They reward knowledge. If you know more of the backstory, you get more out of each episode.
For instance, you can pick up just about any Sherlock Holmes story and get all you need to enjoy it fully within the story. (Sure having read more of them already might add some nuance). Compare that to watching a Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon serial episode 7. Almost impossible to understand what the hell is going on, only the very thinnest of “last time, Flash was trapped in the ice cave, surrounded by snow people, having fallen into it while looking for DestroyMingium isotopes…” You can enjoy the action, hypothetically, but not much else.
Yep. And that also explains why shows like Farscape and Babylon 5 have such devoted fans. They see all the nuance, whereas people who have only watched an episode or two of either series don’t get the fuss. These serial shows take investment, but the good ones also really reward that investment.
But it also means that small flaws become more irritating. We see that Raiders fire missiles which destroy Vipers, until seven of them take on Starbuck and suddenly they don’t.
A good program explains away rule changes, a bad program just changes the rules.
I don’t really understand getting fixated on minutia like that, because it’s ultimately irrelevant. What really matters in that battle is the result, not the specific details of how it played out.
Seriously, if people look back on a show in 10 years and remember that missiles suddenly stopped working in one episode, they either failed with their larger narrative—which is what’s critical to most space or soap operas—or people are just weird. That kind of fetishistic detail isn’t relevant to the “big issues” that Galactica, in particular, is grappling with.
A good program explains away rule changes, a bad program just changes the rules.
Either way, people will just say, “deus ex machina!” I’d argue that, unless we’re talking about historical accuracy, the central narrative is way more important than little details. One of the reasons Galactica is watchable for a non-sci fi fan like me is that it doesn’t get bogged down in all the technical gobblygook.
Becuase… I do? I can’t help it. Once you’ve seen the rules broken they cease taking on meaning and so the illusion is somewhat lost. If a show tells you the engine powers the ship, then in the next episode it’s powered by the medical bay, how can you invest yourself in the show?
Since the creator of BSG disliked TNG pulling explanations out of his ass, I think it’s fair to complain that he’d switch the rules around like that to allow Starbuck to pull off a seven to one win. Especially as they were keeping track of the number of pilots and fighters on the web site because they were supposed to be all about the detail. Likewise with a test taking no time in one episode, then ten hours in the next. Or a man doing everything in can to survive then mysteriously keeping information to himself for no reason. It’s a testament to BSG that the first 1.5 seasons managed to be so damn enjoyable even though the internal consistency was pretty bad. You can break your rules, but you had better damn well include a line explaining it.
B5 did this, BSG did not, which is why B5 will be remembered for its arc and BSG’s will be forgotten.
Because it’s not a show about what powers the ship? While I would agree that every effort should be in place to maintain internal consistency, the show is about narrative, not the specific ins-and-outs of the machinery.
B5 did this, BSG did not, which is why B5 will be remembered for its arc and BSG’s will be forgotten.
I suspect you’re wrong here, at least in the mind’s of the non-hardcore. BSG has a lot more credibility outside the sci-fi faithful than just about any show ever, and it has nothing to do with its ability to maintain fantasy/sci-fi element consistency and everything to do with its story arc.
When I say that many people like it, I am referring to television critics, people whose professional job it is to critique shows. It’s perfectly ok for you to have an opinion and express it of course, but when you make pronouncements like the following …
…you end up sounding really silly. I mean, come on, you’re picking at minutiae about whether rockets are landing or some crap like that, who even cares? It’s the story and the characters that are important, and not necessarily how much quadrotriticale the tribbles have eaten.
This may sound crazy, but I think the BSG writing, characters and general atmosphere are awesome and the BSG story arc is pretty terrible. The plot mostly makes sense on an episode-to-episode level, but taken as a whole series arc, it’s almost incoherent. Maybe it will hang together on a thematic level, but in terms of having a plot that actually makes sense, I don’t think they will be able to pull it off.
I really don’t think it’s the story arc that attracts people to BSG. For me, they had me at “This is Galactica Actual.”
Stargate. Does nobody mention Stargate during these discussions? I’ve seen so many non-sci-fi people watch it, and it’s quite enjoyable. Not to mention that it does a wonderful thing - it grows.
I’m not sure why Stargate gets left out. It IS a great show. I really like it, along with Atlantis. And I agree that its appeal goes beyond the normal Sci-Fi crowd.
I don’t see the complaint as meaningless technobabble. Initially, the Raiders were deadly opponents, in part because they had homing missiles. After a while, they are no longer deadly opponents and act more like mobile targets for the Vipers. Why not use their most effective weapons? No reason. Same with the Cylon Base Stars and their nukes.
Let’s say I start a story about a band of settlers in the Wild West who run afoul of a band of Indians. Maybe they kill their Chief or something. Now, the settlers make a run for the nearest city, but they are really screwed. Not only is the Indian tribe full of implacable hatred, but they are mounted, they have rifles, lots of ammo, and they know how to use them (as demonstrated in the first chapter of the story). Not only that, but the settler’s have to make it across hundreds of miles of trackless desert, they have next to no food or water, and their wagons are on the ragged edge of breaking down. How will they survive? What hardships will they endure? What will the tale of their arduous trek tell us about the will to survive?
We will never know, because in chapter 2, the Indians only have bows and arrows, and don’t know how to ride horses and anyway really more philosophical than implacable. Chapter 2 never mentions the food and water situation or the extreme temperatures. These unexplained changes don’t matter, however, because that stuff is all just counting horseshoes, right?
The difference, at least to what I was getting at, is the mainstream critical reception. Like the Entertainment Weekly cover, serious critiques in mainstream publications, that sort of thing. BSG has transcended genre TV; I’m not sure I’d say the same about Stargate, though maybe I’ve missed its mainstream coverage.
I totally disagree. I think people that have stuck with it appreciate that it’s trying to be more than a show about blowing up Cylons. It overreaches, but I’d rather it do that and fail than just be another action show.
I’m not sure what makes it incoherent. The philosophical ruminations can get a bit… much, but plot-wise, it’s pretty straightforward. I know people here love to pick apart little details, but those generally have little bearing on the big picture.
The show has chosen to be theme-driven as opposed to purely plot-driven, which is pretty radical for any TV show. While I suppose it would possible to be obsessively accurate with all gear and every single plot element, but to do so would probably require extra scenes, extra plotting, and none of it would likely be relevant to the themes they’re exploring. (Obviously some episodes had nothing to do with any of the themes, but that was apparently due to some corporate level, “Um, can you make a few standalone episodes?” requests.)
Obviously, you’re wrong. All it would take is extra effort on the part of the writers to script the show within the constraints of their own continuity.
For all the talk of what a well-written show BSG is, it really isn’t. Characters develop full-bloom personality issues one episode that have utterly vanished the next. Technical abilities and limitations appear and disappear as needed. Cylon society appears to consist of little beyond naked yoga and serving each other lattes. Whatever happened to the black market? Whatever happened to “They Have A Plan”? Discarded, never to be mentioned or acknowledged again.
This all wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if they’d stuck to the formula of the first couple seasons. People seemed to really like the military sci-fi angle. But around the third season when they decided to change course into political commentary, character drama, and the inner workings of Cylon society, they significantly raised the difficulty bar for themselves. This sort of stuff is a lot harder to write well than simple survival drama with shooting and explosions, and it shows.
I think they’re finding themselves again over the last few episodes, actually. But there were many in the previous season (and early in this one) that were just OFF. I’m not talking consistency here, per se, but just tediousness. Even the non-sci-fi people noticed it, and ratings slipped accordingly. But I like the direction it’s taking right now. For reasons I won’t go into, it makes sense that the Cylons have changed their plan.
Do people really believe that BSG has transcended the sci-fi lovers and travelled into the mainstream? For a series which is being culled after four that strikes me as tremendously unlikely.
Certainly, Stargate (urgh) has found an audience somewhere, and it’s not hard for me to find people who watch it.
If I had to name a sci-fi I thought most likely to appeal to people who don’t like sci-fi, I’d pick Firefly. You don’t mention the sci-fi, but you do mention the humour, and that’s how you rope them in.
But around the third season when they decided to change course into political commentary, character drama, and the inner workings of Cylon society, they significantly raised the difficulty bar for themselves. This sort of stuff is a lot harder to write well than simple survival drama with shooting and explosions, and it shows.
Sure it is, and it’s also most of your issues are irrelevant. All that black market stuff was important to the military sci-fi drama. They went in a different direction; not liking that direction is totally fine. But people like you just seem to watch to pick it apart, which is… peculiar.
It’s being killed off because it costs too much to make and doesn’t have that large an audience. I suspect it’s actually lost some of its original sci-fi audience by going down some pretty weird paths, while at the same time expanding its non-sci-fi fan audience. Anecdotally, I don’t watch any sci-fi except for BSG, and I have a handful of friends who are the same boat.
It also got a big cover story in Entertainment Weekly (the source of that “last supper” photo) before season 3, which is pretty mainstream. And it’s talked about on a lot of sites I visit that don’t cover “geek” stuff.
The most consistent thing people say they like about it is that it’s not typical sci-fi, obsessed with technical gobblygook and explaining all sorts of “alien” things. They like the politics, the parallels to the world today, the interpersonal stuff, and the philosophical musings.
When people say typical sci-fi is all technical gobbledegook, they mean “Star Trek”. Most other sci-fi shows (Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, Firefly, Farscape, Babylon 5…) are totally not focused on it. I’m convinced that Star Trek has done more to hurt modern sci-fi than help it, especially after Voyager and Enterprise.
Anyway, I stopped watching BSG after the first two eps of Season 3, when it became “lolz see how edgy we are being rebellious and look it’s Iraq! See?! SEE HOW THIS IS LIKE IRAQ?!?”
Politics aside, a previous poster was right; the writing on BSG is not good. On an individual episode level it is, things are exciting, edgy, tense, serious, and have great music. But as soon as you watch the show and have a memory better than a 90-year-old with Alzheimer’s, the whole things falls apart.
