BSG 2004 reunion

[Markonian]

Something that annoyed me about the finale was Lee's unilateral decision to condemn the survivors of the human race to the Stone Age.

Agreed. Moreover, the idea was that there's a cycle of "Human society builds Cylons, who destroy Humans and build Centurions, who destroy Cylons - restart."

By destroying technology Terrans will never know what happened and just restart the cycle. If, however, the Colonials kept their tech and ships, they could've taught their descendants not to build robots again.

 

[Saul]

I'm not too worried about the plan. What I enjoyed was the drama with well written and acted characters.

The only thing that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is Starbuck just disappearing like that in the end after the whole killing her off, bringing her back and "oh how is she alive? you'll see..."

 

[Reverend]

I'm not too worried about the plan. What I enjoyed was the drama with well written and acted characters.

The only thing that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth is Starbuck just disappearing like that in the end after the whole killing her off, bringing her back and "oh how is she alive? you'll see..."

Whichever particular element you do or do not have a problem with (example: I did not mind that bit with Starkbuck at all), it's all symptomatic of the same basic problem that runs throughout the whole show. Winging it is fine. Winging it while pretending you know what you're doing? Not so much.

Also, if you're going to improvise at least be *good* at it. To put it *very* charitably: this writing team was inconsistent at it. Or did we for get that time they spent half a season developing a sub-plot about a super orthodox religious group among the survivors, only to bail on it when the realised it wasn't actually going anywhere and had essentially wasted half a season's worth of storytelling with nothing to show for it?
This isn't some light-footed reaction to some unavoidable production issue like a cast member leaving, or a network imposition. It was a problem created entirely in the writing room, from conception to clumsy abortion.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

By destroying technology Terrans will never know what happened and just restart the cycle. If, however, the Colonials kept their tech and ships, they could've taught their descendants not to build robots again.

Maybe there was a faction who refused to go along with Lee's directive to abandon technology. Could be the origin of the Lost Continent of Atlantis...

 

[DarthPipes]

Agreed. Moreover, the idea was that there's a cycle of "Human society builds Cylons, who destroy Humans and build Centurions, who destroy Cylons - restart."

By destroying technology Terrans will never know what happened and just restart the cycle. If, however, the Colonials kept their tech and ships, they could've taught their descendants not to build robots again.

Agreed.

As someone pointed out on another board, the human race needs to "devolve" naturally at the end of BSG. A lot of skills are going to be loss and they have limited supplies. They're going to need weapons for instance to deal with all the wildlife on their new world.

 

[Reverend]

Yeah, I think people overestimate just how much good those ships would have done them. Machines break down and they have no infrastructure to replace them or even make new parts. Pretty soon they'd be breaking down one machine to fix another until there's nothing left. Even worse for the electronics since you may be able to improvise a pressure hose, a cam shaft or a drive belt, but good luck improvising micro-circuitry, LCD displays or high capacity batteries. Then there's their clothes. What they had was already getting ragged and most of it wouldn't last much longer. Entropy is unavoidable.

Anyway, it's not like they abandoned *all* technology and knowledge. They simply chose a more agrarian lifestyle rather than try to recreate the one they left behind. I wouldn't be surprised if a generation down the line, some group does break away intent on making an industrialised nation before all that knowledge is gone. They may even have kept it alive for centuries, even millennia, but with such a small starting population there's only so much they can do and eventually they would either die out, or go back to the stars.

 

[Marc]

Anyway, it's not like they abandoned *all* technology and knowledge. They simply chose a more agrarian lifestyle rather than try to recreate the one they left behind. I wouldn't be surprised if a generation down the line, some group does break away intent on making an industrialised nation before all that knowledge is gone. They may even have kept it alive for centuries, even millennia, but with such a small starting population there's only so much they can do and eventually they would either die out, or go back to the stars.

But they didn't have much technology with them after leaving the fleet for the last time and it would have had to be stuff small enough to be easily carried. Even the Raptors were destroyed (unaired clip showed them exploding as the Colonials walk away).

 

[Reverend]

But they didn't have much technology with them after leaving the fleet for the last time and it would have had to be stuff small enough to be easily carried. Even the Raptors were destroyed (unaired clip showed them exploding as the Colonials walk away).

I'm not talking about them rebuilding a civilisation of spaceships, synthetic compounds and microelectronics overnight. It'd take several generations to get to that point, but if a group did break-off with a mind to do something like that, it would be feasible. Hard work, but feasible, at least on a small scale.
Just a basic knowledge of chemistry, physics, mathematics and simple engineering can give a society one hell of a head start, especially if they start out from a point where they know space travel is possible, rather than stumble through ignorance for millennia as we did.

 

[Jedi Marso]

The problem isn't knowing what's 'possible', technologically speaking, it's being able to recreate it or make future generations even care.

Look at our own civilization: If you were dumped on a desert island tomorrow with a bunch of humans from even as late as 1900, would you be able to diagram a transistor for them? A microchip? You use electric power every day, but could you design a working electric power plant? What about an old CRT television or radio, much less an LCD screen? We've reached a state where the average person is a user and consumer of technology without knowing the first thing about the principles behind its operation or how it's put together. It takes a civilization with technology as advanced as ours to build our own tech- modern microchips can't be made by hand. If I put a room full of chemicals in front of you, could YOU make gunpowder without looking up the process on Google? I couldn't. If I gave you a working forge and bellows, would you know how to make steel from iron ore? You might think you do, but do you REALLY, and what quality of metallurgy could you produce? Good enough to use in a railroad steam engine without it blowing itself apart?

Now look at a spacefaring race colonizing the neolithic Earth. They can't reproduce or fix ANYTHING technological, realistically speaking. Once it wears out, it's done. In the meantime, they have to prepare for that. Two generations down the road they are going to be a society of neolithic/ bronze age farmers with a lot of knowledge which is frankly useless to the younger generation. Calculus is going to take a distant back seat to 4H or FFA style skills, or knowing how to make a gut bowstring that doesn't snap under a hard pull. Natural medical knowledge/physiology will last a lot longer, as will basic mathematics and writing. Three generations down the road, things like 'flying among the stars' and nuclear weapons will be disbelieved at best, and the building blocks of religion or myth at worst.

 

[Reverend]

Seems to me the key in even attempting this plausible but unlikely scenario is to preserve as much knowledge as possible in as durable a medium as possible and institute some kind of ritualised religion that makes sure each succeeding generation understands, preserves and passes this knowledge on. No matter which way you cut it, it's going to be a looooong time (several generation minimum) before the bulk of it even begins to become applicable.
Also, it helps to have a concrete goal in mind beyond simply "be more advanced than those other hippies!"

 

[Jayson1]

Couldn't they just bring down tech manuels and preserve the knowledge through time? One drawback though is some of the tech they have might not work well with resources from a different planet. I doubt the colonials used gasoline for example and whatever they used to fuel their machines might not work with what we have here on Earth.
At the very least I would think they would also want to bring down books and sports equipment for recreation and also to try and perserve some aspect of its culture.

Jason

 

[Saul]

Also, if you're going to improvise at least be *good* at it. To put it *very* charitably: this writing team was inconsistent at it. Or did we for get that time they spent half a season developing a sub-plot about a super orthodox religious group among the survivors, only to bail on it when the realised it wasn't actually going anywhere and had essentially wasted half a season's worth of storytelling with nothing to show for it?
This isn't some light-footed reaction to some unavoidable production issue like a cast member leaving, or a network imposition. It was a problem created entirely in the writing room, from conception to clumsy abortion.

I wouldn't call it improvisation. They had long gaps between seasons to really nail the story but I think they made a conscious decision to make the story more fluid and evolve on it's own based on the strength of what happened onscreen and the actor's performances. They could have easily given us a well planned out arc for the show but I think they didn't want it to dominate the freedom they had as writers.

Considering the years the show was being made it was also reflecting what was going on in the real world too. Keeping things related to what was going on at that time made the show relevant and powerful. It's not B5 but wasn't basing itself on fantasy books either by making one large story.

 

[Markonian]

The ships wouldn't break down immediately. There'd be time to use the Colonial Wikipedia to study manuals and try to relearn production skills, and setting up facilities dirtside. They felt confident that they could build a city.

 

[Jedi Marso]

They fled the colonies with one Battlestar and a bunch of left over ships. Where do they get the equipment to mine the minerals to build a city? To refine them? How do they power the production?

Let me put it another way: Say you left port with one aircraft carrier, two cruise ships, and a few supertankers converted over to carry refugees. You are transported back in time to 3000 B.C. and can make landfall anywhere you want on Earth. When you do, the ships are barely seaworthy and your fuel and supplies are almost exhausted. Explain to me how you are going to use those resources to build a modern, functioning city with a level of technology commensurate to what you left port with?

 

[Reverend]

They had long gaps between seasons to really nail the story

Well that clearly didn't pay off. The story wandered all over the place. Not so much nailed down a halfheartedly stuck down with glitter glue and drawing pins.

Also, there's plenty of middle-ground between "rigidly plotted" and "no plan whatsoever".
There's a reason B5 is held up as *the* example of how to do long form, quasi-serialised episodes with multiple arcs across multiple seasons and it wasn't the rigidity of the plan. Indeed, it was the *flexibility* of the plan that allowed them to pull it off.
You have an overall goal for the show with a defined end-point. You have several key points you need to hit along the way that follow basic narrative structure. You have a cast of characters with roughly defined trajectories and built in "escape hatches" in case you need to recast. That leaves *plenty* of room for creativity in writing the individual episodes and a great deal of latitude in the event a better idea strikes you later, so you can adjust smoothly without the plot jumping the tracks.
Indeed, this defined structure actually makes it *easier* to write episodically because your parameters are set and you don't need to worry as much how it's all going to link up because you've already taken care of it. You just have to be mindful to hit those crucial points and remember what direction everyone's headed in (e.g. if someone's going to turn out to be a Cylon then *don't* have him become a biological father)

BSG had none of it. They couldn't even manage to plot out a full season ahead without tripping over themselves, which is something most shows that only go one season to the next with no "big picture" manage without much fuss. As I stated before, they actually aborted a season long arc *mid production*. There's being light on your feel and then there's just wandering around aimlessly.

 

[Gepard]

The ships wouldn't break down immediately. There'd be time to use the Colonial Wikipedia to study manuals and try to relearn production skills, and setting up facilities dirtside. They felt confident that they could build a city.

And we saw them try that on New Caprica. It was a disaster. Granted, the planet sucked but there were also clear problems getting a real city built and infrastructure in place. It was basically a military barracks with landed ships as the generators.

Perhaps the finale should have made a more overt connection between the failure of New Caprica and the willingness to go full caveman on Earth, I don't know -- but the reasons they made that decision are in the show if you look.

 

[DigificWriter]

I much prefer that BSG changed course on a storyline that wasn't working "mid-stream" instead of trying to forcibly make it work, but "to each their own".

The "Tyrol had a child even though he's a Cylon" thing really isn't a problem because it wasn't an isolated thing, bit even if it had been, the show did ultimately end up building a 'loophole' into their narrative by confirming the existence of an external 'higher power' governing certain events snd the unfolding thereof.

BSG wasn't perfect, but very few things are, and for all of its flaws, real or perceived, the series did very much change the rules in terms of presenting Science Fiction drama on television and in terms of paving the way, as it were, for stuff like Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and other cable Genre series that rely fairly heavily on "pushing the envelope" in terms of content.

 

[Reverend]

I much prefer that BSG changed course on a storyline that wasn't working "mid-stream" instead of trying to forcibly make it work, but "to each their own".

The point is that they allowed themselves to get that far along in the first place before realising it was a bad idea and wasn't going anywhere worthwhile. It betrays a fundamental lack of real forethought. It's clumsy and amateurish.

The "Tyrol had a child even though he's a Cylon" thing really isn't a problem because it wasn't an isolated thing, bit even if it had been, the show did ultimately end up building a 'loophole' into their narrative by confirming the existence of an external 'higher power' governing certain events snd the unfolding thereof.

Slapping a plaster and some old chewing gum on a problem does not negate the existence of said problem, nor the reason it came to be in the first place. Indeed, it only serves to highlight said problem.

BSG wasn't perfect, but very few things are, and for all of its flaws, real or perceived, the series did very much change the rules in terms of presenting Science Fiction drama on television and in terms of paving the way, as it were, for stuff like Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and other cable Genre series that rely fairly heavily on "pushing the envelope" in terms of content.

It's not a lack of perfection but an absence in basic competence. Now this wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that this is the only place where such incompetence is on display, where everything and everyone else is firing on all cylinders. It's like watching the London Symphony Orchestra giving a command performance of some random notes somebody scribbled down just five minutes before the curtains went up. That's not pushing any envelops.

 

[DigificWriter]

The idea/concept of a Human and a Cylon conceiving a child was first introduced with Helo and Boomer 2/Athena, so Tyrol and Cally conceiving a child was simply "par for the course" and doubling down on a plot point that had already been introduced very early on in the series.

 

[The Old Mixer]

But they didn't...it was revealed after the fact that the kid was Hot Dog's.