Echoing the sentiment, if you don’t like it by Ep 9, you’re not going to enjoy the show. It’s more of the same, maybe twist on themes, but the same drama and manipulation and self-torture and confusion. And the promise of the Cylons having a plan was a lie.
At first, the tone seemed to be that the religious elements were distortions or misrepresentations. I kept thinking/hoping it was a misdirect and they had something more subtle or twisted in mind. The humans believe in “the gods” and their religion is the pantheism of the Greeks, with the same classical referents. This seemed like a planned ploy to show the silliness of religion, with all the same behaviors we see for christianity played out from “believers” in the pantheism, or cultural nods to the heritage. And then the one God is really a ploy by the Cylons, the bad guys.
The elements of “head Six” were describable as some sort of implant in Baltar’s head, a manipulation game of the Cylons. It was possible to mislead myself into thinking “there has to be something else going on”. But in the end, they come in and say, nope, it was exactly as stated, fooled you!* But yes, in retrospect, they were up front about all that, it was right there in the open. I just expected differently.
*I know, they didn’t say “fooled you”, it just made me feel stupid for expecting more.
That’s what I liked about it. I’ve seen thousands of shows with prophecies and fate and destinies and chosen ones, but those shows never stop to ask what the fuck a destiny would really mean. The destiny is just treated as, “Well, it turns out that you’re the guy who defeats the bad guy at the climax, so that means you were destined to defeat the bad guy, therefore you were the chosen one, therefore why not have all the other characters talk about how you’re the chosen one throughout the show, because I’ve already decided the plot of the show”. Destiny is just the author. Prophecies are just foreshadowing.
Except that’s crap writing. In real life there is no such thing as destiny, and if there were destiny it would mean something like an author of reality would exist, which means God or something that might as well be God.
And that’s why I liked the series arc. Other shows don’t treat destiny with the seriousness it deserves. If you don’t want to examine the implications of prophecy and destiny, then don’t include it in your show, that’s fine with me. But if you do, then you should treat it seriously. That’s why I liked the non-twist twist so much.
Lemur866, that’s not the kind of “twist” that I mean, that’s no twist it’s just an assertion of a destiny without any justification.
No, I’m talking about Head 6 claiming that it’s all part of God’s plan, but turns out “God” is a Cylon AI constructed by the Cylons as their overbeing, or something. Or “God” is a tool of manipulation and doesn’t really exist, just a concept they’re trying to introduce to control and direct the humans.
And Head 6 was really the implanted chip.
But then you get the prophecies like President Roslin’s visions and such, which I didn’t have an explanation, or Chief Tyrol’s on again/off again “am I a Cylon?”
So yes,
it did at least have the distinction of really having God and God’s plan,
but that’s not what I wanted or was expecting. Thus disatisfaction.
You have got to be kidding. That was one of the best aspects of the show. It’s what made it a drama, thriller, tragedy, mystery, morality play and more, rather than just a video game.
There was a lot to like about the setup of the series, but one of the big disappointments was that in the end there wasn’t really a compelling plan.
And the whole tone of the series promised that eventually everything would be explained rationally, or at least in a manner that we as people could relate to.
[spoiler]Because the human experience does include prophesies and visions and the like, but although we never get definitive proof that the supernatural doesn’t exist, we also never get definitive proof that it does exist. That was the failure of the series, that they didn’t find a way to end it without saying that god and angels and prophesies and magic was literally, definitively true.
Also the fact that the survivors of the fleet literally ended up being our cultural and genetic ancestors was just way too Erich Von Daniken to be bearable. It showed definitively that the story we saw was absolutely impossible, really ridiculously impossible, just like all those old scifi novels and movies premised in there being native humanoid life on Mars, Venus, Saturn, or Jupiter[/spoiler]
i haven’t posted in a while. I signed in just to post that I loved the finale. Don’t be too persuaded not to watch the show.
That being said, did you watch the mini-series? Cause the first season is awesome. And if you watched the miniseries and the first 9 episodes and you AREN’T hooked, I’d bail.
During the first run, I wasn’t captivated by the Pegasus plot-line. I didn’t want to see, what I’d heard the repeated rape of the Cylon agent. I’ve seen some of it lately, and I may have been interestingly done, but of a back story with her and the Admiral of the Pegasus. So YMMV.
I did end up completely hooked after The Eye of Jupiter episode. That really made me think about where the series was going, and looked forward to each new episode. Note, this episode is far after the let’s all go colonize an near-arctic world and live in tents instead of warp capable spacecraft for a year So again, if the soap opera theme is getting you down, you could consider jumping ahead to season 3.
Black Market was a bad episode that did at least have one bit of information about Zarek at the end which became marginally relevant later in the series.
The Woman King was a bad episode that was utterly irrelevant to the entire series. We did not learn anything new about anyone, and nothing introduced in the episode was ever referenced again. That one gets my “worst episode” vote.
The boxing episode was at least somewhat enjoyable, if eyeroll-inducing.
The boxing episode of Babylon 5, while retarded, is still worth watching for the B-story about Ivanova and the rabbi. The boxing episode of Battlestar Galactica is just a big pile of stink.