# Battlestar galactica sucks **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 25, 2011, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645 "2011-04-25T14:29:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Oakminster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/77aa72/32.png) [@Oakminster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oakminster)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/101 "2011-04-27T00:52:44Z")
> [@Walmarticus](#): > > The show blows but that character is several magnitudes of adorable. I never said I didn’t like Starbuck and I never will. BSG could be as terrible as Lost and I’d still love that character. Um…no. Nothing about Starbuck is remotely close to any reasonable definition of “adorable”. She’s the stereotypical hard drinking, hard frakking fighter pilot. It’s edgy because she’s a chick with bigger balls than most men. Strong, competent woman? Yes. Hot? Yes. Adorable? Not even close. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/102 "2011-04-27T01:08:35Z")
I liked the finale too! Sure, the last season was rocky at best despite Dee providing one of my favourite TV moments ever, but the finale was great. Not New Caprica great, but pretty damned great nonetheless. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/103 "2011-04-27T04:47:16Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > If it was made obvious from the start instead of being shoehorned in part way through, and if it was the good sort of fantasy, I might agree. How wasn’t it obvious? The visions, angels and ancient prophecies were right there from the beginning. Add to that science fiction so soft it made Star Wars look like Tom Godwin, and how could it be seen as anything other than fantasy? As for the end - It fit with the themes of rebirth and renewal, of breaking the cycle of “all this has happened before, all this will happen again.” Was it perfect? No, but for me it worked. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/104 "2011-04-27T05:09:42Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > How wasn’t it obvious? The visions, angels and ancient prophecies were right there from the beginning. There were _religious people_ right there from the beginning, but I don’t recall anything suggesting it was actually divinely inspired. If I’m wrong, post the earliest example you can think of. > [@](#): > > As for the end - > > It fit with the themes of rebirth and renewal, of breaking the cycle of “all this has happened before, all this will happen again.” Was it perfect? No, but for me it worked. No, it doesn’t. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” They didn’t break the cycle, they just reset humanity back to the start of the first iteration, without any kind of knowledge that could otherwise have let them make a better decision next time around. It’s like a Groundhog Day loop where you don’t retain your memories - you’re not going to make any progress if you have to keep starting completely from scratch. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/105 "2011-04-27T05:35:21Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > There were _religious people_ right there from the beginning, but I don’t recall anything suggesting it was actually divinely inspired. If I’m wrong, post the earliest example you can think of. The Scrolls of Pythia, which described events that occured in the series. Laura Roslin’s visions, which always seemed to come true. And of course, Head Six, who right from the start claimed to be an angel of God, and - surprise! - was telling the truth all along. ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/106 "2011-04-27T05:51:48Z")
[Spoiler] > [@Alessan](#): > > The Scrolls of Pythia, which described events that occured in the series. When was the first time this occurred, and not just by stating their civilisation keeps making the same dumbass mistake? > [@](#): > > Laura Roslin’s visions, which always seemed to come true. Again, when was the first time one of her visions came true? > [@](#): > > And of course, Head Six, who right from the start claimed to be an angel of God, and - surprise! - was telling the truth all along. Was she actually proven to be an angel any time before the final episode?[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/107 "2011-04-27T06:00:02Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > The Scrolls of Pythia, which described events that occured in the series. > > Laura Roslin’s visions, which always seemed to come true. > > And of course, Head Six, who right from the start claimed to be an angel of God, and - surprise! - was telling the truth all along. But all those things were (deliberately) ambiguous. The Scrolls could have been so much religious claptrap as the Bible is. Rosslyn’s visions could have been coincidence and confirmation bias. Baltar could simply have been _nuts_. Until the end where suddenly bam, it’s not ambiguous at all any more but becomes the hard, factual basis of the entire universe. It bothered me as well - the last innings of the show felt like they were being hijacked by Evangelicals to me. YMMV. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/108 "2011-04-27T07:01:24Z")
Speak for yourself - I usually consider ambiguity to mean that the writers don’t have the courage of their convictions. It’s the coward’s way out. Grumman: 1. Sorry - it’s been a while. I do remember that the scrolls had some relevance to the modern plot, and besides, ancient scrolls telling a fragmented tale of a lost civilization are very much a fantasy trope. 2. Laura’s vision of whatshisname flying out the airlock before she ever met him, the snakes, and of course all of the Opera House visions… it was quite clear that prophecy was a real and present force in their world. 3. When was Head Six ever shown as anything \*other \*than an angel? She wasn’t a chip (Baltar checked, remember?), and the Cylons obviously knew nothing about her - as one of them had an angel of her own. The fact that none of the viewers \*believed \*she was an angel until the end doesn’t change the fact that the writers were perfectly honest and forthright about her. It was a fine bit of storytelling: all of the pieces of the puzzle were right in front of us, but it took us the length of the series to piece them together. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/109 "2011-04-27T13:55:13Z")
I’m with \*\*Alessan \*\*on this one. A lot of people felt cheated by the final, but they \*really \*weren’t. They cheated themselves. They’d just let their modernist cynicism dictate to them over the evidence of their own eyes and ears. It’s like people saying _Star Wars_ isn’t a fantasy series. Yeah, the other one has bells on. ---
**Author:** ![filling\_pages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b9bd4f/32.png) [@filling\_pages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filling_pages)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/110 "2011-04-27T15:57:31Z")
I’m rewatching it from the beginning with my sister, and I agree with those who say it was all there from there start. Along with the stuff already mentioned, there’s the really obvious (once you know what’s coming) part in the 5th episode (“You Can’t Go Home Again” part 2): There’s Starbuck, stuck on the planet or moon or whatever. She’s running out of air. Her leg’s fucked up. She prays to the Gods for help getting back to the Galactica, and BAM, walks over the hill and there’s the downed cylon ship. Which she then manages to pilot back into space, make contact, and bring it home without further injury. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/111 "2011-04-27T16:19:59Z")
Except there are no Gods within the BSG universe, only the one God. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/112 "2011-04-27T17:10:53Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > I’m with \*\*Alessan \*\*on this one. A lot of people felt cheated by the final, but they \*really \*weren’t. They cheated themselves. They’d just let their modernist cynicism dictate to them over the evidence of their own eyes and ears. > > It’s like people saying _Star Wars_ isn’t a fantasy series. Yeah, the other one has bells on. Are there people who still claim that Star Wars isn’t fantasy? Huh. I just want to say I have found much of this thread to be rather entertaining, but it looks like the OP has been addressed so there’s no further need for me to. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2011, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/113 "2011-04-27T17:21:02Z")
I don’t complain that it’s fantasy (and it certainly developed into fantasy as the series progressed, even if it didn’t start that way), but I still think the ending wasn’t very good fantasy. OK, OK, “God did it”. But show me _how_ God did it; don’t just have Him wrap everything up by literal fiat in a literal Deus ex Machina. Using **filling pages** ’ example: [spoiler] > [@](#): > > There’s Starbuck, stuck on the planet or moon or whatever. She’s running out of air. Her leg’s fucked up. She prays to the Gods for help getting back to the Galactica, and BAM, walks over the hill and there’s the downed cylon ship. Which she then manages to pilot back into space, make contact, and bring it home without further injury. OK, that’s fine: She prays, and her prayer is answered (by whomever) by a ship having crashed nearby, and her having the ability to repair it and to learn to fly it. That’s perfectly acceptable. But her ship blowing up into tiny smithereens in an atmosphere she couldn’t survive in even if she had ejected, and then poof, she’s got a corpse on a completely different planet and she’s alive again somewhere else? That’s just sloppy writing. Sure, God _could_ do that if He wanted, but it makes for a lousy story.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/114 "2011-04-28T00:53:25Z")
I didn’t mind most of the ending, but when I saw a robot doing the robot I entered a psychotic rage. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/115 "2011-04-28T01:04:20Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > Except there are no Gods within the BSG universe, only the one God. You know it doesn’t like that name. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/116 "2011-04-28T01:08:34Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > I had the same problem after watching episode 1. It turns out you are actually supposed to start with the “miniseries” episodes, which are the real introduction to the series. IMO without seeing the miniseries first, episode 1 doesn’t make much sense. Yes. I thought the “miniseries” was fantastic. I never had a problem knowing who the characters were, although that is a big problem for me for other shows (_Game of Thrones_ right now, although I’m starting to catch on). Of course, I have memories of TOS, so I kinda new a lot of names and relationships already. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/117 "2011-04-28T08:46:45Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Speak for yourself - I usually consider ambiguity to mean that the writers don’t have the courage of their convictions. It’s the coward’s way out. Clarification: I don’t really mind overt and active gods per se. It’s the bait-and-switch that I object to. It’s like the writers were saying “well, there are multiple ways to interpret the series and all viewers are equally valid in analysing it the way they HAHA psych fuck you !”. Statement: If you’re going to do space fantasy then fine, do space fantasy, I like that too. Just don’t sell it to me as post-apo space punk for god knows how many episodes, because throwing god in the works makes every single aspect of post-apo space punk entirely irrelevant, and takes a huge steaming dump on the people who were invested in those aspects of the show. ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/118 "2011-04-28T09:21:18Z")
Now here’s a thread I can get behind. I managed just 3 episodes of BSG before turning off in discust, and I made it through the whole series 1 of Dollhouse. DOLLHOUSE! BSG is soap-opera fantasy with pretend sci-fi sets and less emotional depth than Star Wars. Characters do stupid things for inexplicable reasons and the plots I saw were not only completely transparent but incredibly dull in their resolution. Case in point is the episode where Starbuck crash lands on a planet and literally the entire episode is people humphing about in overwrought dramatic tension (as if Starbuck is going to die in episode 3) while absolutely nothing fucking happens. Incidentally they’re risking the entire human race looking for a pilot who by any reasonable terms is dead (she only survives by finding a tube in a living alien spaceship that convieniently dispenses human breathable air - wft!). The show was a train wreck. I may as well have been watching Eastenders, at least that’s somewhat more plausable. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/119 "2011-04-28T17:31:23Z")
So anyway, this thread reminded me that I wanted to check out BSG. Watched the first few eps and it’s… alright. I like the “we’re the last survivors of our race, struggling to keep things together with no resources/help/under constant attack/etc” angle of it. But I have to say the “omg who’s a cylon?!!” stuff bores me to death. Which is more prominent throughout the series? If it all ends up being secret cylon drama I might as well bow out now. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2011, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645/120 "2011-04-28T17:54:35Z")
It ends up being philosophico-mystical claptrap and remedial theology. No, really. But there’s a fair bit of post-apocalyptic struggle for survival and questionably rash-but-necessary-or-are-they? decisions along the way so it’s not so bad while it lasts. Just remember to quit watching the show once they get off New Caprica and it’s just fine - the whole Cylon infiltrators paranoia is just in the beginning that I recall. They identify the limited number of Cylon models rather quickly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/battlestar-galactica-sucks/579645.md?page=7)