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RDM's Battlestar Galactica

The "religion crap" was fine. If RDM would've had a "plan" and stuck to it, it would have made more sense. This was discussed in another thread not too long ago that the OP might have just found and took part in.

This was my issue with the series, especially after a season and a half. If you're going to tell me "They have a plan" every single week, then it better be a damn good plan. It ended up being a really sucky plan.
 
NuBSG is in my top 5 TV dramas of all time, not just sci fi, but dramas in general. I have It right up there with Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc.

I liked the religious aspect of the show, especially that the Cylons were the monotheists and the humans the polytheists. The fact that the series ended with god behind the scenes pulling the strings made perfect sense. In fact, considering the amount of time spent on discussions of god, who was favored or not, if the series had ended without mention of or indication of the existence of god, it would have been pretty strange.

I had never seen hard sci fi morph into kind of a fantasy. Sometimes not having a plan works out.

For me, it was really only the ending that puts me off. The "plan" did get derailed along the way, but the ending, while ambiguous, always felt like a cop-out. I would have preferred the Beings Of Light™ showing up at the end. At least it would have been something tangible and even if they were "aliens", it would have been too late for EJO to do a walk-out :nyah:


There probably are aliens in the BSG universe, but space is so vast that the probabilities of the colonials encountering aliens was infinitesimal. This is one of the things I really liked about the series because it gave BSG a sense of realism and tied in to my personal belief that while Alien life undoubtedly exists, I don't think humanity will ever encounter it.

Ultimately BSG was about people and an exploration of societal collapse. It didn't need aliens to help with that. Also, I believe that Edward James Olmos is on record as having said that if trek-like aliens had been part of the series, he would have refused to take the role of Adama.

If you buy the latest "idea" that there are only 36 inhabited planets in the entire galaxy, this concept works pretty well.
 
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nuBSG could have been the best scifi series ever, had they kept the religion crap out of it and wrote a better cylon storyline

These two points are my major annoyances with nuBSG. They got rid of one of 90's Treks major shortcomings, an over reliance on technobabble, and replaced it with Lost-era religibabble, which is considerably worse. The "Plan" of course just didn't exist.

Another problem I had with the show was that everyone aside from Adama was unlikeable, sometimes doing something immensely out of character just to shock viewers. Now *that* is soap opera writing.

I couldn't even enjoy the space combat, because of all the shakey cam.

It's a shame really, because I loved the miniseries.
 
If you buy the latest "idea" that there are only 36 inhabited planets in the entire galaxy, this concept works pretty well.

maybe it went to far with no aliens but probably not. One of things with the original series was that the last vestiges of humanity were supposedly on the verge of extinction but they were running in humans/humanoids every week.

Other than the cylons, beings of lights, ovoids and the singer on Carillon I don't recall seeing any other aliens in any sort of quantity in the original.
 
There were also Borays and the rather interesting humanoid Borellian Nomen, but yeah, on the whole, aliens were limited to the pilot due to insufficient funds. Pretty much humans and their colony worlds.
 
There were also Borays and the rather interesting humanoid Borellian Nomen, but yeah, on the whole, aliens were limited to the pilot due to insufficient funds. Pretty much humans and their colony worlds.

The borays I don't remember and I think the Borellian Nomen came from one of the colonial worlds hence being aboard the fleet.

Wasn't just in the pilot though. It continued the whole way through that was probably down to budget as well.
 
Star Trek. My post was my opinion of comparing and contrasting nuBSG to the various series in the Star Trek Franchise.
Oh, I had assumed you were talking about some other part of the BSG franchise, and I couldn't come up with any element of it with the initials ST.
 
Other than the cylons, beings of lights, ovoids and the singer on Carillon I don't recall seeing any other aliens in any sort of quantity in the original.
Casino. Planet.

What the frak were they thinking?!?
 
I thought it was brilliant all the way to the end. Starbuck going away like Poochey was a bit dodgy, but the rest of the finale was emotionally satisfying.
 
nuBSG could have been the best scifi series ever, had they kept the religion crap out of it and wrote a better cylon storyline
I know someone who never watched sci fi stuff before and loved BSG because of the religion crap and the Cylon storyline. Amd she wasn’t alone. This show broke viewing boundaries because of its diverse issues.
 
Having a religious component I had no problem with. Having the religious component completely negate all the characters agency I have a huge problem with.

Everything in the show happened because God predetermined it to, not because of the hard work and sacrifices of the characters.
 
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Not quite. The finale made a point of showing the characters's backstories and the choices they made (of their own will), leading them to the events we saw.

Now, whether they were influenced or "pushed" or predetermined to make those choices ... I'll leave that to the philosophers. But it wasn't shown that they were.
 
em with.

Everything in the show happened because God predetermined it to, not because of the hard work and sacrifices of the characters.
The same can be said for myself. When I got a job some people said to me "that's because I was praying to God for you". How big a role God played all came down to how each character believed and started to believe in their own destiny. Look at Roslin and Starbuck, both believed they were right about leading the way to Earth but at the start of season 4 they were vehemently opposed to each other and were going in completely different directions. But characters like Lee and Bill never really took on those beliefs.
 
Not quite. The finale made a point of showing the characters's backstories and the choices they made (of their own will), leading them to the events we saw.

Now, whether they were influenced or "pushed" or predetermined to make those choices ... I'll leave that to the philosophers. But it wasn't shown that they were.

There is a point in what JirinPanthosa is saying. The series presented both the Humans and Cylons trapped in a continual cycle of violence that could only be broken with help of the OTG. On the other hand, as you mentioned, the characters made all of their choices of their own free will.

Sure we have free will but are we slaves to our shared biological and cultural DNA and will end up continually make the same mistakes without the help of outside entities? The other side of that argument is that yes we will make the same mistakes over and over again but it is ours to make and we will eventually 'grow up' much like the younger races in Babylon 5 will do when the last of the Elder races leaves their universe.

As to nuBSG, the series is very ambiguous and open to interpretation so it could be argued both way. As Silvercrest said it wasn't specifically shown that the characters of the show were influenced or pushed to make their choice and from memory I can't remember any instances were this occurred apart from Baltar and Caprica Six being influenced by their head messengers.
 
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