A few lines of dialog in the show that only existed because they realized after the fact that they didn’t know how to count and they sloppily tried to patch over that.
Not to mention that the very “mystical flimflam mystery of the week” format of the show they were working from practically DEMANDED fans to look way too much into the dialog there. What the fuck did they expect to happen? In a show where a minor character comes back being the semi-leader of the god-like “final five” (who themselves were clearly just another “winging it” idea late in the game) and that was on its last episodes before he was ever mentioned, why wouldn’t fans be trying to decode meaning out of things like the Daniel mention?
Well, Moore wanted a Cain and Abel thing for Cavil too, so that fed into the decision to invent number 7, in addition to their failure at basic counting. And they’re going to be doing stuff with Daniel in Caprica. Just not, you know, the show where he mattered or nothing.
dermot
1944
‘Daniel’ was partly about covering over a weird counting error and partly about illustrating how ruthless Cavil was.
Yeah, I’ve read Moore’s take on the Daniel Cain/Abel thing. I just think it was way late in the game to be trying to introduce such nuanced characterization into the show. Cavil is the big bad. We know that because he’s really the only obvious villian left. I don’t need to know that he used to kick cats and shit when he was a wee little cylon when there are only 3 episodes left. If I’m not buying him as the villian prior to this information, your show is already fucked.
I can fully get behind laughing at fans for what Hugin calls “fanon”, there are plenty of off-their-rocker Lost fans who do things like try to fit characters we haven’t seen on that show in years into the current plot somehow where they obviously don’t fit. Sometimes fans make giant leaps of logic that are completely unwarranted, but I do feel that given how late into the BSG game it was when he was introduced, and the circumstances that occured right up to and after Daniel’s mention it is just sloppy to not have realized fans would expect that to have a lot more meaning than it did.
No, it really was. Using that line in the intro may have been marketing’s idea, but the premise that the Cylons had some sort of plan that goes beyond merely exterminating humanity was very much a part of the actual story starting right from the first episode of the series, “33.” The show constantly dropped hints that the Cylons were up to something, and that there was some motivation behind their actions beyond merely wiping out humanity. But ultimately there wasn’t–they really did just want to wipe out humanity, though some of them wanted to do some genetic experimentation first.
Another example of the show being an alcoholic’s paradise.
I think the whole issue here that we circle around and around is that BSG had massive potential, and a great deal of good will built up early on with its viewers, and whether it ended up working or not, it did NOT live up to that potential, so as viewers we feel cheated. Just a little more TLC from the creator and the writers, just a little more attention to detail and consistency, maybe just somebody keeping better notes in the storyboard meetings, and it could have been SO much better than it turned out. Was it watchable? Sure, I watched it to the end. Was I disappointed? Definitely.
Athryn
1949
I didn’t feel cheated, I thought it was just fine for the most part, it had it’s weak episodes and stronger ones, but overall I was satisfied with the series as a whole.
The thing about the internet and message boards is you can find a consensus for any point of view, and an echo chamber of “me toos” for any PoV. :)
Me too!
But seriously, I completely agree with the thought. BSG was better than most of the crap that’s on tv even when it wasn’t that great, but there was such a huge gap between BSG at its best and BSG on average I can’t help but feel let down.
And the feeling of disappointment for me is almost completely due to the uneven writing. Even when doing fairly mediocre episodes, I felt the cast was always surprisingly good, which is probably part of the reason I’ve been able to stick with BSG (and Lost when it was a bit off the rails), but not so much Heroes. When Heroes went bad in the story department it made me acutely aware of how weak most of the cast is.
Would you feel better if at the end, someone would’ve said, “My gosh, Kara is an angel!” and they all sat around discussing the implications of that?
FoRmaT
1952
Zylon
1953
Oh, a strawman. Isn’t that darling.
No, I would have felt better if, before they blowed up Kara real good, the writers had sat down and figured out exactly how and why she was going to be brought back, then stuck to that plan. Instead, we got the usual BSG mishmash of randomly strung-together “wouldn’t it be cool if” moments, with no consistent thread tying it all together.
I love how much you seem to hate this show. Brings a smile to my face.
Editer
1955
You know, if Lee had expressed any of that in the show, the Intarwebs wouldn’t be having this conversation.
(Also, it’s fun to read this topic while avoiding glancing at the left column and guessing which posts come from Zylon. I’m batting 1000 so far.)
CSL
1956
I’d still suggest that even after having abandoning most everything they would have wiped out the indigenous human populationws by way of diseases. (It probably wouldn’t go the other way since I don’t see them getting rid of their medical tech for at least awhile or without a fight).
Yeah, none of that argument came across in the show. And even that bugs me, because it remains in total opposition to the “keep the human race alive at all costs” philosophy that guided the show right up until the finale. By discarding all of their tech, even the non-weapons-related stuff, they dramatically decreased their odds of survival.
Although I don’t agree with how he said it, I kind of do agree with the one guy’s argument that their willingness to just give up on every bit of the culture they struggled so hard to try and keep alive does seem like losing.
Why does everyone assume by ditching their ships that the colonial humans ditched all their techs? They kept the Raptors and Vipers apparently and as well as enough materials to build a city until Lee nixed the idea.
Like many said already, after spending four years on cramped ships with thousands of others that are only meant to be in space for days or months at most, I’m sure most people would want a simple life. We saw this already with New Caprica – the humans lived in tents while the Cylons had the only concrete building.
In any case, eventually the ships’ fuels would have ran out and after the loss of thousands of survivors in the insurrection and civil war, I’m sure that the colonial humans lost a lot of skilled people (eg. the replacement chief was murdered during the mutiny).
Munin
1960
I think this response by RDM on the Scifi forum sums up his approach to writing BSG pretty well:
The image of the bird was just than – an image. I had no idea what it meant or symbolized, but just saw this picture of a man (didn’t even know it was Lee) trying to chase a bird out of his house with a broom. We put it up on the board and then folded it into the story of Lee without trying to define exactly what it meant. I still don’t know exactly what it meant. I don’t want to.
Besides - now that Kara turned out to be some “angel”, what was all that crap about her sending mankind to its destruction/doom? Something like that appeared in Razor and several times in the regular series.
