BSG News
Kevin D.
Who wants some Battlestar Galactica news? You, sir, would you like some? You, over there, with the yellow shirt, I know you do! You, guy, up in the front, would you like to hear some news about the second half of the third season? You do? Well, come right up!
FYI: The article is full of spoilers - to a degree. If you want to remain completely in the dark about upcoming episodes then don't read it. Otherwise, I think it bodes well for the future. I know I'm quite excited.
I'm not going to read it because that's just the way I am, but I hope you're right and the show redeems itself- the last half-season was an all-around bust for me. Couple that with the move to Sunday night at 10:00 PM EST (AKA "The Place Once-Good Shows Go To Die") and if the first couple episodes don't grab me, I'm done.
That's fair. Even I can admit this first half has been fairly weak. But, to be fair, I also have to admit it's weak by BSG standards. If compared to most other television drama's I still believe it would come out ahead. So, if anything, the makers of the show are guilty of missing the bar they set for themselves early on.
However, even if the first couple of episodes don't grab you try to stick around anyway. While you're not gonna read the article the last four episodes are looking to be nuts. Moore said that the fourth to last episode will change the direction of the show altogether - and it's an all Starbuck episode. I don't want to spoil anything but if you care at all about Starbuck you must see this episode.
“I think that one thing the fans have come to expect from the show is, we’ve never really pulled punches when it comes to the question of having main characters becoming injured or changing profoundly or dying."
After that I got maybe another third into the article and just stopped. I realized I just didn't give enough of a crap to keep reading.
It's hard to explain this, especially when you've got snotty people like Ali floating around who just crap on a serious artistic discussion. But: I loved this show originally because I thought they were gutsy enough to be really original and really different, and gutsy enough to avoid all the things that make so much American television so very predictable and so very bad.
They utterly betrayed that.
When I say "betrayed" I do not mean I'm crying in a corner and sobbing. I mean, it was an artistic betrayal. They made an implicit promise to the audience, then they broke it.
Indeed, they didn't just break it. They took the promise out, put it on center stage, poured gasoline on it while everyone watched, lit it with a blowtorch, then danced naked around its burning embers congratulating themselves.
Those of us who watch the show know exactly what that moment was, too. I don't even bother having to describe it.
I know you badly want to be a writer, Kevin. Here's my advice: if you ever really want to respect your own work, don't do what these guys did. They blew a cardinal rule, and broke it so spectacularly it's beyond words.
Do not betray the trust your audience has put in you.
'Nuff said.
Starbuck was my my second-favorite from the beginning. I only liked Baltar a little better, because James Callis has been so brilliant at playing such a self-centered rationalizing weasel--like the apotheosis of Wile E. Coyote. And I mean that in a very admiring way toward James Callis. He was SUCH a disgusting weasel. I think it takes a special kind of talent to portray someone you can both utterly loathe and almost see yourself being--like, the very worst parts of yourself being portrayed on the screen. Callis did that SO WELL I think he should have gotten at least one Emmy for it.
Other than that, Starbuck is my fav'rit. Has been for some time.
If they'd killed off Starbuck in season 1, or even season 2, it would have been much like the death of Mercutio in Romeo &Juliette, or Borimir in The Fellowship of the Rings. It would have been epic. Because, in fiction, it works like this:
Everybody loves that character. Everybody wants to be that character, or at least wants to know that character personally. Then the character shockingly dies, often because of their own foolish mistake or personal failing. That's what makes for epic tragedy. Most of us know someone we loved who died before they should have. Or at least harbor fantasies of heroic, tragic endings for ourselves. That's what makes for great drama.
Anyway, I love Starbuck. I relate to her. But now, at this point in the series? I just could not possibly give less of a crap what happens to her.
Kill her? Okay. Have her marry Apollo? Okay. Have her be a Cylon? Whatever. Have her die, and then have the Cylons try to resurrect her using their own experimental technologies, maybe have her reborn in someone else's body? That might be mildly interesting. Get her pregnant 3 or 4 times and have her become a happy hausfrau? Whatever.
My view:
The audience will tolerate all sorts of nasty surprises and tragedies and disappointments. They'll put up with all sorts of weirdness too. Just so long as they believe you are genuinely committed to your story and are willing to take it wherever it leads, they'll stick with you. If you stay true to your vision, you'll lose some people and gain some other people, but the core audience trusts you and will stick with you.
Once they believe you're just stringing them along, however? You're done.
It would be like having Romeo &Juliette suddenly wake up after poisoning themselves, realizing it was just a bad dream. Or Scarlett O'Hara winding up marrying Rhett Butler. Or having a sequel to Casablanca in which Ilsa Lund and Rick Blaine are happily married with a white picket fence house in Hollywood, with Sam as their butler or some shit. It would be a betrayal beyond words.
Stereotypes are okay. Drama and comedy trade in stereotypes. But let the audience detect that you're just playing with them, just stringing them along? That only works in light comedies or cheap action stories. At best.
To be honest, I'm really getting fed up with this emerging tradition of some HUGE, DRAMATIC cliffhanger EVERY SINGLE SEASON.
Geez, guys, lighten up. Yes, this is a serious show; and yes, we don't want camp, but wherever you have human beings, you'll find people, situations, or surprises that make you laugh. Some of them might seem grim to outsiders, but still funny.
Let me give you some examples. Now everyone knows that during the seige of Bastogne during the Battle of the Buldge, GEN Mcauliffe's reply to a German officer's demand for surrender was "Nuts." Now that's pretty funny. Less known are the actions of some doggies who had put up a Christmas tree, including a doll in the decorations. When a shell damaged the tree (and the doll), they repaired the tree, and pinned a Purple Heart on the doll.
The Pacific War has some good examples; during the most desperate part of the battle of Leyte Gulf (destroyers and escort carriers taking on battleships and cruisers at literally point-blank),where one petty officer yelled out "looks like we're sucking them into 40mm range, boys!"
Another example comes from the Battle for Okinawa, which was close enough to Japan proper to require a 360-degree radar picket line about 30 miles out from the island. Each picket was manned by destroyers and destoyer escorts, who were tasked with reporting incoming kamikazee attacks to the main fleet. Alas for the pickets, many of the inexperienced Japanese pilots attacked the first ships they saw, so the pickets took a lot of punishment. One ship -knowing the enemy preferred carriers, battleships, and such- hung a very large sign on the side of their ship, with a very large arrow, and the caption "TO JAP PILOTS - CARRIERS THIS WAY."
Hell, look at Bill Mauldin's stuff from Italy and southern France. At one level it's pretty funny; at another it's not really funny at all. That's just how people make the best of unpleasant situations.
So I have to say BSG has taken the "dark" road way too far. Hell, I'm halfway ready to shoot Starbuck myself.
Something else that jumped out at me: did anyone else notice how many times the producers used the word shocking during that interview? Or is it just me? Do you really need to shock your audience on a regular basis to be taken seriously? Do you even need to shock them once a season? It sounds more like the producers want to mess with the audience, instead of entertain them.
Let me remind everyone that is, after all, the basic motivation for any movie or series: to entertain people. If you can't do that, you've failed.
Finally, I think they're being a bit too cute and coy about the "who's a Cylon?" business. I fear that they're going to muck things up with "tomato surprise" revelation, and misuse that suspense.
If one of the regular (or semi-regular) cast members turns out to be a Cylon, they had better have a damned good reason for doing so, and their decision had bloody well be supported from past continuity, unlike some of their past mistakes, such as the violent anti-war activists who appeared out of whole cloth for a single episode, then disappeared, never to be heard from again.
While Dean hasn't convinced me that Balthar is a Cylon, he at least makes a cogent and rational case why that might be true. So if Balthar becomes revealed as a toaster, I would consider that within the realm of the believable. The factors Dean has mentioned are well-grounded within the series, and "Balthar as Cylon" would require little (if any) after the fact rationalization.
Adama, on the other hand, would be a real stretch. If nothing else, the man had two sons, and no one ever said "gee, there's some genetic anamolies here." The doc on Galactica has spent plenty of time examining Adama, Lee, and the Cylon baby. There's no way he could have missed any odd similarities.
Basically I'm saying the "Cylon surpise" plot element holds a lot of potential for abuse. If Moore succumbs to temptation, then I'm done for the series.
Hell, I like Firefly better anyway, in many ways.
I love Mary McDonnell. She brought something to that role that I think almost no other actress could have, and I hope if she's reading she won't take it personally. But Roslin should be dead now. Way dead.
Don't give me any "why would any series kill off one of its most popular characters" bullshit. We sat and watched for two years while she withered and died, and at the last moment a spontaneous miracle cure fixed her. What a horrible betrayal of the audience.
This isn't Star Trek. Or it wasn't supposed to be, anyway.
If Eddie Olmos (Adama) had cancer from the beginning, and we spent two seasons waiting for his death (as the prophecies foretold), I'd say the same thing.
Still love her and those bewitching glasses, though. ;-)
If you're as upset that Roslin missed her prophesied death because Moore simply didn't want to kill the character you're ignoring the phrophesy itself and the state of the search for Earth at the time.
If Roslin had died when you thought she should have then she wasn't the prophet foretold. It's that simple.
Roslin still may die. We just don't know how yet. Indeed her cancer could come back. Cancer does that.
Dean, you've told me time and time again, in regards to your own book, to finish it before I judge it. You need to take your own advice now. If Roslin is the prophet she will die. That she didn't die when you thought she was going to doesn't mean she still won't. Let the story finish before you start accusing Moore and Co. of selling out.
But, we spent two years watching her die. We felt for her, felt her fear palpably (Mary McDonnell portrayed it incredibly well), and admired her courage and her commitment in the face of a situation when most people would have just given up and whined "I'm dying, who cares?!?!" and being impresssed that she refused to give in to that self-indulgence and gave her all because she realized humanity was more important than her (which McDonnell did even better).
Then Bozo the clown pops out and says "ya-ta-da-da-da, just kidding!" and waves a magic wand and she's all better.
It was the biggest slap in the face imaginable to a *huge* chunk of the Galactica audience. Even if *you* are not that part of that audience, it's no longer possible to deny that an *enormous* number felt the same way. Artistically, the whole series went from a possible Da Vinci to just another cheap Elvis painting on black velvet.
The proof is in the putting, Kev. Their ratings are now *half* what they were before. They went from the highest-rated show in SciFi channel history to one of the lowest-rated in their entire stable. It was an *enormous* creative blunder.
If they can pull themselves out of this hole, I'll be totally impressed. I really will be. But I don't think they can--and having spent years now delving into the creative process, I'm saying that as a matter of analytics. I'm not some sobbing fanboy. I'm analyzing it as a creator and saying, "Holy shit, could they have possibly fucked up more badly???"
Trust once lost is hard to regain. They've got their work cut out for themselves.
And I'll keep posting the threads.
Also, I'll try to avoid being too negative. I'm hoping they somehow manage to salvage this train wreck. I'm not convinced that they can but I'd be pleased to be wrong.
I'd like to have a long, long talk with Ron Moore. :-)
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.