Regarding LOST...
I agree. If they hadn't focused on the characters like they did in season 1 and went full throttle with the island mystery, LOST would not have gotten past season 2.
The Battlestar Galactica (TOS & NuBSG) Appreciation and Remembrance Thread
I agree. If they hadn't focused on the characters like they did in season 1 and went full throttle with the island mystery, LOST would not have gotten past season 2.
I will admit that what first got me into LOST was hearing about the button conundrum in S2. And I didn't tune in until S3 (I like to joke I started by watching the worst part of the series first; watching S1 and S2 on DVD while S3 was on hiatus marvelously screwed up my sense of chronology, but seems oddly apropos for this series).
But my point being that if the only real hook for me had been that mystery then I wouldn't have stuck with the show, because S3 (at least the first half) wasn't particularly about the mystery boxes, and certainly wasn't about that particular mystery box.
But my point being that if the only real hook for me had been that mystery then I wouldn't have stuck with the show, because S3 (at least the first half) wasn't particularly about the mystery boxes, and certainly wasn't about that particular mystery box.
And bringing it back to BSG, the strength of the reboot series was really the characters. Nobody in the main cast was two dimensional and everyone had a moment where the series focused on them. It really was a great ensemble. In order to care about their journey, you had to care about the characters (the humans and the Cylons) and the show scored high marks of that regard. It wasn't about the technical details about the journey as much as it was following these people deal with difficult issues.
I think maybe the language I'd use would be "find the characters interesting" rather than "care about" them. I don't think I really found any of the NuBSG characters likeable (maybe Helo, who seemed to have a less compromised sense of morality than many of the others (in many cases not their faults; they were in extreme circumstances after all)), but I definitely found them interesting, though it took a long time for me to find Tigh in any way sympathetic.
I'd call them flawed, but very human. I cared about them very much despite their flaws.
I remember watching BSG and Lost simultaneously back then, mostly. Similar shows in characterization and story development, and I was always torn as to which I liked better. The eventual answer became both, for different reasons. I think my rewatch count for BSG has been higher than that for Lost though, for whatever reason.
NuBSG is not currently Streaming anywhere without having to spend money.
It is in Canada, but not the mini-series. That said I'm tired of the way streaming shows keep moving around or are sometimes available and sometimes not. Physical media is still better.
If nothing else, I like having the NuBSG discs for the commentary tracks, though my memory suggests they're a little uneven. Still, I'd rather have them than not have them.
It still sticks in my craw that WB couldn't even bothered to include the commentary tracks when releasing B5 on Blu-ray. Maybe there was some sort of rights issue? But it feels vaguely ridiculous, and especially now that so many of the cast are no longer with us, a bit sad.
It still sticks in my craw that WB couldn't even bothered to include the commentary tracks when releasing B5 on Blu-ray. Maybe there was some sort of rights issue? But it feels vaguely ridiculous, and especially now that so many of the cast are no longer with us, a bit sad.
The complete series is fairly cheap on blu-ray. Right now it's running around 100 USD but a few times a year it's on sale for half-price or less. Worthy of having in a collection.
Oh, that reminds me: I posted a complete set of the original podcast commentaries to the Internet Archive. There were some bonus discussions that didn’t make it to disc, and some of the episode commentaries had to be edited for time when they were embedded in the episodes: https://archive.org/details/battlestar-galactica-podcast
Ironically, the commentaries would’ve been the least-straightforward extra to include on the B5 blu-rays because of those damn commercial bumpers in the middle of every episode, so the timings would’ve been off.
Thanks for that link! I remember such a link from a long time ago, but I never really followed up on it, and now I have no idea where it is...
I'm pretty sure everyone would accept the grievous loss of the commercial bumpers if it meant we got the commentary tracks back.
I'm pretty sure everyone would accept the grievous loss of the commercial bumpers if it meant we got the commentary tracks back.
I presume you mean ‘bowl’? Because, I sure as heck cannot remember seeing a dog’s bowel being flipped over as a signal?!?
[wink!]
I didn't know that the commentary tracks were missing from the BluRay. This means that you need to have the original DVD discs in order to get them? B5 is another example of a show that is difficult, if not impossible, to find on streaming in its entirety. The series is available on Prime but none of the other series or movies are there unless you want to rent them.
The Blu-ray discs include no special features other than, IIRC, the updated "The Gathering", which IIRC hasn't been remastered as the other episodes have. Again, going off memory.
No commentaries, no documentaries, nothing. WB just shoveled it out the door.
The version of "The Gathering" is just the version from the DVD, cropped to 16x9 and upscaled. I double-checked, but you can actually see the blue glow from the original opening credits on the bottom edge of the screen where they've been cropped away to be replaced with new titles. I briefly hoped it might've been from a studio source that didn't have credits already added so I might be able to combine it with the DVD version and get a clean version of one of the establishing shots in the opening sequence, but no such luck.
At least they had it on streaming first, so they fixed the most egregious errors fans caught that were initially in the remaster (a handful of episodes had scenes missing).
WhoopsI presume you mean ‘bowl’? Because, I sure as heck cannot remember seeing a dog’s bowel being flipped over as a signal?!?
Funnily enough, I wrote it correct the first time, but for some reason my brain thought it was wrong.
They didn't say otherwise...?
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No, there wasn't. And the last time I listened to the commentary was in 2021.
Probably another thing they wanted to be left vague and up to our interpretation, then.
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