffs at those who say that things should have been planned well in advance...

yet, the moment he did plan something a long time ago (the Opera house) and finally brings it to fruition, what does he do? he hammers you with it over and over again to show you how brilliantly he planned it a long time ago...even making the final 5 ridiculously stand on the balcony while all hell breaks loose around them just to complete the picture of the vision...

this tells me one thing: deep down inside, he knows he's a hack...he knows what he did was wrong...


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

hanumang said:


> Where are you getting this notion of Caprica being a mini-series?


Good question. 

I'm not sure what made me think that. Maybe it was the premiere DVD coming out.

From what I've seen of _Caprica_, I think there will be more coherence with this show than _Galactica_. Part of the problem with _Galactica_ was that RDM didn't seem to care as much for the Cylon-Human conflict, and instead wanted to focus on doing stories about politics and revolutions. Given that the former was the whole point of _Galactica_ to begin with, he had to jam sidetracking storylines in whatever haphazard way he could to do the stories he really wanted to do.

_Caprica_ seems to be the show that RDM was trying to make _Galactica_ into. It's too bad they couldn't have given him _Caprica_ earlier, and let someone else keep the show on course before he had gotten too far.


----------



## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

jbppsu said:


> The 6 (?) raptors jumped from the bay? And the damage isn't that big of a deal? But one Raptor jumps *close* to the ship and it causes almost catestrophic damage?


The Raptors in the bay did a controlled jump in a designated area, and by that point they didn't care about damage to the ship as much because it was its last mission. The damage to the immediate area was worse than what Boomer's Raptor did, but because it was isolated to the bay, it didn't have the same effect on the overall ship.


----------



## kjnorman (Jun 21, 2002)

There is a lot of negativity on this board and while I'll admit some (perhaps a lot) of it is deserved I must say that I liked this episode.

I enjoyment may be improved though because all this last season, I gave up on the show and simply switched my brian off when i came to view it. With that mentality it become a whole lot more viewable.


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## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

dswallow said:


> The Highly Anticipated Feature-Length Prequel to the Series Phenomenon, 'Battlestar Galactica' Premiering Exclusively on DVD and Digital Download, Caprica...


I wonder if the Syfy and Universal people realize how much of BSG ratings were people just sticking it out because the end was coming. I think the numbers (or lack thereof) for Caprica may be surprising to a lot of people. I might watch "The Plan" someday when I'm feeling a bit masochistic, but no force on Earth (Original or Extra Crispy) will ever get me to start a new RDM series. (And I watched all 5 Trancers movies*)

*Not related to RDM, just an indication of the level of bad Sci FI I willingly subject myself to.


----------



## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

kjnorman said:


> I enjoyment may be improved though because all this last season, I gave up on the show and simply switched my *brian* off when i came to view it. With that mentality it become a whole lot more viewable.


Is Brian a Centurian?


----------



## USAFSSO (Aug 24, 2005)

Sorry if this was already brought up, but is Galen supposed to be Conner MacCleod.


----------



## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

USAFSSO said:


> Sorry if this was already brought up, but is Galen supposed to be Conner MacCleod.


no reason to think so...

besides, Conner was born only a few centuries ago...certainly not 150,000 years ago...


----------



## Shakhari (Jan 2, 2005)

Anubys said:


> no reason to think so...
> 
> besides, Conner was born only a few centuries ago...certainly not 150,000 years ago...


Even Methos is only 5,000 years old.

Maybe Galen is the Source.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Delta13 said:


> So this Caprica DVD is coming out months before they start production, and a year+ before it will actually air? Uh, that's interesting.


The pilot movie has already been made. It's the series proper which hasn't gone into production yet.


----------



## TCM2007 (Dec 25, 2006)

Craigbob said:


> One other problem I had with this finale, comes from Hera being Mitochondrial Eve. She can't be Eve.
> 
> There were already humans on Earth, not to mention the 38,000 other colonists that came down many of whom were women. So once again RDM is in love with a phrase and just has to work it in to the show.


There are "humans" on earth, but under this ending WE are not humans, we are all human/cylon hybrids!


----------



## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

kjnorman said:


> Yes, but what I saw (unless my mind made it up) was that after the rapters jumped, parts of the POD kind of buckled and (I think) imploded from the shock.


Yes, the whole side of the flight pod is blown outwards and a bunch of energy/plasma like stuff rushes out into space. They made a point of showing that.


----------



## Kamakzie (Jan 8, 2004)

Will Caprica be about the birth of the Cylons?


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## ThePennyDropped (Jul 5, 2006)

Kamakzie said:


> She snapped the baby's neck because she thought she was being merciful so it wouldn't have to suffer through the attack on Caprica.


I've read that theory here before, but I still don't buy it. There didn't seem to be anything in the miniseries that suggested that. Did Ron Moore offer that as an explanation in an interview or podcast?


----------



## Thaed (Nov 25, 2003)

Lessons from BSG:

--Drinking heavily helps to solve problems.
--Technology is bad.
--Angels guide us.

When Lee said "no cities" I paused my TiVo and went on a 2 minute rant about how after 5 years into a science fiction show we get the message that technology is bad? I have never seen a bigger middle finger given to an audience of a show before in my life.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

kaszeta said:


> Biggest bag of suck that ever sucked.


I just want you to know, you just installed a new phrase into my and my wife's vernacular. We've now said that about the finale about 100 times since Friday night.


----------



## Todd (Oct 7, 1999)

BTW, Caprica will be available on NetFlix.


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## jwjody (Dec 7, 2002)

When Galen pulled his hand out of the stream and the other Cylons thought it was a trap, why did Cavil suddenly yell "Frack" and kill himself? He's been fighting to keep the machines alive, that's why he wanted Hera. He put a gun to her head to keep himself alive. Then he suddenly shoots himself? bleh

The bunch of dancing robots at the end was just corny.

J


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

jkeegan said:


> I just want you to know, you just installed a new phrase into my and my wife's vernacular. We've now said that about the finale about 100 times since Friday night.


For the record, I never saw the phrase until IndyJones1023 used it a few years ago.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

jwjody said:


> When Galen pulled his hand out of the stream and the other Cylons thought it was a trap, why did Cavil suddenly yell "Frack" and kill himself? He's been fighting to keep the machines alive, that's why he wanted Hera. He put a gun to her head to keep himself alive. Then he suddenly shoots himself? bleh
> J


They did that since that's what the actor thought would be cool.

Indeed, that how/why they did just about everything.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

kaszeta said:


> For the record, I never saw the phrase until IndyJones1023 used it a few years ago.


That phrase is very close to "Biggest bunch of sucks that ever sucked" which came from a early episode of the Simpsons.


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## TriBruin (Dec 10, 2003)

Now that I have had a day to process the show and read the posts, I think I can put in to words how I feel.

I went in to the final ready to be disappointed. What had started out as a much watch show in the beginning turned in to a WTF just happened head shaker. How could a show so full of promise sink so far? 

However, I enjoyed the finale. For a show that was so all over the board, it was a decent ending. I enjoyed that the found (the real) earth. The battle scenes were classic BSG, and a couple great shout-outs to the original (music and Centerions).

I see many of the holes that others have brought up, but I told myself to let it go. This is the end and if that's how the shows ends, so be it.

I did like the end with (angel?) Balter & Six. Seeing that robotics advancement right after the saying (hoping?) things would be different was a powerful scene. And trust me, I am not much for "messages" in TV shows.


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## Saturn_V (Jun 2, 2007)

jwjody said:


> When Galen pulled his hand out of the stream and the other Cylons thought it was a trap, why did Cavil suddenly yell "Frack" and kill himself? He's been fighting to keep the machines alive, that's why he wanted Hera. He put a gun to her head to keep himself alive. Then he suddenly shoots himself?


The instant Galen snapped Tory's neck, the "Secret to Resurrection" was gone forever. (all five had a piece of the puzzle) Cavill had already given up Hera, the only other thing that could've kept the colony Cylons going. Game over, thanks for playing.

But Cavill didn't kill himself until after Tory (and his cylon brothers) were gone.


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Saturn_V said:


> The instant Galen snapped Tory's neck, the "Secret to Resurrection" was gone forever. (all five had a piece of the puzzle) Cavill had already given up Hera, the only other thing that could've kept the colony Cylons going. Game over, thanks for playing.
> 
> But Cavill didn't kill himself until after Tory (and his cylon brothers) were gone.


The only moment for me better than Tory geting her neck snapped was when Tory spaced that obnoxious, whining, sniveling simp Callie.


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

TriBruin said:


> I went in to the final ready to be disappointed. What had started out as a much watch show in the beginning turned in to a WTF just happened head shaker. How could a show so full of promise sink so far?
> 
> However, I enjoyed the finale. For a show that was so all over the board, it was a decent ending. I enjoyed that the found (the real) earth. The battle scenes were classic BSG, and a couple great shout-outs to the original (music and Centerions).
> 
> ...


Despite my criticisms, I completely agree with your assessment, starting with low expectations for the finale of a once promising show to an entertaining finale that if one lets all the discontinuities go and experiences it as viscereal entertainment, it works.


----------



## Saturn_V (Jun 2, 2007)

I actually liked Cally. Was sad to see her go. 

But after Tory, the most satisfying moment for me was seeing Boomer get hers. (offing Gaeta and Zarek runs a distant third) Seeing that character agonize and flip-flop sides umpteen times in five years was 10x more annoying than Cally. And I like how they didn't make a big production out of Boomer's end (apart from the "rookie" flashback) but it was great that Athena got to pull the trigger.


----------



## TriBruin (Dec 10, 2003)

philw1776 said:


> The only moment for me better than Tory geting her neck snapped was when Tory spaced that obnoxious, whining, sniveling simp Callie.


Showing my (lack of) attention to detail, when Tory was spilling her "We all have dark secrets that everyone is going to see" I was not thinking about Callie, I thought Ellen was going to learn that Tighe poisoned her on New Caprica (but she probably already knew that, huh?)


----------



## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

TriBruin said:


> Showing my (lack of) attention to detail, when Tory was spilling her "We all have dark secrets that everyone is going to see" I was not thinking about Callie, I thought Ellen was going to learn that Tighe poisoned her on New Caprica (but she probably already knew that, huh?)


I thought Tory's weasel words scene was pretty funny. She should have said she left the iron on in her apartment or something and skedaddled when she learned that mind reading was involved.


----------



## justen_m (Jan 15, 2004)

BeanMeScot said:


> Can someone retcon it and get rid of the Caprica crap? It might actually approach decent.


I 30-second-skipped over all the Caprica pre-history crap. That worked pretty well. I also used extensive 30ss after they landed on "Earth". This could easily have been a 90-minute episode instead of 2+ hours if they just edited out the extraneous stuff. I did like the Baltar/Caprica(6) interactions; and the space battles, of course. I admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the episode overall.


----------



## jwjody (Dec 7, 2002)

The more I think about it the more I don't like it. It seems they literally used Deus ex machina to get themselves out of so many tight spots they wrote themselves into.

Don't have a way to explain Starbuck, it was God! Don't have a way to explain head Baltar and head 6, it was God!

There were so many bad things that didn't make sense then they used God to get themselves out of it.

Really disappointing.

J


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## Saturn_V (Jun 2, 2007)

God's been there since season one. (even the miniseries)

how did Baltar find the Cylon device in the CIC in the miniseries?
how did Baltar know Olympic Carrier was chock full of Cylons in "33"? 
how did Baltar know which part of the Tylium refinery to hit in "Hand of God"?

The "god" or rather the "hand of god" stuff was in there from very beginning.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

..and it sucked back then too.


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## Globular (Jun 9, 2004)

Did anyone else notice the "Island to the North" Galen went to and assume Ireland?

Galen = Gaelic?


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Globular said:


> Did anyone else notice the "Island to the North" Galen went to and assume Ireland?
> 
> Galen = Gaelic?


Och, ah dinna assume Ireland but assumed Scotland.

You do realize that Gaelic would be say a tad early 150,000 years ago, or even 15,000 years ago.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Globular said:


> Did anyone else notice the "Island to the North" Galen went to and assume Ireland?
> 
> Galen = Gaelic?


I did.


----------



## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

Sorry if this comparison has been made already but I think of BSG as being like the The Matrix trilogy. The first two seasons are like the first movie. The second two seasons are like the 2nd and 3rd movies. Good but overall, very disappointing when compared to the first two movies. Is that a fair comparison?

Just a quick question... Why did Caville kill himself towards the end of the space battle after the humans had reclaimed the upper hand. Boomer's execution was, in my opinion, too easy a way to end things for her.

Oh well... unlike others, I will watch _The Plan_ and I will give _Caprica_ a chance. Some of the better episodes of ST:TNG and DS:9 were the result of RDM. He deserves an opportunity to prove himself again.


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## whitson77 (Nov 10, 2002)

Sirius Black said:


> Sorry if this comparison has been made already but I think of BSG as being like the The Matrix trilogy. The first two seasons are like the first movie. The second two seasons are like the 2nd and 3rd movies. Good but overall, very disappointing when compared to the first two movies. Is that a fair comparison?


As someone who hated the last 2 matrix films. Especially the last one. I think BSG derailment was one of the worst things I've ever seen in a series. I stuck with it just for the ending. And it was worse than I could possibly imagine. The writers on this show were abysmal at best the last two seasons.

Starbuck an Angel or ghost??? REALLY???


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Damn! Where were all those strip club scenes during the prior seasons?
Ol' coot Colonel Tigh sure seemed to be enjoying himself. Ellen seemed to be geting hot and ready. Scratch that, Ellen is ALWAYS hot and ready.

Someone started this previously but I think it's worth expanding...

*Things I learned from BSG...*
1. Important problems and decisions are best solved while consuming mass quantities of hard liquor

2. Important relationship decisions are best addressed by first beating the ***** outa each other

3. Some Angels are like wicked hot!

4. Always use a phone with a cord. Wireless is bad for you.

5. Don't ever make fun of toasters

6. Technology free, weaponless Colonials and Cylons are fast enough to outrun lions

Feel free to add to this important list...


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## pjenkins (Mar 8, 1999)

Sirius Black said:


> Sorry if this comparison has been made already but I think of BSG as being like the The Matrix trilogy. The first two seasons are like the first movie. The second two seasons are like the 2nd and 3rd movies. Good but overall, very disappointing when compared to the first two movies. Is that a fair comparison?


agree, i loved the series for a long time and thought the galatica jumping into orbit was about the coolest thing ever for a scifi series - then it just all went to shiet in a handbasket (for me anyway). at least the finale was watchable/entertaining, but still silly/ridiculous.


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## jwjody (Dec 7, 2002)

Why did they fly the fleet into the Sun? I don't remember what the explanation was.

J


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

jwjody said:


> Why did they fly the fleet into the Sun? I don't remember what the explanation was.
> 
> J


To get rid of all tech.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

Sirius Black said:


> Just a quick question... Why did Caville kill himself towards the end of the space battle after the humans had reclaimed the upper hand. Boomer's execution was, in my opinion, too easy a way to end things for her.


It was stated earlier in the thread, but basically the actor who play Caville went to RDM and said he thought it would be cool if his character killed himself. So RDM thought about it for a minute and said, "Hmm, this show is all about the characters after all, so why not let your character do something that is completely out of character? I like it!!!"


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## kemajor (Jan 2, 2003)

jwjody said:


> Why did they fly the fleet into the Sun? I don't remember what the explanation was.
> 
> J


TV Reason: It was Lee's great vision for a great future. He believed technology was the root of all evil.

Real Reason: They are frakking morons.

- Kelly


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

kemajor said:


> TV Reason: It was Lee's great vision for a great future. He believed technology was the root of all evil.
> 
> Real Reason: They are frakking morons.


Realer reason: To explain why there's no trace of Colonial life on Earth.

Realest reason: Because they thought it would be cool.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

jking said:


> It was stated earlier in the thread, but basically the actor who play Caville went to RDM and said he thought it would be cool if his character killed himself. So RDM thought about it for a minute and said, "Hmm, this show is all about the characters after all, so why not let your character do something that is completely out of character? I like it!!!"


While I certainly didn't agree with all the choices made by RDM and Co. that isn't a fair criticism since we actually _do_ have precendent for Cavil taking the 'quick' way out: during the New Caprica arc, I believe, his model slit his own throat to avoid a longer, more drawn-out death. If I'm remembering correctly, this was when Roslin and Zarek were scheduled to be executed by firing squad and the resistance turned the tide.

Either way, I distinctly remember Cavil bringing up how 'human skin is tougher than you might think' when sitting with the other models afterwards.

Truth be told, I'd argue that they actually did get authentic character bits - right down to Lee being completely illogical, Galen wanting to live alone, etc - but, yeah, the story-arc decisions were dubious...


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

The problem is, you can find precedent for just about any character taking just about any kind of action.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Sorry, but you're painting with too broad a brush for me, Rob.

If Cavil actually stuck to a truce (after gaining the knowledge of resurrection), that would have struck me as out-of-character.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

Sirius Black said:


> Some of the better episodes of ST:TNG and DS:9 were the result of RDM. He deserves an opportunity to prove himself again.


Meanwhile, for me, I could *never* get into DS9, even though I've seen every episode of all the Star Trek series. I've only seen maybe 10 episodes of DS9. It was the worst of the bunch, imo. I figured out at the end of last season of BSG that was making it not work for me, either. But I stuck it out anyway. (Why? Because I had watched all of the first three seasons back-to-back, via TiVo recordings).

Series isn't so bad when you watch them back to back - it goes quickly. You forget the suckage so much faster.


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Alpinemaps said:


> ....I've only seen maybe 10 episodes of DS9. It was the worst of the bunch, imo.....


 Huh?

If you only gave DS:9 ten episodes to make your decision, you shortchanged yourself. How could you make a decision like that after only 10 eps? It was more of an acquired taste. It was good but it took awhile...


----------



## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

Bierboy said:


> Huh?
> 
> If you only gave DS:9 ten episodes to make your decision, you shortchanged yourself. How could you make a decision like that after only 10 eps? It was more of an acquired taste. It was good but it took awhile...


When the other Trek shows hooked me on the first episode, then yes. But, I tend to do that with most TV shows. If I don't like the first two or three episodes, forget it. I don't have 'time' for an acquired taste.

I can't tell you how many DS9 fans have said 'oh, just ignore the first season, it gets good after that.'

So I'm supposed to just wait 24 episodes before a show gets good? Why?


----------



## Gunnyman (Jul 10, 2003)

Once DS9 got truly serial in nature it got VERY good. Where is THAT RDM?


----------



## pkscout (Jan 11, 2003)

hanumang said:


> that isn't a fair criticism since we actually _do_ have precendent for Cavil taking the 'quick' way out: during the New Caprica arc, I believe, his model slit his own throat to avoid a longer, more drawn-out death.


Yea, but that was when they had resurrection. His "easy way out" was final this time.


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Alpinemaps said:


> When the other Trek shows hooked me on the first episode, then yes. But, I tend to do that with most TV shows. If I don't like the first two or three episodes, forget it. I don't have 'time' for an acquired taste.
> 
> I can't tell you how many DS9 fans have said 'oh, just ignore the first season, it gets good after that.'
> 
> So I'm supposed to just wait 24 episodes before a show gets good? Why?


Other Trek shows hooked you after the first episode? So you thought _Encounter at Farpoint_ - the pilot for the Next Generation - was gripping? C'mon man, let's not get carried away here. 

If you didn't like DS9, fine, but its pilot was actually the strongest of the 4 Trek spin-offs. But most naysayers couldn't get past the 'no starship' thing to realize that. If you were one of the folks who felt it wasn't Star Trek, cool. But blaming its pilot is a very weak argument.

I'm a Niner to the bone and I've never heard another DS9 fan recommend 'ignoring the first season' so I have to believe that you're making that one up. In fact, one the greatest character episodes of the series - Duet - was a first season episode.



Sirius Black said:


> Oh well... unlike others, I will watch _The Plan_ and I will give _Caprica_ a chance. Some of the better episodes of ST:TNG and DS:9 were the result of RDM. He deserves an opportunity to prove himself again.


While RDM did excellent work on TNG and DS9 I don't think he's suited to being the showrunner. He needs someone else to steer him back around when he - as he admits to doing in a podcast - gets showy with his writing. Too often his scripts become so absorbed in their character moments that he loses sight of the story. Or he simply invents dumb arcs like the final five and no one has the power to tell him, "Ron, stop it. Now go write something where Col. Tigh is drinking heavily and being completely incompetent."


----------



## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

pkscout said:


> Yea, but that was when they had resurrection. His "easy way out" was final this time.


To quote Cavil: please continue to state the obvious. 

Bad jokes aside, since resurrection was lost with Tory's death, yes, he chose to die - really die - by his means.

Considering how much he hated being a skinjob (as repeatedly mentioned this half-season) it made sense for him to eat his own gun.


----------



## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

cheesesteak said:


> What was up with the Adama vomit? I really didn't need to see that.


No kidding. I was eating dinner when that happened. 



pkscout said:


> The best thing I can say is that it's over. I feel like I deserve a t-shirt that says "I watched BSG for 5 years, and all I got was this stupid t-shirt."


I had the same feeling after the finale of 'Alias'.


----------



## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

hanumang said:


> Other Trek shows hooked you after the first episode? So you thought _Encounter at Farpoint_ - the pilot for the Next Generation - was gripping? C'mon man, let's not get carried away here.


To the 15 year old me, that had only ever seen reruns of original Trek and movies, a new show was gripping. I loved it. 20 years later, sure it's not so good. But to me - it was great!



> If you didn't like DS9, fine, but its pilot was actually the strongest of the 4 Trek spin-offs. But most naysayers couldn't get past the 'no starship' thing to realize that. If you were one of the folks who felt it wasn't Star Trek, cool. But blaming its pilot is a very weak argument.


I didn't blame it's pilot. I just said that I've only watched 5-10 episodes. I never mentioned which ones I've watched. I've seen the baseball episode, and the Tribbles episode, and the Mirror Universe episodes. Those all were fine to me. But they had other hooks than DS9 to get me involved. Other, later episodes that I've tried to watch just didn't hook me. Maybe it was me trying to get involved in a serialized show in the middle of the narrative? I don't know.



> I'm a Niner to the bone and I've never heard another DS9 fan recommend 'ignoring the first season' so I have to believe that you're making that one up. In fact, one the greatest character episodes of the series - Duet - was a first season episode.


That's your experience. My experience, with my Trek friends - when I tell them I haven't see DS9 because I couldn't make it through the first few episodes, have ALL said to me - oh, skip the first season, and you'll be fine.



> While RDM did excellent work on TNG and DS9 I don't think he's suited to being the showrunner.


I don't think RDM is this genius so many make him out to be. I certainly didn't see it in the last season of BSG (and I enjoyed the first two seasons). I also don't see the genius in Joss Whedon, even though I loved Firefly. I never could get into his other productions.

Okay, we're steering this thread off course. Back on course now.


----------



## bluntspoon (Aug 29, 2003)

kaszeta said:


> Biggest bag of suck that ever sucked.
> 
> Truly, that was bad.


Hello! We have a winner.
I didn't pad the finale so I missed the final 10 minutes or so and only just watched the end. I wish I hadn't, I'm more unhappy than ever. 

And this Answer from NJ interview just flat out makes me mad.



> Given how much of the show was made up on the fly by you and the other writers, looking back, how well do you think everything hangs together with the finale factored into it?
> 
> I think it hangs together better than it has any right to. I do feel good that the process I always believed in and really defended -- about feeling the story instinctively as you go through it, and not being tied to, "Oh, we know exactly how it's going to end up" -- that that was true. We were able to get there and could say, "We've been making this mosaic, and now we just need to put the final touches on it and we'll have a complete picture." There's loose threads and things that don't quite work, but I think that's in the nature of almost any show. By and large, I think we did a pretty good job of it.


There is a serious amount of delusion running through this guy.


----------



## rrrobinsonjr (Nov 26, 2004)

I want that 2 hours of my life back.

I won't invest another second in the BSG franchise. The movie this fall, the new series, none of it.

These writers are making it up as they go along. It's a lot of talk that means nothing. Most of the mystical bs doesn't even make any sense. Whatever they were trying to do, they failed miserably.

I bailed on this show weeks ago, and decided I'd check out the finale. I should have just stayed away.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

> I think it hangs together better than it has any right to. I do feel good that the process I always believed in and really defended -- about feeling the story instinctively as you go through it, and not being tied to, "Oh, we know exactly how it's going to end up" -- that that was true. We were able to get there and could say, "We've been making this mosaic, and now we just need to put the final touches on it and we'll have a complete picture." There's loose threads and things that don't quite work, but I think that's in the nature of almost any show. By and large, I think we did a pretty good job of it.


It just shows a disrespect for the audience.

How 'bout this RDM? How are your numbers on BSG vs the numbers on Lost?

Because that has got to be a direct swipe on Lost.

Yeah, that's what I thought.


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

IndyJones1023 said:


> To get rid of all tech.


Yet, they let the most advanced of the tech (the Centurions) go wander around the galaxy because "it's the right thing to do".


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

rrrobinsonjr said:


> I want that 2 hours of my life back.
> 
> I won't invest another second in the BSG franchise. The movie this fall, the new series, none of it.
> 
> ...


If you "bailed on this show weeks ago", then "decided to check out the finale"....how would the finale make any sense at all to you?


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Bierboy said:


> If you "bailed on this show weeks ago", then "decided to check out the finale"....how would the finale make any sense at all to you?


Well, I can't see any continuity from prior episodes really mattering much for the finale. Not that prior episodes had all that much continuity.


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

kaszeta said:


> They did that since that's what the actor thought would be cool.
> .


Yep. But logically, another reason would be so that he wouldn't be taken prisoner and be made to call off the attack again under duress.



Alpinemaps said:


> Meanwhile, for me, I could *never* get into DS9, even though I've seen every episode of all the Star Trek series. I've only seen maybe 10 episodes of DS9. It was the worst of the bunch, imo.


I've watched probably only 1/2 of DS9 (vs. all of TNG, TOS and Enterprise). Overall, DS9 wasn't very interesting and it only got good around the end w/the Dominion war.

When Marina Sirtis appears w/Michael Dorn at conventions, she likes to refer to it as Deep Sleep 9.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

dswallow said:


> Well, I can't see any continuity from prior episodes really mattering much for the finale.


I suppose if someone didn't watch part 1 of Daybreak, the flashbacks (in parts 2 & 3) could be more than a little jarring.


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## rrrobinsonjr (Nov 26, 2004)

dswallow said:


> Well, I can't see any continuity from prior episodes really mattering much for the finale. Not that prior episodes had all that much continuity.


Precisely. I didn't really have much trouble picking up the thread. But it was basically a lot of the same concocted false profoundness and meaningless gibberish. Things happen that are apparently supposed to make you think, but are in the end just stupid.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

morac said:


> Yet, they let the most advanced of the tech (the Centurions) go wander around the galaxy because "it's the right thing to do".


No, no, no! They "earned" it.


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## doom1701 (May 15, 2001)

cwerdna said:


> I've watched probably only 1/2 of DS9 (vs. all of TNG, TOS and Enterprise). Overall, DS9 wasn't very interesting and it only got good around the end w/the Dominion war.
> 
> When Marina Sirtis appears w/Michael Dorn at conventions, she likes to refer to it as Deep Sleep 9.


Just to echo...I feel the same way about DS9. I watched quite a bit of it. ST:TNG was sacred time for me each week, and I feel I gave DS9 quite a chance (2+ seasons). Near the end of Babylon 5, I went back to watching DS9 for a little bit, and found that it was still full of the technobabblish deus ex machina storylines that had turned me off to it years before.

And one additional comment about the "earths" controversy. Back in season 2, when the Arrow shows us earth (while on Kobol), we see *our* constellations. And everyone is standing at Stonehenge. Granted, with the common themes the "other" earth could have easily had it's own stonehenge, but the constellations (as well as the planetary landmarks that Starbuck later describes) couldn't be duplicated. The first "earth" they found was always intended to be our earth, until Moore changed his mind.


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## rrrobinsonjr (Nov 26, 2004)

doom1701 said:


> The first "earth" they found was always intended to be our earth, until Moore changed his mind.


Yeah, that's obvious. The show suffered in part from any real long-term vision.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

doom1701 said:


> Just to echo...I feel the same way about DS9. I watched quite a bit of it. ST:TNG was sacred time for me each week, and I feel I gave DS9 quite a chance (2+ seasons). Near the end of Babylon 5, I went back to watching DS9 for a little bit, and found that it was still full of the technobabblish deus ex machina storylines that had turned me off to it years before.


I think DS9 was the Star Trek show for people who didn't like Star Trek shows. My attitude towards TNG ranged from apathy to loathing, but I loved DS9.


doom1701 said:


> And one additional comment about the "earths" controversy. Back in season 2, when the Arrow shows us earth (while on Kobol), we see *our* constellations. And everyone is standing at Stonehenge. Granted, with the common themes the "other" earth could have easily had it's own stonehenge, but the constellations (as well as the planetary landmarks that Starbuck later describes) couldn't be duplicated. The first "earth" they found was always intended to be our earth, until Moore changed his mind.


I'm pretty sure I remember an interview back when they first found "fake Earth," in which Moore insisted it was the real Earth. If I remember correctly, then that means either he was lying, or he later changed his mind.

Not that it really matters...


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

I wonder if Red Stripe Beer paid for all the product placement in that episode.


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## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

dswallow said:


> Well, I can't see any continuity from prior episodes really mattering much for the finale. Not that prior episodes had all that much continuity.


My point is him making a statement about the quality of the show while not having watched it in some time. Because of that, I find that statement less than substantive and not to be taken seriously. I'll take a statement like that much more seriously from someone who stuck with the show.


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## aaronw (Apr 13, 2001)

morac said:


> That phrase is very close to "Biggest bunch of sucks that ever sucked" which came from a early episode of the Simpsons.


I think it's actually closer to "That was the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked" - for the three-peat.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

Gunnyman said:


> Once DS9 got truly serial in nature it got VERY good. Where is THAT RDM?


On DS9 he was playing in someone else's sandbox by their rules. RDM is better as helmsman than captain of the ship.



phox_mulder said:


> $27 for an hour and a half?
> 
> Nah, don't think so.


26.95 is only the MSRP. Chances are you'll pay between $15 and $20.

I'm thinking that a better title for _The Plan_ will be _The Retconning_.


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## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

There's another interview with RDM at http://www.tvguide.com/News/Battlestar-Galacticas-Ron-1004256.aspx?.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> I think DS9 was the Star Trek show for people who didn't like Star Trek shows. My attitude towards TNG ranged from apathy to loathing, but I loved DS9.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I remember an interview back when they first found "fake Earth," in which Moore insisted it was the real Earth. If I remember correctly, then that means either he was lying, or he later changed his mind.
> 
> Not that it really matters...


Or we all live on the fake earth.

I swear listening to all the drivel in this thread. I would think you guys all belong on the show. People hated the whiny Callie. I don't think she would measure up to you guys.

I really believe you guys would have hated the finale no matter how it was executed. It is your destiny!


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## appleye1 (Jan 26, 2002)

cwerdna said:


> There's another interview with RDM at http://www.tvguide.com/News/Battlestar-Galacticas-Ron-1004256.aspx?.


Ugh...I'm speechless.

BSG is cursed. It has this wonderful premise and a great backstory and mythology, but twice now it's been trashed, If anyone ever proposes making another version in the future I'll be highly doubtful of it's potential.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

cwerdna said:


> There's another interview with RDM at http://www.tvguide.com/News/Battlestar-Galacticas-Ron-1004256.aspx?.


uh.. he.. uh...

wow.

Hey, just 60.5 hours until some actual tv to cleanse our pallette! What a complete difference.

I gotta go shower for work. Maybe I'll have an epiphany and realize "it's about QUALITY TV!" and delete a bunch of season passes.


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## rlc1 (Sep 15, 2003)

I so wanted to like the finale, even after I saw it and my initial reaction was negative. But after chewing over it for a while, I just can't make myself like the idea of 38,000 people deciding to live as primitives. Their lives would just be incredibly hard and it doesn't make sense that anyone would choose to live that way.

Also, for all the effort that they went through to get Hera back, what did she really do for them? Supposedly she was "special" but besides providing the musical notes that led to Kara's jump coordinates, she had no purpose in the end. Mitochondrial Eve? With 38,000 new people suddenly populating "prehistoric Earth", why does Hera become the mother of humanity? Seems like just a way to shoe-horn her in as an important part of the final plot.

I would much rather have seen the Galactica jump to a present-day Earth, sort of a "Galactica 2009" without the silliness of Galactica 1980.

I think the trouble with many shows (BSG, Lost) is that in order to stay interesting and the get people to watch, they have to write many questions into the plot along the way that you hope will eventually be answered, which is part of the reason you keep watching. You want answers. But there are just too many questions to possibly answer them all in a satisfactory way at the end. So ultimately writers paint themselves into corners, and they just can't find a way out at the end that will satisfy everyone. Just my opinion of course - if you were satisfied with this ending, then good for you - I wish I could have that same feeling. But I don't, the ending just got me depressed.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

rlc1 said:


> I so wanted to like the finale, even after I saw it and my initial reaction was negative. But after chewing over it for a while, I just can't make myself like the idea of 38,000 people deciding to live as primitives. Their lives would just be incredibly hard and it doesn't make sense that anyone would choose to live that way.
> 
> Also, for all the effort that they went through to get Hera back, what did she really do for them? Supposedly she was "special" but besides providing the musical notes that led to Kara's jump coordinates, she had no purpose in the end. Mitochondrial Eve? With 38,000 new people suddenly populating "prehistoric Earth", why does Hera become the mother of humanity? Seems like just a way to shoe-horn her in as an important part of the final plot.
> 
> ...


The whole point of the hera thing was not because whe was special and would save the fleet ....

It was because the military had nothing left and felt dying in battle on the ship they loved was better than wandering off on a starbase with everything they new and loved gone. This was started by Adama afeter realizing they had to abandon ship and he told him it was mostl likely a one way trip.


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

I am one of the ones who liked the finale. Maybe because I watched all seasons in the span of a few months.

But, I just read that RDM interview and all I can say is....thank Gods he is not a writer for Lost. He would certainly frak that up.


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## rlc1 (Sep 15, 2003)

zalusky said:


> The whole point of the hera thing was not because whe was special and would save the fleet ....
> 
> It was because the military had nothing left and felt dying in battle on the ship they loved was better than wandering off on a starbase with everything they new and loved gone. This was started by Adama afeter realizing they had to abandon ship and he told him it was mostl likely a one way trip.


I disagree. They went to save Hera because they thought she was important - in fact both races though she was vitally important. Perhaps she was important to the Cylons, being the first hybrid. But in the end she wasn't important at all to the humans, past the point where she came up with the musical notes.


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## rlc1 (Sep 15, 2003)

pex said:


> Well, I loved the finale. I suspect part of the reason I could enjoy it is that I realized early on not to get hung up on plot details, or I'd drive myself crazy. I just let the shows wash over me, like I'm listening to improv jazz. They managed to reel in the majority of the plot lines--that's enough for me.
> 
> A couple of thoughts:
> _The faithful rarely love a show finale._ Intricate plot-driven shows are especially problematic--the longer the show runs, the more internal inconsistencies crop up, and the more loose ends are left unresolved. Six Feet Under was the only quality series in recent memory to expire leaving fans satisfied, but it hardly is comparable plot-wise.
> ...


Excellent points. The greater a show is in the early days, the bigger the fall when they have to try and wrap it up in a finale.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

rlc1 said:


> I so wanted to like the finale, even after I saw it and my initial reaction was negative. But after chewing over it for a while, I just can't make myself like the idea of 38,000 people deciding to live as primitives. Their lives would just be incredibly hard and it doesn't make sense that anyone would choose to live that way.
> 
> Also, for all the effort that they went through to get Hera back, what did she really do for them? Supposedly she was "special" but besides providing the musical notes that led to Kara's jump coordinates, she had no purpose in the end. Mitochondrial Eve? With 38,000 new people suddenly populating "prehistoric Earth", why does Hera become the mother of humanity? Seems like just a way to shoe-horn her in as an important part of the final plot.
> 
> ...


+10


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

cwerdna said:


> There's another interview with RDM at http://www.tvguide.com/News/Battlestar-Galacticas-Ron-1004256.aspx?.


Every time this self-important fool opens his yap he reveals himself for the opportunistic slacker he is. He deludes himself thinking that BSG provided any social commentary of worth. It could have had it actually explored the issues it raised, but it went nowhere. His penchant for inserting scenes into episodes just because it would be cool (Lee seeing the pigeon) provided some interesting moments but ruined the series. The finale flashbacks were gratuitous and an afterthought. (OK I liked the strip club, but that's my failing as a male) Roslyn as a cougar out of the blue typifies RDM's penchant for shock at the expense of character arc.

And yah, I'm shallow enough a viewer that I was able to anesthethise my rational side and enjoy the final episodes as pure entertainment devoid of rationality. Great scenes and music.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

rlc1 said:


> I disagree. They went to save Hera because they thought she was important - in fact both races though she was vitally important. Perhaps she was important to the Cylons, being the first hybrid. But in the end she wasn't important at all to the humans, past the point where she came up with the musical notes.


They went to save Hera because that's what RDM decided at the last minute that they should do. Rob has said it probably a couple of times in this thread already, it's useless trying to apply any logic to why they do anything in this show. In fact, RDM basically said it himself... "the plot doesn't matter."


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## whitson77 (Nov 10, 2002)

RM is a fool, and shame on me for watching it after season two. I won't watch anymore of his work


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

jking said:


> In fact, RDM basically said it himself... "the plot doesn't matter."


do you think he understands that this is why they didn't pick up the phone and call him about the movie?

you know, because having a plot is usually a GOOD thing...


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## rlc1 (Sep 15, 2003)

whitson77 said:


> RM is a fool, and shame on me for watching it after season two. I won't watch anymore of his work


I won't watch Caprica because I think it looks too much like a soap opera, and even if it isn't, I think it will ultimately disappoint. I might watch The Plan because I think even RDM can make a 2-hour show interesting. But I'll never watch another series created by him. I hate him....but even more, I hate myself for getting so wrapped up in a TV series. I feel really pathetic that I can get so bummed out because of a TV show finale that was unsatisfying for me. In fact, the way this show ended will probably play a large part in my watching less TV from here on. That's probably a good thing.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

hanumang said:


> I suppose if someone didn't watch part 1 of Daybreak, the flashbacks (in parts 2 & 3) could be more than a little jarring.


Speaking of that, what was the deal with he pigeon? It part one Lee chases it off, in part 2/3 it just flies off on it's own. Also they showed it right after Kara disappeared. If there was some kind of symbolism going on, it went right over my head.

As I was about to post the above, I read the TV Guide interview. Apparently there was no point to the scene. "I just had an image of someone in their house chasing a bird from the room, I didn't know what it meant but it's an image and let's put it on the board" - Ron Moore. I guess that's why it didn't make sense. 



aaronw said:


> I think it's actually closer to "That was the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked" - for the three-peat.


I decided to look it up and actually neither of us was right, but you were closer. It's "they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked."



rlc1 said:


> Also, for all the effort that they went through to get Hera back, what did she really do for them? Supposedly she was "special" but besides providing the musical notes that led to Kara's jump coordinates, she had no purpose in the end. Mitochondrial Eve? With 38,000 new people suddenly populating "prehistoric Earth", why does Hera become the mother of humanity? Seems like just a way to shoe-horn her in as an important part of the final plot.


That gets to me to and even the script writers seemed to acknowledge the problem with it since Baltar and Six question why saving Hera was so important. The only thing I can think of is that Hera is the only one to survive. Like you mentioned going from having all that technology to working with rocks and sticks as tools would be incredibly difficult and most likely most of the colonists died. They pretty much had to since otherwise it wouldn't take 150,000 years to evolve into modern day man. It still doesn't make any sense, but apparently it doesn't have to.

Overall I think the following line by Ron Moore pretty much condenses the entire problem down to a single sentence:

""Let's forget about the plot for a moment and just trust that it will work itself out, because it always does" - Ron Moore


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## Jeeters (Feb 25, 2003)

rlc1 said:


> I disagree. They went to save Hera because they thought she was important - in fact both races though she was vitally important. Perhaps she was important to the Cylons, being the first hybrid. But in the end she wasn't important at all to the humans, past the point where she came up with the musical notes.


I don't think they thought she was as import to themselves as they thought she was important to the other Cylons. i.e., it was more a matter taking Hera away from the Cylons than it was getting her back for themselves.


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## rlc1 (Sep 15, 2003)

morac said:


> Speaking of that, what was the deal with he pigeon? It part one Lee chases it off, in part 2/3 it just flies off on it's own. Also they showed it right after Kara disappeared. If there was some kind of symbolism going on, it went right over my head.
> 
> As I was about to post the above, I read the TV Guide interview. Apparently there was no point to the scene. "I just had an image of someone in their house chasing a bird from the room, I didn't know what it meant but it's an image and let's put it on the board" - Ron Moore. I guess that's why it didn't make sense.
> 
> ...


Yeah, the pigeon scene and the "trust that it will work itself out" line really make me angry. Plots don't work themselves out, writers and show creators have to craft good, solid story lines. I think RDM just got lazy because BSG was so positively reviewed for so long, and he thought he could get away with anything. I could accept the "characters are important, plot is not" argument if that's how the series had been all along. But clearly the plot was important for the first couple of seasons, at least.

Looking back, I can't decide when this show jumped the shark, but it's between one of these two plot points for me:

-The whole idea of the Final Five - and how the people that were in that group seemed so randomly chosen

-The idea that the Cylons would even decide that it was wrong to try and wipe out humanity, and instead changed course and tried to care for them. Call me simplistic, I would have rather the show just continued as a more pure good-versus-evil story and that humanity eventually succeeded in wiping out the evil Cylons.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Wow, now there's not even any Ron Moore love around here? I was castrated before for suggesting he might not have a clue what he was doing...


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

rlc1 said:


> Looking back, I can't decide when this show jumped the shark...


IMHO, I think New Caprica is the point in which they began to lose their way.


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## tgrim1 (Sep 11, 2006)

I for one am just happy to see we evolved to leave the corners on our paper and pictures.


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

rlc1 said:


> I won't watch Caprica because I think it looks too much like a soap opera, and even if it isn't, I think it will ultimately disappoint. I might watch The Plan because I think even RDM can make a 2-hour show interesting.


This is my take, in a nutshell.

I ended up getting extremely frustrated with BSG. The Miniseries was great, albeit suffering a bit from the "pilot effect", in which several plot items/events are present in a pilot that end up being regretted later.

The series hooked me extremely quickly, since the 1st season started off so, so well ("33" is still one of my favorite tv show episodes ever), not even showing much signs of fading until "You Can't Go Home Again." After that, though, it seemed to be mostly a slide downhill, recovering quite well with "Pegasus", and then sliding down again until bottoming out at "Black Market".

However, every once in a while RDM and company could pull something decent off. The Pegasus episodes were really good. And while I though the whole New Caprica plot line was bad, I really like both the web episodes and "Exodus, Pt II" were really well done. BSG:Razor was also quite refreshing, and to me, showed that it was possible for the BSG writers to retcon decently. In fact, the hope that they could pull something like that off again is a good part of what kept me watching (and, indeed, a few of the reviews I saw before the episode made me think something like this might have happened, since I saw phrases like "tied up all of the loose ends" and "excellent finale" thrown around).

Alas, in the end, a lot of BSG came across like a lot of other poorly-produced shows, with all sorts of plot and character inconsistencies (seriously, just try to turn everything we've seen into an actual timeline...). Yes, there was good writing present as well, but it was separated by a lot of poor writing.


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## Mars Rocket (Mar 24, 2000)

morac said:


> Like you mentioned going from having all that technology to working with rocks and sticks as tools would be incredibly difficult and most likely most of the colonists died. They pretty much had to since otherwise it wouldn't take 150,000 years to evolve into modern day man. It still doesn't make any sense, but apparently it doesn't have to.


I agree that they would most likely all die, if not from being unprepared than from various dangerous animals that existed back then. "Modern man" (**** sapiens) appeared around 150K years ago (maybe as far back as 195K years ago), so the only evolution going on that really changed things was a cultural evolution.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

jking said:


> IMHO, I think New Caprica is the point in which they began to lose their way.


Agreed. That's when things began to get less interesting to me, too.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

dswallow said:


> Wow, now there's not even any Ron Moore love around here? I was castrated before for suggesting he might not have a clue what he was doing...


Sorry about the castration. The text internet doesn't do high pitched voice.


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

morac said:


> Yet, they let the most advanced of the tech (the Centurions) go wander around the galaxy because "it's the right thing to do".


I don't think they hated all technology. They just wanted their own lives to be simpler, not just from a technological standpoint, but also from a sociopolitical one. So, rather than go back to the big city, "large population confined to a small area" living, they spread out around the world, and lived in smaller communities.

We didn't see them destroy any of the shuttlecraft, and I'll bet they kept some weapons and tools around too. After all, they would eventually need to use them to help build the pyramids.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

jking said:


> IMHO, I think New Caprica is the point in which they began to lose their way.


True. I think the show just allowed the characters to wallow in self pity for too long after that. Actually, I would point the finger at the episode with the boxing matches as the point which really signaled that the writers were adrift. The immediate aftermath, with the "star chamber" tribunal spacing the collaborators was also good, but after that... eh.

There seemed to be hope after they found the old "Cylon Earth." I had no idea, though, that Dee's suicide was the writers' symbolic way of saying they had no idea where they were going either.

There had to be many interesting directions that the show could have chosen after New Caprica. RDM and his writers chose almost none of them.


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## USAFSSO (Aug 24, 2005)

appleye1 said:


> Ugh...I'm speechless.
> 
> BSG is cursed. It has this wonderful premise and a great backstory and mythology, but twice now it's been trashed, If anyone ever proposes making another version in the future I'll be highly doubtful of it's potential.


_"It's happened before it will happen again"_


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

Mars Rocket said:


> I agree that they would most likely all die, if not from being unprepared than from various dangerous animals that existed back then. "Modern man" (**** sapiens) appeared around 150K years ago (maybe as far back as 195K years ago), so the only evolution going on that really changed things was a cultural evolution.


I'm going to guess that Helo, Athena and Hera were the ones who survived and left descendants. It seemed like they were they only ones who were focused on the essentials (farming and hunting). Lee just wanted to go climb rocks.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

aintnosin said:


> I'm going to guess that Helo, Athena and Hera were the ones who survived and left descendants. It seemed like they were they only ones who were focused on the essentials (farming and hunting). Lee just wanted to go climb rocks.


in Lee's defense, he thought he was going to be climbing Kara for the next few years


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

rlc1 said:


> With 38,000 new people suddenly populating "prehistoric Earth", why does Hera become the mother of humanity?


Perhaps the Human-Cylon mix made her genetic line the strongest. Maybe without that mix, the Colonials, Cylons, and prehistoric humans would have all died out. Whatever higher powers existed knew that she was essential to the development of life on Earth, so they guided everyone to that end. Who knows, perhaps even the destruction of the Colonies in the first place was to get to that point.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

Isn't it odd that, 150,000 years later, we evolved to dress just like they did?

And how exactly did the Kobol gods become our signs of the zodiac?

I'm not expecting an answer of course...


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## gamndbndr (Jul 3, 2007)

First, I really enjoyed the series over the years. This and Eureka are why SciFi is watched in our household.

But I am still confused by a critical point of the finale that I haven't seen discussed further - what about the rest of the fleet?

Battle ensues, Kara jumps the ship - but not to the rendezvous point (where they had to get in 12 hours) but to somewhere that only she knows through the tones (the president says, "Kara, where have you taken us?") and they end up on Earth.

But isn't the rest of the fleet waiting at the rendezvous point? How did they find their way to Earth? Or did they?

Or is this just a part of a "and somehow everyone found each other and lived happily ever after" ending?


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## kjnorman (Jun 21, 2002)

Rosincrans said:


> Is Brian a Centurian?


As I said, I had to switch my *brain* off..


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

gamndbndr said:


> First, I really enjoyed the series over the years. This and Eureka are why SciFi is watched in our household.
> 
> But I am still confused by a critical point of the finale that I haven't seen discussed further - what about the rest of the fleet?
> 
> ...


they did address that point: they sent a raptor to the rendez-vous point and guided the fleet to Earth...


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## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

gamndbndr said:


> But I am still confused by a critical point of the finale that I haven't seen discussed further - what about the rest of the fleet?


Racetrack probably followed Galactica to Earth, then jumped over to the rendezvous point, and told everyone where Galactica was.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

gamndbndr said:


> First, I really enjoyed the series over the years. This and Eureka are why SciFi is watched in our household.
> 
> But I am still confused by a critical point of the finale that I haven't seen discussed further - what about the rest of the fleet?
> 
> ...


It was pretty clearly addressed. Once Galactica arrived at "new Earth," it sent a Raptor to the correct rendezvous point and told the rest of the fleet where to go. Then once they'd all offloaded onto the planet, Sam Anders piloted the entire fleet into the Sun to destroy the ships and their technology.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> It was pretty clearly addressed. Once Galactica arrived at "new Earth," it sent a Raptor to the correct rendezvous point and told the rest of the fleet where to go. Then once they'd all offloaded onto the planet, Sam Anders piloted the entire fleet into the Sun to destroy the ships and their technology.


You! You have silver fillings! Let's get rid of those too - no need to have any technology with us.

Timmy, you have asthma.. sorry, you're not going to make it, because we're not taking any technology with us.. No more inhalers for you!

We're gonna live an adventure! There's no conceivable chance we'll change our mind, so instead of leaving the fleet in orbit or on the moon or something, we should send it into the sun.


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## Talon (Dec 5, 2001)

Jeeters said:


> I don't think they thought she was as import to themselves as they thought she was important to the other Cylons. i.e., it was more a matter taking Hera away from the Cylons than it was getting her back for themselves.


Yes.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> You! You have silver fillings! Let's get rid of those too - no need to have any technology with us.
> 
> Timmy, you have asthma.. sorry, you're not going to make it, because we're not taking any technology with us.. No more inhalers for you!
> 
> We're gonna live an adventure! There's no conceivable chance we'll change our mind, so instead of leaving the fleet in orbit or on the moon or something, we should send it into the sun.


What amazed me is how little debate there was about it. An issue this important would normally consume an entire season and feature at least one mutiny and Bill Adama would disown his son at least once.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

aintnosin said:


> What amazed me is how little debate there was about it. An issue this important would normally consume an entire season and feature at least one mutiny and Bill Adama would disown his son at least once.


you forgot the drunken and tearful breakdown...with stuff on Adama's desk getting swept away and broken...all very dramatic...

then the obligatory throw up scene in living rooms across the nation


----------



## pjenkins (Mar 8, 1999)

oh yeah, the "one jump to new Earthk because Bob Dylan's song is playing in my head", forgot about that disaster of a plot line....


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

aintnosin said:


> What amazed me is how little debate there was about it. An issue this important would normally consume an entire season and feature at least one mutiny and Bill Adama would disown his son at least once.


Had they thought of this ending a couple of years ago, that's probably what they would have done. But since they only thought of this ending in just enough time to insert it into the series finale, they abandoned all consistency (once again) in order to shoehorn something into the "plot."


----------



## kemajor (Jan 2, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Realer reason: To explain why there's no trace of Colonial life on Earth.
> 
> Realest reason: Because they thought it would be cool.


Comments on your <excellent> reasons...

Realer Reason: This also explains the lack of mitochondrial raptor dna. 

Realest Reason: Man, you nailed it.

- Kelly


----------



## Talon (Dec 5, 2001)

jbppsu said:


> - There was zero indication that Kara was anything but a living breathing person. But now we're supposed to believe that she was an angel/ghost all along? Umm, ok, but she did real things! She moved objects, she jumped the ship, but she wasn't real? Huh? But if she was an angel all along why was it such a struggle for her to find the coordinates for Earth2?


Have you ever watched an episode of Supernatural? Angels (and Demons) can do anything humans can, move objects, etc. And actually on that show as well, the Angels are not exactly clear on what they are supposed to be doing. Can't BSG take the same artistic license in this case? After all, Lee did see her ship explode, she couldn't be the human Kara anymore.

I liked the finale. The main beef I have is buying into the fact that they gave up all technology.


----------



## Tangent (Feb 25, 2005)

While I enjoyed the finale, it wasn't nearly as satisfying as I'd hoped. Like has been repeated multiple times, there are too many inconsistencies from one episode to another, too many plot holes and retconning. My biggest disappointment throughout the entire series has been the mystical part of it. It was relatively minor at first, but as they wrote themselves further and further into corners they had no choice but to give characters visions to get out of them. Baltar's head-six is a good example. I'm positive she was at first always supposed to be a psychotic delusion brought on by his guilt over causing the near-annihilation of mankind. Any special insights she gave him - such as the Cylon device under the Dradus display that he blamed on Doral - could be explained as subconsious knowledge he would have anyway. He was an expert on military systems, so he would know that device didn't belong there.

One thing that stuck out that I was happy with is something the show has always done really well: The use of military terminology and procedures. Adama ordering "Flank speed" instead of the idiotic "ramming speed" was a welcome change from almost every other sci-fi show where starships collide.

While getting them to "Earth" did seem a bit rushed and sudden, I saw no problem with Adama's explanation of that Earth and the ruined one and didn't think it involved time travel. The original Earth is where the Cylon tribe fled from Kobol, eventually blew all but 5 of themselves up, and was the wasteland the fleet found earlier. In the finale Starbuck took them to this beautiful new planet which is clearly the planet we now live on, just 150,000 years ago. Since the fleet has spent the last 4 years suffering and dying so they can start a new life on Earth, they just said "frak it, we're calling _this _place Earth".

Even destroyiong the tech and the fleet didn't seem too far-fetched. They'd just spent 4 years of living hell on those ships. They were probably viewed as more of a prison than a home. That plus the reasonable premise that this would break the cycle would be enough for most people to accept.


----------



## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Talon said:


> Have you ever watched an episode of Supernatural? Angels (and Demons) can do anything humans can, move objects, etc. And actually on that show as well, the Angels are not exactly clear on what they are supposed to be doing. Can't BSG take the same artistic license in this case? After all, Lee did see her ship explode, she couldn't be the human Kara anymore.


That has nothing to do with the argument. The argument is that to pull ghosts and angels out of their ass at the last second in a space opera is (ironically enough) blasphemous, to say the least. You don't mix the two unless you start off that way.


----------



## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Tangent said:


> They'd just spent 4 years of living hell on those ships. They were probably viewed as more of a prison than a home.


That I can agree with. But sending everything into the sun makes no sense. I would think they would scavenge everything they could to give themselves a fighting chance on the planet first. Probably even land as many craft that are capable and gut them for building materials.


----------



## BitbyBlit (Aug 25, 2001)

zalusky said:


> I swear listening to all the drivel in this thread. I would think you guys all belong on the show. People hated the whiny Callie. I don't think she would measure up to you guys.


Finding out your husband is a Cylon is one thing, but we're talking about being disappointed in a whole television show here. Nothing can compare to that kind of loss.

If Callie had done what she did because she found out Galen was writing episodes of _Galactica_, we would have been more supportive of her emotional turmoil.


----------



## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Tangent said:


> While getting them to "Earth" did seem a bit rushed and sudden, I saw no problem with Adama's explanation of that Earth and the ruined one and didn't think it involved time travel. The original Earth is where the Cylon tribe fled from Kobol, eventually blew all but 5 of themselves up, and was the wasteland the fleet found earlier. In the finale Starbuck took them to this beautiful new planet which is clearly the planet we now live on, just 150,000 years ago. Since the fleet has spent the last 4 years suffering and dying so they can start a new life on Earth, they just said "frak it, we're calling _this _place Earth".


I know I sound like a broken record but NO...the first Earth matched ours in terms of constellations and positions as shown in Kobol...

if this is "our" Earth now, it's not a different planet...so it must be our past (time travel)...

or, they found another planet just like ours, in a system just like ours, with all stars and planets aligned in its sky in exactly the same way...

the truth is that RDM simply ignored everything he'd done to get us to the first Earth because it didn't fit what he wanted to do in the finale...


----------



## Talon (Dec 5, 2001)

What is this about a feature film having nothing to do with RDM?


----------



## rlc1 (Sep 15, 2003)

Anubys said:


> I know I sound like a broken record but NO...the first Earth matched ours in terms of constellations and positions as shown in Kobol...
> 
> if this is "our" Earth now, it's not a different planet...so it must be our past (time travel)...
> 
> ...


You're right. It's somewhat understandable that things that happened in season 1 or 2 might not all tie together by the time of the finale. But the "nuked Earth" plot point was very recent. Since RDM has said in interviews that they knew all along that they wanted humanity to find a new Earth to settle on, they really screwed up when they showed that "nuked Earth" matched up with our Earth in terms of the constellations. Major, inexcusable plot hole.


----------



## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Talon said:


> What is this about a feature film having nothing to do with RDM?


it was mentioned in the tvguide.com interview with RDM about 100 posts ago...they are making a film and RDM was lamenting the fact that they didn't bother calling him about it...


----------



## Tangent (Feb 25, 2005)

Anubys said:


> I know I sound like a broken record but NO...the first Earth matched ours in terms of constellations and positions as shown in Kobol...
> 
> if this is "our" Earth now, it's not a different planet...so it must be our past (time travel)...
> 
> ...


This is one of those cases where you can't go back too far into the show's details if you want it to make sense. The constellations which matched our own do not make sense no matter which explanation you look at. The other planet would not have them because it's in the wrong position in space. Earth 150,000 ago would not have them because of the slow but steady relative movement of the stars in the sky.

That said, the introduction of time-travel to FTL can be discounted also. If Time travel was involved due to the black hole the colony was around then the Raptor would not have been able to rendezvous with the fleet to have them meet up with the Galactica.

That leaves us with one decent option: Just forget previous evidence (as we've been forced to do more than once before) and accept what Adama said. They just decided to call this new planet Earth even though it isn't the planet they called Earth before.


----------



## pjenkins (Mar 8, 1999)

Howard Stern's review: "horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible".


----------



## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

aintnosin said:


> Isn't it odd that, 150,000 years later, we evolved to dress just like they did?
> 
> And how exactly did the Kobol gods become our signs of the zodiac?
> 
> I'm not expecting an answer of course...


It's all written down in the parts of the bible the Vatican is still hiding.


----------



## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

BitbyBlit said:


> Finding out your husband is a Cylon is one thing, but we're talking about being disappointed in a whole television show here. Nothing can compare to that kind of loss.
> 
> If Callie had done what she did because she found out Galen was writing episodes of _Galactica_, we would have been more supportive of her emotional turmoil.


 - spot on. I now understand why she was so broken up the whole episode and previous ones as well.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

This question was posed by a reader on USA Today TV Critic Robert Bianco's weekly webchat:


> Lexington, KY: Hey Robert. Ok. One more. Battlestar Galactica. I thought the finale was very well done. It was an ending that seemed to be planned for years. I hope LOST ends this solid and satisfying. Here is what I liked: It was truly unique and superb writing how BG showed different factions of the humans and cylons that were often at deadly odds with each other and overtime these factions came apart and came together. In the end, I don't believe I saw "evil" anywhere. Instead we went on a four year journey from "war with the cylons" to "different points of view about survival" where even the most identifying Cyclon (Caprica Six or Head Six) was maybe not so evil after all. Incredible how intricate this was including the final theme about the "endless cycles" and the two earths. I thought it was interesting how all of the major heroes of the series...did not exactly find unrealistic "last minute" happiness but each found their own unique form of peace. Also, when the military was saluting the new president and admiral...it really made me feel like it was their "last mission". The effects of the final battle were well done and I liked the way they brought together the different types of cylons into their battle. Religion was interesting. We had God, God(s), Angels among us, Angels of the future, Predestination, Incarnation. My conclusion is that I would like to see more of these series with a set number of episodes where the writers from the beginning know exactly where they are going and exactly the number of steps it takes to get there. LOST became good again once the number of steps was made in stone. Cheers.


All I have to say is: What TV show was this guy watching?


----------



## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> This question was posed by a reader on USA Today TV Critic Robert Bianco's weekly webchat:
> 
> All I have to say is: What TV show was this guy watching?


I think we finally have evidence of life on other planets, 'cause he sure isn't from this one!

I also wonder in what system of morality is it not evil to murder billions of people?


----------



## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

DevdogAZ said:


> This question was posed by a reader on USA Today TV Critic Robert Bianco's weekly webchat:
> 
> All I have to say is: What TV show was this guy watching?


Well, he's clearly not reading TCF, nor any of the RDM interviews! 

Actually, if you read the BSG LiveJournal Community, most (but not all) over there loved the finale.


----------



## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> That has nothing to do with the argument. The argument is that to pull ghosts and angels out of their ass at the last second in a space opera is (ironically enough) blasphemous, to say the least. You don't mix the two unless you start off that way.


Normally I completely agree with your view of RDM's hacking of BSG, however let me attempt to defend RDM's Deus Ex Machina ending.  Actually, the non physical, mystical ending possibility was set up right from the 1st season. Constant references to god(s) ran through the series. Visions by multiple characters. Even though I attributed head Six to psychological trauma from realizing you destroyed humanity for a Lewinski, the supernational explanation was pre-established as a possibility. A constant 'religious' theme. In retrospect, RDM cleverly hid the Angels in plain sight, that is assuming that he knew that from the beginning which I kinda doubt. 

That said, nobody could have a clue about the ending because it was what it was on a recent RDM whim, not a deterministic consequence of the story arc. Suspension of critical thinking is a must for the finale and in my view, for the last couple seasons. I thought that the last episodes were very entertaining once I knew chaos was inevitable and just lay back and enjoyed it, so to speak.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Alpinemaps said:


> Actually, if you read the BSG LiveJournal Community, most (but not all) over there loved the finale.


I get torched over in the AVS Forum BSG thread as a simple philistine space cadet, intellectually incapable of understanding RDM's brilliance and insight.


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## fog00 (Jan 3, 2007)

morac said:


> I decided to look it up and actually neither of us was right, but you were closer. It's "they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked."


To be more complete, it is "Yeah, Moe, that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! Ive seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked!"


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

philw1776 said:


> I get torched over in the AVS Forum BSG thread as a simple philistine space cadet, intellectually incapable of understanding RDM's brilliance and insight.


Yeah, I got torched over there once or twice for doubting the great RDM. Even though all I did was mention things RDM himself said in the podcasts (between his discussions on his choice of scotch and the inane ramblings of his wife), such as his talks about stranded plot lines, production mistakes, and the like.

I'm scared that enough people thought that this ending was excellent that we'll be subjected to more stuff like this...


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

pjenkins said:


> Howard Stern's review: "horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible".


...and I have just so much respect for him.....


----------



## pjenkins (Mar 8, 1999)

Bierboy said:


> ...and I have just so much respect for him.....


he's usually pretty good about geeky-movie/show reviews, actually.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

kaszeta said:


> Yeah, I got torched over there once or twice for doubting the great RDM. Even though all I did was mention things RDM himself said in the podcasts (between his discussions on his choice of scotch and the inane ramblings of his wife), such as his talks about stranded plot lines, production mistakes, and the like.


What's hilarious over there at AVS Forum is that the RDM rump swabs have connative dissonance over RDM's own statements. Over the last season, a few more posters have committed apostacy against the RDM religion.

...a fellow NH resident


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## JohnB1000 (Dec 6, 2004)

OK, so I'm gonna take this off on a tangent. Today I was reading an article on song lyrics (written by Jarvis Cocker of Pulp) He did an analysis of James Blunt's Your Beautiful. It fit this show to a tee.



> But it's not all good. Consider James Blunt. I know that attacking him may seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but I'm going to do it anyway. Let's look at the lyrics for 'You're Beautiful'.
> 
> "My life is brilliant."
> 
> ...


----------



## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

I'm thinking I need to figure out what font they are using, and cafepress some shirts that say "They Had No Plan."


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

"The Plan" is a lie.


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

They had a plan. It was dismissed as not being flashy enough.


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## 5thcrewman (Sep 23, 2003)

Don't call him God, he prefers Ronald.


----------



## jbppsu (Jun 2, 2008)

I loved this from the RDM interview when asked about Kara:



> There's a lot of different ways you can look at it, but the more we talked about it, the more we realized there was more in the ambiguity and mystery of it than there was in trying to give it more definition in the end.


So basically they had no idea how to explain what they'd done with Kara and thought that by not explaining it they could seem to be very artistic and cool. Uhh, guys hate to break this to you, but it didn't work.

For me the show really started to fall apart when they decided that artistic and cool was better than being consistent.

My hate for this show and RDM in particular is because they beat us over the head with "They have a plan" for 2 seasons and then we find out that they didn't. They had no idea where the show was going. Not only does RDM admit it he celebrates it.


----------



## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

rlc1 said:


> You're right. It's somewhat understandable that things that happened in season 1 or 2 might not all tie together by the time of the finale. But the "nuked Earth" plot point was very recent. Since RDM has said in interviews that they knew all along that they wanted humanity to find a new Earth to settle on, they really screwed up when they showed that "nuked Earth" matched up with our Earth in terms of the constellations. Major, inexcusable plot hole.


Actually not as far fetched as you might think. With the vast distances involved between stars you can go pretty far out and still get the same view of many constellations (Not all but many). depending on what direction you are looking at.

Check out a free program called Celestia that will allow you to check this for yourself.

However I do take exception to them being 1 million Light years from teh 12 Colonies. that would place them somewhere between here and the Andromeda Galaxy (our nearest Galactic neighbor at ~ 2.5 Million L.Y.).


----------



## lord-dogbert (Jan 31, 2005)

BitbyBlit said:


> The Raptors in the bay did a controlled jump in a designated area, and by that point they didn't care about damage to the ship as much because it was its last mission. The damage to the immediate area was worse than what Boomer's Raptor did, but because it was isolated to the bay, it didn't have the same effect on the overall ship.


Also, when Boomer was going to jump out the hanger bay the pods were being retracted so the spatial distortion would've happened wholly inside the ship where as the museum bay was extended and mostly abandoned anyways so damage didn't matter. The ship was already breaking down anyways.


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

I have one more question. Did Kara interact with Adama and Roslin in her final scene or was it just with Lee?


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Craigbob said:


> However I do take exception to them being 1 million Light years from teh 12 Colonies. that would place them somewhere between here and the Andromeda Galaxy (our nearest Galactic neighbor at ~ 2.5 Million L.Y.).


You should also mention that the Milky Way Galaxy is only 100,000 light years in diameter, which would put Caprica outside the Milky Way.

There are stars outside of galaxies. It's possible that Caprica was in orbit around one of them, though the chance of one of these stars supporting life is extremely unlikely. But then again it's not any less likely that humans evolving on multiple planets in different star systems.


----------



## Win Joy Jr (Oct 1, 2001)

aintnosin said:


> I have one more question. Did Kara interact with Adama and Roslin in her final scene or was it just with Lee?


I believe she hugged him and told him to get moving...


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

The million light year figure came from Tigh, right? He may have just been exaggerating.


----------



## NJChris (May 11, 2001)

aintnosin said:


> I have one more question. Did Kara interact with Adama and Roslin in her final scene or was it just with Lee?


 I thought Adama told her to jump the ship and after the jump Rosalin asked Kara directly where she jumped to.


----------



## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

Win Joy Jr said:


> I believe she hugged him and told him to get moving...


Okay. Never mind, then.

I was thinking that maybe she physically stayed on the Galactica with Anders and she was only there in Lee's head.


----------



## Tangent (Feb 25, 2005)

lord-dogbert said:


> Also, when Boomer was going to jump out the hanger bay the pods were being retracted so the spatial distortion would've happened wholly inside the ship where as the museum bay was extended and mostly abandoned anyways so damage didn't matter. The ship was already breaking down anyways.


There might be a corrolation between jump distance and damage caused to any too-close ship as well. Long-distance jumps might cause greater distortion than short ones. The raptors in this case made extremely short jumps while it could be safely assumed that Boomer's jump would be max distance or at least a significant distance.

As for the million light year figure, I'm guessing it was more hyperbole than actual calculation. Ever gotten a flat tire on a long trip with no help nearby? There you are without a spare tire a million miles from home...


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## Unbeliever (Feb 3, 2001)

The jump causing damage is a very recent retcon. Else Athena would be dead when the refinery ship jumped out from under her 2 inches from docking.

--Carlos V.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Win Joy Jr said:


> I believe she hugged him and told him to get moving...


I remember him saying something to her that made no sense. It seemed like a very odd thing to say to someone that you care about and are seeing for the last time. Can't remember what it was. Then he gave her a quick kiss. There was definitely interaction between Adama and Kara while on the planet.


----------



## lord-dogbert (Jan 31, 2005)

What we need is for a book to be released, then we'll get all of the details. lacking that i'll make stuff up to stay sane and happy. 

As for the tech stuff, there is tech with them, though not much. The Dr. needed equipment of some sort to check the deceased Geico man relative's DNA for comparison. What equipment they took who knows but most of it went with the ships into the sun. I paused the frame as the ships flew by under TOS theme song (which was cool BTW) and there weren't enough ships in that screen shot. As for people willingly giving up their tech, I'm surrounded by high tech all day and night because of what I do and I tell you that I look forward to no tech camping 2 weeks a year to get away from it all. No phone, GPS, laptop, TiVO I dare say and other things with chips. I'll bet they have their guns and ammo to deal with lions and other things, I certainly have my 12 ga. and 9mm with me when I camp.

I'm content with the ending even though it leaves holes, at least i'm not on the couch, remote in hand going "what the frak" at the to be continued screen.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

lord-dogbert said:


> What we need is for a book to be released, then we'll get all of the details. lacking that i'll make stuff up to stay sane and happy.
> 
> As for the tech stuff, there is tech with them, though not much. The Dr. needed equipment of some sort to check the deceased Geico man relative's DNA for comparison. What equipment they took who knows but most of it went with the ships into the sun. I paused the frame as the ships flew by under TOS theme song (which was cool BTW) and there weren't enough ships in that screen shot. As for people willingly giving up their tech, I'm surrounded by high tech all day and night because of what I do and I tell you that I look forward to no tech camping 2 weeks a year to get away from it all. No phone, GPS, laptop, TiVO I dare say and other things with chips. I'll bet they have their guns and ammo to deal with lions and other things, I certainly have my 12 ga. and 9mm with me when I camp.
> 
> I'm content with the ending even though it leaves holes, at least i'm not on the couch, remote in hand going "what the frak" at the to be continued screen.


Two things:

The screenshot of the fleet heading into the sun - that was simply their way of showing that the fleet sailed off into the sunset. A faithful CGI rendering of every ship in the fleet was unnecessary at that point, and was probably cost prohibitive.

Giving up technology - Taking a break from technology for a couple of weeks of relaxation is entirely different than giving it up for good meaning that you'll have to now perform all kinds of manual labor just to survive.


----------



## Tangent (Feb 25, 2005)

I'm sure that most people have heard of The Phantom Edit which "fixed" issues people had with Star Wars Episode I. What we really need now is a talented film editor with a lot of free time on their hands to get a complete DVD set of BSG. I'd love to re-watch the entire series with the inconsistencies, episode-to-episode retcons, and quite frankly, most of season 3 edited out.


----------



## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Tangent said:


> I'm sure that most people have heard of The Phantom Edit which "fixed" issues people had with Star Wars Episode I. What we really need now is a talented film editor with a lot of free time on their hands to get a complete DVD set of BSG. I'd love to re-watch the entire series with the inconsistencies, episode-to-episode retcons, and quite frankly, most of season 3 edited out.


I wouldn't even wish that task on my enemy, as that would require not only watching the whole tedious thing again, but becoming intimately familiar with every aspect of it. And even if someone were to undertake that task, I wouldn't waste another minute of my time watching, let alone 60+ hours it would take to rewatch the entire series.


----------



## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

I think an edit of the rescue off New Caprica to a jump into Earth 2.0 orbit would end the series nicely.


----------



## vikingguy (Aug 12, 2005)

Gunnyman said:


> Once DS9 got truly serial in nature it got VERY good. Where is THAT RDM?


Considering he stole most of the DS9 from JMS we saw the real RDM during BSG. RDM can kiss my ass for letting his ego ruin a once great show.


----------



## vikingguy (Aug 12, 2005)

Everything except the space battle sucked. Even the space battle had major holes in it I had to role my eyes at. The whole starbuck thing was off the charts off stupid.


----------



## Bob Coxner (Dec 1, 2004)

philw1776 said:


> OK, the rational side of me has to agree about the rabbit out of the hat ending. And gods know I've been critical of BSG ploting post season two, but ever since I decided to shut off the analytical portion of my brain evolved say in the last 150,000 years, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the finale. Great music and scenery.
> 
> Sure folks would abandon technology and live short miserable lives working 12+ hour days of backbreaking labor trying to grow crops. But hey, it's drama.
> 
> ...


What "crops" were they planning to grow? There were no domesticated plants at that point of time. How much experience would anyone have in domestication of animals or plants?

This reminds me a lot of the planet where they dropped off the hairdressers, consultants, etc, in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They were more prepared to survive than the BSG remnants.

Also, breaking into such small groups would be suicide in those circumstances.


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## jebbbz (Sep 7, 2007)

Jonah Goldberg is a conservative political commentator who happens to have been a big fan of BSG. Here is a link to his reaction to the finale that might be of interest:

BSG Is Over

I don't think he made any political comments that might deter anyone from finding it interesting.


----------



## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

jebbbz said:


> Jonah Goldberg is a conservative political commentator who happens to have been a big fan of BSG. Here is a link to his reaction to the finale that might be of interest:
> 
> BSG Is Over
> 
> I don't think he made any political comments that might deter anyone from finding it interesting.


Thanks! Normally I can't stomach him but this review is spot on.


----------



## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

I guess BSG would be an example of Unintelligent Design.


----------



## cwerdna (Feb 22, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> This question was posed by a reader on USA Today TV Critic Robert Bianco's weekly webchat:
> 
> All I have to say is: What TV show was this guy watching?


Wow. Geez, that reader definitely hasn't been reading RDM's interviews nor watching that carefully.


Unbeliever said:


> The jump causing damage is a very recent retcon. Else Athena would be dead when the refinery ship jumped out from under her 2 inches from docking.


I totally forgot about that. Maybe we need a new acronym? YABI = Yet Another Battlestar Inconsistency along the same lines as YATI (Yet Another Trek Inconsistency)?


----------



## gastrof (Oct 31, 2003)

Maybe I missed this, but did they finally explain how Kara was still alive, duplicate Viper and all, with her original body and ship found on the nuked Earth?


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

gastrof said:


> Maybe I missed this, but did they finally explain how Kara was still alive, duplicate Viper and all, with her original body and ship found on the nuked Earth?


No.

(Apparently, she's an angel.)


----------



## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

..as is her Viper


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## jlb (Dec 13, 2001)

Never heard of Jonah Goldberg, but I read that review and I think it was spot on. I still say that I "enjoyed" the finale, but there were many things I would have done differently. I can deal with the YABIs and all too, but they/it/etc makes me look forward to Wednesday evenings at 9 a whole lot more.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

36 hours, 6 minutes left!


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> I remember him saying something to her that made no sense. It seemed like a very odd thing to say to someone that you care about and are seeing for the last time. Can't remember what it was. Then he gave her a quick kiss. There was definitely interaction between Adama and Kara while on the planet.


It's the whole "What do you hear Starbuck?", "Nothing, but the rain", "Well grab your gun and bring in the cat" dialog. It's been used a few times before between them. I'm not sure what the significance of it is, but it's used as a form of affectionate greeting between the two of them.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

morac said:


> It's the whole "What do you hear Starbuck?", "Nothing, but the rain", "Well grab your gun and bring in the cat" dialog. It's been used a few times before between them. I'm not sure what the significance of it is, but it's used as a form of affectionate greeting between the two of them.


That's right. I remember hearing that and thinking that of all the irrelevant things they showed us in flashbacks during the final three hours, that was something that should have been explained.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Just listening to the pocast for the finale. RDM is spending a lot of time talking about the writing process. The fact that they were able to incorporate the opera scene and work it back into the story is something he is quite proud of, and for him validates the way they went about it...write yourself a puzzle, and figure it out later...


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

That's actually how a lot of (screen)writers work, in my experience.

I know the answer to that from many you will be 'what about Lost, it doesn't do that' but don't kid yourselves...


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

hanumang said:


> I know the answer to that from many you will be 'what about Lost, it doesn't do that' but don't kid yourselves...


To an extent. What the producers have said is that they don't introduce an element without knowing how it plays out. They're taking things in larger, more forward-looking chunks.

For example, in Lost, I believe that they knew the significance of the remnant of the statue with 4 toes when they showed it. On BSG...they would have just put that in there because it sounded like a cool idea, maybe they could work it in, maybe not, but they'll worry about that later if they feel like it.


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

hanumang said:


> That's actually how a lot of (screen)writers work, in my experience.
> 
> I know the answer to that from many you will be 'what about Lost, it doesn't do that' but don't kid yourselves...


I tend to agree with this but the writers on Lost are clearly more talented and for the most part don't deviate too much from established characterizations on a regular basis. I doubt, for example, that Kate will start up a meaningful relationship with, say, Christian just because they think she needs more complications in her life.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

LOL. Most writers I know work backward. You have to.


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## slocko (Mar 5, 2004)

Here are my tidbits.

I'm going to go with the idea that Baltar/Six are an advanced race with infinite powers doing an experiment. Q style from Star Trek. This works for me. RDM should have thought of this angle.

Kara prophecy did come true, she led humanity to their end, because their dna didn't survive, onlly the hybird's.

I also hated her disappearing act. Worse part of the entire show was that. What a cop out. Also, if she crashed on that planet, how did her body and viper end up on Cylon Earth? 

I havent' seen this mentioned but it stuck out like a sore thumb to me. During the flashback when Adama is being polygraphed, they ask him if he's a Cylon. I said what????????????????????? At that point nobody knew Cylons looked like us. Or am I wrong?

Another thing I never liked was how the importance of the Centurions was underplayed. They are sentient beings smart enough to wage war on us, but we never see any character development out of them. They dont' even speak. So at the end, let's just send them off on their merry way. Bollocks!

They also never explained the command structure of they Cylons. Did they all share one consciousness? Why was Cavell the leader? How many copies of a model where running around at one time? 

I know the actor playing Cavell wanted to kill himself, but what RDM wanted was no better. He said in the interview the original plan was to have Tigh throw him off the top of the deck.


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## Sirius Black (Dec 26, 2001)

slocko said:


> Here are my tidbits.
> 
> I know the actor playing Cavell wanted to kill himself, but what RDM wanted was no better. He said in the interview the original plan was to have Tigh throw him off the top of the deck.


Dean Stockwell wanted to kill himself? That's news to me. Seems rather unhealthy to let him do that very thing on stage from a mental health perspective.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

slocko said:


> Here are my tidbits.
> 
> I havent' seen this mentioned but it stuck out like a sore thumb to me. During the flashback when Adama is being polygraphed, they ask him if he's a Cylon. I said what????????????????????? At that point nobody knew Cylons looked like us. Or am I wrong?


I thought the exact same thing when it was said, but then the next line from the questioner's mouth was something like, "Hey, we're just asking some obvious questions to get a baseline reading." He was basically saying that they were asking questions they already knew the answer to. It was just thrown in there for shock value for the viewers, but it's plausible such a question could have been asked in that type of setting.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Sirius Black said:


> Dean Stockwell wanted to kill himself? That's news to me. Seems rather unhealthy to let him do that very thing on stage from a mental health perspective.


To be fair, he had just read the script.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

IndyJones1023 said:


> LOL. Most writers I know work backward. You have to.


That works well for books, but not so well for TV series where you don't know if you'll be canceled next season or not. So most TV series are written on a per season basis. There are notable exceptions, but it's not the norm.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

morac said:


> That works well for books, but not so well for TV series where you don't know if you'll be canceled next season or not. So most TV series are written on a per season basis. There are notable exceptions, but it's not the norm.


When you start a series by saying you have a plan, you damn well better. I know it can be a long and winding road to the end depending on the number of seasons it lasts. And I know you might not get to tell your end story if you're canceled too soon. But RDM et al just totally bufu'ed the audience. They are horrible hack writers.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

hefe said:


> To an extent. What the producers have said is that they don't introduce an element without knowing how it plays out. They're taking things in larger, more forward-looking chunks.


I have to disagree, sorry. Walt, Libby and Ben are all elements introduced that played out differently than originally intentioned. Ben - only a limited guest star run initially - worked out for the positive and that's what sets Lost apart, when they get thing right (or get lucky), they're phenomenal.

Walt, in particular, strikes me as the biggest goof - they spent so much of Season 1 making something big out of him. And for what?

BSG, I think many of us will agree on, was marred by decisions that didn't play out well. They didn't have a Ben Linus among them. Ellen Tigh ain't no Ben Linus.



Sirius Black said:


> I tend to agree with this but the writers on Lost are clearly more talented and for the most part don't deviate too much from established characterizations on a regular basis. I doubt, for example, that Kate will start up a meaningful relationship with, say, Christian just because they think she needs more complications in her life.


No doubt - they writers on Lost are better. But they are also working with one key advantage - when they change the game (we thought the show was about getting off the island, initially, didn't we?) they don't ruin their show.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

slocko said:


> Kara prophecy did come true, she led humanity to their end, because their dna didn't survive, onlly the hybird's.


Actually the more I think about the "harbinger of death" prophecy, the less I have a problem with it. After all it was the Cylon created hybrid (as opposed to Hera) who called her "harbinger of death" and her actions did lead to the death of the "bad" Cylons. Also Anders said it and he died. So for those doing the prophecising, Kara was the "harbinger of death".


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

IndyJones1023 said:


> When you start a series by saying you have a plan, you damn well better. I know it can be a long and winding road to the end depending on the number of seasons it lasts. And I know you might not get to tell your end story if you're canceled too soon. But RDM et al just totally bufu'ed the audience. They are horrible hack writers.


Well to be fair RDM never said he had a plan, only that the Cylons had a plan.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

hanumang said:


> I have to disagree, sorry. Walt, Libby and Ben are all elements introduced that played out differently than originally intentioned. Ben - only a limited guest star run initially - worked out for the positive and that's what sets Lost apart, when they get thing right (or get lucky), they're phenomenal.
> 
> Walt, in particular, strikes me as the biggest goof - they spent so much of Season 1 making something big out of him. And for what?
> 
> BSG, I think many of us will agree on, was marred by decisions that didn't play out well. They didn't have a Ben Linus among them. Ellen Tigh ain't no Ben Linus.


OK, there's some exceptions. But the sheer number of elements, of clues and references. They do quite a job of having a purpose when they bring something in. Some things have changed along the way. At this point, I think that they can make adjustments to the overall plan because there _is_ an overall plan, even if every detail isn't (or wasn't...maybe it is now) already set in stone.

So, like I lead with in the post before, "to an extent." There is clearly a huge difference in how the two shows have gone about the writing process.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Plus, I'm sure they had some enigmatic Others leader character in mind. However, they altered it to be Ben once his character took off.


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## whitson77 (Nov 10, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> LOL. Most writers I know work backward. You have to.


I've written a lot of stuff. None that I've tried to publish. I write an outline. Then I write the beginning first. Then the ending. Then work from the beginning to the end.

I couldn't write from the ending the whole way to the beginning. My brain just doesn't work that way and I'm surprised that most of the writers you know work that way. Maybe I'm backwards!!


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

hanumang said:


> I have to disagree, sorry. Walt, Libby and Ben are all elements introduced that played out differently than originally intentioned. Ben - only a limited guest star run initially - worked out for the positive and that's what sets Lost apart, when they get thing right (or get lucky), they're phenomenal.
> 
> Walt, in particular, strikes me as the biggest goof - they spent so much of Season 1 making something big out of him. And for what?
> 
> BSG, I think many of us will agree on, was marred by decisions that didn't play out well. They didn't have a Ben Linus among them. Ellen Tigh ain't no Ben Linus.


From what I've heard/read, they always planned to have a Ben Linus character. It just wasn't necessarily going to be Michael Emerson, which is why he was originally introduced as Henry Gale. But he just did such a great job that they decided to make him the man behind the curtain rather than just a lackey for that man.

As for Walt, I agree that it was a miscalculation on their part. But we still don't know for sure that he won't play a part toward the end. Perhaps he will. But if he doesn't, it was a mistake, but not a huge one.

In contrast the whole series of BSG, from the miniseries forward, was based on the fact that the Cylons had a plan. That's the big issue. Of course the writers were going to have to write the details of individual episodes, etc., but they should have at least had a rough idea what the overarching "plan" was when they introduced that as the tagline for the series.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

whitson77 said:


> I've written a lot of stuff. None that I've tried to publish. I write an outline. Then I write the beginning first. Then the ending. Then work from the beginning to the end.
> 
> I couldn't write from the ending the whole way to the beginning. My brain just doesn't work that way and I'm surprised that most of the writers you know work that way. Maybe I'm backwards!!


Well, knowing how _The Sixth Sense_ ends, do you think Shamalan just happened to pull it out of his butt and it worked perfectly? Nope. You devise an ending and work your characters backward to get to that point.


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## whitson77 (Nov 10, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> Well, knowing how _The Sixth Sense_ ends, do you think Shamalan just happened to pull it out of his butt and it worked perfectly? Nope. You devise an ending and work your characters backward to get to that point.


Of course he knew the end. That what the outline is for.

But I don't think if you have a 20 chapter book, that you start writing at the last chapter or last page.

You know how the story ends before you start. But I think you write that part first in most cases. I would honestly be surprised if the majority of novelists did that.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

whitson77 said:


> You know how the story ends before you start.


Yeah, we're saying the same things. And agreeing that RDM didn't do this.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

BitbyBlit said:


> We didn't see them destroy any of the shuttlecraft, and I'll bet they kept some weapons and tools around too. After all, they would eventually need to use them to help build the pyramids.


*Um no, clearly the Goauld did that!*

On another note I found it interesting that the resurrected Starbuck (an instrument of God) could not see HeadSix which was an angel (a messenger of God). Who knows maybe they dont know each other because they work in different departments


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> Plus, I'm sure they had some enigmatic Others leader character in mind. However, they altered it to be Ben once his character took off.


Hey, watch the crossover spoilers! I'm still in the middle of Season 2 of Lost.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

BobB said:


> Hey, watch the crossover spoilers! I'm still in the middle of Season 2 of Lost.


Sorry about that if you're serious, but there were spoilers way before mine, so I don't know why you're picking on me.


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> Sorry about that if you're serious, but there were spoilers way before mine, so I don't know why you're picking on me.


I am serious, and I'm not picking on you in particular, that whole subthread appeared since the last time I checked this thread so I just replied to one at random. Doing my best to skim for BSG content and not absorb what was said about Lost.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

BobB said:


> I am serious, and I'm not picking on you in particular, that whole subthread appeared since the last time I checked this thread so I just replied to one at random. Doing my best to skim for BSG content and not absorb what was said about Lost.


You're completely right. Wait until you find out they kill Jack and Sawyer and Locke and....


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## NJChris (May 11, 2001)

IndyJones1023 said:


> You're completely right. Wait until you find out they kill Jack and Sawyer and Locke and....


 Are we supposed to spoilerize seasons for shows that have already been aired? huh?


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

NJChris said:


> Are we supposed to spoilerize seasons for shows that have already been aired? huh?


It's a grey area.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

NJChris said:


> Are we supposed to spoilerize seasons for shows that have already been aired? huh?


dear God(s)...please...not another debate about spoilers...if you want to discuss it, search the forum...you will find a 100 threads that argue about the finer details of it Ad nauseam...


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

NJChris said:


> Are we supposed to spoilerize seasons for shows that have already been aired? huh?


It's a fair point. This thread isn't about Lost. For my part, I picked an example from Lost that I didn't think warranted a spoiler alert, just made a point, but I can see how it could easily get beyond that.


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## BobB (Aug 26, 2002)

NJChris said:


> Are we supposed to spoilerize seasons for shows that have already been aired? huh?


Um, yes, please. I'm not a Nazi about it or anything, but in a world of TiVO and Netflix, lots of people watch shows well after they originally air. It's one thing to reference a classic Honeymooners episode, quite another to give away plot points of a still-active series. Especially on a thread that's not ABOUT that series.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

IndyJones1023 said:


> It's a grey area.


Not really grey at all.

a) It's not about the current season of any show.

b) It's pretty arguably not even a plot point; at least your original comment wasn't.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Anubys said:


> dear God(s)...please...not another debate about spoilers...if you want to discuss it, search the forum...you will find a 100 threads that argue about the finer details of it Ad nauseam...


Listen.. They may not have made it that far in the threads yet, and you just revealed that there are discussions about whether things are spoilers or not. Please put that in spoiler tags - some people haven't made it that far, and don't want to know ahead of time what discussions they'll find here.


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## Ladd Morse (Feb 21, 2002)

I somehow managed to miss what was the whole deal with the flashback Admiral Adama -- the "it will only take an hour and it's a lot of money", talking himself into doing it even though he didn't want to and taking the polygraph test. What one hour job had been offered to him? 

Was it attending the ceremonies of closing down of the Galactica? If so, why would he need to take a polygraph test?


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

Anubys said:


> dear God(s)...please...not another debate about spoilers...


It would actually be more entertaining than BSG was.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

Ladd Morse said:


> I somehow managed to miss what was the whole deal with the flashback Admiral Adama -- the "it will only take an hour and it's a lot of money", talking himself into doing it even though he didn't want to and taking the polygraph test. What one hour job had been offered to him?
> 
> Was it attending the ceremonies of closing down of the Galactica? If so, why would he need to take a polygraph test?


I think it was for a civilian job, not the ceremony


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

OK, I've been busy lately but I finally made it to the end of this thread. My two cents:

RDM definately pulled a "switch-a-roo." In the last episode before the writer-strike-break the fleet arrives at Earth and North America is clearly seen. We've been seeing Orien in the star backgrounds for a few episides and Geda confirmed that that other constillations matched the Zodiac in the temple on Kobol. In the ruins a Christian cross is clearly seen, a symbol not used before in the series, despite prominent religious themes. This would place the series in our future, since no traces of advanced civilization have been found.

But after the break, we learn that the inhabatents of Earth were Cylons and there are even remains of Centurions in the mass graves. WTF? The possible links to our world grow convoluted indeed. Also, this time the space-perspective shots show no recognizable features.

But in No Exit Anders reveals that his people arrived three thousand years earlier and lived there another thousand years before blowing themselves up a thousands years ago. Surely if there had already been people there Anders would have been aware of it. The idea that this was our Earth makes no sense.

On Kara: I'm a bit disapointed that we didn't get a better explanation. She wasn't a vision. Even after her return, she actually DID physical stuff like fly vipers and shoot guns, and her character sincerely didn't understand how she came back. OTOH, which as much God talk as this series has, you can't fault it for having a bit of divine intervention.

Although misdirection is a common device shows like this use, it was just short of clearly stated that Daniel was Kara's father. How else was Kara able to learn "Watchtower" from her dad?

On Hera, mother of humanity: If you read about the origin of man, Modern Man is not beleived to have evolved from Neanderthal Man. Instead, the fossil record shows Modern Man appearing 50-150 thousand years ago and co-existing with the Neanderthals until their extinction about 30,000 years ago. So the idea of Hera being Mito-whatever Eve is poetically very satisfying, although the idea of none of the other 16,000 or so female colonists having any surviving decendents defies logical belief (Mito-DNA passes from the maternal side only, so if some of the male colonists had children with Neanderthal women, it would not appear in this type of DNA).

I suspect an earlier version of the ending had only a handful of survivors escaping the final battle in a single raptor (Hera, Boomer, Adama, Baltar, Caprica?) and reaching Earth. But the holocaust of 38,000 other colonists might have been too dark and a happier ending choosen.

On Dumping Technology: I think this represents abandonling all of the baggage of the previous order. If the final five had given Cabel the resurrection technology, like they did last time around, then the cycle would have surely continued. Sending the ships into the sun and settling as famers represents the polar opposite.

On the ending: Even though he's wearing sunglasses, Baltar looks directly into the camera lens as he directs the question to the audience: "But will it happen again?" The question is left open, but we see the toy robots which for now are cute.

But... Are the Terminator movies & TV Show the sequel to BSG????


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Dancar said:


> Although misdirection is a common device shows like this use, it was just short of clearly stated that Daniel was Kara's father. How else was Kara able to learn "Watchtower" from her dad?


Nowhere near clearly. That was never even intended. Moore said that Daniel was just something to spruce up Cavil's story, and that he had no further significance.

Her dad was the piano player. But I practically fell asleep in that episode...did she say she learned it from her dad, or was it the notes Hera wrote on the paper...?


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

Dancar said:


> On Hera, mother of humanity: If you read about the origin of man, Modern Man is not beleived to have evolved from Neanderthal Man. Instead, the fossil record shows Modern Man appearing 50-150 thousand years ago and co-existing with the Neanderthals until their extinction about 30,000 years ago. So the idea of Hera being Mito-whatever Eve is poetically very satisfying, although the idea of none of the other 16,000 or so female colonists having any surviving decendents defies logical belief (Mito-DNA passes from the maternal side only, so if some of the male colonists had children with Neanderthal women, it would not appear in this type of DNA).


They specifically stated that the colonists were genetically compatible with the natives which I believe would place them somewhere in the Cro-Magnon branch rather than the Neandertal branch. However, I agree with your point. It's highly unlikely that none of the colonists/cylon dna would survive. Then again, why do we keep trying to apply consistency and science to RDMs writing?


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## Mars Rocket (Mar 24, 2000)

Dancar said:


> In the last episode before the writer-strike-break the fleet arrives at Earth and North America is clearly seen. We've been seeing Orien in the star backgrounds for a few episides


I think the Orion bit was just sloppiness on the part of the graphics people; I don't think it was intended.

North America was most definitely not identifiable on the first "Earth" they come to - all the shots are carefully constructed to never show any identifiable land masses on the planet. There are always clouds in the way or the viewpoint is too close in.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Odd, I thought Daniel might be her dad, too.

So, the story is that all these years they've been saying "there are 12 models of Cylons." Then at the last minute they say "oh yeah, and there's a 13th one." But never explain him?

Just when I didn't think RDM could get any worse!


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## Craigbob (Dec 2, 2006)

Mars Rocket said:


> I think the Orion bit was just sloppiness on the part of the graphics people; I don't think it was intended.
> 
> North America was most definitely not identifiable on the first "Earth" they come to - all the shots are carefully constructed to never show any identifiable land masses on the planet. There are always clouds in the way or the viewpoint is too close in.


Actually not sloppiness, but an accidental effect of the software they were using to create the star fields. By default it used earth-centric familiar star patterns. Once the SFX company realized that and that Fans were scrutinizing every frame to try and determine where the fleet was they actually started randomizing the star fields more. Once they got closer to the end and dealing with Earth they went back to the default. Of course they did not take star drift or precession into account. So the stars look pretty much as we see them today.

But this is not the forum for an astronomical discussion.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

BobB said:


> I am serious, and I'm not picking on you in particular, that whole subthread appeared since the last time I checked this thread so I just replied to one at random. Doing my best to skim for BSG content and not absorb what was said about Lost.


As far as I could tell, there was nothing discussed about LOST that should be much of a surprise to someone watching the 2nd season. 


Ladd Morse said:


> I somehow managed to miss what was the whole deal with the flashback Admiral Adama -- the "it will only take an hour and it's a lot of money", talking himself into doing it even though he didn't want to and taking the polygraph test. What one hour job had been offered to him?
> 
> Was it attending the ceremonies of closing down of the Galactica? If so, why would he need to take a polygraph test?


I wondered that as well. It was clearly something other than the closing ceremonies of Galactica though, as that would obviously take longer than an hour, and Adama clearly said as he left the polygraph test that he'd rather be on his run-down ship than put up with that crap.


IndyJones1023 said:


> Odd, I thought Daniel might be her dad, too.
> 
> So, the story is that all these years they've been saying "there are 12 models of Cylons." Then at the last minute they say "oh yeah, and there's a 13th one." But never explain him?
> 
> Just when I didn't think RDM could get any worse!


No, Daniel was one of the 12. Prior to the Final Five, they had only introduced 6 different models, and had skipped over #7. Therefore, Daniel was probably #7. There was no 13th model.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> No, Daniel was one of the 12. Prior to the Final Five, they had only introduced 6 different models, and had skipped over #7. Therefore, Daniel was probably #7. There was no 13th model.


In no particular order:

1) Leoben
2) Doral
3) Simon
4) D'Anna
5) Boomer
6) Six
7) Cavil
8) Tigh
9) Anders
10) Tory
11) Tyrol
12) Ellen
*13) Daniel*


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

OK, I stand corrected. I thought Daniel was introduced simply to fill the hole in the numbering.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

hefe said:


> Nowhere near clearly. That was never even intended. Moore said that Daniel was just something to spruce up Cavil's story, and that he had no further significance.
> 
> Her dad was the piano player. But I practically fell asleep in that episode...did she say she learned it from her dad, or was it the notes Hera wrote on the paper...?


She did say her dad used to play it. I don't believe the idea was never indended. The Daniel idea by itself doesn't really spruce up the cavil story much, plus it disupts the numerological significance of *12* Clyons. OTOH, if Kara is a human/cylon mix, that can explain much of her uniqueness(such as being able to pilot a Cylon Raider - not to mention resurrection) while having none of the skinjobs or the final five recognize her. That and the fact the piano player appears one or two episodes after Daniel is discussed.

I'm convinced this was an aborted plot twist, just like post-nuclear Earth.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> OK, I stand corrected. I thought Daniel was introduced simply to fill the hole in the numbering.


He was. There were 12 Spylons: 1-6, 8, and the Final Five.

Then they actually thought about it for a moment, and realized that having the Final Five be numbers 7 and 9-12 was kinda silly. So they invented a 13th model (Daniel, #7) who no longer existed, and thus wasn't counted as one of the 12.

So it was a kludgy solution to the problem, but it _was _a solution.

For some reason, it never occurred to them that people would expect more than "Oh, right, there was Daniel but now he's gone."


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Dancar said:


> She did say her dad used to play it. I don't believe the idea was never indended. The Daniel idea by itself doesn't really spruce up the cavil story much, plus it disupts the numerological significance of *12* Clyons. OTOH, if Kara is a human/cylon mix, that can explain much of her uniqueness(such as being able to pilot a Cylon Raider - not to mention resurrection) while having none of the skinjobs or the final five recognize her. That and the fact the piano player appears one or two episodes after Daniel is discussed.
> 
> I'm convinced this was an aborted plot twist, just like post-nuclear Earth.


I had many of the same feelings.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

Dancar said:


> She did say her dad used to play it. I don't believe the idea was never indended. The Daniel idea by itself doesn't really spruce up the cavil story much, plus it disupts the numerological significance of *12* Clyons. OTOH, if Kara is a human/cylon mix, that can explain much of her uniqueness(such as being able to pilot a Cylon Raider - not to mention resurrection) while having none of the skinjobs or the final five recognize her. That and the fact the piano player appears one or two episodes after Daniel is discussed.
> 
> I'm convinced this was an aborted plot twist, just like post-nuclear Earth.


+1


----------



## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Mars Rocket said:


> I think the Orion bit was just sloppiness on the part of the graphics people; I don't think it was intended.


I don't recall seeing it earlier in the series. But it was shown quite prominently starting with the episode where Callie is sent out the airlock, which was after Kara was conviced they were very close

It was seen again in the fanalie proir to the jump to the Cylon colony. This means they were close.



> North America was most definitely not identifiable on the first "Earth" they come to - all the shots are carefully constructed to never show any identifiable land masses on the planet. There are always clouds in the way or the viewpoint is too close in.


It most definately was in the last episode before the mid-season break. It was after the break that the space-perspective shots were vague.


----------



## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> He was. There were 12 Spylons: 1-6, 8, and the Final Five.
> 
> Then they actually thought about it for a moment, and realized that having the Final Five be numbers 7 and 9-12 was kinda silly. So they invented a 13th model (Daniel, #7) who no longer existed, and thus wasn't counted as one of the 12.
> 
> So it was a kludgy solution to the problem, but it _was _a solution.


A solution to WHAT problem? That someone on the Internet might say "Hey! If Boomer was #8, then which of the final five has a lower number?"


----------



## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Has anyone complaining about inconsistancies in BSG noticed that the original Star Wars movie is inconsistent in many repsects to the rest of the films? While Lucas claims to have outlined all six (or is it nine) films back at the start, Darth Vader was CLEARLY not Luke's father until Empire Strikes Back was made.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

Dancar said:


> A solution to WHAT problem? That someone on the Internet might say "Hey! If Boomer was #8, then which of the final five has a lower number?"


The problem that they were pulling numbers out of a hat, then had a Final Five, then decided the Final Five were the original Spylons, then realized that it made no sense whatsoever for one of the original Spylons to be #7.


Dancar said:


> Has anyone complaining about inconsistancies in BSG noticed that the original Star Wars movie is inconsistent in many repsects to the rest of the films? While Lucas claims to have outlined all six (or is it nine) films back at the start, Darth Vader was CLEARLY not Likes father until Empire Strikes Back was made.


Huh?!?

After I saw Star Wars, I was so sure Vader was Luke's father I assumed they had come right out and said it.

Had a lot of arguments those three years...


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> The problem that they were pulling numbers out of a hat, then had a Final Five, then decided the Final Five were the original Spylons, then realized that it made no sense whatsoever for one of the original Spylons to be #7.


It actually makes no sense for the original Spylons to be anything other than 1-5.


----------



## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> The problem that they were pulling numbers out of a hat, then had a Final Five, then decided the Final Five were the original Spylons, then realized that it made no sense whatsoever for one of the original Spylons to be #7.


I'll agree with you there, but but it seems like a trivial thing to spend screen time on.



> After I saw Star Wars, I was so sure Vader was Luke's father I assumed they had come right out and said it.


Not to get too off-topic, but based on what?

There's a much stronger case for Kara being the daughter of #7 than for Luke being son of Vader, based on the first film only.


----------



## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> It actually makes no sense for the original Spylons to be anything other than 1-5.


Well, it makes sense for them not to be numbered at all, which is the direction they ended up going.


Dancar said:


> Not to get too off-topic, but based on what?
> 
> There's a much stronger case for Kara being the daughter of #7 than for Luke being son of Vader, based on the first film only.


Based on the way they danced around Papa Skywalker's past and fate. It seemed clear they were hiding something, and that was the only thing I could think of.

Now, it seems clear to me that Lucas's view of the Skywalker family history evolved considerably over time, due mostly to the different story needs of interesting but vague backstory in the first movies versus an interesting main story in the second set.

But you're absolutely right in that they (RDM & Co) seemed to imply (but obviously didn't mean to) that Kara was Daniel's daughter. I suppose we could chalk that up as evidence that they didn't think about things very much, except the chalkboard is already completely full.


----------



## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

Dancar said:


> I'll agree with you there, but but it seems like a trivial thing to spend screen time on.
> 
> Not to get too off-topic, but based on what?
> 
> There's a much stronger case for Kara being the daughter of #7 than for Luke being son of Vader, based on the first film only.


Uncle Owen said it all man, Uncle Owen.


----------



## Tangent (Feb 25, 2005)

slocko said:


> I havent' seen this mentioned but it stuck out like a sore thumb to me. During the flashback when Adama is being polygraphed, they ask him if he's a Cylon. I said what????????????????????? At that point nobody knew Cylons looked like us. Or am I wrong?


The guy that asked the question said it was just to establish a baseline. It would be the equivalent of you being polygraphed and being asked if you were a telephone.

Re: Luke and Vader etc... Try to find a full version of "The Secret History of Star Wars" pdf floating around. It used to be freely available, but then they decided to sell it so you might have to dig. It's an extremely complete history of the writing, filming, interviews etc... It makes it very clear that in Star Wars Vader was not only never intended to be Luke's father, but was more of a lackey than the emperor's right-hand-man. Not only does Ben have to explain his "Vader killed your father" comment with the very out of character "from a certain point of view", but rough drafts of the story actually flesh out Luke's father as a completely seperate person. Vader's role only got promoted to father and emperor's right-hand-man when the character turned out to be extremely popular.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

I can understand why he flew off to let the prez die, but for him to just move away was very absurd. I wonder why he just didnt fly into the side of a mountain. Were they trying to make us think he would?

While i do agree that in the context of the show they want to 'start over', they can still have used the metal for non 'technical' things and have a law not to make 'future' weapons. And tens of thousands of people live together and survive and now want to separate? or are they tired of each other and do want to separate? Let's be serious, they probably arent going to survive in the extreme climates and Im wondering why not just repopulate a good area then move out? 

I loved the accidental stone/launch! It's the kind of thing that's scripted in reality shows or belongs on a brenda hampton show ...unsure which is more appropriate. 

So did i miss the part showing where the people who choose not to go on the mission wound up? I remember starbuck choosing where to jump to based on the notes but the people who didnt even go on the 'suicide' 'mission couldnt know where she was jumping to, correct? I guess i'm trying to reconcile how the fleet wound up at earth where in reality only the galactica should have. I await enlightenment.


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## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

newsposter said:


> I can understand why he flew off to let the prez die, but for him to just move away was very absurd. I wonder why he just didnt fly into the side of a mountain. Were they trying to make us think he would?
> 
> While i do agree that in the context of the show they want to 'start over', they can still have used the metal for non 'technical' things and have a law not to make 'future' weapons. And tens of thousands of people live together and survive and now want to separate? or are they tired of each other and do want to separate? Let's be serious, they probably arent going to survive in the extreme climates and Im wondering why not just repopulate a good area then move out?
> 
> ...


They sent a Raptor to the rendevous coordinates and they followed.


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## JoeyJoJo (Sep 29, 2003)

IndyJones1023 said:


> In no particular order:
> 
> 1) Leoben
> 2) Doral
> ...


In order:

1. Cavil
2. Leoben
3. D'anna
4. Doral
5. Simon
6. Six
7. Daniel*
8. Boomer.

These are the numbers (other than Daniel) I remember them all being referred to at one time or another. There was always a hole between Six and Boomer, that's where Daniel would fit 

As for "the Final Five" I think RDM was trying to be clever. They weren't the final 5 Spylons as we had been led to believe, but the Final Five survivors of the 13th Colony.


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## jking (Mar 23, 2005)

What does it matter if Vader was or wasn't originally Luke's father? I don't think anyone here has implied that BSG is the only serial in history to have inconsistencies.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

Dancar said:


> Has anyone complaining about inconsistancies in BSG noticed that the original Star Wars movie is inconsistent in many repsects to the rest of the films? While Lucas claims to have outlined all six (or is it nine) films back at the start, Darth Vader was CLEARLY not Luke's father until Empire Strikes Back was made.


GEEEZZZ!!! What happened to the spoiler tags!? You ruined it for me!!


----------



## jimmymac (Nov 6, 2002)

whitson77 said:


> Of course he knew the end. That what the outline is for.
> 
> But I don't think if you have a 20 chapter book, that you start writing at the last chapter or last page.
> 
> You know how the story ends before you start. But I think you write that part first in most cases. I would honestly be surprised if the majority of novelists did that.


Not always. I've been writing for years. Sometimes I start with an outline and sometimes I just start writing. Having an outline doesn't mean you'll stick to it. I know a lot of other writers who get carried away as they are writing and end up going in a whole other direction than originally planned.

When you're working on a novel, you can go back and fix the stuff that doesn't end up making sense if that happens. Don't have that luxury if you are writing a TV show.


----------



## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

Sure you do.

Dream sequences.


----------



## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

Ladd Morse said:


> I somehow managed to miss what was the whole deal with the flashback Admiral Adama -- the "it will only take an hour and it's a lot of money", talking himself into doing it even though he didn't want to and taking the polygraph test. What one hour job had been offered to him?
> 
> Was it attending the ceremonies of closing down of the Galactica? If so, why would he need to take a polygraph test?


The job was a government job. The "it's only an hour out of your life" was referring to the polygraph test he had to take in order to get the job. RDM was playing up the irony that a man trusted enough to command a Battlestar needed to take a polygraph to be a paper pusher. In one of the few dramatic moments that was actually true to his original character, Adama saw it as an insult to his honor and refused to do it.


----------



## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Dancar said:


> She did say her dad used to play it. I don't believe the idea was never indended. The Daniel idea by itself doesn't really spruce up the cavil story much, plus it disupts the numerological significance of *12* Clyons. OTOH, if Kara is a human/cylon mix, that can explain much of her uniqueness(such as being able to pilot a Cylon Raider - not to mention resurrection) while having none of the skinjobs or the final five recognize her. That and the fact the piano player appears one or two episodes after Daniel is discussed.
> 
> I'm convinced this was an aborted plot twist, just like post-nuclear Earth.


Well, on this one, I'm going by what the show's producer says. For all the criticism of RDM, he has always seemed to be up front about everything. He doesn't seem to care if people like his methods or not, and I don't really sense anywhere that he's covering anything up.

He admits they wrote themselves into corners. He admits there was no concept of the Final Five when the 12 models were posited. He often talks in his podcasts about the story arcs and elements that they thought of and then aborted. I just think he would have mentioned that was a considered story direction if it was, like he did so many other times.

Now, when I first saw the Daniel stuff, I also assumed it had greater significance, and figured that a connection with Starbuck was likely. In fact, that would have worked better in my mind than what they did.


Moore in his podcast said:


> "There is no connection between Kara and Daniel...
> 
> ...I don't think I realized the impact that the backstory of Daniel would have in "No Exit." I sort of thought that it was an interesting story about...that defined something about Brother Cavil, or John Cavil, and his backstory and how he reacted to the threat of someone else being as beloved as he was...it was a sort of a Cain and Abel type allegory...all those reasons...I just thought it was an interesting piece of backstory, but in recent weeks I've realized that the "cult of Daniel" has grown, there's a tremendous amount...there's a lot of people out there who are now investing a tremendous amount of time, energy and thought into the notion that Daniel is really a powerful figure in the show and part of the mythos, and is directly related to Kara, and...you know what, I don't want anyone listening to this broadcast...podcast, I don't want you to go into the finale with your...having your Daniel hopes up too high, because that's really not part of the plan, and again I apologize if people think that...that was such a gigantic...mislead, or clue, or something...I mean, that was not the intent, and I don't think I anticipated how strongly that would be grabbed by people."


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

He might not of meant for there to be a connection between Daniel (#7) and Kara, but IMO, he should have because I think it would have fit a little better!

I was just thinking, weren't we kind of promised that by the end of the series we wouldn't want to see these characters again? I think it backfired. I could certainly do without some of the characters, but most of all I don't want to see RDM again!


----------



## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

newsposter said:


> I can understand why he flew off to let the prez die, but for him to just move away was very absurd. I wonder why he just didnt fly into the side of a mountain. Were they trying to make us think he would?


Be glad we didn't get what RDM originally wanted. I read in one of the interviews that he wanted to have Adama and Rosalin fly off into space and the president die off screen. The actress who plays Rosalin convinced him that was a bad idea.

Speaking of which. I'm convinced Adama must have met up with the others at some point in the future. As he was the one who came up with the name Earth and only told Rosalin he must have ran into someone else in order to tell them so it could be passed down through the ages.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Trent Bates said:


> He might not of meant for there to be a connection between Daniel (#7) and Kara, but IMO, he should have because I think it would have fit a little better!


I agree with that. But I guess he really wanted Kara's story to be the religious angle. She was resurrected by God or the Gods or whatever ended up being the spiritual truth of the BSG universe.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

morac said:


> Speaking of which. I'm convinced Adama must have met up with the others at some point in the future. As he was the one who came up with the name Earth and only told Rosalin he must have ran into someone else in order to tell them so it could be passed down through the ages.


well...not really...these people were not _really _using English...they were speaking whatever language aliens use...our English did not evolve until a few  years later...

so Adama probably said xjsfjgkhne in his native tongue...


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Asking what Adama did after we last saw him is like the movie Stand Be Me when the boys ask "And then what happened?" After hearing the story about Lardass's barf-o-rama.


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## NJChris (May 11, 2001)

I have to say I did enjoy some of this one. Mainly the space, action and some of the characters.

However, now that it's done I can't say it has left any impact on me. The details are fading fast. It did not stick with me at all.


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## jpwoof (May 19, 2004)

the finale left me sad for some reason. not sure if it's because I would miss the series or if it's because at the end they felt they needed to live their lives separately. loneliness.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Craigbob said:


> However I do take exception to them being 1 million Light years from teh 12 Colonies. that would place them somewhere between here and the Andromeda Galaxy (our nearest Galactic neighbor at ~ 2.5 Million L.Y.).


I hate to be a total science dweeb, but what is a light year? For us it is the distance light travels over during one rotation of *Earth* around it's sun.

But if Earth is an ancient legend to them, they wouldn't know Earth's rotational period. They are probably using the rotational period of some other planet, such as Kobol or Caprica. And we have no what the rotational period of that planet is.

.... But as RDM says, it's about the _characters!_


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

Dont worry how far a light year is. Just remember the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

ihatecable said:


> Dont worry how far a light year is. Just remember the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs


..but that was because it was impressive that it had such a good navicomputer that it could go through densely warped space precisely, rather than having to go all the way around huge spacial distortions in the Kessel run like everyone else in the race had to..


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## kaszeta (Jun 11, 2004)

jkeegan said:


> ..but that was because it was impressive that it had such a good navicomputer that it could go through densely warped space precisely


Or Han Solo had gotten ahold of some really good melange.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

morac said:


> Well to be fair RDM never said he had a plan, only that the Cylons had a plan.


Too bad he never asked the Cylons what it frakkin' was!



Dancar said:


> While Lucas claims to have outlined all six (or is it nine) films back at the start, Darth Vader was CLEARLY not Luke's father until Empire Strikes Back was made.





Rob Helmerichs said:


> After I saw Star Wars, I was so sure Vader was Luke's father I assumed they had come right out and said it.


I think it was pretty clear that the identity of Luke's father was a major plot point from the start.



Aunt Beru said:


> Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He's got too much of his father in him.





Uncle Owen said:


> That's what I'm afraid of.


What's clear is that the whole Luke/Leia brother/sister thing wasn't on anyone's mind even when they were making _Empire_.


Leia said:


> I guess you don't know everything about women, do you?





kaszeta said:


> Or Han Solo had gotten ahold of some really good melange.


He _was_ a smuggler.


----------



## RGM1138 (Oct 6, 1999)

Wait. Vader was Luke's _Father?_



Man, I'm glad I didn't invest all those years in watching BSG, since so many seem to think it wasn't worth the effort.

Bob


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

RGM1138 said:


> Wait. Vader was Luke's _Father?_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


well, with all its faults; I'd still watch it...

there...I've said it...I can't take it back...


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Anubys said:


> well, with all its faults; I'd still watch it...


I agree wholeheartedly. It's simply a show that peaked earlier in its run than most would have liked. I thought the first 40 episodes (or so) were fantastic television.

Besides, this place (like much of the internet) is a bastion of negativity. Not that there's anything wrong with that when it comes to a show where the headman admits to winging it with little care for story...


----------



## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

hanumang said:


> Besides, this place (like much of the internet) is a bastion of negativity.


/rises to defend TCF

I disagree...this place is full of very smart people who are better educated than average...they do not tolerate mediocrity and can spot it faster than most people...they can also articulate their point better than most people...

TCF people are quick to praise what is good just as they are quick to denounce anything that does not measure up...


----------



## Bierboy (Jun 12, 2004)

Anubys said:


> /rises to defend TCF
> 
> I disagree...this place is full of very smart people who are better educated than average...they do not tolerate mediocrity and can spot it faster than most people...they can also articulate their point better than most people...
> 
> TCF people are quick to praise what is good just as they are quick to denounce anything that does not measure up...


I tend to agree here....when I first joined TCF five years ago, I felt it tended more toward the negative. It's either changed a bit....or my perception after being involved has changed...


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

Dancar said:


> I hate to be a total science dweeb, but what is a light year? For us it is the distance light travels over during one rotation of *Earth* around it's sun.
> 
> But if Earth is an ancient legend to them, they wouldn't know Earth's rotational period. They are probably using the rotational period of some other planet, such as Kobol or Caprica. And we have no what the rotational period of that planet is.


A *real* science dweeb would know that the proper term is "revolution", not "rotation".


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Anubys said:


> /rises to defend TCF
> 
> I disagree...this place is full of very smart people who are better educated than average...they do not tolerate mediocrity and can spot it faster than most people...they can also articulate their point better than most people....


Daahh, yaaahh!! I sez wot he just said!


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Anubys said:


> I disagree...this place is full of very smart people who are better educated than average...they do not tolerate mediocrity and can spot it faster than most people...they can also articulate their point better than most people...


I'm not saying the grass is greener on the other side of the street. But, to be perfectly blunt, the very thing that makes this place great - educated, information junkies - also makes it frustrating.

Not saying that being adversarial in one's writing style isn't entertaining - I get that - but folks here talk about RDM (and many other Powers That Be on other shows) like he's a committed some crime against them.

But I'm also an offender - I remember doggin' out the writers of Lost for much of season 2, only see how those story elements built Season 3 and eat serious crow.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

This discussion raises an interesting question. Knowing what you know now, would you watch BSG again? Assume that if you start, you'll watch the whole series, so it's either "No, not at all," or "Yes, the whole thing."

I think for me, I'd probably pass, despite how good the first season or two were. I just rarely give up on shows and so once I start, I'm usually in it for the long haul, regardless. So given how bad a taste I have in my mouth for this series after the last couple of seasons, I don't think it was worth my time to watch.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

DevdogAZ said:


> This discussion raises an interesting question. Knowing what you know now, would you watch BSG again? Assume that if you start, you'll watch the whole series, so it's either "No, not at all," or "Yes, the whole thing."
> 
> I think for me, I'd probably pass, despite how good the first season or two were. I just rarely give up on shows and so once I start, I'm usually in it for the long haul, regardless. So given how bad a taste I have in my mouth for this series after the last couple of seasons, I don't think it was worth my time to watch.


For me, no probably about it. For all its initial promise, the show so totally betrayed it that I would never start knowing what I know now.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

Anubys said:


> /rises to defend TCF
> 
> I disagree...this place is full of very smart people who are better educated than average...they do not tolerate mediocrity and can spot it faster than most people...they can also articulate their point better than most people...
> 
> TCF people are quick to praise what is good just as they are quick to denounce anything that does not measure up...


So where are you guys holding the next mutual admiration society meeting?


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

I probably still would. Despite the flaws, I still mostly enjoyed it.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

aintnosin said:


> I think it was pretty clear that the identity of Luke's father was a major plot point from the start.
> 
> What's clear is that the whole Luke/Leia brother/sister thing wasn't on anyone's mind even when they were making _Empire_.
> He _was_ a smuggler.


All I know is that if I wanted to hide a child from a man and wanted him to believe his son had died, I would place the child with the man's step-siblings in the house where his mother used to live.

And if I returned to the planet where I spent the first 10 years of my life, it would hold no special significance to me, nor would the droids I built as a child.

And if I can drift back to BSG, yes, the quality of the show was variable, but I think too many people here criticize it because it is now the show they would make, instead of appreciating it for the show RDM made.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

DevdogAZ said:


> This discussion raises an interesting question. Knowing what you know now, would you watch BSG again? Assume that if you start, you'll watch the whole series, so it's either "No, not at all," or "Yes, the whole thing."
> 
> I think for me, I'd probably pass, despite how good the first season or two were. I just rarely give up on shows and so once I start, I'm usually in it for the long haul, regardless. So given how bad a taste I have in my mouth for this series after the last couple of seasons, I don't think it was worth my time to watch.


Here's a good question: would you recommend the DVDs to someone who hasn't seen it yet?

My answer: Yes, althought it depends on the person. I am still strongly recommended the DVDs to a friend who 1) Liked the 1970s BSG, 2) likes Sci Fi in general, 3) Saw Part 1 of the miniseries and liked it, and 4) is an ex-Mormon who finds religious themes in fiction fascinating.

If I had all the time of in the world, I would make a list of the episodes I found less intertesting and suggest skipping them, but I'll leave that to others.


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## Mr_Bester (Jan 27, 2007)

aintnosin said:


> ...
> 
> I think it was pretty clear that the identity of Luke's father was a major plot point from the start.
> 
> ...


Allegedly, the original line in Empire was "Luke I Killed your father". It would take me a long time to find where I saw that though.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Mr_Bester said:


> Allegedly, the original line in Empire was "Luke I Killed your father". It would take me a long time to find where I saw that though.


At IMDB they say that it was to hide the secret:


> Security surrounding this movie was so intense that George Lucas had regular reports about "leaks" from actors. George Lucas was so determined that the ending be kept secret that he had David Prowse (Darth Vader) say "Obi-Wan killed your father", and dubbed it later to be "I am your father". In fact, only six people knew about the ending: George Lucas, director Irvin Kershner, writers Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, Mark Hamill, and James Earl Jones.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

And of course, the editors and sound people once the film went into post-production.


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

If it were an all or nothing proposition to watch BSG (2003) again, I'd have to pass. (After all, I've already seen it.)

If on the other hand I could watch only from the miniseries to the rescue on New Caprica and then jump to the last half of the finale (as suggested earlier in this thread), I'd likely choose to do so! I'd also recommend the same to my friends.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

Earlier I mentioned the BSG LiveJournal community. In this post, someone quotes a comment from DiscoverMagazine.com. It summed up how I think a few of us felt, and I thought I'd repost it here.



> http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/s...-finale-still-got-questions-weve-got-answers/
> 
> # Jeff Says:
> March 21st, 2009 at 3:27 am
> ...


I have to agree with this. It's a very well written argument.

(Of course, there are quite a few on that community that can't believe this person could even think this)


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Reposting someone else's thoughts from a BBS or the like - who's not a member here - is a little out-of-bounds.

But since you did it, the criticism is over-the-top. Not sure what 'Jeff' was expecting out of the finale. <shrug> He needs to breathe into a paper bag or something...


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Why would that be "out of bounds?" Once you post something publicly on the internet, you can't really have any expectations about how it will be used after that. 

Personally, I'm glad he posted it. I totally agree with "Jeff" and it's something I never would have seen if it weren't posted here, as it comes from a site I've never heard of and would never visit on my own.


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

hanumang said:


> Reposting someone else's thoughts from a BBS or the like - who's not a member here - is a little out-of-bounds.
> 
> But since you did it, the criticism is over-the-top. Not sure what 'Jeff' was expecting out of the finale. <shrug> He needs to breathe into a paper bag or something...


What was he expecting? Same thing as most of the rest of us: answers. And I don't mean spelling every little thing out, I mean some justification for *anything* they hinted at explaining throughout the life of the series. What "the plan" was. *How* Kara came back from the dead. Anything. Instead we got 20 minutes of useless flashbacks about characters they've taught us not to like, followed by an (admittedly) awesome hour of space battle and interesting development, followed by...crap. The ending gave us nothing, it was a waste.

"God did it" is a terrible (and uninteresting) answer.


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## DLiquid (Sep 17, 2001)

I've stayed away from these BSG threads for a long time, because there was so much negativity and it was affecting my enjoyment of the show. A few things bugged me about the finale, the biggest being Starbuck's disappearing act, so I couldn't resist coming here. I expected some negativity, but I really enjoyed the finale despite its faults, so I'm kind of surprised by the level of hate here. I don't disagree with the majority of the criticisms, but those things just don't bother me that much.

I really liked the second half of this season. Then I read this thread, and several people are saying that it sucked. I guess it was good I didn't read those show threads. I had no idea that it sucked.


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

Also, if they're going to land our intrepid "heroes" on our Earth that far in the past, let's see some hints at how they slotted in to our history. We've got several key characters named after the gods of an ancient civilization - go somewhere with that! You've got an old wiseguy who's missing an eye...Odin maybe? Do something with that. And the whole thing with the chief was just stupid. Seemed like they were hinting at something but, if they were, they did a bad job of it.

Bah.

At least the middle-bit was good.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

DevdogAZ said:


> Why would that be "out of bounds?" Once you post something publicly on the internet, you can't really have any expectations about how it will be used after that.


I'm not talking about infringing on copyright or some such nonsense, if that's what you thought I was getting at.

This forum is for us - members - to post _our_ thoughts. It's one thing to post RDM's thoughts (being that he's the man behind the program in question) but another poster's response to a blog entry on some other website is not necessarily cool. If it was some type of hard news (airdates, DVD release, etc) contained within that's one thing, but being that it's an opinion 'piece' I consider it out-of-bounds. Not some egregious violation (a la untagged spoilers) but still not cool.

Any of us could copy-and-paste for days just to stir the pot. Or pile on. It would sure help my carpal tunnel...

But, since we're discussing this piece, it's over-the-top because the guy's getting hyper-emotional - as though there was something that could have possibly saved the show in the last 2 hours 11 minutes when (I think) any long-term viewer knew it was too far gone.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

hanumang said:


> This forum is for us - members - to post _our_ thoughts. It's one thing to post RDM's thoughts (being that he's the man behind the program in question) but another poster's response to a blog entry on some other website is not necessarily cool. If it was some type of hard news (airdates, DVD release, etc) contained within that's one thing, but being that it's an opinion 'piece' I consider it out-of-bounds. Not some egregious violation (a la untagged spoilers) but still not cool.


Where is your notion coming from? I totally don't get what you're saying. It's perfectly cool and in no way "out of bounds" to post commentary here. It's not an exclusive club.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

hapdrastic said:


> "God did it" is a terrible (and uninteresting) answer.


I don't disagree.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

IndyJones1023 said:


> It's perfectly cool and in no way "out of bounds" to post commentary here.


We'll just disagree then.


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## Alpinemaps (Jul 26, 2004)

hanumang said:


> Reposting someone else's thoughts from a BBS or the like - who's not a member here - is a little out-of-bounds.
> 
> But since you did it, the criticism is over-the-top. Not sure what 'Jeff' was expecting out of the finale. <shrug> He needs to breathe into a paper bag or something...


I properly attributed the posting. I certainly didn't repost as if it were my own. I'm not sure how posting it as a quote is different than posting a direct link to it (which I also did).

I don't think it's pot-stirring, or over the top. 'Jeff' put together, in one place, everything I felt that was wrong with the finale.

I was entertained for those 2 hours. But I'm disappointed because there was *so* much more potential. So many things that *should* have been answered, and could have been answered, but weren't.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

DLiquid said:


> I really liked the second half of this season. Then I read this thread, and several people are saying that it sucked. I guess it was good I didn't read those show threads. I had no idea that it sucked.


Good thing you finally came here! You might have gone your entire life without knowing how much it sucked!


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## mrdbdigital (Feb 3, 2004)

ihatecable said:


> Dont worry how far a light year is. Just remember the Millennium Falcon made the Kessel run in 12 parsecs


Too bad that a parsec is a measurement of distance, not time, which renders the statement nonsensical in the above context.

From Dictionary.com: Parsec - Noun - Astronomy.
A unit of distance equal to that required to cause a heliocentric parallax of one second of an arc, equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun, or 3.26 light-years.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Consider having Chief Tyrol take a look at your sarcasm detector, Mr. Digital.


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## shaunrose (Sep 13, 2001)

Alpinemaps said:


> I properly attributed the posting. I certainly didn't repost as if it were my own. I'm not sure how posting it as a quote is different than posting a direct link to it (which I also did).
> 
> I don't think it's pot-stirring, or over the top. 'Jeff' put together, in one place, everything I felt that was wrong with the finale.
> 
> I was entertained for those 2 hours. But I'm disappointed because there was *so* much more potential. So many things that *should* have been answered, and could have been answered, but weren't.


Thanks for that post. I also think that was a well argued opinion for why so many of us were disappointed. It reminds me of a quote from Macbeth

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."


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## smark (Nov 20, 2002)

mrdbdigital said:


> Too bad that a parsec is a measurement of distance, not time, which renders the statement nonsensical in the above context.
> 
> From Dictionary.com: Parsec  Noun - Astronomy.
> A unit of distance equal to that required to cause a heliocentric parallax of one second of an arc, equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun, or 3.26 light-years.


Ahh but it's in a galaxy far, far away so perhaps a parsec doesn't mean what you think it means!


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

smark said:


> Ahh but it's in a galaxy far, far away so perhaps a parsec doesn't mean what you think it means!


inconceivable!


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

Wait, are we still talking about light-yahrens?


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## Revolutionary (Dec 1, 2004)

Alpinemaps said:


> ...I don't think it's pot-stirring, or over the top. 'Jeff' put together, in one place, everything I felt that was wrong with the finale.
> 
> I was entertained for those 2 hours. But I'm disappointed because there was *so* much more potential. So many things that *should* have been answered, and could have been answered, but weren't.


While I generally agree with Jeff that it could have been so much more, I don't really think there are that many unanswered questions. And while the literati can always lambaste every author for "pulling a deus ex machina" simply for invoking "god," I think its been clear for some time now that the "Cylon god" was a real power at work on the show. We were supposed to struggle with Baltar's faith in that god just as much as he did (e.g., the episode in Season 2 where Head Six points out the critical infrastructure on the Cylon base, and Baltar believes her to score a huge victory). We were supposed to wonder how Athena, Rosyln, and Caprica shared a vision. We were supposed to suspect that Starbuck's miraculous return to the fleet WAS MIRACULOUS. I think RDM et al did a fine job preparing us for the fact that this "science fiction" show contained important supernatural elements, and that it would not be the traditional "made up scientific principals save the day a la Star Trek or SG-1" sci fi show (the modern equivalent of a true deus ex machina device).

From that perspective, "what is Kara Thrace" was answered. She was the deceased Kara Thrace, re-purposed; "God" restored her so that she could lead humanity to "Earth" -- not the "13th colony called Earth," but the Earth where you and I live. She was not a figment or "Head Kara" (everybody saw her); she was not an "angel" in the sense that Head Six or Head Baltar were angels. She was Kara, miraculously resurrected to be a conduit of "God's" will and to bring his plan to fruition. Why? Because "God" wanted to do it that way.

And also from that perspective, we know what Hera was. "God" wanted to restart the human race on Earth. But "we are all God's children" (remember Head Six saying that several dozen times? it wasn't a platitude) -- he wanted the Cylon's to persist as well. Hera was a symbol for a future where the two "species" were merged, and from that merger, "God" started a our race (a third race, one that WE call humanity, but one that is NOT the "humanity" that lived on the 12 colonies) on a lush new planet. Perhaps the final scene's discussion about "mitochondial Eve" was too literal -- one can envision that we are not literally all HER descendants. She was simply the first human/cylon hybridization, the proof-of-concept. Many Cylons stayed with the humans; it is easy to believe that the two bloodlines intermingled countless more times beyond just Hera. Symbolically we are all her descendants, inasmuch as we all have "Cylon DNA" somewhere in our genetic code.

Frankly, I enjoyed this aspect of the show. It is politically and artistically dangerous to ever invoke "God." This show did it very well, and that "God" brought this all together should only surprise you about this finale if you weren't paying attention, or simply discarded all the "god-talk," thoughout the series.

Where the finale really veered off course was with the un-characteristic plot devices, each employed to cram the plot to where RDM wanted it to go. Adama would not have left Lee forever just because Laura died. The humans would not have abandoned all trappings of their technology to live in huts and hunt with flint spears. In the Discover interview, Moore said that Racetrack (or was it "God"?) launched nukes at the Colony -- if nukes weren't to be used, why was that Raptor loaded with 8 of them (and apparently nothing else). These are just a few. So while it answered a few questions, it fell flat not because they pulled a "deus ex machina" ("God" has been out of that particular box for several seasons), but because of the other poor writing choices.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Fascinating interpretations, Revolutionary. Thanks for sharing.


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## Revolutionary (Dec 1, 2004)

hanumang said:


> Fascinating interpretations, Revolutionary. Thanks for sharing.


You're welcome. I mostly needed to mind-dump. I just got around to watching the finale last night. The curse of Tivo, I guess.


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## mrmike (May 2, 2001)

I didn't see this linked elsewhere, but there's a lively bit of chat on Tor about the finale as well.


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## tgrim1 (Sep 11, 2006)

A minor thing thats bugging me is that there were actually 3 iterations of Kara and the viper werent there? Lee seen her and the viper blow up, #1. The viper and body on Earth1 werent blown up, #2, and then the versions that made it back to Galactica, #3.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

tgrim1 said:


> A minor thing thats bugging me is that there were actually 3 iterations of Kara and the viper werent there? Lee seen her and the viper blow up, #1. The viper and body on Earth1 werent blown up, #2, and then the versions that made it back to Galactica, #3.


Didn't Kara only find the *front* half of her viper on Cylon Earth?


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

mrdbdigital said:


> Too bad that a parsec is a measurement of distance, not time, which renders the statement nonsensical in the above context.
> 
> From Dictionary.com: Parsec  Noun - Astronomy.
> A unit of distance equal to that required to cause a heliocentric parallax of one second of an arc, equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun, or 3.26 light-years.


[Sarcasm] Thank you for confirming what a parsec is; now I can go back and tell my 9th grade science teacher who taught that to me 30 years ago that he was right. [/Sarcasm]

PS: I guess I should have wrapped my prior post in [Joking]


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

Revolutionary said:


> Where the finale really veered off course was with the un-characteristic plot devices, each employed to cram the plot to where RDM wanted it to go. Adama would not have left Lee forever just because Laura died. The humans would not have abandoned all trappings of their technology to live in huts and hunt with flint spears. In the Discover interview, Moore said that Racetrack (or was it "God"?) launched nukes at the Colony -- if nukes weren't to be used, why was that Raptor loaded with 8 of them (and apparently nothing else). These are just a few. So while it answered a few questions, it fell flat not because they pulled a "deus ex machina" ("God" has been out of that particular box for several seasons), but because of the other poor writing choices.


They dumb thing about that was that nukes have been used throughout the series. Galactica has withstood hundreds of nuclear hits that we've seen. In fact, given the prevalence of nukes throughout the show, when they rammed the Colony and were trading shots back and forth like crazy, I just assumed that every one of those were nukes. So it was completely ridiculous that a handful of missiles, fired from a Raptor, were able to do that much damage to the Colony. If either side had ammo that powerful, why weren't they using it during the main part of the battle?


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## techrat5 (Sep 17, 2003)

aintnosin said:


> Didn't Kara only find the *front* half of her viper on Cylon Earth?


Not even that much, I think it was just the cockpit.


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## techrat5 (Sep 17, 2003)

DevdogAZ said:


> They dumb thing about that was that nukes have been used throughout the series. Galactica has withstood hundreds of nuclear hits that we've seen. In fact, given the prevalence of nukes throughout the show, when they rammed the Colony and were trading shots back and forth like crazy, I just assumed that every one of those were nukes. So it was completely ridiculous that a handful of missiles, fired from a Raptor, were able to do that much damage to the Colony. If either side had ammo that powerful, why weren't they using it during the main part of the battle?


It was stated that they would be too close for nukes and missles and that it would be a gun battle. That still does not explain why the raptor had nukes though.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

techrat5 said:


> It was stated that they would be too close for nukes and missles and that it would be a gun battle. That still does not explain why the raptor had nukes though.


As a final solution. If the battle goes badly, nuke the frak out of 'em.


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

mrdbdigital said:


> Too bad that a parsec is a measurement of distance, not time, which renders the statement nonsensical in the above context.
> 
> From Dictionary.com: Parsec  Noun - Astronomy.
> A unit of distance equal to that required to cause a heliocentric parallax of one second of an arc, equivalent to 206,265 times the distance from the earth to the sun, or 3.26 light-years.





ihatecable said:


> [Sarcasm] Thank you for confirming what a parsec is; now I can go back and tell my 9th grade science teacher who taught that to me 30 years ago that he was right. [/Sarcasm]
> 
> PS: I guess I should have wrapped my prior post in [Joking]


No one here reads anything.. Sigh.. Ok, here was my comment on that, maybe I should elaborate:



jkeegan said:


> ..but that was because it was impressive that it had such a good navicomputer that it could go through densely warped space precisely, rather than having to go all the way around huge spacial distortions in the Kessel run like everyone else in the race had to..


I'd heard that one of the backstories was that it WAS impressive that he ran the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs (distance), because the Kessel run was a race to the finish, not of a particular route, and that most entrants had to go waaaaay around these spacial anomalies smack dab in the middle.. So most people would do the race by going waaaaaay around, yet the Millenium Falcon's navicomputer was so good that it could actually navigate _through_ the difficult portions, having a much shorter route..


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Here:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run



> The Kessel Run was an 18-parsec route used by smugglers to move glitterstim spice from Kessel to an area south of the Si'Klaata Cluster without getting caught by the Imperial ships that were guarding the movement of spice from Kessel's mines. Worlds along the Kessel Run included Fwillsving, Randa, Rion, and possibly Zerm.
> 
> It took travelers in real space around The Maw leading them to an uninhabitablebut far easier to navigatearea of space called The Pit, which was an asteroid cluster encased in a nebula arm making sensors as well as pilots go virtually blind. Thus there was a high chance that pilots, weary from the long flight through real space, would crash into an asteroid.
> 
> ...


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

Or, if you think "hey that was retcon by Lucas! He still didn't know what a parsec was!", you can look at the original draft of A New Hope, quoted later on the same page I just linked to:



> HAN: It's the ship that made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs!
> Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation.


Whichever interpretation you pick, it doesn't change the fact that Battlestar Galactica was written by a hack, who doesn't deserve to be mentioned within the same page as George Lucas.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

You know I'm impressed that I remembered the number of parseks, I thought a Star Wars geek was going to slap me down saying that I got that wrong,lol


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> Whichever interpretation you pick, it doesn't change the fact that Battlestar Galactica was written by a hack, who doesn't deserve to be mentioned within the same page as George Lucas.


Yet you just did exactly that.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> Or, if you think "hey that was retcon by Lucas! He still didn't know what a parsec was!", you can look at the original draft of A New Hope, quoted later on the same page I just linked to:


That still wouldn't explain why when asked if the ship was "fast", Solo responded about making the "Kessel run in 12 parsecs".

Even if the ship managed to get through a "18 parsec" run in 12 parsecs, it would have no bearing on speed. He simply found a short cut.

So it still makes no sense.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Han shot first.


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## Trent Bates (Dec 17, 2001)

techrat5 said:


> Not even that much, I think it was just the cockpit.


And the point of that was that the Viper exploded (for-whatever-reason-I-can't-remember-now and I'm -not-about-to-go-back-and-watch-to-find-out) but the cockpit (like in other modern aircraft) survived the explosion and made it to "cylon-earth" where it impacted and Kara died.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

morac said:


> So it still makes no sense.


I actually like the explanation that's allegedly in the script--that Solo was making a stupid claim, and Obi-Wan reacted appropriately.

Far the scene to actually work that way, it would require a massive boost in the IQ (or at least the knowledge base) of the average American moviegoer, but it's nice to think that such a smart throwaway bit was intended.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

mrmike said:


> I didn't see this linked elsewhere, but there's a lively bit of chat on Tor about the finale as well.


I LOLed at this:


> I kinda want to add my own scene to the finale where after Lee turns and Starbucks not there we then cut to a lion running off across the savannah with Starbuck in its mouth. That would work much better for me.


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## mrdbdigital (Feb 3, 2004)

morac said:


> That still wouldn't explain why when asked if the ship was "fast", Solo responded about making the "Kessel run in 12 parsecs".


Exactly. In the context of the conversation in the original movie, without the viewer knowing the back story about the Kessel run, it appears to be an incorrect reference to speed.

There was no sarcasm intended on my part in my earlier message. I was just referring to the original line in the movie, as appearing to be incorrect usage of the term parsec.


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## Malcontent (Sep 5, 2004)

http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/the-battlestar-ending-you.php#more


> Ron Moore dropped an interesting tidbit about an ending that might have been.
> 
> In this version of the story, the Galactica herself ends up on Earth instead of being flown into the sun, and she also manages to show up in our present day timeline:


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

> Moore said they ultimately didn't go with the ending because they wouldn't have been able to reconcile it with the "reality" of the series.


Wait, what?


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Interesting...More from the BSG forum...


> QUOTE (Shaphie @ Mar 26 2009, 01:08 AM)
> Did you really not see Daniel being something that people would jump on? Or are you just evil and love giving Max headaches?
> 
> RDM here.
> ...


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Phenomenal idiocy at work there.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

> It's one of those things that seems so obvious in hindsight, but no one at the time ever raised the idea that this would become a huge rabbit hole for the fans to jump down.


Uh, this guy worked on _Star Trek_? Was there ever a rabbit hole too small for trekkies to jump down?


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

> Moore said they ultimately didn't go with the ending because they wouldn't have been able to reconcile it with the "reality" of the series.


Anyone else experience some uncontrollable laughter after reading that line?


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## Wil (Sep 27, 2002)

dswallow said:


> Anyone else experience some uncontrollable laughter after reading that line?


Most people don't know this (because the question was edited out), but President Obama was asked about Moore's comments on last Sunday's 60 Minutes.


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## Todd (Oct 7, 1999)

I'm surprised they didn't play "Mr. Roboto" at the end...


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Wil said:


> Most people don't know this (because the question was edited out), but President Obama was asked about Moore's comments on last Sunday's 60 Minutes.


what did he say in response?


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## Malcontent (Sep 5, 2004)

http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/the-best-and-worst-online.php


> Some thought the crew's farewell was perfect, some cringed, while others came down somewhere in between. Here's a sampling of the choicest quotes about BSG's swan song--the good, the bad and the mixed.


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## bigbrihaze (Jan 19, 2004)

I have to disagree with you on this. If you look at what out science knows about evolution, there is a point when Neanderthal overlapped with Homosapiens. I remember watching a Discovery Channel program about it...
from YahooAnswers..

_"Two competing hypothesis exist on this. The predominate hypothesis is "replacement," but a growing number think some interbreeding occured & that is called the "regional" hypothesis. The replacement hypothesis suspects **** sapien came out of Africa some 60-40,000 yrs ago & replaced all other ancient lines of **** in Europe & Asia. The regional hypothesis suggests some interbreeding of sapien & neandertal happened in Europe, and some interbreeding of **** erectus & sapien happened in Asia.
Both neandertal & sapien are considered to have evolved from **** erectus. & while limited evidence for interbreeding exists, no evidence exists that says they could not interbreed. The sequencing of the entire neandertal genome is targeted for later this year or early next year._
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080105024512AAAOoU9



IndyJones1023 said:


> The remnants of the human race all splitting up? I'm not talking about across the globe, but even the ones "sticking together" were going off on their own in couples. That's a phenomenally bad idea.
> 
> Such a stupid ending. So sad to waste so much potential. And the "Hollywood ending" with its "message" was so unnecessary. It even looked tacked on. The Adama-on-hillside with swelling music was the ending. No need for the extra scene.
> 
> :down:


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

I don't think you meant to quote me. I don't see how your comment is a response to mine.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

IndyJones1023 said:


> I don't think you meant to quote me. I don't see how your comment is a response to mine.


True. I believe he meant to quote me. If the sequencing of Neandertal DNA shows we got some of their characteristics it would just go to prove what I already think about some people. I was originally taught the "replacement" theory.

Only eight posts to go to 500!


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

I do recall one scientist on TV saying this (paraphrasing since I don't recall the exact words): If history has proven anything to us, it is that if man sees something that looks vaguely like he could frack, he will frack it...to even entertain the hypothesis that the two races did not interbreed is totally absurd since it flies against every shred of evidence we've seen throughout history...

I am in way, shape, or form an expert or even an amateur on the subject...but I need to know nothing else about this...the above statement is all the evidence I need


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

ronsch said:


> True. I believe he meant to quote me. If the sequencing of Neandertal DNA shows we got some of their characteristics it would just go to prove what I already think about some people. I was originally taught the "replacement" theory.


But that's not what it shows. There is no evidence in Neanderthal DNA of anything that they might have passed to us.

This is one of those questions that really should be considered settled, but too many people won't give up the blending view. There was a time when both made sense, but more and more evidence has come to light, and absolutely none of it supports the blending theory. The blending theorists argue that "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence," but Argumentum ex Silentio will only take you so far. When you're arguing that something happened, and an ever-growing body of evidence doesn't show it happening, eventually it's time to give it up.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

I think the real question that the Neandertal sequencing might answer is were they genetically compatible enough to interbreed with **** Sapien, not that one or the other wouldn't have tried.


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## ihatecable (Apr 16, 2003)

I think it would be safe to assume Baltar would try or at least that was what the consensus on the hill was.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

ihatecable said:


> I think it would be safe to assume Baltar would try or at least that was what the consensus on the hill was.


With exception of those cool binoculars, he wouldn't have much technology to work with.

Greg


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

A few months back while waiting for a haircut I read the National Geographic article RDM was looking at with Baltar & Six reading over his shoulder.

The article conceeded that some interbreeding must have happened (knowing that men will frack whatever they can frack), but explained that there is no evidence in the DNA code, and modern man appears to be a different evolutionaty branch from the Neandertals, not decendent from them.

The science of human evolution is still murky, so the BSG ending fits into history as we know it as well as science fiction can be expected to.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

gchance said:


> With exception of those cool binoculars, he wouldn't have much technology to work with.
> 
> Greg


I think the idea is that Baltar would conduct as many field trials as he possibly could before dying of exhaustion


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

(Hope I'm not smeeking, but I'm not sure how to do a search through a single thread)

I was reading this interview and in it RDM mentions a "show bible". All I can think is: really? It mentions Laura's sister and drunk driving crash as being in the bible, as background for her character. But that doesn't strike me as really meeting the criteria of a "show bible".

To me, in order to qualify as a show bible, it would have to have had things in it like the Final 5, Daniel, two Earths, etc., instead of them having made it up on the fly (which they've admitted to).


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

A show bible is a combination of backstory for the characters, rules of the universe you're creating, and an ongoing log of events and character developments.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

They had one, it just wasn't as thorough as it should have been.


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## hapdrastic (Mar 31, 2006)

IndyJones1023 said:


> A show bible is a combination of backstory for the characters, rules of the universe you're creating, and an ongoing log of events and character developments.





hefe said:


> They had one, it just wasn't as thorough as it should have been.


I guess my definition of "show bible" includes "some idea of what we're doing and why we're doing it" as well as just backstory....


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

hapdrastic said:


> I guess my definition of "show bible" includes "some idea of what we're doing and why we're doing it" as well as just backstory....


It depends on the show. I'm sure they didn't have an end game for _King of Queens_. But having one for BSG would have been one hell of a good idea.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

hapdrastic said:


> I guess my definition of "show bible" includes "some idea of what we're doing and why we're doing it" as well as just backstory....


That's an awfully high bar.


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## Fahtrim (Apr 12, 2004)

this thread is still going? doesn't change the fact that it was a crap ending to a series that started well and went all down hill from there

just like the Matrix, 1st good second bad, third stupid


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Fahtrim said:


> this thread is still going? doesn't change the fact that it was a crap ending to a series that started well and went all down hill from there
> 
> just like the Matrix, 1st good second bad, third stupid


Well, it had ended...but then you posted.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Most TV shows are written by teams of writers and different directors direct different episodes. The "bible" maintains continuity of how different characters behave and what is possible (example: Jack Bauer FTL jumping his car NOT OK!). I'm not convinced that the death of Laura's family was part of this bible, but at least some of the backstory involving Zack, Lee and Starbuck would have been, as it was referred to since early in the series.

I'm sure that RDM had a general idea where BSG would end all along (Earth), but the twists & turns and final details were written as they went along. I doubt that any TV show ever outlined in advance 4 seasons of story development in the detail some people here expect.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Dancar said:


> I'm not convinced that the death of Laura's family was part of this bible, but at least some of the backstory involving Zack, Lee and Starbuck would have been, as it was referred to since early in the series.


Actually, a quick Google search turns up this page at Battlestar Wiki which details some of the backstory for BSG's characters contained in the series bible.

To my surprise Roslin's family tragedy is there, albeit slightly altered.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

I had a copy of the Star Trek:TNG writer's bible and it ultimately bears little resemblance to the final show. A series bible is, at best, a starting point, but not the final word.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

aintnosin said:


> I had a copy of the Star Trek:TNG writer's bible and it ultimately bears little resemblance to the final show. A series bible is, at best, a starting point, but not the final word.


On the other hand, TNG never pretended to be about the destination. It never claimed to have A Plan.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

aintnosin said:


> I had a copy of the Star Trek:TNG writer's bible and it ultimately bears little resemblance to the final show. A series bible is, at best, a starting point, but not the final word.


Never mind that BSG attempted to convince us that it had a plan (that's been addressed) but TNG's scenario makes total sense since the show didn't really find its footing until season 3, in my mind.

There were more than a few story elements (that I would imagine were part of the series bible) that were dropped within the first dozen episodes. Picard's pride in his French heritage being one that stands out, for some odd reason.


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## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

aintnosin said:


> I had a copy of the Star Trek:TNG writer's bible and it ultimately bears little resemblance to the final show. A series bible is, at best, a starting point, but not the final word.


Unlike BSG, TNG stayed true to its established science. Whether that was due to a bible, or constant vigilance, the difference between TNG and BSG is quite clear. Thinking about this reminds me of one episode on TNG when 2 people were beamed from another ship to the Enterprise without the ship dropping its shields (Which according to the Star Trek rules can't be done). An error like this wouldn't even catch our attention on BSG, but it was quite a WTF moment for Star Trek fans when it aired. I just looked it up and I wasn't too surprised to find out who wrote the episode. I guess whoever was in charge of fixing RDMs crap back then took that day off.


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## hanumang (Jan 28, 2002)

Well, certain 'science' things in the TNG universe did take a while to get right. The notion of the galaxy split into (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta) quadrants was one of them.

If the series is about exploring you'd think they'd get the map and its directions down from the get-go, but the 'current' quadrants system wasn't cemented until _The Price_ (the 56th episode of TNG).


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## Rosincrans (May 4, 2006)

hanumang said:


> Well, certain 'science' things in the TNG universe did take a while to get right. The notion of the galaxy split into (Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta) quadrants was one of them.
> 
> If the series is about exploring you'd think they'd get the map and its directions down from the get-go, but the 'current' quadrants system wasn't cemented until _The Price_ (the 56th episode of TNG).


A fair point. Thinking back there was a lot of revamping that went on after the first season that didn't make a lot of sense continuity wise, but was better for the show overall. Maybe if the final product of BSG had been better I would also be more forgiving of the false starts at the beginning.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

I noticed that the whole FTL capability was kept vague so that it could fit the needs of the story. It obviously allows instant intersteller travel and quick getaways, but it seems there is a limit to the distance you can jump, or perhaps where you can jump, since some destinations seemed to require up to a dozen jumps.

There was one episode that irritated me a little... Galactica was accidently separated from the fleet because new jump coordinates were not communicated to the fleet, and it would take something like 20 hours to calculate the jump. If you know the old coordinates, then why so difficult to figure how to get there from where you are? Or why not just jump back, and then jump to the old corrdinates? Yet in the finale, it took less than 12 hours to send a raptor to the rendevous point and lead the fleet to Earth!


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

Other interesting thing about BSG is how it conforms to what we're discovering and departs from other SciFi shows & movies.

SETI has been looking for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations for decades now and has found ziltch. If intelligent life was as common in the real universe as it is in Star Trek and Star Wars, we should have surely detected some sign of it by now. While extraterrestrial life can't be ruled out, technological civilizations capable of radio communications or space travel must be exceedingly rare.

Now enter BSG. Humans & Cylons are the only known forms of intelligent life in the universe, and no one even bothered to look for others. Despite FTL technology, only 17 planets capable of supporting human life seem to be known: The 12 colonies, Kobol, New Caprica, the "Temple of Jupiter" planet, Earths One and Two. 

In other Sci Fi stories, introducing new planets and civilizations all the time opens the doors for writers to come up with an infinite number of new stories, but in BSG, the lack of other life and scarcity of inhabitable planets re-enforced the sense of isolation and lonliness felt by the fleet.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

Dancar said:


> .
> 
> SETI has been looking for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations for decades now and has found ziltch. If intelligent life was as common in the real universe as it is in Star Trek and Star Wars, we should have surely detected some sign of it by now.
> 
> .


you are thinking too much like a human. I think the correct statement to make is that we havent been able to detect any other life signs using our current technology. You are being presumptive that everything we know about life/earth/people/aliens or whatever is correct. There may be things out there we cant even comprehend. Life forms in a form we cannot measure. Things that not even the stupidest sci fi movie cant imagine.

yes it's pretty hard to think of something that doesnt exist...but thats only because of our human minds


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

I am not discounting the possibility of non-intelligent life or pre-industrial civilization, as SETI has no way to detect it. But any civilization capable of space travel would certainly be emitting lots of electromagnetic noise which would be noticed. Even if they don't use it for communications (you'd have to use a science fiction concept like "subspace communication" to avoid it), it would still be by-product of their technology.

Of course any civilization which emergerged in the past few thousand years would still be undetectable if they are more than a few thousand light years away,

Still, the lonley BSG universe appears to be more likely than the Star Trek one.


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## IndyJones1023 (Apr 1, 2002)

Dancar said:


> I am not discounting the possibility of non-intelligent life or pre-industrial civilization, as SETI has no way to detect it. But any civilization capable of space travel would certainly be emitting lots of electromagnetic noise which would be noticed. Even if they don't use it for communications (you'd have to use a science fiction concept like "subspace communication" to avoid it), it would still be by-product of their technology.


Perhaps their technology is based on things that use frequencies we haven't discovered yet.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

newsposter said:


> you are thinking too much like a human.


And even thinking like a human, they would have to be almost in our yard to be detectable. People sometimes forget how vast the distances are; there could be hundreds of sentient species in the galaxy and we might never know simply because they are beyond our very limited detection capabilities. Remember, e.g., that radio waves degrade with distance. Our radio and TV signals wouldn't even reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. Even with high-powered narrow-band transmissions (which would have to be targeted at a specific star), the range is generally only in the dozens of light-years, with maximum ranges in the hundreds. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. And since there is as of yet no real theoretical basis for faster-than-light travel, the odds of somebody coming across us physcially are almost nil.

The sad truth is, the universe could be teeming with intelligent life, but science fiction notwithstanding, we may never know. Hopefully, we'll get lucky or learn something revolutionary that will improve the odds.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

The current radio telescope technology IS cabable of detecting a late-20th Century Earth from a vast distance provided it is aimed at the right spot and the right frequencies are being monitored. Of course, if the star you're listening to is 50,000 light years away, you're listening to what was emitted 50,000 years ago, not to whatever is happening now. But they've been listening for decades without finding anything that isn't explained by natural sources.

A lot of people have opinions on extraterrestrial life, but they are still entirely speculative. The conclusion you come to depends on what assumptions you start with, and there are few facts to confirm or disprove any of the assumptions. Our Earth may be only place in the universe with any life at all, or there may be intelligent life all over the place, but very few that have learned how to communicate off-planet. Or maybe they choose to be hidden. FTL travel may exist using a physics we haven't discovered yet, and sub-luminal interstellar travel (either "generation ships" or traveling 99 percent light-speed to slow down time for the travelers) may or may not have ever happened.

The only thing does appear very likely to me is that a "Star Wars" universe where intersteller travel is as common as intercontenental travel is here looks very unlikely.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Here's IGN's top 20 moments in BattleStar for what it's worth:

http://tv.ign.com/articles/966/966587p1.html



Dancar said:


> SETI has been looking for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations for decades now and has found ziltch. If intelligent life was as common in the real universe as it is in Star Trek and Star Wars, we should have surely detected some sign of it by now. While extraterrestrial life can't be ruled out, technological civilizations capable of radio communications or space travel must be exceedingly rare.


Looking for intelligent life in space is literally like looking for a needle in millions of haystacks. We still haven't finished exploring our own planet let along the universe. We keep finding new species on Earth every day and most of the Earth's oceans are still a mystery.

Let's say there are lots of planets with life on it out there, SETI still might not find them for a number of reasons:

1. To find a signal from another planet, the SETI telescopes must be point exactly at that planet. Considering how empty space is and we don't know where the planets are, it's unlikely we'll point to one by accident.

2. Any civilization on that planet has to have been broadcasting signals at least as long ago as they are far away. In other words, if a planet is 10,000 light years away, the civilization on that planet would have had to start broadcasting at least 10,000 years ago.

3. The civilization would have to be specifically broadcasting towards us. Currently our radio and TV signals emanate out into space, but at such a low power that they quickly become part of the background noise of the universe. Even if another civilization received our signals, it would be very difficult to actually pick them up. So another civilization would need to be specifically sending signals at very high power out into space (basically sending a beacon). See this article.

So basically, just because SETI hasn't found anything, doesn't mean extraterrestrial life is "exceedingly rare".

I will grant though that Star Trek finds new species way to easily. The likelihood of two spaceships accidentally bumping into each other in space like they do on Star Trek is next to impossible.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> The sad truth is, the universe could be teeming with intelligent life, but science fiction notwithstanding, we may never know. Hopefully, we'll get lucky or learn something revolutionary that will improve the odds.


Even if we find one, the conversations wouldn't be that interesting. Think about the conversations on those live satellite broadcasts, where one person speaks and then the other person responds a few seconds later. Now multiply that by about 3 billion times and you'd have an inter-planetary conversation. At least until we discover sub-space.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Uh, oh. President Obama has been depressed ever since BSG was over...

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_depressed_distant_since?utm_source=a-section

_"I'm a little concerned," first lady Michelle Obama was overheard saying at a fundraising event Tuesday. "When Firefly was canceled, he walked around like a zombie for a week, and Serenity was the only thing that snapped him out of it. Last night he said he felt like he had just discovered David Axelrod was one of the Final Five, whatever that means."

The commander in chief also bragged that he "totally called" the fact that "All Along The Watch Tower" would be used as the jump coordinates for the FTL drive. 
_


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

All that SETI tells us is that Sagan et. al.'s conjecture that advanced technical civilizations could be beaming radio signal becons to contact emerging technical societies is probably NOT the case. Even we with Arecibo could send a beacon across a large fraction of the galaxy that another us could receive.

What SETI really can't do is pick any (if they exist) regular radio eminations from anyone further than a few dozen LY away, our backyard.

My feeling is this...if there is/was ever an advanced TECHNICAL species in this galaxy, they would have explored it all using autonomous self-replicating probes, even ones limited by light speed. At 10&#37; the speed of light, the galaxy could be covered in a million years. The galaxy is roughly 13,000 million years old.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

philw1776 said:


> My feeling is this...if there is/was ever an advanced TECHNICAL species in this galaxy, they would have explored it all using autonomous self-replicating probes, even ones limited by light speed. At 10% the speed of light, the galaxy could be covered in a million years. The galaxy is roughly 13,000 million years old.


Unless they're like us, in which case the funding bill will never get out of committee.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

philw1776 said:


> My feeling is this...if there is/was ever an advanced TECHNICAL species in this galaxy, they would have explored it all using autonomous self-replicating probes, even ones limited by light speed. At 10% the speed of light, the galaxy could be covered in a million years. The galaxy is roughly 13,000 million years old.





Rob Helmerichs said:


> Unless they're like us, in which case the funding bill will never get out of committee.


Then they would just have to wait until their equivalent of Skynet took over.


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

Dancar said:


> I am not discounting the possibility of non-intelligent life or pre-industrial civilization, as SETI has no way to detect it. But any civilization capable of space travel would certainly be emitting lots of electromagnetic noise which would be noticed. .


sigh....i dont know how to say this without tone....so just try to imagine it and dont be too offended....

you are STILL thinking like a human...there may be things out there that dont follow the same 'rules' as us...radio waves, food, oxygen, visible light, rotating 'planets', galaxies, heat, cold, tires, lasers etc. You think their spaceships will give off waves or something? how can you know that? you cant. You are limited by your human brain so i dont blame you, but just open your mind to the possibilities here.

Think of everything you know about life here as wrong and that nothing you even can think of can describe what may be out there or how the "beings" live. I know it's an oxymoron to think of things that don't exist, or rather things we dont know exist. You have to try.  But you will always fail.

There may be something out there that doesnt emit heat/cold/or these radio waves you keep speaking of. You have to think more abstractly. Also you are binding yourself to 'life as we know it' and while you are very likely correct about discovering 'life as we know it', it's the life we dont know about nor comprehend that Im thinking may be out there and we will never be able to detect it.

I hope you understand what i'm getting at here but in case not, here's an absurd example: Everything except humans on earth is really alive and humans are the definition of inanimate objects 'to' those inanimate objects. Put another way, the walls are alive but you arent, according to their definition of life.

"everything is relative" has never been a more appropriate quote for what we are talking about here.


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## aintnosin (Jun 25, 2003)

newsposter said:


> you are STILL thinking like a human...there may be things out there that dont follow the same 'rules' as us...radio waves, food, oxygen, visible light, rotating 'planets', galaxies, heat, cold, tires, lasers etc. You think their spaceships will give off waves or something? how can you know that? you cant. You are limited by your human brain so i dont blame you, but just open your mind to the possibilities here.


Even if they do, if they only achieved modern technology 5,000 years ago and they're 10,000 ly away, we won't detect anything for another 5,000 years.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

aintnosin said:


> Then they would just have to wait until their equivalent of Skynet took over.


Me, I think them there Centurions took over the entire galaxy and are just waiting for us to stick our noses out...


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

Due to a bout of temporary insanity I watched big chunks of the finale again last night before deleting it to reclaim the space. Cavil's suicide and the last half hour made no more sense this time than the first viewing.


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

ronsch said:


> Due to a bout of temporary insanity I watched big chunks of the finale again last night before deleting it to reclaim the space. Cavil's suicide and the last half hour made no more sense this time than the first viewing.


Well, it looked COOL!

As to the last half hour, given the several previous mind numbing episodes on fractious human politics it's incredible that everyone right in the middle of planing to build cities suddenly uniformly all agrees to abandon technology just because Apollo throws out the idea.

A more rational approach would be to keep technology (vs being chased by lions and enduring over 145,000 years of miserable primitive existance) and simply outlaw cybernetics or robotics. The way the Battlestar folks did it abandoning technology, eventually literacy, etc. prevented any warning to their descendants. Had they outlawed a cybernetic slave society they could have documented and preserved the warning to the species leting the descendants know the terrible price their civilization paid for cybernetic slavery. But NOOOooo! Obviously, yet again RDM went for the shocking 'cool' back to nature apporach vs any rational thought or motivation.


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## Rob Helmerichs (Oct 17, 2000)

philw1776 said:


> Obviously, yet again RDM went for the shocking 'cool' back to nature apporach vs any rational thought or motivation.


Actually, there _was _a tiny bit of rational thought involved. Since it was _our _past they ended up in, there had to be a reason why the Colonials left no trace whatsoever in the fossil record.

So the solution was pretty lame, yes, but it was an actual solution to an actual problem. On the very rare occasion when RDM actually tried to solve a logical problem, he should be praised. Sort of. I guess.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Actually, there _was _a tiny bit of rational thought involved. Since it was _our _past they ended up in, there had to be a reason why the Colonials left no trace whatsoever in the fossil record.
> 
> So the solution was pretty lame, yes, but it was an actual solution to an actual problem. On the very rare occasion when RDM actually tried to solve a logical problem, he should be praised. Sort of. I guess.


remind me not to ask you for a letter of recommendation


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## philw1776 (Jan 19, 2002)

Rob Helmerichs said:


> Actually, there _was _a tiny bit of rational thought involved. Since it was _our _past they ended up in, there had to be a reason why the Colonials left no trace whatsoever in the fossil record.
> 
> So the solution was pretty lame, yes, but *it was an actual solution to an actual problem*. On the very rare occasion when RDM actually tried to solve a logical problem, he should be praised. Sort of. I guess.


I agree. However, I think that lots of folks here could have come up with some let's say ancient high civilization whose city was later destroyed by volcano, asteroid, whatever such that only stragglers, offspring of Hera survived.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

I suspect that an earlier version of ending had only a single raptor surviving the final battle and arriving on Earth carrying Hera, Baltar, Six (dramatically it worked well to have them survive) and a couple of others (Cally/Hot Dog's son to mate with Hera?). That way it would work to cast Hera as the mother of modern humans and explain why techology did not survive. But perhaps they decided death in space for the other 38,000 colonists was too dark.


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## morac (Mar 14, 2003)

According to a post by RDM, an earlier version had Galatica surviving intact, but being buried in Central America. It just hadn't been discovered yet in our time. Thankfully that idea was scrapped.


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## busyba (Feb 5, 2003)

You know what would have been cool... if at some point Lee asked Starbuck, "what _are_ you?" and she replied, "not to be overly dramatic, but I'm an angel sent by God. Ta-da!"


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

morac said:


> Looking for intelligent life in space is literally like looking for a needle in millions of haystacks. We still haven't finished exploring our own planet let along the universe. We keep finding new species on Earth every day and most of the Earth's oceans are still a mystery.
> 
> Let's say there are lots of planets with life on it out there, SETI still might not find them for a number of reasons:
> 
> 1. To find a signal from another planet, the SETI telescopes must be point exactly at that planet. Considering how empty space is and we don't know where the planets are, it's unlikely we'll point to one by accident.


Yes, but SETI selects as its targets stars where life is likely to be: similar to our own and not in star binarary systems which can cause climate extremes on any planets.



> 2. Any civilization on that planet has to have been broadcasting signals at least as long ago as they are far away. In other words, if a planet is 10,000 light years away, the civilization on that planet would have had to start broadcasting at least 10,000 years ago.


True, I already made that point.



> 3. The civilization would have to be specifically broadcasting towards us. Currently our radio and TV signals emanate out into space, but at such a low power that they quickly become part of the background noise of the universe. Even if another civilization received our signals, it would be very difficult to actually pick them up. So another civilization would need to be specifically sending signals at very high power out into space (basically sending a beacon). See this article.


Quoted from the linked article:


> "Some of our radars are easily detectable quite far, hundreds of light-years, into space, if the aliens wish to try, and if they're in the beam," says Seth Shostak, an astronomer at Seti.


I met Set Shostak at a speaking engagement once. I was suprised to hear him explain that broadcasts of "Good Morning Caprica" is actually NOT what they are looking for. Like he says, it's radar and other forms of long-wavelength transmission which are by-products of some of the things we do and assume other technologically advanced civilizations might do.



> So basically, just because SETI hasn't found anything, doesn't mean extraterrestrial life is "exceedingly rare".


Conversely, the fact that they would be difficult to find doesn;t mean they exist either. Unfortunately, the farther away it is, the less likely it is that there will be any meaningful exchange, unless subspace communication or hyper-space jumps are possible. If a civilization is within a few dozen light years, two-way communication is possible, even if it takes generations to have a "conversation." But father than that it would be like listening to 78 rpm Curuso records.


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

morac said:


> According to a post by RDM, an earlier version had Galatica surviving intact, but being buried in Central America. It just hadn't been discovered yet in our time. Thankfully that idea was scrapped.


I like that idea. If the show ended with the discovery of an ancient spacecraft in 2010 that would be fascinating, since it would be a major paradigm shift for our culture. Just don't send a dead Cylon Centurian to a lab for reverse engineering - too Terminatory.


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## packerfan (Jan 8, 2002)

Did you know that Tricia Helfer once posed in playboy? Me neither. The internet is your friend, if you are interested in seeing her goods.


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## Crrink (Sep 3, 2002)

Hmm, another WWTDD fan?
I think they have a new writer since the last month or three - posts haven't been nearly as funny.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

packerfan said:


> Did you know that Tricia Helfer once posed in playboy? Me neither. The internet is your friend, if you are interested in seeing her goods.


How could you not know? She posed around S3 sometime.

Greg


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## Timbeau (May 31, 2002)

Saw in the section on Grace Park on imdb:


> [on what's next for her character Sharon on "Battlestar Galactica" (2004)] It's funny because I was on the plane with [producer Ronald D. Moore] on the way here, and I was like, "What do you see for my character?" And he was kind of lost, and I was like, "It's kind of funny because I'm sort of lost. I was sort of looking at my character to maybe give me some ideas." And he's like, "So the responsibility lies on me to help shape your life?" I'm like, "Yeah, pretty much!" Then he's like, "Well, I was drawing on the actress". And I'm like, "Oh, so you're looking to me to provide you with a storyline?"


Looking back, "And he was kind of lost" sounds soooo true. In fact, to me, the whole quote really sums up the way the series went -- no one providing any clear cut direction anywhere.


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## Anubys (Jul 16, 2004)

like, that sounds like it's like really bad...


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## Timbeau (May 31, 2002)

Anubys said:


> like, that sounds like it's like really bad...


 A dialogue writer she ain't.


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## dswallow (Dec 3, 2000)

Timbeau said:


> A dialogue writer she ain't.


I don't get why people say that's bad dialogue if people actually do speak like that; then someone who writes dialogue where people speak like that should really be considered a good dialogue writer, right?


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## Timbeau (May 31, 2002)

dswallow said:


> I don't get why people say that's bad dialogue if people actually do speak like that; then someone who writes dialogue where people speak like that should really be considered a good dialogue writer, right?


I'm not sure I'd watch a show that was written like that. I think it would get pretty tiresome.


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## cheesesteak (Jul 24, 2003)

gchance said:


> How could you not know? She posed around S3 sometime.
> 
> Greg


I didn't know. She doesn't do much for me with clothes on. I won't knock myself out looking for pictures of her naked. I might just happen to stumble upon them when I'm bored, though.


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## DevdogAZ (Apr 16, 2003)

dswallow said:


> I don't get why people say that's bad dialogue if people actually do speak like that; then someone who writes dialogue where people speak like that should really be considered a good dialogue writer, right?


Not to mention that she wasn't writing the quote above, she was speaking it. So how does the way she talks have anything to do with whether she's a good dialogue writer or not?


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## Dancar (Oct 8, 2001)

What is good dialog writing? A show like West Wing, where everyone unrealistically has the same quick-wittedness and sarcasm? Like a typical sitcom, where everything is a setup for a punchline, or like Robert Altman movies where charachters realistically talk over each other, speak in sentence fragments or unitelligibly mumble, yet many in the audience find annoying?


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## newsposter (Aug 18, 2002)

Dancar said:


> What is good dialog writing? A show like West Wing, where everyone unrealistically has the same quick-wittedness and sarcasm? Like a typical sitcom, where everything is a setup for a punchline, or like Robert Altman movies where charachters realistically talk over each other, speak in sentence fragments or unitelligibly mumble, yet many in the audience find annoying?


i think you answered your own questions..sit coms demand punchlines, things like west wing have all witty people etc


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## Pralix (Dec 8, 2001)

I just finished re-watching this episode. The whole giving up on technology thing reminded me of the last episode of The Martian Chronicles mini-series. Rock Hudson decided his family will go native because that is the only way he thinks they will survive in the long term. Technology was what destroyed the Earth and caused all sorts of problems with humans on Mars.


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

Pralix said:


> I just finished re-watching this episode.


Why?

Greg


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## jkeegan (Oct 16, 2000)

gchance said:


> Why?
> 
> Greg


Maybe he wanted to remember which was worse, BSG or Heroes? (Jeff ducks)


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## gchance (Dec 6, 2002)

jkeegan said:


> Maybe he wanted to remember which was worse, BSG or Heroes? (Jeff ducks)


No need to duck. I have 6 episodes of Heroes and keep watching one every few weeks. It's tough going!

Greg


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## Figaro (Nov 10, 2003)

jkeegan said:


> Maybe he wanted to remember which was worse, BSG or Heroes? (Jeff ducks)


Oh god, I have 9 episodes of Heroes stacked on my DVR. I think i might just delete them. When watching a TV show seems like a chore to do, it might be time to give up on it.

This has all given me a new perspective on Lost though. It's not that Lost has remained so great, it's just that it hasn't gone to suck as fast as Heroes and BSG.


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## ronsch (Sep 7, 2001)

I've got the whole season of Heroes. Haven't even started it yet!


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## slocko (Mar 5, 2004)

I have the whole season too. Just started watching this week. The upside is that since everyone had told me it was bad, my lowered expectations are actually making me enjoy the show, well at least the beginning. Maybe it will get worse.


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## DouglasPHill (Feb 10, 2005)

Its not bad, in fact, many of the eps and even the first season were very good. Whats bad is the writers making everything up without any checks to see if anything was consistent with previous episodes. The cylons may have had a plan, but the writers did not.


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