Battlestar Galactica, Sucker of Monkey Butt - Brian "Krow" Aker's Idle Thoughts

There's a few series out there right now that were writen in a very linear way, with a definate ending where they would have to finish up the story. that are past it and the producers are now in milk it mode.

BSG has blown it's wad. All they can do is find earth, destroy the cylons or change everything. If they wanted it to last six seasons they should have taken about 20 eps with pegasus, or strung out the year on new caprica.

JMS from Babalon 5 had it write. Get your story straight, plan your timeframe and write the story you have. Then get out of dodge.

I hope they can pull the trigger on Jericho rather than letting it get watered down and beat it to death when there's no story left.

Start season four where season two left off, admit the mistake and hire good writers.

Hah! Not the first time that tactic has been used! But they can't do it yet. First they have to do an abortive spin-off series BSG Girls. Followed by the fourth season, aka BSG: The Quest For Peace, which will finally be the last straw. Then we wait aother twenty years. And THEN... then you can have your rewrite. =) =)

You aren't at all curious what they're planning on doing with the whole cylon story? Do you really think they've got no sense of where that arc is going and how it is going to get there? And why would you care, other than the annoyance of a cliff hanger, about the seeming death of starbuck? All the signs and portents and crazy stuff surrounding that character for the whole episode clearly indicate that the current arc for that character is just beginning, so she obviously can't be dead.

*shrug*

I certainly don't think the 90's series was better, this one at least has several long running and interesting plot arcs going on that aren't transparent enough to see the end coming a mile away.

I had imagined that Baltaar would be the one who 1)dies 2)ressurects as a cylon and 3) finds earth. But who knows, maybe all three happen to Kara.

About the only way to reasonably pull off Kara-as-cylon, would be to blur the lines between human and cylon. Maybe the cylons can upload humans and then base a new model line after them? I like the idea that Sharon started out human before she was cloned.

About the only question they can tackle that would still hold my interest is, why did the cylons go on a killing spree to begin with? If the robota began to believe they were somehow incomplete, that the humans had held out on them and the only thing was to go back to the source... Maybe. Otherwise they're acting out just so the series can have a villian.

Aaaand by 14 I mean 12.

I went through a phase where I was a star Trek rivet counter. I wanted every Enterprise set from every episode to conform to a single unified blueprint. I wanted to trace all the rubber science to build a complete technological history of this society.

And it wasn't too long before I realized I was completely missing the point of Star Trek. It's about the *stories*. If I'm more concerned with the gizmo that the character is holding, than the relationship that character has to the rest of the story, then I'm cheating myself of the real gift.

If we count the hybrid, the raider, the heavy raider, and every other kind of ship shown in the show, then that's the kind of rivet-counting that doesn't really give the show much room to evolve. I would far rather that they break their own rule in order to show us a more complex, nuanced version of cylon culture, than lock themselves into a death-spiral. I *want* these guys to succeed.

Just for example... I'm pretty sure Lucy lawless simply got tired of appearing on the show, and so she had her character written out. There goes 1/12th or 1/14th of the total cylon population, just to accomidate a single actor's career choice. If they need to depict all 12 humanoid models at once, they could bring her back for a special appearance, or they could cast a similar-looking actress. I'm not going to sneeze, either way, it's their story.



And you want alien psychology and motivation to be ... human?

No matter how far out the science fiction, it's still being told to a (presumably) human audience. So there's a limit to how weird any alien can be. And I like the idea that everything humans create, contains some of their personality, even if it's just a chipped stone axe. The Cylons are not alien, they are children of men.

Well, yes, every show takes breaks from the main plot for an episode or three. Even the venerable icon of fully knitted linear plotlines, B5, had irritating breaks in the interesting plot developments, also known as filler. Filler sucks. I'm not convinced that this is filler -- so far I've found it slightly less revealing than I'd like but I haven't given up hope yet. Downloading the latest episode to watch currently...

I'm not mad, but I do wish you'd taken the three seconds it would have taken to put in a cut tag, since I don't get to watch BG real time all the time.

I email in journal entries, the cut tag feature breaks them most of the time so I don't bother with them.

And frankly if you are reading my journal, which is more for me then others, then you get whatever I feel like posting :)

Ron Moore is essentially out of the picture at this point, a committee of writers has been tasked with Season 3. Ron is off filming Caprica, the prequel. So what can one expect?

Who knows though, maybe I'm just saying that because I'm a Cylon. Not like anyone would care now - I remember a point where someone would say that and it would actually mean something.