I loved Babylon 5 and am enjoying Lost. I’ve had a couple of people suggest that I might like BSG, given that* I like Lost and B5.
I hated the 1978 version. I understand that, except for some similarity of names, the two series have really nothing in common. Correct?
Any way to give a brief precis of where the story opens without spoilering things?
Thanks in advance!
Fenris
*Plus one person, who I generally trust, who said I’d hate it as it becomes a (his words) “Ham-handed Bush-Bashing Fest…at the expense of the storyline”. (And this is a guy who loathes Bush.) I hate it when current politics overwhelm the storyline (see Marvel’s “Civil War” storyline for an example)
Start with the miniseries. Basically, Man created the Cylons. They rebelled and left. Now they’re back, and they have a plan.
That’s all you need, really. Be aware that the first episode of the series, “33,” is some of the most intense TV ever. It’s hard to keep up that intensity over 4 seasons, so don’t expect it to.
Lost was my wife’s favorite show until I introduced her to BSG.
If you’re out to rent it, the mini series is included in most season 1 sets. As Silenus says, start with that. If you were willing to forgive the acting & SFX in early Babylon 5, you should be fine with BSG. Also, the “Bush Bashing” isn’t as clear cut as your friend would make it seem. There’s questionable moral choices all over the series, and that’s a lot of the fun.
If you start right now, you might catch up in time for all of us to discuss the finale together.
Yes, start with the mini-series. The mini-series has a vague similarity to the 78 galactica in overall plot, sneak attack on the colonies, last battlestar, rag tag fleet. However that is where the similarity ends, believe me you will not be disappointed There is no casino!
And questionable moral choices are great–my buddy was implying that the show ground to a halt as they spent a number of episodes on “President of Earth, Gary Hedge incarcerates prisoners without habeus corpus! Isn’t that AWFUL!” type ham-fisted stuff. If that’s not the case, I’m fine with it.
The first episode I have available is “33”. That’s not the start of the mini-series?
The show includes homages back to the original BSG – the original Centurions have a cameo in the miniseries, one of the original BSG actors shows up later into the series (playing an utterly different, and fascinatingly complex, character).
The show is being written to evoke current events – hence your friend projecting onto it that it is commenting on Bush. However, nothing is black and white; all moral decisions are presented as rather murky, and you can pretty much always argue for both sides of any conflict convincingly. In fact, people have been doing just that about the last couple of episodes.
I’ve never watched Lost, but BSG is quite different from B5 in some ways – primarily, in its morals. Not only are there no clear “good guys” or “bad guys” (everyone gets their moment of sympathy, or their moment to be loathed), but the do-the-right-thing guy doesn’t always get rewarded in the end, nor does the selfish bastard get his (or her) just desserts.
BSG is no where near as clear and defined as B5 was, and there are several characters I started out loathing whom I have become quite fond of now.
I tried B5 but never got into it. I also watch Lost.
BSG is twice the show Lost is. Lost is a confection; fun while you’re watching it, but disposable: I can’t imagine it’ll have a lasting impact. BSG, on the other hand, will continue to reverberate; people will be talking about it and rewatching it for years.
I think it would be fair to say that BSG is unashamedly political, but (with the exception of one or two episodes) the politics derives from what’s happening on the Colonial Fleet, not the White House.
Why I love it: The show is virtually unique in the SF realm for being based on the characters, not the technology or the setting. They’re all believable, real people with complex motivations, not cartoon characters like you’d find on the the old show or Star Trek. It brings a lot of moral and religious ambiguity into play, helping the characters evolve (whether that’s growth or not depends on the individual). The acting, by virtually every cast member, not just the designated stars, is simply outstanding.
The story is continuous, starting with the miniseries, and absolutely has to be watched in order to be appreciated or even fully comprehended. The producers’ freedom from making each episode canned and self-contained for syndication does permit much greater depth than on a show where everything has to finish the same way it started.
At any point where you might expect TV space-opera convention to take over and something predictable to occur, that’s the warning to expect something you’d never have been able to predict.
Well, OK, I did like the old show too, but only as being the space opera with a novel setting that it was. Nobody would ever laud the acting or the depth, but it was never really intended as something more than light entertainment with then-state-of-the-art SFX anyway.
I watched (and enjoyed) the first two seasons, but it seemed to me the “Bush Bashing” became a bit of a crutch.
(I left off watching right after the humans abandoned that planet hidden in a nebula, and they were “spacing” collaborators out of the Galactica launch tubes. Maybe the writers overcame their angst…)
But I agree it stands out as a scifi series where character developement drives the plot, and not “gadetry worship”. It was interesting to see some retro tech (copper wire telephones, for example) as a defence against Cylon/AI viruses.
Just to reiterate, do not start here. Hold onto it, but pick up the mini-series on netflix or at your local video rental place.
Meanwhile, while I won’t give a dissenting opinion exactly, I will say that it does have its weak moments. Beware the Ides of March…err…Black Market. Parts of mid-season two and a rather larger chunk of season three ( after a superb start ) meander a bit IMHO. In contrast season four seems much stronger to me, at least to date. Further the producer is very upfront about his developing major areas of the plot as he goes - I think by and large he has done a fine job, but not without the occasional stumble and cliche.
It really is an excellent show, just don’t expect the excellence to be sustained at a high level throughout. If it seems to weaken for a bit, stick with it - eventually you will be rewarded.
This is assuming the mini-series + 33 hooks you. If they don’t, the series probably won’t :).
The miniseries and first season are really, really good. The second season is not that good, and IMO most of the third and the first half of the fourth seasons drop precipitously in quality. (For broadcast, each season after the first was broken into two halves, and there was also a movie, Razor, broadcast between S3 and S4.) The last half of season four (the final episodes) are being broadcast right now, and so far they’re very good.
I’d definitely recommend the show because it is very smart and isn’t afraid of being overtly political, while at the same time it is not generally an allegory for current events. Your friend is seeing something very different than I did. But you have to be prepared for it to get pretty dire for a stretch there in the third season.
I strongly dispute the “Bush bashing” accusation. One of the show’s putative “hero” characters, Starbuck, has unambiguously, and fairly convincingly, argued in favor of what would be the fleet’s equivalent of hard-right politics. (In her eulogy delivered at the end of “Pegasus,” for example.) The “New Caprica” storyline does dip into some of our modern political discourse for its terminology, but not to make clear points about our immediate situation.
One of the strongest points about the show is that every character has been given a chance to be right on certain questions, and at other times, the same characters have been wrong on other questions, sometimes spectacularly so.
Roslin says it in one episode, about Lee (paraphrased): “Yeah, he’s right, but this is a situation where it’s wrong to be right.”
Be patient about the pacing. The show wasn’t originally bought for 5 full seasons, it got funded a bit at a time. There are a number of points where the story could have been wrapped up (or cut off) without leaving excessive loose ends, because it might have happened. Often the story seems to have fallen down, picked itself back up, and started stumbling forward again, but, remarkably, that uncertainty fits the situation the characters find themselves in. They’re not sure of anything, and neither are the viewers. Frak, you can’t even be sure someone’s dead.
The very small number of continuity problems that have resulted is a testament to the quality of the writing and producing by Ron Moore and David Eick.
Just for comparison, Moore is also the guy behind “Star Trek: First Contact”. If you thought that movie was dark enough and character-driven enough to be intriguing, you’ll love BSG.
What is this “Black Market” some of you speak of? There was no such episode. You hear me? There Was No Such Episode!
Ron Moore set out to make movie grade television and did a very very good job with what he was given, and I suspect that BSG may be the first in a (hopefully long) series of shows with this concept. but just like in the movies, if you dont have the money or keep getting hounded over it things will suffer. if he could do the entire series over right now from scratch with a full 5 seasons garunteed to him up front I bet we would all be amazed at the result.
Black Market was probably the worst ep in the series, BUT with a couple very very minor changes it would have been one of the best, basically Moore forgot they were trying for grey not black and white and what we got was clearly (and boringly) black and white.
to give you some perspective, I havent owned a tv in about 20 years, I wont even turn one on (my current roommate has one) but I watch this show pretty much religiously.
Moore’s involvement on Deep Space Nine was probably a better predictor of what we get in BSG, than a feature movie.
And, without trying to spoil the OP here, “Black Market” turns out to have had important implications for character development, and for a minor plot point that suddenly became very relevant two years later in the show. There are a few episodes that seem like filler, but there aren’t many you can skip without missing something vital.
In that regard, BSG is like B5 – minor details later become relevant, or secrets are revealed that lead to more questions, throughout the series.
(“The Woman King”, however, may be freely ignored.)
