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Current Music: Journey
A lovely, talented, and far-more-prolific-than-me lj friend takes umbrage, it would seem, to my criticism of Battlestar Galactica. Thus, this post.
(BSG spoilers ahead, you have been warned.)
My "issues" with BSG began, now that I think about it, in the tail end of the 2nd season. (Up to that point, the show was superlative, with excellent acting, writing, pacing, and production values. There were plot holes, but the show was So Good You Didn't Care.) The episode "Black Market", which dealt with, well, black markets, annoyed me because it seemed like the characters had enough bad stuff without tossing in the crappier side of humanity. Not a huge deal...it would have been a blip if the show had continued on its otherwise stellar pace.
Alas, the next episode was "Scar". Where to begin...
OK, how about seeing the final dogfight scene so. many. times. that the final time, I was just glad to see that it was over. Or the utterly contrived way in which every possible event seemed to go just Cat's way and just not Starbuck's way. Or the fact that the whole foundation of this episode was wholly within the episode itself. Why couldn't Scar have been dogging the fleet for several episodes? Why couldn't the issues with Cat build to a slow boil over time? In addition to being a mediocre episode, it felt like they had hired the ST:TNG writers to create a self-contained episode. Alas, it wouldn't be the last time.
The next episode ("Sacrifice", the hostage-taking one where Billy dies) felt similarly spotty...the magic was gone. I was seeing the plot holes and objecting to them, rather than having the overall quality of the show suspend my disbelief. At least I got to look at Dana Delaney. :)
"Downloaded" (with a bunch of scenes on Caprica, where the "hero" Cylons resolve to change their society) also seemed very contrived; in particular, the scene where Anders escapes, with the gun being dropped at just the right time.
Fast forward to the season finale...where Roslin conspires to fix an election...and Adama ends up helping to cover it up. Sure sure, it's a dark and gritty show, no one wears the white hat -- but this alone seriously impeded my ability to like these characters. It felt like a blatant violation of Roslin's character.
(Oh, and Cally, my favorite bit character on the show, gets randomly beat up by the chief...and of course, her natural response is to express her love for him. WTF?)
And then we skip one year ahead. In the episode. Tons of interesting story developments (like, say, anything about Cally) are glossed over. New World? Crappy. Cylons? A year late.
So then into the third season. I watched about the first 10 episodes, before my Tivo died and I decided it wasn't worth looking for the episodes I lost. During these episodes, it became increasingly clear that the Cylons did not, in fact, have a plan...kill the humans, enslave the humans, oops, kill them again, or maybe just follow them around a bit. The very tight and tense premise of the first two seasons had slumped into a vague supposition: they're not really even the bad guys any more, just the "other side", doing stuff to provide conflict in the series.
(To be fair, seeing the ground-bound colonists, such as Tigh, become bitter and hardened was well done.)
So I stopped watching and started making snide comments. :) The show lost its luster for me...maybe it will get it back (maybe it already has). I stopped watching DS9 because it sucked, but by all accounts it got much better toward the end. I'll keep an eye out. |
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