Is the BSG universe bland ?

[dworkin]

I think the deal breaker for me was when I found out the cylons didn't understand their own technology.Spoiler

Resurrection hub destroyed?

Build a new one you dumb machines. Because it's a machine, not the magical Orb of Fantasia. But it really was a magical orb that only a wizard could make. Arrg.

[JLTucker]

I think the deal breaker for me was when I found out the cylons didn't understand their own technology.Spoiler

Resurrection hub destroyed?

Build a new one you dumb machines. Because it's a machine, not the magical Orb of Fantasia. But it really was a magical orb that only a wizard could make. Arrg.

Did you miss that to know how to build it all of the final five are needed? Did you miss the sequence in the series finale when four of them were in the CIC connecting to Anders to give the secret of resurrection to Cavil?

[fgalkin]

I think the deal breaker for me was when I found out the cylons didn't understand their own technology.Spoiler

Resurrection hub destroyed?

Build a new one you dumb machines. Because it's a machine, not the magical Orb of Fantasia. But it really was a magical orb that only a wizard could make. Arrg.

Did you miss that to know how to build it all of the final five are needed? Did you miss the sequence in the series finale when four of them were in the CIC connecting to Anders to give the secret of resurrection to Cavil?

So, your response to people complaining that it was silly "God Did It" magictech is to point out it's silly "God Did It" magictech?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[JLTucker]

Did you miss that to know how to build it all of the final five are needed? Did you miss the sequence in the series finale when four of them were in the CIC connecting to Anders to give the secret of resurrection to Cavil?

So, your response to people complaining that it was silly "God Did It" magictech is to point out it's silly "God Did It" magictech?

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

I didn't mean it that way. I hate that shit too. He said they could rebuild it but only the final five know the secret to resurrection. It seems I misunderstood him.

Edit: I'm an idiot. Conceded.

[Themightytom]

Well, I didn't think that Colonial religion was a case of "parallel development" that just happened to coincide with the exact same names and beliefs of Grecian myths; I thought that the Greeks of our time had decided to canonize and venerate the "old tribal tales" left over from millenia of oral tradition and retelling.


In that, the only thing to swallow is... inter-breedable humans developing across the Galaxy... and, the names of the gods not changing at all in about, what, 145,000 years. Unless you are willing to accept that the Colonal languages are "automatically translated" in the telling of the story and that they weren't actually speaking English (which is acceptable, I suppose. After all, it's not like the people in Star Wars are speaking actual English, or in the case of the Hutts, a blurred form of Aztec Nahuatl ).

Thats not entirely impossible given that we've already seen humans caravanning to and fro from system to system and a recurring theme of "All this has happened before". Kobol could have been a tribe of "new" earth which left after some holocaust and the survivors reverted to primtiive tribal practices. And with the presence of the still nebulous Cylon God there could have been manipulation throughout the redevelopement on new Earth to keep elements of colonial society intact, like the pantheon of colonial gods.

That would have a Muuuuuch better plot to The Plan than what we ended up seeing which dovetails back to the original topic. Instead of fleshing out the universe they fixated on a known portion of it. We already knew Cavil was a sociopathic machine wannabe, we already knew there were cylons in the fleet. The Plan was useless beyond supporting retcons.

The first and only creative elap nBSG took away from the old was making Star buck a man, giving characters first names, eliminating oxy, removing capes having the Galactica arrive 150,000 years in the past, so much for "Even know our brothers are out there amongst the stars" or whatever... Thats why nbsg verse is bland, they took a campy concept, removed half of the seventies era camp and failed to fill the void in with anything significant.

[Junghalli]

The problem with the Cylons is that once they were 'explained' they ceased being a mysterious and relentless threat - and just became retarded. Having it all be because Dean Stockwell had mummy issues took a hell of a lot of the wind out of my sails as far as liking the show goes.

To me the Cylons were a promising initial concept ruined by bad execution. Initial concept: a race of rebelled war robots that has come to believe they have replaced humans as God's favored children and God wants them to wipe us out as an inferior and discarded creation. Implausible, and yet also fascinating.

I think the thing that most torpedoed the fascination I had with this concept was when they gave the Cylons Pinnochio Syndrome. The initial concept made me to think back to the Mayan Popol Vuh, where the gods try to create humans a couple of times before getting it right ... and the Cylon belief actually makes sense in that context. They are smarter and stronger than us. They can self-modify, evolve in intelligently directed Lamarckian fashion, transcend the boundaries of their creation and perfect themselves, unlike humans who are (barring transhumanism) stuck with the inherent limitations of their flesh. Accepting the conceit of religion, it really is not illogical for them to take one look at us and themselves and decide that they really are a superior creation, that humanity was some shitty early draft that had its chance and proved unsatisfactory, and they are the superior replacement.

Actually, this would have been a great way to avert the stupid Pinnochio Syndrome cliche hard; the skinjobs aspire to become closer to God by being promoted into some superior mechanical form the next time they resurrect, because the Cylons think you get closer to God by bringing your physical and mental powers closer to the infinite ones of God.

Well, I didn't think that Colonial religion was a case of "parallel development" that just happened to coincide with the exact same names and beliefs of Grecian myths; I thought that the Greeks of our time had decided to canonize and venerate the "old tribal tales" left over from millenia of oral tradition and retelling.

Remember, the Colonals came to Real Earth 150,000 years ago, so their passed-on legends and worship of the Zeus/Apollo/Athena pantheon eventually became Greek religion... not that they "just happed" to invent a mirror image of Greek religion.

In that, the only thing to swallow is... inter-breedable humans developing across the Galaxy... and, the names of the gods not changing at all in about, what, 145,000 years.

As I remember from a paper I had to read for my African History class, languages that diverged over 10,000 years ago average something like 5% vocabular in common. We're talking more than 10 times that long. And then there's the implausibility of any religion not being distorted beyond all recognition by memetic mutation, re-interpretation, and syncretism after 140,000+ years in an illiterate culture. Especially when IIRC most ancient polytheist religions had nothing like the Abrahamic emphasis on doctrinal purity and were quite happy to assimilate alien gods and practices. And it's a religion made up by agriculturalists with an urbanized civilization; stone age foragers would probably distort it just making it relevant to their own lifestyle (any gods that have to do with agriculture will be either forgotten or changed and Diana is likely to become a lot more important, for starters). Just explaining the names of the gods as cultural translations is much more plausible.

[starfury]

I think the thing that most torpedoed the fascination I had with this concept was when they gave the Cylons Pinnochio Syndrome. The initial concept made me to think back to the Mayan Popol Vuh, where the gods try to create humans a couple of times before getting it right ... and the Cylon belief actually makes sense in that context. They are smarter and stronger than us. They can self-modify, evolve in intelligently directed Lamarckian fashion, transcend the boundaries of their creation and perfect themselves, unlike humans who are (barring transhumanism) stuck with the inherent limitations of their flesh. Accepting the conceit of religion, it really is not illogical for them to take one look at us and themselves and decide that they really are a superior creation, that humanity was some shitty early draft that had its chance and proved unsatisfactory, and they are the superior replacement.

That is actually fairly common most myths, the Greeks with their mutiples types of men, from Gold, to silver, to Bronze and finally to modern man, aka made of rust and iron. The cylons were in your idea was to turn it on it's head with the humans were early failed Prototypes as opposed to the final shitty models, as the good earlier designs were destroyed in these stories.

And of course of the constant trope of reptile man of who evolved milliena before modern man, and saw themselves as superior to their failed replacements.

[Gandalf]

To me the Cylons were a promising initial concept ruined by bad execution. Initial concept: a race of rebelled war robots that has come to believe they have replaced humans as God's favored children and God wants them to wipe us out as an inferior and discarded creation. Implausible, and yet also fascinating.

I think that the biggest problem was that they clearly had no real plan for what the Cylons were when they started. I imagine that much like the Klingons in Trek, different writers were pulling them in all different directions which prevents a real consistent view.

I remember someone from nBSG stating that the Cylons decided that there were only really a few different people within humanity, so they only needed twelve different humanoid Cylons. That was a fun idea, and as human influences corrupted a Six and an Eight, their masterpiece society crumbled.

[Coyote]

And then there's the implausibility of any religion not being distorted beyond all recognition by memetic mutation, re-interpretation, and syncretism after 140,000+ years in an illiterate culture. Especially when IIRC most ancient polytheist religions had nothing like the Abrahamic emphasis on doctrinal purity and were quite happy to assimilate alien gods and practices. And it's a religion made up by agriculturalists with an urbanized civilization; stone age foragers would probably distort it just making it relevant to their own lifestyle (any gods that have to do with agriculture will be either forgotten or changed and Diana is likely to become a lot more important, for starters). Just explaining the names of the gods as cultural translations is much more plausible.

Were the gods' responsibilities delineated in nBSG? I was always waiting for some statement about how Athena was, perhaps, the protector of the Caprica City (as she was the protector of Athens) but it seemed like they never pegged the gods down to specific duties/realms of responsibility.

[Gandalf]

Were the gods' responsibilities delineated in nBSG? I was always waiting for some statement about how Athena was, perhaps, the protector of the Caprica City (as she was the protector of Athens) but it seemed like they never pegged the gods down to specific duties/realms of responsibility.

Ares/Mars were related to war, or at least violence.

On Mars' Day or whatever it was, there were big resistance attacks on New Caprica which Roslin thought "appropriate". Also, there were the Sons of Ares who mainly seemed to be violent thugs.

[Junghalli]

I remember someone from nBSG stating that the Cylons decided that there were only really a few different people within humanity, so they only needed twelve different humanoid Cylons. That was a fun idea, and as human influences corrupted a Six and an Eight, their masterpiece society crumbled.

Honestly the idea that all their infiltrators into Colonial society were identical-looking clones of only 12 people kind of bugged me. It's the sort of thing that's just asking for Murphy to come up and bite you in the ass if somebody somehow stumbles on the fact that there are a couple of guys running around with different backgrounds and the same face and gets curious. Even if they wanted only a dozen lines it'd have been a good idea to play with the genes a little to give them different builds, facial features, eye and hair color etc. so they wouldn't be completely visually identical aside from things like hair style. Their operative on the Pegasus would not have gotten her cover blown if they had done that.

[Stofsk]

Man, I was typing up a rant on all the Battlestar-sized plot holes that were in this show when I realised I was straying off-topic. We can argue til the cows come home about all the conceptual, structural and creative shortcomings this show suffered from, but I'm not sure its relevant to the discussion on whether BSG is a bland universe or world building.

[Anguirus]

The thing that probably best sums up my problems with their approach to the Cylons is the idea that their religion considers physical suicide a sin.

I believe that this only applies to actually ending one's life, outside of resurrection range. IIRC Gina is the only Cylon who makes a big deal out of this, and she later chooses to "sin" in this way anyway.

The other Cylons intentionally destroy their bodies and wake up elsewhere all the freaking time. The series is littered with examples...from the miniseries to "The Plan."

[Sarevok]

Uh season 3 episode "the passage" argues against that. Deanna was comitting suicide and resurrecting. She went to tremendous lengths to hide her sin including deleting memory files on the centurio she ordered to shoot her.

[RedImperator]

Uh season 3 episode "the passage" argues against that. Deanna was comitting suicide and resurrecting. She went to tremendous lengths to hide her sin including deleting memory files on the centurio she ordered to shoot her.

She was committing suicide in order to catch a glimpse of the Final Five. I always got the impression her "sin" was trying to access forbidden knowledge, not using up another body.

At any rate, for Cylons, suicide obviously isn't a sin if it serves a purpose. A Doral suicide-bombed Galactica; Boomer's various sabotages would have resulted in her own death if successful, etc.

[derek-c-wicks]

I to enjoy the BSG series (1970's), but lets face it, it was just another Star Wars generated money maker scooping up the "science fiction craze" dollars. BSG was original in it's storyline and its villans. Lets face it, there is not one person out there that did not think the cylons where awesome! The story of the last space" race of human's searching through space for a lost planet and tribe of humans was original. Being chased by emotionless robotic adversary's added great tension and a parallel to the growing computer age of the 70's. As for the model fighters in the series, they were just as good as any Star wars designs. BSG was great, but Star Wars will always be the master that rules the galaxy.

[Adrian McNair]

I to enjoy the BSG series (1970's), but lets face it, it was just another Star Wars generated money maker scooping up the "science fiction craze" dollars. BSG was original in it's storyline and its villans. Lets face it, there is not one person out there that did not think the cylons where awesome! The story of the last space" race of human's searching through space for a lost planet and tribe of humans was original. Being chased by emotionless robotic adversary's added great tension and a parallel to the growing computer age of the 70's. As for the model fighters in the series, they were just as good as any Star wars designs. BSG was great, but Star Wars will always be the master that rules the galaxy.

You do realise that this thread concerns nBSG and not the original series, right?

[NecronLord]

Thread necromancy, and the wrong show too!