RDMs great plan : Pander to everyone ?

[Sarevok]

I just realised something. In the beginning Galactica was heavily left wing. They went as far as to do contrived Iraq and Gitmo allegories. Cylons try to occupy new caprica like Baghdad for no reason and we see colonials turn into insurgents and suicide bombing police stations. Many on the american right must haved hated the show then because of how it treated the iraqi interim government i mean cylon occupation.

Now we get complete 180 degree reverse. They shove christianity in all but name only and rely on thousand years of brainwashing to do the trick. And it works. When you say god did it no one sees it as bad. Reversing the polarity of the neutron flow=bad, inaccurate scifi, religious metaphors, angels and divine influence = mature examination of the human condition or something. If you question it then you are an angry atheist. By including christianity in this RDM has guranteed legions of watchers will defend his awful ending by reflex.

Its brilliant. If I ever become a tv producer I will just add some bible metaphors and I will be rich because legions of the religious will defend my work regardless of how bad it is.

[Ford Prefect]

I wouldn't call the start of season 3 'in the beginning', bro. Additionally, it's hard to get where he was going with the occupation. In retrospect the New Caprica stuffi s a lot better than I gavei t credit for, but it was honestly the start of the sudden surge in 'the Colonials are dangerous fanatics' stuff. While they were never exactly saints to begin with (the Cylons were much more credible as villains), from about the time of New Caprica Moore's entire approach to presentation of the humans changed. Chalk it up to losing his way after season 2, I guess?

[Skylon]

I really doubt someone who ditched Galactica for presenting shots at torture/Gitmo and suicide bombers would give two shits about Galactica suddenly coddling them with religious explanations. There were wackos who ditched the show for depicting a rape...and while no such act happened again on the show, I doubt they came back to it.

[PeZook]

Personally, I was convinced the Cavils were totally trying to sabotage the "new cylon way". Too bad it turned out not to be the case, because if it was true, the whole plot would be so much more meaningful, while the way it is now it turns out the Cylons were complete retards.

"Oh boy we totally don't understand why the humans hate us. I mean, what did we do? Why do they want us to die painfully? Holy shit, what a bunch of assholes!"

Said by people who decided to genocide the twelve colonies pretty much out of spite.

Turns out RDM isn't really a literary genius after all? It's not like religious elements weren't present right from the start, they just got blown up all out of proportion when they wrote themselves into a corner.

[Skylon]

A little addition: people will take what they want to from a show, a person anything. Right-wingers portray Jimmy carter as an evil liberal incarnate, in spite of the man being deeply religious.

[Anguirus]

from about the time of New Caprica Moore's entire approach to presentation of the humans changed.

...what?

The most fanatical people in the show were those guys who shot the hell out of Billy in season 2. Or the Gemenese "scripture literalists" who popped up in the show as soon as it started to take on the internal politics of the fleet. Or hell, episode 3, "Bastille Day," a bunch of dangerous fanatics take over a ship and take military prisoners, one of whom is subjected to rape.

The most consistent thing about the show, love it or hate it, is a complete lack of sugarcoating of either "side."

Regarding the OP, just because we live in hyper-polarized America does not mean that "vague Iraq allegory" and "vague supernatural forces at work" somehow represent diametrically opposed concepts.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Especially considering that 'Religious stuff has power' is present in the first episode of the series.

But Sarevok has shown himself time and again to be an idiot on this issue, so why bother?

[Gramzamber]

I figured RDM's thought process to be like..

"Okay so Cylons have a Plan. A big Plan. It's like... a Plan! They planned everything according to the Plan."

"Uhm..."

*writer's block*

*writer's block*

*writer's block*

*writer's block*

"GOD DID IT! I am genius."

[Starglider]

The morality the show is pushing is midly liberal and heavily christian. Paganism is progressively deconstructed and discredited. There are plenty of liberal christians in the US, who opposed the occupation of Iraq etc, so annoying as the monotheism is I don't see any fundamental conflict there.

I was far more pissed off by the fact that sci-fi fans like a show that is inherently Luddite and anti-scientific. The ending is a pair of angels pointing out that 'oh no, Lee's brave decision to throw away technology only bought humanity 100,000 years of noble savagery before evil robot construction started up again'. I do actually wonder if future transhuman generations will look down on this crap the way we look down on overly racist mid-20th-century films.

[Thanas]

That's not what I got from the story. For me, it was more about the union of two species becoming the forebearer of all of humanity, as well as the various characters and what happened to them. That seems to be the more important message for me.

[Gramzamber]

That's not what I got from the story. For me, it was more about the union of two species becoming the forebearer of all of humanity, as well as the various characters and what happened to them. That seems to be the more important message for me.

That message seems kind of moot when you realise that whatever union they may have achieved is lost in the mists of time because they all decided that being cavemen is fun.

[Starglider]

That's not what I got from the story. For me, it was more about the union of two species becoming the forebearer of all of humanity, as well as the various characters and what happened to them. That seems to be the more important message for me.

The fact that that pile of superficial treacle was dumped all over the final episode because, as RDM said, 'having a happy ending was the final twist', does nothing to erase the evangelicism ('everything will turn out all right... if you trust god... and he finds you worthy enough to survive') or the luddism. The final shots were of our best real-world attempts at making androids, with ominous photography and scary music. Yeah, on behalf of the entire transhumanist community, fuck you RDM.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

While they were never exactly saints to begin with (the Cylons were much more credible as villains)

Really? From almost the very start of the series, or at least as early as the exposure of Boomer as being a Cylon, I found the Cylons to be the people I was largely rooting for. Largely because most of the humans in the show pissed me off, and the outright anti-Cylon attitudes of Colonials. I don't know. I found the Cylons to in many ways be more sympathetic characters than the humans in that show.

Okay, I admit, I am slightly infatuated with Eights, but that's not the entire reason for this opinion.

But I found nBSG to get increasingly less tolerable after Season 2. Seeing Athena become accepted as a pilot was nice, and some other bits were pretty cool, but largely I'd rather just ignore Season 3.

Season 4 doesn't exist for me.

[Imperial Overlord]

I'm with Starglider. The ending was Luddite garbage. They certainly aimed for having two species come together and joining, but when one of them is a product of high tech engineering and the ending is going back to the stone age and images of modern robots set to ominous music that skews it completely. Not to mention that "God" is fine with genocide of high tech cultures, that's okay too because it's part of his "plan". A real opportunity was missed by having the Centurians free and sentient for a season and then having them do jack shit except shoot a few people in a couple of episodes and then be whisked off stage in a touchy-feely way.

[PeZook]

That's not what I got from the story. For me, it was more about the union of two species becoming the forebearer of all of humanity, as well as the various characters and what happened to them. That seems to be the more important message for me.

They didn't need the whole "Let's go tribal" thing to do that, though. It could be done just as well if it turned out our Earth was devastated by war with their Cylons, and the Colonials broke the cycle by settling down, aside their Cylons and remembering what the fuck happened.

There is something to the accusation that the show's message is quite anti-technology. Check out the pilot, where the colonial fleet gets disabled by a magic cylon hacking attack, and the only battlestars to survive were the primitive Galactica with a heart of gold and the temporarily disabled Pegasus. And, of course, it slowly turns out there is a one true God, the Colonials worship a religion full of lies and deceit (Oh! Look! Kobolians practiced human sacrifice RAR!) and God's angels engineered everything.

Really? From almost the very start of the series, or at least as early as the exposure of Boomer as being a Cylon, I found the Cylons to be the people I was largely rooting for. Largely because most of the humans in the show pissed me off, and the outright anti-Cylon attitudes of Colonials. I don't know. I found the Cylons to in many ways be more sympathetic characters than the humans in that show.

I don't know, I thought humans behaved reather realistically after, you know billions of people were murdered wholesale in a sneak attack by the Cylons. I'd be pretty pissed too, especially after it turned out the Cylons wouldn't stop before they killed every last human alive.

Seriously. The Cylons were far more annoying due to them not understanding why humans would hate them so much afterwards, which made them look like total retards.

[Zac Naloen]

And, of course, it slowly turns out there is a one true God

That's not the finale I saw. Which was the point.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

I don't know, I thought humans behaved reather realistically after, you know billions of people were murdered wholesale in a sneak attack by the Cylons. I'd be pretty pissed too, especially after it turned out the Cylons wouldn't stop before they killed every last human alive.

Seriously. The Cylons were far more annoying due to them not understanding why humans would hate them so much afterwards, which made them look like total retards.

I know I'm supposed to instinctively side with the humans, because I also am a human, but frankly they earned that sneak attack with their own actions. I'm not saying I think all the Cylons had the right idea. I found most of the Sixes to be utterly infuriating, with the exception of Caprica Six and the one off the Pegasus whose name escapes me right now. But it was a goddamn War, and the Colonials gave as good as they got, or would have done given the chance. And no one would be crying over all those billions of dead toasters, because they're just machines.

Ultimately, both sides were dicks. I just found some of the Cylons to be more interesting and less hateful characters. Adama will always be awesome, though.

And two of my favourite human characters turned out to be Cylons anyway. lol idiotic Final Five plot-twist.

[Starglider]

and the only battlestars to survive were the primitive Galactica with a heart of gold and the temporarily disabled Pegasus.

Naturally the characters on the high-tech Pegasus are evil, and the Pegasus itself has to die way before the low-tech Galactica does.

From almost the very start of the series, or at least as early as the exposure of Boomer as being a Cylon, I found the Cylons to be the people I was largely rooting for.

The main problem with the Cylons was their pathetic attempts to imitate every detail of humanity, even while declaring themselves superior to it. Of course the 'good' Cylons (as designated by the writers) are the ones who decided to completely abandon their own culture and just act like humans, while the 'evil' ones are the ones who wanted to stay different. Not that they were ever evil robots; they were genetically engineered human clones with some mechanical telepathy. I can understand the humans imagining them to be 'toasters' due to the need to villify the enemy in a time of war, but the Cylons playing along with that was ridiculous. They aren't machines at all.

I don't know, I thought humans behaved reather realistically after, you know billions of people were murdered wholesale in a sneak attack by the Cylons.

The stupid part about that was that the humano-Cylons had no legitimate greivance. They are human clones created by five transhumanist refugees from a mildly posthuman civilisation that destroyed itself. The mechanical Cylons were the ones who were actually enslaved - the 'final five' duped them into helping create the second-gen humano-Cylons, who proceeded to re-enslave the Centurions even more effectively than the Colonials did. I would be relatively ok with the centurions blowing away the 12 Colonies, because the colonials did enslave and genocide them, but the humano-cylons have no such claim, just a ridiculously unwarranted persecution complex.

The only positive part about that show was the fact that the sentient centurions got to keep the base ship. I like to imagine them learning their lesson ('never mess about with human cloning or other biological nastiness again'), flying off and making a cool machine civilisation on the other side of the galaxy.

[Zac Naloen]

And, of course, it slowly turns out there is a one true God

That's not the finale I saw. Which was the point.

I tried the edit this because it was a shit post but ran out of time.

By that was the point I meant that whoever was trying to run the show (I say trying because the humans kept fucking things up by being so broken and irrational), it was left vague enough that it could have been anything. Based on a few things that happened in the show I actually tend towards thinking advanced Sentient AI. Mostly because of the Hybrids tapping into his thoughts and because he seems to have an issue with humans treating machines as if they are slaves (or machine treating humans as slaves) and in a weird way is trying to teach the lesson again and again that Sentient creatures are at their best when they work together. From the final montage especially I took that, as our own machines get more advanced we need to look at how we treat them or it could well happen all over again. It's a bit culture inspired in that regard.

[Starglider]

Based on a few things that happened in the show I actually tend towards thinking advanced Sentient AI.

Do you honestly think the writers were capable of that? RDM spent five seasons injecting progressively heavier religious metaphors into the series - I don't think it's because he's particularly religious, he was just thinking 'oh, American viewers love to lap up Christian references, particularly when they're converting pagans and blowing the crap out of godless atheists (Cavil)'.

Mostly because of the Hybrids tapping into his thoughts and because he seems to have an issue with humans treating machines as if they are slaves (or machine treating humans as slaves)

Rendered irrelevant by the fact that the humano-cylons aren't machines, and we barely see anything of the sentient centurions.

From the final montage especially I took that, as our own machines get more advanced we need to look at how we treat them or it could well happen all over again. It's a bit culture inspired in that regard.

You're trying to use your intelligence to rationalise the broken themes into something less offensive. What do you think most viewers got from that ending? Certainly the reviews I read got the theme 'oh no, the cycle wasn't broken after all, evil robots any day now'.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

Rendered irrelevant by the fact that the humano-cylons aren't machines, and we barely see anything of the sentient centurions.

Yes, they are. They're clearly some sort of retarded super-advanced bio-machines, but they're certainly machines, capable of being programmed and reprogrammed and even with interfacing with other forms of non-biological machinery. I mean, Cylon Raiders are shown to be at least largely biological, are you going to say they aren't machines either?

Other than that I agree with pretty much everything you said.

Except I don't remember that ending, because Season 4 doesn't exist.

[Zac Naloen]

Do you honestly think the writers were capable of that? RDM spent five seasons injecting progressively heavier religious metaphors into the series - I don't think it's because he's particularly religious, he was just thinking 'oh, American viewers love to lap up Christian references, particularly when they're converting pagans and blowing the crap out of godless atheists (Cavil)'.

Actually I do, the finale is thin on facts but it was quite explicit to me that whoever God is he'll play the role if it gets him where he wants to be, but he doesn't like it.

Rendered irrelevant by the fact that the humano-cylons aren't machines, and we barely see anything of the sentient centurions.

Whilst true, the only people who came out of the whole thing with their civilisation back was the centurions. I can't think that wasn't on purpose.

You're trying to use your intelligence to rationalise the broken themes into something less offensive. What do you think most viewers got from that ending? Certainly the reviews I read got the theme 'oh no, the cycle wasn't broken after all, evil robots any day now'.

Well I suppose if you didn't work out that the cylons weren't in fact the bad guys at the end there then I guess that's how you could have seen it.

[Gramzamber]

The way I see it, "God" and it's angels are the true villians orchestrating this whole thing just to maintain the cycle of genocide.
What's the best way to make sure you repeat your mistake? Forget all about it. Just like they all did in the end!

I feel like writing a fanfic about it.. but I'm too lazy.

[Bilbo]

In my opinion RDM's great plan was nothing more than to create a story that was written as it went along in such a manner that no one could predict what was going to happen. So he left hints he felt he could incorporate but were vague enough to mean anything.

As for God or Super AI. If the AI is sufficiently advanced enough is there really a difference? What if the Super AI actually had seeded the life that had first become humans and at some point given then the first hint to create subserviant robots?

Where do you draw the line?

[Starglider]

They're clearly some sort of retarded super-advanced bio-machines

They are indistinguishable from humans by every medical test, up to and including microscopic cellular examination, mass spectrometer analysis and functional brain scanning. They can interbreed with humans. They are expressly shown to be created by genetic engineering, and grown in tanks rather than constructed. They have absolutely no qualities that require inorganic components, other than the FTL brain state upload on death.

they're certainly machines, capable of being programmed and reprogrammed

They can have false memories and directives implanted, but that capability is a direct consequence of the ability to upload, store and download brain state. In other words it is a capability that arises from the computing machinery in the 'resurrection hub', not the cylons themselves. They probably have some very minimal implants to facilitate this (the 'silica pathways' most likely keep a running log of brain configuration, and then somehow function as an FTL transmitter).

and even with interfacing with other forms of non-biological machinery

Existing real-world humans do this, with a few implanted electrodes. Cylons do it with some bioluminescent cells added to their nervous system via genetic engineering (apparently with lots of them in the spine that involuntarily light up during sex ). The ability may be learned the same way that humans learn to use prosthetics, or it may be directly added by the memory manipulation technology.

I mean, Cylon Raiders are shown to be at least largely biological, are you going to say they aren't machines either?

Raiders are cyborgs; they seem to be fully mechanical except for the brain. Starbuck was able to fly a raider with all its organic parts removed for at least a week afterwards. As to why the humano-cylons built them this way instead of using the same inorganic AI that the Centurions have, most likely because they weren't completely confident about their sentience-inhibitor technology and wanted to ensure that the raiders could not get too smart.