[TV] Battlestar Galactica

[Deleted]

So is this show different than most sci-fi shows and movies? Does it have a good storyline throughout the series that will make me want to make me want more as the show progresses? Will there be characters that I will be to relate to?

It is different. It feels more "adult" than most sci-fi shows. Most of the characters or their relationships are messed up, which makes them interesting to watch. Early on, I found many of the characters very engaging - especially the strong women. The acting and dialogue is generally very strong. There's a very powerful post-apocalytic type vibe to the show, that drives it along - the struggle for humanity to survive. Sadly, most of these virtues fade during the course of the show - not unlike Lost, which you liked. The mini-series and the first two seasons were very strong; the rest, watchable.

[Ivanstone]

Pardon me for the huge necro here.

After a decade of actually managing to avoid finding out how the series ends, I finally watched the whole thing over the past 10 days.

I quite enjoyed the series and I'm happy I managed the spoiler free experience of it.

I would like to address something controversial about the show and I'm a little appalled with the writing in this regard:
What the fuck is wrong with people not wearing their goddamn space suits? Suited-up Raptor pilots are forced to stew in their own juices for a couple days but almost nowhere else in the show are people wearing their suits. Its outer-fucking-space, you work in the a potentially dangerous spot in outer-fucking-space you wear the goddamn suit.

Next project: Babylon 5! I don't know how that ends either.

[Puupi]

Next project: Babylon 5! I don't know how that ends either.

I wish there was a good quality rip of the show somewhere in the internet, but I haven't found one.

[eschatological]

I think one of the main themes of BSG is kind of the complacency of humanity. Space travel is common, these ships are massive and have their own atmosphere, nobody expects decompression on an actual Battlestar, and if it's gotten to that point, you're probably all dead anyways.

I love BSG, I can never find the pilot/movie thing they did anywhere, which covers the pre-attack plans of Six with Baltar.

[BloodyAngel12]

I think one of the main themes of BSG is kind of the complacency of humanity. Space travel is common, these ships are massive and have their own atmosphere, nobody expects decompression on an actual Battlestar, and if it's gotten to that point, you're probably all dead anyways.

I love BSG, I can never find the pilot/movie thing they did anywhere, which covers the pre-attack plans of Six with Baltar.

The 4 episode mini series before it went on to be big seasons?

[Risale]

Pardon me for the huge necro here.

After a decade of actually managing to avoid finding out how the series ends, I finally watched the whole thing over the past 10 days.

I quite enjoyed the series and I'm happy I managed the spoiler free experience of it.

I would like to address something controversial about the show and I'm a little appalled with the writing in this regard:
What the fuck is wrong with people not wearing their goddamn space suits? Suited-up Raptor pilots are forced to stew in their own juices for a couple days but almost nowhere else in the show are people wearing their suits. Its outer-fucking-space, you work in the a potentially dangerous spot in outer-fucking-space you wear the goddamn suit.

Next project: Babylon 5! I don't know how that ends either.

You will have a much better time with B5 then with BSG.
Small suggestion don't watch the final episode of S4 till after you have seen the final episode of S5 the order would then be "Sleeping in Light" followed by "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars".
The reason for saying this is that they were not sure if S5 would ever happen so doing it this way will make more sense and gives you a better ending to the series.

[callipygoustp]

I love BSG, I can never find the pilot/movie thing they did anywhere, which covers the pre-attack plans of Six with Baltar.

I believe you are referring to:
Battlestar Galactica (miniseries) - wiki
Battlestar Galactica (miniseries) (2003) - imdb

[eschatological]

No, I think there was one even before that.........with Six actually living her life with Baltar, and the conspiracy plotted by the Cylons to destroy Caprica.

Like, I remember the mini-series that became the pilot, and then the first official episode was "32" or whatever where they had to jump 32 times until they found the infiltrator on one of the ships. IIRC, it starts with Six walking into a neutral meeting site and blowing up a UN guy, and the pilot had flashbacks to Caprica. Then they find the Cylon model in the abandoned station, and find out about how many models there are, etc.

I could have sworn there was a movie-length thing before that with Six infiltrating Caprica and Baltar.

Maybe I'm old and just making shit up at this point.

[Ivanstone]

I think one of the main themes of BSG is kind of the complacency of humanity. Space travel is common, these ships are massive and have their own atmosphere, nobody expects decompression on an actual Battlestar, and if it's gotten to that point, you're probably all dead anyways.

I get that and people are complacent and selfish even in the face of the apocalypse.

Its just that in one early episode there was an event where military crewmen died because they weren't wearing their suits and I figured Adama and/or Tigh would clamp down on that. Admittedly, I watched The Expanse before BSG and their a lot fussier about that in the former. Also I'm not sure I would consider BSG to be actual Sci-Fi and in some ways it feels like an epic fantasy.

[eschatological]

The thing with The Expanse is that it's going for more of a gritty realism. In The Expanse, there's a "middle class" (and even a "lower class") of space workers. In BSG, even though you have things like water freighters, most of the ships actively in space seem to be military or high-tech industrial, or pleasure ships. Or transports. In BSG, it feels like you're a good thousand years into human space flight - after all, they've mastered near-light speed jumps. In the Expanse, we haven't gotten past our own solar system yet.

[Nerraw]

No, I think there was one even before that.........with Six actually living her life with Baltar, and the conspiracy plotted by the Cylons to destroy Caprica.

Like, I remember the mini-series that became the pilot, and then the first official episode was "32" or whatever where they had to jump 32 times until they found the infiltrator on one of the ships. IIRC, it starts with Six walking into a neutral meeting site and blowing up a UN guy, and the pilot had flashbacks to Caprica. Then they find the Cylon model in the abandoned station, and find out about how many models there are, etc.

I could have sworn there was a movie-length thing before that with Six infiltrating Caprica and Baltar.

Maybe I'm old and just making shit up at this point.

You might be thinking of "The Plan", which was made after the main show had ended.

[Ivanstone]

The thing with The Expanse is that it's going for more of a gritty realism. In The Expanse, there's a "middle class" (and even a "lower class") of space workers. In BSG, even though you have things like water freighters, most of the ships actively in space seem to be military or high-tech industrial, or pleasure ships. Or transports. In BSG, it feels like you're a good thousand years into human space flight - after all, they've mastered near-light speed jumps. In the Expanse, we haven't gotten past our own solar system yet.

In BSG they have FTL drives and artificial gravity. Both seem to run on Alchemy. They also have a battleship that stores data on tape drives. Its kind of an odd mix of technology. Its part of the reason I'm hesitant to describe BSG as a Sci-Fi show. The Expanse looks like something we could do in the next 200 years and its reasonably consistent in how it presents that.

There are some overlap in both show's social structure. In BSG you mostly saw the military but a small chunk of the show was about the more under-privileged members of society. The episode about the Tylium refining ship being the best example. Many of the civilians are over-worked and terrified. The Expanse's main cast are mostly lower class workers and you only get a glimpse at the military. The shows are both lopsided in their focus.

[Collegeguy]

I get that and people are complacent and selfish even in the face of the apocalypse.

Its just that in one early episode there was an event where military crewmen died because they weren't wearing their suits and I figured Adama and/or Tigh would clamp down on that. Admittedly, I watched The Expanse before BSG and their a lot fussier about that in the former. Also I'm not sure I would consider BSG to be actual Sci-Fi and in some ways it feels like an epic fantasy.

Expanse and BSG are just taking place in different universes with different tech. In BSG, capital ships just sit rather immobile while duking it out likely because the technology doesn't necessitate much else. They have jump technology and so developing fast engines may be pointless. I don't recall them having suits on all the time in the Rocinante. They only did it during CQB when they know PDC are putting bullet holes through the whole ship. BSG hull armor was far more advanced that no bullets are going to penetrate. Recall that the Galactica took direct nuke hits and kept smiling at you. Rocinante isn't going to survive that.

- - - Updated - - -

In BSG they have FTL drives and artificial gravity. Both seem to run on Alchemy. They also have a battleship that stores data on tape drives. Its kind of an odd mix of technology. Its part of the reason I'm hesitant to describe BSG as a Sci-Fi show. The Expanse looks like something we could do in the next 200 years and its reasonably consistent in how it presents that.

The reason for the odd mix was that they can't have networked computers as Cylons are far more advanced in computer manipulation making this technology vulnerable. BSG tech is definitely ahead of the Expanse, but they also have to take steps backwards because of the AI sophistication. They use a lot of paper as well because of this paranoia. They even question the paranoia at the beginning. It's explaining the ryhmes and reasons as a sci-fi would just have to dig into it.

[Nihilist74]

I like the old Battlestar Galactica from the 1980's. Don't care for the newer ones much.

[Ivanstone]

Expanse and BSG are just taking place in different universes with different tech.

Space is still the same. It will fucking murder you given the chance. If you're working on a part of the ship where the hull is damaged, you wear a space suit. This is established in BSG and they just ignore it out of apparent laziness sometimes.

The reason for the odd mix was that they can't have networked computers as Cylons are far more advanced in computer manipulation making this technology vulnerable. BSG tech is definitely ahead of the Expanse, but they also have to take steps backwards because of the AI sophistication. They use a lot of paper as well because of this paranoia. They even question the paranoia at the beginning. It's explaining the ryhmes and reasons as a sci-fi would just have to dig into it.

An offline quantum storage drive has the same level of security as an offline tape. You use the former when you actually think about technology and the latter when you don't.Not using networked computers is one thing about they were unnecessarily backwards because they clearly weren't thinking too much about the tech and science side of things.

[Kokolums]

I like the old Battlestar Galactica from the 1980's. Don't care for the newer ones much.

I love the art style of 1970s BSG. From the uniforms to the ship design. The glam and sheen of it all was an awesome contrast to the underlying plot of impending doom. This was a civilization of humans that had all of its planetary colonies annihilated, all but one of its military flying fortresses destroyed, fleeing for their lives and could be wiped out by a basestar tomorrow, and they said eff it, let's wear lipstick, hair spray, shine every button on our uniforms, get drunk, gamble, smoke a cigar and live like there's no tomorrow, because there probably isn't.

I could never get into the new BSG because they changed the art style to something glum and utterly forgettable and everyone moped around. Didn't feel like BSG at all.

[Nihilist74]

Did you ever watch the ones where they finally got to earth? They were really cheesy but enjoyed watching them. I barely remember watching them when I was a little kid but I watched them on youtube a while back.

[zEmini]

The storry really started to go to shit after season 3.

If I were the writer/director
-I would of left out the angel destiny bullshit. The blonde is a virus and baltar goes insane.
-Starbuck stays dead.
-When the reach the real "earth", the USS and Russia could either blow them away or make contact. The End.

[Puupi]

-When the reach the real "earth", the USS and Russia could either blow them away or make contact. The End.

Someone clearly didn't understand the ending.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Someone clearly didn't understand the ending.

Having seen the series three times, I still have no clue what happened at the end, nor do I intend to waste my time trying to find out "what it all means". It's pointless gibberish. It's unsatisfactory. The end. Moving on with my life to better things.