I was going to post this in the thread I started on my rewatch of BSG but didn’t want to crap on the show there. Plus, who knows if I will go back to it or not? I decided to share it anyway and hope it amuses.
On BSG:
Wow. My attempt to rewatch BSG died pretty fast and easily. I have been thinking about it and decided to share, so I hope it’s interesting. These are on me, not the show itself.
Reason - I needed something to occupy my time and thought this would do so. It did for a bit there and I’m happy that it worked for a while. We had lost one of our dogs and I wanted a distraction.
Time - I have watched many things in the past several months, even rewatched movies I have seen, so it’s not that I didn’t have time. The commitment to get through 63 more episodes seemed like a lot. As I type that and reread it, I’m not sure how much I’m fooling myself. I have the time but something happened that pushed me away from it.
Story - Part of it was remembering what was to come or remembering what does come and wondering if I found a plot hole. Baltar builds a cylon detector that says yes for Boomer. We know that is correct but does he when it switches it to no? (And by randomly pushing a bunch of buttons on his testing machine!) This is when Baltar was no longer a scientist and it was all drama. He didn’t question if it was right or wrong or try again against a control. Maybe that’s asking too much from any show.
Characters - This time around, I’m not invested in many of the characters. I don’t like Baltar. I don’t like the many versions of Six. Is the one Baltar sees a projection? From him? I’m not sure Baltar’s six was consistent, so again we are going to drama instead of a plan. It’s not that I don’t like Starbuck but she became the Mary Sue. They only way the writers could involve her as a main character was to give her the skill needed for that episode. I know that Roslyn doesn’t die from cancer, so all of that is drama. I don’t like Tigh or his wife, and that was the last episode I watched. Further, she IS a cylon, as revealed seasons later, so does Baltar’s test work or not?
Future episodes - I think thinking more and more about the story, I kept seeing the plot holes or things that made no sense to me. Do the cylons want humans dead? Yes because they wiped out the twelve colonies and tried to kill all humans. No, because they capture them and put them on a planet. Yes because they keep chasing them. NO. YES. Maybe?
I think this is where I diverged and it became more about what was happening with me than the show itself.
I think what happened for me was the show had already become Lost (Ha!) in itself. It’s drama of the week. It started out really good with world building and science. They need to find how the cylons keep finding them, although the human like ones are problems. They need water. They need supplies and other basics. The cylons had a simple plan to kill humans. Then we are lied to because the cylons are shown not to want to kill but to prove they are alive. Then maybe earth of old will have the answer. Somehow Baltar becomes a cult leader and is still on Galactica? (If I remember that correctly.) How is he not relegated to a civilian ship? Why do even care about him anymore? Why do the cylons even care about humans anymore? How can the humans work with the cylons, who destroyed their civilization? Any one or two of these might have been okay but as they pile up, it becomes harder and harder for me to believe in it anymore.
I don’t know if it is because it’s Ronald Moore running it (And I told my wife I was worried for her show Outlander when it was announced he was showrunner) and Trek didn’t do ongoing stories. Looking up Moore’s credits, he worked TNG, DS9, and Voyager, which I never finished Voyager and it was years before I saw all of DS9. I didn’t watch Roswell so don’t know how good that was. Carnivale was another show that started with some great things to draw me into it but soon became a mess that made no sense. It seems like Moore, and the early 2000s, were the last gasp of syndicated shows. Where Babylon 5 or even Buffy had stories across a season, or more, most shows didn’t do that or weren’t allowed. Execs didn’t want a tv show that had to be seen in a particular order. It seems a lot more shows do try and tell a story these days.
Again, this is on me and I do apologize for those who love the show. I got to a point where I wasn’t looking forward to watching the next episode, so I knew I had to stop. I don’t know if I will get back to it or not because other things have become a priority. I want to watch a quick movie or more coherent plot than what I had seen up to that point. Equally, if I don’t like something, I should stop instead of nit picking it to death, especially for those who enjoy it.
I think I’m also mad at myself and the money I have wasted over the years on DVDs/BR of TV shows and movies. I have all of Lost and won’t watch it, probably for many of the same reasons that I am talking about BSG. We tried to rewatch both Stargate SG-1 and Star Trek Enterprise and they didn’t hold up as well as what we had in our head. I also have all of those DVDs. I got True Blood on DVD, we didn’t have HBO then, but it’s not a show that we will watch again. (I would read the books again before I watch it.) I have some DVDs I like, such as TNG, Bab5, Adventures of Brisco County Jr, Forever Knight, Bond movies, X-Files, Doctor Who, Monty Python, and more. I see any of them that I can stream as a waste of money, even if there wasn’t any way to know that when I got them.
It has taken me a long time to realize that, sadly, I am paying the monthly fee to many streaming services in case I want to watch things again. It’s cheaper than buying all of the DVD boxed sets I have. The only reason I want to get some DVD sets is for BTS or blooper extras. If streaming had that, I think I could better justify paying for streaming services and not buying DVDs.
Thanks for the discussion on the other thread. Thanks for any who read this. I hope everyone is doing well. Take care!