Yea, Caprica's problem was they threw out too many arc elements from the beginning, and and tried to advance each one a little each week, so, it seemed to most, that the arc wasn't moving, and didn't know where it wanted to go. If they had stripped it back to 2 or 3 (or even 4) Arc elements to start with, and play them out, and then layered on top of that with more, I believe it would've been much more likely to succeed. I personally didn't mind, I'm fine with a slow burn (I love Babylon 5 Season 1, which many can't get through, their first time through, until they learn what's coming, and can identify what is actually moving), but, yea, to succeed, they needed to better plan their world/Arc building. If you're able to accept that first half season, though, I think it really becomes a great Series by the end, and I was sad to see end (Though the CODA really helps make it a complete Series)
I loved the pseudo-mysticism in NuBSG and in fact the episodes featuring Iblis were among the best out of what was largely fluffy nonsense in the original. I would have loved to see a new take on Carillon though, introduce some new characters and some funky aliens for half a season. I understand that this would have detracted from their overall allegory for real world conflicts but sometimes I love me some real sci fi. I would have loved to see the Imperious Leader and Count Iblis pop up too.
Remember they changed showrunners for the back half of the season, and it really shows. I have no confidence that, had Jane Espenson stayed at the helm for the entire season, it would have turned out even half as good as it did. Basically, I think all the credit for how the show turned out by the end is due to Kevin Murphy. I don't know how he managed it, but he wrangled that writers' room into making the show coherent instead of a mishmash of danglers.
Oh, I have no doubt that the new Show Runner was the reason for the improvement, I was merely saying, it was all there, it just needed to be parsed and introduced/advanced in a more planned out manner. I don't think he changed much more than the pace, by scaling back, and concentrating on a few things at time (that were already there), rather then trying to do everything all at once
The only mis-step I think the series made has to do with the character of Clarice Willow, whose story really doesn't start to coalesce until the introduction of James Marsters' Barnabas Greeley in Episode 6 as a 'foil' for her.
But we all expected that nuBSG was our future and not our past. I think having it the other way around was something the audience wouldn't expect and I liked that. It's not as mysterious but I thought it worked. They had the idea from as far back as season 2 and it is hammering home the "all this has happened before" thing. The angels, beings of light thing does fall flat on it's face though. I agree. For a show that didn't want to do aliens it's strange that it would introduce angel like characters instead.
Me neither. The original premise of BSG was based on van Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" ancient aliens theories. They were always supposed to be our ancestors. The question was, what was the journey going to be like and what shape would that lineage take? "Life here began out there".
Given that the original BSG was (supposedly) about our distant past, I know some fans of nuBSG thought it would be clever if that series took place in our future instead, and made guesses to that effect.
Ok, then I guess I had expected Earth to be part of nuBSGs past and humanity had set out from there and thought the various clues which some of you had screen captured and posted in the BSG forum to point to that. But then again, technically "the real Earth" was nuBSGs past.
One of the other major things that muddied the waters for the NuBSG timeline was the planetarium/Stonehenge holodeck on Kobol, showing 12 constellations as seen from our Earth (a.k.a. Earth 2), in current configuration, not taking into account hundreds of thousands of years of stellar drift, nor taking into account Earth 1's position relative to those stars compared to that of Earth 2. Granted, they probably hadn't come up with any of what happened in the finale when they did the Kobol episode, but it really exemplified how, in retrospect, they were just making it up as they were going along and chose to basically "forget" the concepts they laid out in the beginning.
The planetarium also showed all 12 constellations visible in the same night sky, which isn't possible from our Earth...which could in retrospect be seen as a clue that it wasn't our Earth that they were looking for at that point.
Moore did say that he had some plan for how the show would end but apparently he was going to have them arrive in ancient Greece instead of a more distant past. Looks like he knew that modern man was part cylon from season 2 and stuck to that though. In "Epiphanies", Baltar discovered that Hera (who was a fetus at the time) had no antigens in her blood. She had no blood type. This came as a surprise and by extension, the audience was meant to think that she was exotic. Except that she wasn't. What they found was type O blood, which is quite common today. The Science of Battlestar Galactica
I've never bought into the idea that Moore, Eick, and Co. were completely 'flying by the seats of their pants' on BSG, but that's just me. Others' mileage may vary. Personally, I think that's one of the more brilliant ideas they came up with because it provided a perfect 'fix' for a major timeline flaw that Jane admitted she and others had made (and which still exists in the stand-alone DVD release of the Pilot) vis a vis Caprica's setting relative to BSG.
No one said they were "completely" making it up as they went, but it's obvious they didn't think through the details in any meaningful way beforehand. Moore had a vague idea of where he thought the show should end and worked out the details as they went. In some ways, it worked. In other ways, it didn't.