Yeah, I hope it just doesn't become a canvas for them to have commentary on whatever the political landscape or event of the day is.
REMINDER: The Best Show on Television Returns Tonight
- Thread starter DemoCoder
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Wow, the Season 3 Ep 1 was the weakest episode so far. I really hope they're not lost for direction and just making it up as they go along.
I rather a show be closed off in only a few season but done right. Case in point: the UK edition of The Office.
The American shows tend to run themselves into the ground for ratings sake.
I rather a show be closed off in only a few season but done right. Case in point: the UK edition of The Office.
The American shows tend to run themselves into the ground for ratings sake.
This is the only thread that has been a little negative on BSG. Everywhere else people are raving about it. BSG can't be a more perfect show to me. Love how dark the series has gotten. And interesting that some think the occupation is a parallel of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Everywhere else and I agree with it sees it as a parallel of the Iraqi occupation. The thing that puts in more towards the Iraqi situation to me is the hated police force.
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Firefly is back on?
If you had followed Moore's blogging and podcasts over the last few years, you'd know BSG does have a consistent story arc. Yes, filler episodes will exist, many to stimulate discussion on various sociopolitical issues, but that is no different than Star Trek, StarGate, Babylon5, et al, even *24* have done over the years. Art is about challenging people, not preaching to the choir. We knew that JMS, for example, had a Story Arc for B5 from the beginning. However, that doesn't mean every detail over the 5 years was filled in, or that he didn't have to make some changes to make all the tiles fit into place. In one respect, BSG is making it up as they go along, I'm pretty sure Season 4 hasn't been written yet. But that doesn't mean Moore didn't visualize the series' beginning, middle, overall thrust, and one or more endings.
I know perfectly well that BSG would be high praised by right wingers if the issues that it tackled happened to side with right wing views. Did I see Republicans bashing the show for an episode that basically outlawed Abortion? Or episodes that ridiculed civilian government views of military policy as riduculously naive to the real world reality they were in? How about the episode which made peace activists of the A.N.S.W.E.R. type look like IDIOTS for wanting a "truce" with the Cylons and conducting "shut it all DOWN" style protests?
I saw no peeps of criticism. But let the show offer a criticism of occupation and the futility of putting down terrorism resisting occupation with force (where the only real solution is total genocide) and all of a sudden, the show sucks, is transparently subversive and obvious.
24 went out of their way to portray Muslims in a fair way, most of the time tricking the audience by encouraging them to believe the dark skinned Muslim was a bad guy, only to find out that blond headed WASPs or Westerners were the true bad guys. What did they get for this? Conservatives protested political correctness, and Muslims protested racial stereotype when in *ONE* season out of FIVE, the masterminds turned out to be Islamic.
Yes, any show that by analog criticizes the Bush administration is going to seem obvious to people are who sensitive to criticism of Bush. Does that mean it's either bad or wrong? What is wrong with getting people to think about the Iraq/Israeli issues by obvious analogy?
IMHO, the raison d'etre of Science Fiction is not about the future, but about today, the here and now, by showing us alternative ways history might unfold and giving us a vantage point on ourselves. Trek really was't about humans in the 23rd and 24th centuries, it was about us, now, and how we'd like to see ourselves and our era evolve.
BSG is obviously about the here and now. The very set design, costumes, and poltics shown in the civilian fleet and Colonial One would not be distinguishable from a show based on Congress and Air Force One, if you clipped out any mention of Cylons.
If that upsets people, tough. Kudos to Ron Moore for creating challenging art.
I know perfectly well that BSG would be high praised by right wingers if the issues that it tackled happened to side with right wing views. Did I see Republicans bashing the show for an episode that basically outlawed Abortion? Or episodes that ridiculed civilian government views of military policy as riduculously naive to the real world reality they were in? How about the episode which made peace activists of the A.N.S.W.E.R. type look like IDIOTS for wanting a "truce" with the Cylons and conducting "shut it all DOWN" style protests?
I saw no peeps of criticism. But let the show offer a criticism of occupation and the futility of putting down terrorism resisting occupation with force (where the only real solution is total genocide) and all of a sudden, the show sucks, is transparently subversive and obvious.
24 went out of their way to portray Muslims in a fair way, most of the time tricking the audience by encouraging them to believe the dark skinned Muslim was a bad guy, only to find out that blond headed WASPs or Westerners were the true bad guys. What did they get for this? Conservatives protested political correctness, and Muslims protested racial stereotype when in *ONE* season out of FIVE, the masterminds turned out to be Islamic.
Yes, any show that by analog criticizes the Bush administration is going to seem obvious to people are who sensitive to criticism of Bush. Does that mean it's either bad or wrong? What is wrong with getting people to think about the Iraq/Israeli issues by obvious analogy?
IMHO, the raison d'etre of Science Fiction is not about the future, but about today, the here and now, by showing us alternative ways history might unfold and giving us a vantage point on ourselves. Trek really was't about humans in the 23rd and 24th centuries, it was about us, now, and how we'd like to see ourselves and our era evolve.
BSG is obviously about the here and now. The very set design, costumes, and poltics shown in the civilian fleet and Colonial One would not be distinguishable from a show based on Congress and Air Force One, if you clipped out any mention of Cylons.
If that upsets people, tough. Kudos to Ron Moore for creating challenging art.
digitalwanderer
Legend
I liked the twist with who he sent to be the you-know-what of the you-know-where, I'm loving how that character develops.
I don't like where the show is at right now either to be honest, it's almost too dark for me. They keep painting the human race into a corner and then stacking the odds against them, I can't see this season being a very happy one.
I don't like where the show is at right now either to be honest, it's almost too dark for me. They keep painting the human race into a corner and then stacking the odds against them, I can't see this season being a very happy one.
I'm quite concerned for this season, and have been since the last few minutes of last season. It was a heck of a risk to take to go this way. The good news is the show is strong enough that if this doesn't work out they'll have enough time to write their way out of it.
And that ending was ripped straight from The Great Escape. . .
And that ending was ripped straight from The Great Escape. . .
I think you missed my criticism. Its not that the show is critical of any particular ideology, just that its getting blatant to the point of gratuitousness.
With the abortion issue, one could see the two sides, and it wasn't ripped straight from the headlines. There was a viable reason to discuss abortion(the need to grow the human race), though the heavy handedness of painting a group of people in the fleet as the religious right was, imho, part of the hamfisted-ness that seems to be becoming more apparent in the writing.
The invasion and "occupation" by the cylons is a complete character change for the cylons, and it feels like it happened simply so the writers could write about their political views of the Iraqi occupation (the 'parallels' are so blatent I'm really surprised anybody is suggesting Israel, or Vichy france). This is the hamfistedness that bothers me, not that it offends my political views.
In my opinion, he's unecessarily trying to make it 'relevant' by making it tied to today's events. Its the reason most Johnny Carson skits and shows don't really make sense these days; and the Muppet Shows don't hold up over time: they depend on current events to be relevant, and after 10 years, they simply cease to be.
quest55720
Regular
I think it is a major insult to even put RM and JMS in the same sentance. Battle star has 1/10000 the arc development and continuity that b5 had. RM backed him self into a corner and pulled a giant reset and blew up every storyline the show had. If he truely had a plan like JMS did there would of been no need to blow every single story line up and start over. I thought season 2.0 battle star was pretty damn good the show won me over. Then season 2.5 came along and pissed all over what the first 2 seasons built up. I will continue to watch in hopes the show gets back to the greatness of season 2.0. It is to bad RM read his own press clippings and had to get cute and prove how great he is by tearing down the show so he could rebuild it mid stream.
The best show on TV is still the shield.
Personally I find most dramas which try to deal with "real-life" issues do it very badly, but more than that it irritates me that they even try. If I want a discussion of real-life, I'll watch the news, or a political discussion programme. If I watch a sci-fi show I want to be entertained. I don't like the blurring of the boundaries between news and entertainment -- it runs the risk that the news channels feel that they need to entertain me to hold my attention, and try to turn news into entertainment. That's not a direction we want to be going in I think.
(It's happening increasingly in TV show made this side of the pond, not just with US imported stuff).
I liked the first 2 hr ep. Not as good as S2 but a decent outing still. I think it was necessary to have the cylons change their plans to allow for more cylon-human interaction stories. It was too stark before now its subtle with a continuing debate amongst the cyolons as to what to do.
kinda lookign forward to see if they worked the withdrawal from Iraq into the storyline before it happens.
I think the dilemnas presented arent too contemporay either. The universal themes of the show still hold up IMO. Honestly I thought B5 did some of that social\political commentary in general terms as well.
LOL at Appollo being fatter than me even.
kinda lookign forward to see if they worked the withdrawal from Iraq into the storyline before it happens.
I think the dilemnas presented arent too contemporay either. The universal themes of the show still hold up IMO. Honestly I thought B5 did some of that social\political commentary in general terms as well.
LOL at Appollo being fatter than me even.
I liked the first episode of the season as it sort of ties in with the movement of a few of the human-cloned cylons feeling more sympathetic towards the humans then others. If I am not mistaken, the cylon occupation is not the direction that the entire cylon population is taking. But rather a faction within the cylon population that wanted a co-existance with the humans. I still think the hard-assed, lets kill every human cylons are still out there.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
I think they just went for a change of pace because there's only so much "trekking through space" you can do and still keep the viewer interest. Don't forget, this is a pretty stark universe - there's just the Humans and their own creation the Cylons. There's not a different set of aliens on every planet for a new story every week.
I think at some point they will get back into space, but first they have to show the downfall of Gaius Baltar, the grinding down of an occupation, and those that would rather die than be oppressed. I think we're going to see a blurring of the moral ground the various factions occupy. We're going to be asking ourselves if the humans are the bad guys or the good guys, and whether the Cylons are just as human as the humans are.
I think at some point they will get back into space, but first they have to show the downfall of Gaius Baltar, the grinding down of an occupation, and those that would rather die than be oppressed. I think we're going to see a blurring of the moral ground the various factions occupy. We're going to be asking ourselves if the humans are the bad guys or the good guys, and whether the Cylons are just as human as the humans are.
I didn't like the episode either, IMO the issue was handled with too much restraint. The writers kind of tip-toed around the interesting issue of reproductive rights when humankind faces extinction. It should have been more controversial, the nature of the problem demands it.
That being said, I don't think the inclusion of the religious elements was "hamfisted" at all. Religion plays a prominent role in BSG and there was simply no way the writers could have ignored it.
No, it's not a complete change of character. Throughout season 2, the growing internal dissent among the cylons was one of the major themes. It had to lead somewhere and the occupation seems to be a pretty good plot device for pushing that particular plot arc forward, instead of letting it merely ripple along for another season or two, boring everyone to hell. IMO the occupation does not feel out of place or contrived, it fits the storyline of season 2.
I agree... that's why I hate the fact that South Park turned from random madness with some abstract social commentary to little more than commentary on contemporary events and persons (e.g. Paris Hilton, Hybrid Cars, World of Warcraft, Ben Aflec and J-Lo, Al Gore, Global Warming, Passion of the Christ etc.). It's the same sort of thing that ruined MAD Magazine - going from Don Martin, Spy vs Spy etc. to movie spoofs, politcal humor and crap like that.
I don't think BSG will run into this problem, though, because there's nothing that requires knowledge of today's events. The storyline will work as well twenty years from now.
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