Battlestar Season 4.5

  GORDO said:

what's the movie gonna be about now cats?

the attack on the colonies from the cylon's point of view.

and cats. lots of cats.

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the very end threw me for a loop however, i was expecting it to end in the 1960s, hence the Dylan/Hendrix tune to tie it all together. did the homeless man have some significance i missed?

i don't think so...unless that was god.

i did like that they played the hendrix version at the end though. the robot montage was a wtf moment, but i liked that it was set to that version of the song.

all in all, i didn't hate the episode, but i definitely think it could have been a stronger piece. a lot of things weren't given the attention they needed in order to really work well and a lot of logic was thrown out the window in deciding to set it in our past - most notably the fact that the colonials created a religion that was an amalgam of greek and roman mythology and we're supposed to believe that this religion was lost for 145,000 years and then the greeks later reinvented part of it and then even later the romans came along and reinvented the other half. doesn't really make much sense. the other big one is that they ended up on our earth, yet the cylon earth, which also had a single large moon (which is an incredibly rare thing in the galaxy, to have a rock planet our size with such a proportionately large moon) had the same view of the constellations as are visible from our earth. there's simply no way that's logically possible unless the cylon earth was actually mars, which also doesn't make logical sense because mars doesn't have a large moon.

i do have an interesting idea about "god" though.

when head baltar said that he doesn't like that name, it made me think of the hybrid in 'razor' when he said "my children believe i am god", yet he seemed to distance himself from that idea. we know that this hybrid was able to project images into young adama's head. we also know that the hybrid experiences space/time much differently than humans or even cylons do, he can see the past and future of everything at the same time as an intricate web of paths. maybe once this first hybrid experiment was plugged in he became aware of humanities past, present and future and saw the cycle that repeated itself infinitely and then used this knowledge and his abilities to project to set in motion a series of events that would lead to the breaking of the cycle. the only thing that i can't quite explain with this theory is starbuck because she wasn't simply a projection. she was real, she flew a viper that people touched. it's possible that all these things were projections as well since baltar often physically interacted with head six, having sex with her and even being lifted off his feet by her at one point, seeming to float in air to outside viewers and shelly godfreed left behind a physical pair of glasses (although we're never quite sure if she was a cylon copy or an "angel/demon" projection like the other head characters). the other possibility could be that the hybrid can experience all plains of existence and simply plucked starbuck from "the other side" and brought her back into our reality. another strange thing about this idea is that the hybrid wasn't created until the centurions constructed it during the war (although this is just a guess, they could have found it out in space somewhere, having been created by a previous batch of cylons - it was never stated), but if our rules of time/space don't apply to the hybrid, then it's possible for him to also project visions into the heads of the final 5 back on earth and even the leaders of the 13th tribe as they traveled from kobol to earth though it's a weird concept that kinda hurts your brain if you try to rationalize it too much.

no matter how you cut it though, the ending just doesn't make very much sense. i'm fine with ambiguity, but there has to be some logical basis to suppose what happened on your own and in this instance there really isn't. the only way to rationalize it is by saying "god did it" and that is a total cop out and doesn't really jive with what the rest of the series was saying. maybe watching the whole thing again will answer some of these questions for me, i don't know. right now it feels like there are a lot of holes left by this finale though.

just wanted to report (mainly to CoE, i guess) that i'll be finished with the show in probably a week ... i've got 4 episodes left, and it's not looking promising, sigh

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The DVD version of "A Disquiet Follows My Soul" will be about 10 minutes longer. The DVD version of "Islanded in a Stream of Stars" will be about 15-20 minutes longer. The DVD version of "Daybreak," the series finale, will be about 15-20 minutes longer.

Everything is 15-20 minutes longer in here.

Disclaimer: I have never watched one single episode of the current BSG series. I have seen all the old series episodes umpteen times. I went ahead and read all the spoilers to see if this series was worth watching, and I can't say I'm much more interested in doing so (not because of the finale, but moreso it just doesn't sound like my cup of tea).

The original series had lots of religious/mythological overtones (Count Ibli as the Devil, the 'angels', etc.), so I'm wondering why so many people are shocked at the current producer's injection of religion into this series. From some accounts it sounds like he's pushing a religious agenda, and others he's merely using it as a scapegoat to explain away everything quickly.

religious people use religion in both ways :p

I always assumed it was some reowrking of jewish mythology.

Given how Dean Stockwell's other big sci fi show ended, he was probably thinking "dont make it about God... don't make it about God..." the whole time...

Cavill's death was the best thing about the finale btw - FRAK! BANG! - apparently DS came up with that. He was supposed to get killed by Tigh.

yeah, so what was up with him shooting himself? They couldn't resurrect anymore, right? So he was just like, ok seriously fuck this?

  Kcinsu said:

yeah, so what was up with him shooting himself? They couldn't resurrect anymore, right? So he was just like, ok seriously fuck this?

yeah it was great. i forgot how much his nasty childish sarcasm added to the show - really balanced everyone elses clunky earnestness

i love how they actually exterminated the entire (bad) cylon race on the basis of a misuderstanding and didnt even mention it afterward (except for Tigh saying he would've done the same thing)

cavill shooting himself made no sense whatsoever.

  inteeliguntdesign said:

cavill shooting himself made no sense whatsoever.

he was a cynical asshole who could never deal with being wrong about anything. everything turned to shit for him so he took the easy way out.

and would never let anyone have the pleasure of offing him, if he could help it.

He likes to be the one in control.

  Joyrex said:

Disclaimer: I have never watched one single episode of the current BSG series. I have seen all the old series episodes umpteen times. I went ahead and read all the spoilers to see if this series was worth watching, and I can't say I'm much more interested in doing so (not because of the finale, but moreso it just doesn't sound like my cup of tea).

 

The original series had lots of religious/mythological overtones (Count Ibli as the Devil, the 'angels', etc.), so I'm wondering why so many people are shocked at the current producer's injection of religion into this series. From some accounts it sounds like he's pushing a religious agenda, and others he's merely using it as a scapegoat to explain away everything quickly.

personally, it wasn't the religious aspect that surprised me because that was definitely there throughout the entire show, but in the end i thought we'd get some kind of answers or even something to speculate about regarding the nature of god. i'm not broken up that they didn't, it's fine being a mystery and it's probably more "realistic" that way, but it just seemed like they might go in that direction, which i thought would have been pretty cool, so when they didn't i was like "awwww, motherfrakkers!" i thought they might have some scientific explanation of god. but even what was there wasn't preachy, it wasn't pushing an agenda (ron moore isn't religious himself), it's just simply part of the universe and it is what it is.

but seriously, just watch the show and make up your mind. reading vague plot points out of context doesn't exactly deliver what is actually good about the show. i can't tell you how many people have fought me tooth and nail about watching this show, saying it sounds lame, it just doesn't interest them, they don't like sci-fi, they don't have the time, etc. and then they watch the mini series finally and they're like "oh wow, this is pretty cool" then they watch the first few episodes of season 1 and all of a sudden they're the biggest fans ever. even though the finale was a bit of a letdown for me because it didn't go where i wanted it to go, it's still a great series and the more i watch the finale, the more i like it. it leaves a few logical inconsistencies, but honestly, if you aren't a hardcore geek like me, you might not even notice them. i was actually surprised by how many people absolutely loved the finale.

i stopped watching the show mostly because the 'hidden cylon' sub plot seemed like a generic TV show way to stretch out the tension of the show for as long as possible. I'm willing to be proven wrong so Im curious what did these secret cylons end up doing and why were they secret even to themselves for a certain point of time? If they were indeed cylons why couldn't they communicate with the cylons outside the ship as to always let them know exactly where Battlestar was at any given time?

did they ever explain why that porn star blonde cylon chick was appearing in that guys head? was she real? was it a hallucination? or was it left unanswered in order to appear sophisticated instead of not thought out?

feel free to put responses in spoiler tags

  Awepittance said:

i stopped watching the show mostly because the 'hidden cylon' sub plot seemed like a generic TV show way to stretch out the tension of the show for as long as possible. I'm willing to be proven wrong so Im curious what did these secret cylons end up doing and why were they secret even to themselves for a certain point of time? If they were indeed cylons why couldn't they communicate with the cylons outside the ship as to always let them know exactly where Battlestar was at any given time?

 

 

did they ever explain why that porn star blonde cylon chick was appearing in that guys head? was she real? was it a hallucination? or was it left unanswered in order to appear sophisticated instead of not thought out?

 

feel free to put responses in spoiler tags

yep, it's all explained/a big part of the story so silly to just read someone explaining it in a watmm post.

  tauboo said:

  Awepittance said:

i stopped watching the show mostly because the 'hidden cylon' sub plot seemed like a generic TV show way to stretch out the tension of the show for as long as possible. I'm willing to be proven wrong so Im curious what did these secret cylons end up doing and why were they secret even to themselves for a certain point of time? If they were indeed cylons why couldn't they communicate with the cylons outside the ship as to always let them know exactly where Battlestar was at any given time?

 

 

did they ever explain why that porn star blonde cylon chick was appearing in that guys head? was she real? was it a hallucination? or was it left unanswered in order to appear sophisticated instead of not thought out?

 

feel free to put responses in spoiler tags

yep, it's all explained/a big part of the story so silly to just read someone explaining it in a watmm post.

well considering im not going to watch the remaining episodes of the show i'd like to know how this was resolved.

  Awepittance said:

i stopped watching the show mostly because the 'hidden cylon' sub plot seemed like a generic TV show way to stretch out the tension of the show for as long as possible. I'm willing to be proven wrong so Im curious what did these secret cylons end up doing and why were they secret even to themselves for a certain point of time? If they were indeed cylons why couldn't they communicate with the cylons outside the ship as to always let them know exactly where Battlestar was at any given time?

 

 

did they ever explain why that porn star blonde cylon chick was appearing in that guys head? was she real? was it a hallucination? or was it left unanswered in order to appear sophisticated instead of not thought out?

 

feel free to put responses in spoiler tags

you really should just watch it and see because telling you kinda gives away big parts of the story. part of the fun is not knowing all this stuff, then later learning it and then going back to what you've already seen with a new perspective on it. honestly, i think you'll like it. it's got a lot of what i think you are into - it's got great character development, it's complex (not plotwise, but psychologically), it's risky and it's not the same episode over and over, they're not afraid to totally change up the setting for a big chunk of time if the story requires it. it's creative, but it's also real and it seems to me like that's the kind of thing you'd be into based on what you've talked about on this board. i know you're hesitant about the ongoing story aspect, but most episodes are self contained stories inside the bigger story. the end of season 4 has been a lot more continuous, but for the most part each episode is satisfying. and there are a few standalone type episodes every season after 1, but most people agree it's best when it's not standalone. but if you're really hung up on the cylon thing, i'll tell you:

  catsonearth said:

  Awepittance said:

i stopped watching the show mostly because the 'hidden cylon' sub plot seemed like a generic TV show way to stretch out the tension of the show for as long as possible. I'm willing to be proven wrong so Im curious what did these secret cylons end up doing and why were they secret even to themselves for a certain point of time? If they were indeed cylons why couldn't they communicate with the cylons outside the ship as to always let them know exactly where Battlestar was at any given time?

 

 

did they ever explain why that porn star blonde cylon chick was appearing in that guys head? was she real? was it a hallucination? or was it left unanswered in order to appear sophisticated instead of not thought out?

 

feel free to put responses in spoiler tags

 

you really should just watch it and see because telling you kinda gives away big parts of the story. part of the fun is not knowing all this stuff, then later learning it and then going back to what you've already seen with a new perspective on it. honestly, i think you'll like it. it's got a lot of what i think you are into - it's got great character development, it's complex (not plotwise, but psychologically), it's risky and it's not the same episode over and over, they're not afraid to totally change up the setting for a big chunk of time if the story requires it. it's creative, but it's also real and it seems to me like that's the kind of thing you'd be into based on what you've talked about on this board. i know you're hesitant about the ongoing story aspect, but most episodes are self contained stories inside the bigger story. the end of season 4 has been a lot more continuous, but for the most part each episode is satisfying. and there are a few standalone type episodes every season after 1, but most people agree it's best when it's not standalone. but if you're really hung up on the cylon thing, i'll tell you:

 

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

the part you're talking about from season 1 where you're not sure whose a cylon doesn't carry on for too long. by halfway into season two we've seen all the 7 models of skinjob cylons. there are 12 total cylon models in the universe, 5 of them are 1000s of years old and it was those original cylons that helped the metal centurions to build their 7 models, but the 7 new models have been programmed not to know who the original 5 are. i wont tell you why, but there's a reason. what i just told you right there doesn't get revealed until quite late in the show, but for most of the time between seasons 2 and 4 the other 5 cylons (which baltar called the final 5 once because they were the only cylon models that they hadn't seen yet, but actually they predate the ones we've already seen, so it's a bit misleading as a name) aren't really a plot point, everyone just assumes they're gone and don't want to be found, nobody knows who they are, where they are or wtf they're doing and it's not really an issue. the majority of the show is not about who is or isn't a cylon and even when the don't know, it still isn't the backbone of the show. the whole marketing campaign for the end of season for about "who is the 5th cylon" was mostly scifi channel's inept marketing department which has never really known what to do with the show from the start. again, it's not the main part of the show and it wasn't something they milked constantly on screen. it only gets brought up a few times. you find out who 4 of the 5 are at the finale of season 3 and halfway through season 4 you know who the 5th is.

 

as for why the hidden cylons in the beginning didn't have contact with the others is that for the most part they were sleeper agents that didn't even know they were cylons themselves. we know they're cylons before they do, so it's not dragged out indefinitely like on lost or something. basically, there's just boomer who you find out is a cylon at the end of the mini, but she doesn't find out until she's activated and performs her mission at the end of season 1. not going to tell you what that is because it's an intense scene that i wouldn't want to ruin. there are some cylons in the fleet that know they're cylons and are performing specific missions. they do have contact with the outside cylons and are telling them galactica's position.

 

the blond cylon in baltar's head is a "projection" being sent to him from "god". this is stated very early in the series, so i'm not really giving anything away, but what is not stated is that he's not the only one who experiences these projections. in the end we never discover exactly who or what is responsible for the projections, but it's clear that they had been guiding key players along a certain path. we also know that it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that the visions are technology based since the cylons possess a similar technological ability, but like i said, we never met this so-called god in the series. the concept may be explored in 'caprica' as well, from the looks of it.

thanks for the explanation

Just finished watching. Tried to watch it with out getting to into the story line as its was so complicated. But all in all a good end to what has been a wandering series with the first 2 season been mind blowing and that latter ones going down poo path.

I thought the end was touching, no idea what Starbuck was meant to be, which is a shame. Sam did say I'll see you on the otherside which lends the theory that the hybrids seem to know everything.

But all by the by, I enjoyed it. Good work people what makes it!

  zaphod said:

anyway this show is kind of embarrassing, now, if it wasn't before. the miniseries and the first season plus some of the eps in seasons two and three were extremely strong, but this is all plot mechanics and character archetypes. also the guy who plays tigh might be the worst actor ever.

also tigh's wife. seriously, how do these people find work?

  zaphod said:

but this does happen to all tv shows. i can't think of one that survived every season unscathed. even the wire got bad in its final run.

i'm beginning to think it'll never happen. i guess arrested development didn't start sucking that much ... also the uk office? but yeah, very rare, and disappointing

  cats said:

this show really needed another season before it ended. they rushed and tried to force an ending when really, a lot of these things needed more time to play out in order to work. when you rush through shit, it always turns out cheesy and that's something the show has been able to overcome all throughout it's run...dunno if they succeeded this time. sad that it had to happen like that, but i guess it's better than the show getting canceled before they had a chance to end it.

i guess that might explain all of the gaping confusing plot holes (i had begun to type out the 15-20 things that made absolutely no fucking sense, but there's no point).

overall, and not that my opinion matters really, i guess it could have been a worse ending; the music was really good, if nothing else, and it certainly made a sort of emotional sense, even if the plot was a mess. the whole lee/starbuck arc, especially re: that episode in s3 where they were boxing, was actually rather moving (and felt real) ... at the very least, moore managed to create good characters, with enough vaguely interesting stuff going on that the show isn't a complete loss after season 2.5 (though still mostly a loss).

mainly i just feel sort of angry at the show, at moore; it COULD have been so much better, there was so much potential. i guess it was, i don't know, the writer's strike? the fact that moore & co. were doing pilots for various tv networks (fox, scifi) and just lost focus? or that they couldn't stretch it out into five seasons, and so just tried to jam it all in at the end? but i still truly do not understand how they "never have time" to fit the plot points into episodes when roughly half of each episode is completely random filler (bad speechifying! a three-episode attempted coup! baltar has extended ridiculous interactions with his cult members! a sunglasses-wearing lawyer, who acts like a private eye for some reason, and his pet dog have extended interactions with lee adama! i don't even remember what the fuck that was about, why lee was on trial, what it was for, because it was FUCKING BORING).

i really wish the show had gone in a different direction after the mini and the first 13 episodes; there was a real perfection there, it's just a shame. all of the things that they could have done ... more flashbacks to their lives on caprica, more of a sense of the life of the survivors on the other ships, more of the engrossing caprica/galactica alternation (in s1), etc, etc.

it just became a long boring slog through space focusing entirely on trivial bullshit re: galactica, as literally every single fucking character became more and more ridiculous and unbelievable. i didn't care about them making it to earth, about who the cylons were, etc, etc.

and, this is random, but did anyone else just find it utterly unconvincing that the 12 cylon models were anything other than human? maybe it's just that the actors were so bad, but seriously, you need to have something to differentiate them from humanity, maybe after they become aware of their own nature as cylons; they have to do something different ... if they act and talk completely like human beings, even after they realize that they're cylons, then, i don't know, it just feels inauthentic.

haha, yeah, actually, i had a really hard time buying the idea that these were machines at the end of the day. it felt like an old sci fi archetype of an android or something. like they watched blade runner a few times and modeled everyone after roy batty but then found (mostly) terrible actors to play the parts.

that boxing episode was extremely good, sort of transcendentally so, in how it managed to be science fiction, fit within the context of the show and fully develop the characters, plus had convincing acting and writing from everyone. the entire final season, at least the final five or so episodes, should have been that strong. i mean, moore stated that the ending was about the characters and yet, here we are, spending most of our time watching a poorly thought out space battle and a sort of anti climactic stand off with caville over something that i've at this point lost track of.

i was definitely dismissive and overly harsh on this show in the other threads but it basically ended up being about as bad as i was saying it was, not having watched all of it. i take a television show as a whole, so a weak ending is a weak series, unfortunately. it's just like a novel.

seriously, i was a little choked up at the end of that boxing episode.

in the end, i don't know, maybe i was expecting too much of moore? maybe it really IS very very difficult to make a great tv show, even in the best of circumstances (who has really managed it? david lynch for 13 episodes ... the wire for seasons 1, 3, 4 ...), and maybe the fact that they had no budget and no actors and were producing it for the shittiest tv network on the planet should just make us thankful that they managed to fit as many transcendent episodes in there as they did.

so yeah, i'll give it that; when it was on, it was maybe the best tv show ever. when i watched the first 19 episodes in one fell swoop, three years ago, i was briefly hopeful that i'd finally found the glorious scifi high/low art hybrid that i'd been searching for (watching bsg made me start that scifi thread, actually); and the show had enough of those moments, even near the end, that i can forgive whatever plotting problems there were.

though i'm still a little pissed at moore for blowing it, lol.

the show had one good thing going for it though: the adama drinking game. every time he breaks a mirror or shaves, do a shot. if he sort of falls down against a wall crying, you have to chug a beer, and if there's a visible line of "the drool of overacting" coming from some orifice, kill yourself.

  zaphod said:

the show had one good thing going for it though: the adama drinking game. every time he breaks a mirror or shaves, do a shot. if he sort of falls down against a wall crying, you have to chug a beer, and if there's a visible line of "the drool of overacting" coming from some orifice, kill yourself.

Roslin was competing with him on the scenery chewing front by the final episode. WTF at her goodbye scene with the Dr. It's like sche knew she'd be too "weak" for her usual overacting for her death scene so she busted out the "Roslyn chokes up" routine in a blatantly shoehorned in scene

BSG reminds me of M*A*S*H in that by the end the actors had well and truly taken over the show and giving the characters "moments" had precedence over everything else (plot, themes, fun, etc)