# Why were fans disappointed with Battlestar Galactica's finally?



## Kramodlog (Feb 23, 2014)

I finished it and I'm not sure I understand why fans hate the finally. 

From what I gather it is because it took a mystical/religious angle it took, but that was always in the series. I do not see a break, but a continuity.

It was a very ambitious space opera, with hits and misses, but it was fun to see the how the writers didn't just let them drift in space for four seasons with just "monster of the week" style episodes. Fun to see a series end before cancellation too.


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## MarkB (Feb 23, 2014)

The mystical/religious angle was always in the series as something some of the characters _believed_, but it wasn't until the last season, and Starbuck's return, that it became something that was presented as actually real - and even then they tried to keep the viewers guessing, and there were potentially other explanations.

In the end, it comes down to the same problem as the ending of _Lost_ - you've presented the viewers with a mystery, a puzzle with a lot of possible answers and a scattering of clues, and positively encouraged them to keep guessing and speculating. If you then finish the series by presenting them with the answer "a god did it", then you're short-changing them, because an answer that comes from outside the established context of both the series and the real world is essentially unguessable and renders all the prior speculation meaningless.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 23, 2014)

Spoilers, I assure you.

For one thing, imagine you did not get to watch the next episode right away. Imagine waiting 4 years to get all that stuff. When there's a mediocre episode that doesn't answer the questions YOU want answered, you get to go online and b**** about it. All that b****ing swirls together creating a general sense of discontent, so that at the end, people needed to see something impossibly good to stop them from complaining.

For another thing, it's kind of stupid to have everyone decide to throw away all their technology and breed with cave men.


Aside from that, I dug it. The climax was cool. The denouement seemed a little silly.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 23, 2014)

RangerWickett said:


> Spoilers, I assure you.
> 
> For one thing, imagine you did not get to watch the next episode right away. Imagine waiting 4 years to get all that stuff. When there's a mediocre episode that doesn't answer the questions YOU want answered, you get to go online and b**** about it. All that b****ing swirls together creating a general sense of discontent, so that at the end, people needed to see something impossibly good to stop them from complaining.
> 
> ...



I binged watch, so it makes more sense than waiting for 4 years.

Which questions do you feel aren't answered?


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## Morrus (Feb 24, 2014)

For me, it wasn't an objection to a mystical ending.  It's just that the ending was... anticlimactic.  It was boring.  I wanted something cleverer than that. A show that kept me engrossed for years just kinda went out with a whimper and a "meh".

Not that I have any idea how it should have been done better.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 24, 2014)

As a big fan of the show, I enjoyed it. Not without some mixed feelings, but I wasn't vehemently against it like some were. I think the inherent problem is that the show's style initially left so much to the imagination, that the reveals were almost guaranteed to be disappointing. The reveal of what Cylon ships look like or their culture or their Final Five were all, on some level, disappointing compared to what I imagined was going on behind the scenes when they were ransacking human civilization in the original pilot.

As to the finale, one can't say it wasn't prefaced. The characters questioning their faith and the ambiguity of whether there was any truth to it were played from the beginning. The mysterious "head" characters were played from near the beginning. The ending is a total deus ex machina, pretty much by definition, but it does make sense within the context of the show. I think it's disappointing because the show had, at times, such a naturalistic feel-their world felt so real-that it seems wrong that it should end by definitively stating that they live in a fantasy world with magic and gods and all that. It also, like any deus ex, carries a certain glibness in the way it waves off major points of plot confusion. The coda, wherein they give up technology and settle, makes a certain amount of sense, but is done in a way that seems too fast and too simple for a show that usually acknowledges that life is not simple.

However, the finale (much like Star Trek: TNG's) was moving on a character level because of the flashbacks that showed us where they came from and the many fairly definitive resolutions to their arcs. It was also an entertaining spectacle, with the requisite big space battle and action scenes. The soundtrack to the show contains an entire disc of riveting music that sums up the show's whole history, one of the better albums I own.

So, the bottom line is that it's not the finale I would have written. I would have written something that had a rational explanation for everything and didn't go the gods are real route. But there's enough to it that I can respect it.


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## RangerWickett (Feb 24, 2014)

The Cylons were created by Man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies.


*And the have a plan.*

*smashcut to black*



Well damn if that doesn't sound ominous and cool. I wonder what their plan is? Why are they trying to get Helo to have a kid with one of them? What mysterious goal do they have?

And then later on, the show creators basically cop out and say, "Um, the plan was just to, y'know, kill all the humans."

I was hoping for something a bit more complex than that. Like maybe they'd found some scientific way to talk to their God, but it required a human-Cylon hybrid. Or they knew that some outside force was about to destroy humanity, so they attacked (but didn't kill everyone) so as to force the human race to scatter and be harder to kill by the real villains. Maybe the final five models were actually planning to annihilate all biological life, and the rest of the Cylons were trying to thwart them.

But the show never actually had a plan. Like, they had a general idea where they wanted to end it, but they didn't script their reveals along the way, so stuff seems half-assed. Just like LOST, and The X-Files before it. 

If you're going to do a serial mystery, you'd better actually have a plan. Especially if you claim that you do at the start of each episode.


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## wingsandsword (Feb 24, 2014)

I loved, positively loved, the first two seasons of Galactica.  Third season was mostly okay, but it started to go downhill, I kept watching until the finale. . .and had a huge "WTF" on my face at the end.

*1. *It's a ridiculously huge strain on disbelief that tens of thousands of people, from a spacefaring (and according to Caprica, post-cyberpunk) society would all willingly give up technology and revert to a stone age population.  They didn't have people who said "heck no" and wanted to stay on their ships or land them?  Just because Apollo said he didn't want a city everyone went along with it?

They could have at least set up a city on some island, called it "Atlantis" and salvaged a tiny shred of credibility there, saying that some went to live with the natives, others built a city of Colonial technology on a lush island.

*2. *The entire Tomb of Athena plotline on Kobol made no connection.  The entire cliffhanger between the first and second seasons was based on the fact there's a star map on Kobol leading to Earth, our Earth (as in the stars in the sky are the same).  The only way that works is if the original residents had been to, or come from Earth.  The "Earth" they find that's a nuked wasteland and wasn't our Earth threw that out of the water, and the idea that our Earth was apparently uncontacted?  Huge continuity problem with the map from Kobol.

*3. *The religion stuff was always subtle the entire time, a sort of "is it/isn't it".  It was always ambiguous up until the end if Baltar was just having delusions based on his guilt, or if there was some piece of Cylon biotech in his brain producing the image, or if Head Six really was an angel.  Everything religious could have been a coincidence.

Then the resurrection of Starbuck dumped on that one, and if that wasn't enough, the end with the angels walking in modern day Earth talking about everything that happened just fell flat.

*4. *It's a little of what TV Tropes called "The Chris Carter Effect", for X-Files having the same thing happen to it.  They imply early on that there's masterful plotting and a huge overarching plotline, but they haven't really given it any thought, then when the show actually becomes a long-running hit they realize they have to start to show that plot and are winging it and it really shows.  The longer the show went, the more clear it was that they really didn't have a long term plan.  The Final Five, the "Earth" that wasn't Earth, the Cylon prophecy about not following Starbuck, all felt the were pulled out of nowhere and shoehorned in or dropped.  They even admitted the whole reason for the lost "Daniel" Cylon was they made a mistake in numbering the models and had to account for why one was missing.  Big part of the Cylon origin story was a patch for a writing mistake when they realized the fans would notice that sort of thing.

*5. *Too grimdark.  Yeah, this was a darker and more realistic retelling of Galactica than the campy 70's version, but the earlier seasons always had moments of hope.  Somewhere around the 4th season they just started to pile on more and more bad things, make things darker, more grim, more bleak, without respite.  They were practically losing more characters to suicide than enemy action at one point.  

*6. *"No aliens" An original key conceit of the show from the writers was that there were no alien life, that intelligent life arising would be so incredibly unlikely that they would never see another sentient race, ever.  Edward James Olmos even said he'd walk off the set if they ever encountered aliens.  So, having them encounter humans that were genetically identical to them that apparently evolved separately was countless times even more unlikely than some random alien race.  There was a brief hand wave about divine providence, but for a show that had previously couched divine actions in plausible coincidences, this was just way, way too far.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 24, 2014)

RangerWickett said:


> If you're going to do a serial mystery, you'd better actually have a plan.



I guess then, it really depends whether one looks at the show as a mystery or not. I see all that stuff, and I suppose I was disappointed on some level that the plan didn't pay off, but that wasn't really why I was watching anyway.

If I had to choose between, say "Deus ex machina ending that makes a lot of the mythology seem pointless or incoherent" and "cheap gag that was never set up" or "cliffhanger ending that never gets resolved after show gets canceled" or "ending where all the characters give up and pull a Cavill", I'm definitely taking the first one. Shows often end really badly.


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## wingsandsword (Feb 24, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> I guess then, it really depends whether one looks at the show as a mystery or not. I see all that stuff, and I suppose I was disappointed on some level that the plan didn't pay off, but that wasn't really why I was watching anyway.
> 
> If I had to choose between, say "Deus ex machina ending that makes a lot of the mythology seem pointless or incoherent" and "cheap gag that was never set up" or "cliffhanger ending that never gets resolved after show gets canceled" or "ending where all the characters give up and pull a Cavill", I'm definitely taking the first one. Shows often end really badly.




This is the heart of a lot of the discontent.  A lot of fans saw the series as essentially a large mystery: What/where is Earth and what is the Cylons plan?  If you don't have really good answers to those questions that fit the clues that came before, fans feel cheated.


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## MarkB (Feb 24, 2014)

RangerWickett said:


> For one thing, imagine you did not get to watch the next episode right away. Imagine waiting 4 years to get all that stuff.




It's not even being able to watch the show on demand that makes the difference - it's watching it now, after the fact, compared to at the time.

When the series was being broadcast, the level of discussion and speculation it sparked was massive. I remember people at work who weren't even SF fans discussing the new episodes and their implications, and online it was simply massive. For anyone who engaged with that to any significant degree, the level of investment in the show and the unfolding plot was far higher than it could be for anyone watching it today and speculating on their own. The potential for disappointment was therefore similarly high.


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## delericho (Feb 24, 2014)

I never had a huge problem with the finale. As far as I was concerned it was about as good as we could have got, given where the show had gone to that point.

However, the new BSG jumped the shark about three-quarters through the second series (actually, the precise moment is 



Spoiler



when Adama is all set to abort Athena's baby, Helo tries to stop them, and Adama talks him down


). After that it does have some really good stuff, especially the first six episodes of season three, but it never quite reaches the same heights again.

By the end, the show is very clearly struggling, with too many of the compelling characters dead, too many of the others caricatures of their former selves (Adama, Roslin, and Starbuck in particular), and too many things being pulled out of the writers' collective butts. So I felt the finale was about as good as we could hope for - at least they finished off most characters' story arcs and had one last, big battle against the Cyclon.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Feb 24, 2014)

goldomark said:


> I finished it and I'm not sure I understand why fans hate the finally.
> 
> From what I gather it is because it took a mystical/religious angle it took, but that was always in the series. I do not see a break, but a continuity.
> 
> It was a very ambitious space opera, with hits and misses, but it was fun to see the how the writers didn't just let them drift in space for four seasons with just "monster of the week" style episodes. Fun to see a series end before cancellation too.



I tend to agree with people that it seems questionable they would abandon all tech and start anew*. Still, the finale worked for me. 

And I could almost cry every time I see Adama and Roslin's final moments. 


(I can totally get however that they would all leave their ships, afte  so many years stuck on them, especially that since that flight through  the nebula/solar storm thingy, all ships are vastly overcrowded).


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 24, 2014)

wingsandsword said:


> This is the heart of a lot of the discontent.  A lot of fans saw the series as essentially a large mystery: What/where is Earth and what is the Cylons plan?  If you don't have really good answers to those questions that fit the clues that came before, fans feel cheated.



And yet, it's pretty clear that the showrunner himself wasn't that interested in that aspect of the show, that he saw it as more character-driven and less plot-driven. Perhaps that's why I look at it differently, because I'd followed his various commentaries and his work before BSG. Given the way DS9 went, it's no surprise that BSG took the tone it did. Someone coming into it with a different perspective might have different expectations. And seeing all his comments about writing the finale definitely helped it go over better.


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## billd91 (Feb 24, 2014)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> I tend to agree with people that it seems questionable they would abandon all tech and start anew*. Still, the finale worked for me.
> 
> And I could almost cry every time I see Adama and Roslin's final moments.
> 
> ...




I can see them abandoning much of the tech for a number of reasons. Growing paranoia about technology after being so burned by their own technological creation could play into it. Keep in mind that this is also a society that could be pretty severely affected by some form of PTSD and other psychological traumas - fully ditching past lives may help the healing process or at least not leave them with lots of exacerbating triggers. 
And it's also possible that the tech they have is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Their refugee town on New Caprica wasn't exactly an exemplar of technology either.

In any event, I thought the ending fit the series reasonably well.


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## Zombie_Babies (Feb 24, 2014)

Morrus said:


> For me, it wasn't an objection to a mystical ending.  It's just that the ending was... anticlimactic.  It was boring.  I wanted something cleverer than that. A show that kept me engrossed for years just kinda went out with a whimper and a "meh".
> 
> Not that I have any idea how it should have been done better.




This.  And I think the ending should have been darker as well.  The whole point was that the journey could end nowhere.  It was all built on hope and I would have enjoyed it more had that hope been in vain.


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## WayneLigon (Feb 24, 2014)

goldomark said:


> From what I gather it is because it took a mystical/religious angle it took, but that was always in the series.




That was it, and no, it wasn't.


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## wingsandsword (Feb 24, 2014)

Ahnehnois said:


> And yet, it's pretty clear that the showrunner himself wasn't that interested in that aspect of the show, that he saw it as more character-driven and less plot-driven. Perhaps that's why I look at it differently, because I'd followed his various commentaries and his work before BSG. Given the way DS9 went, it's no surprise that BSG took the tone it did. Someone coming into it with a different perspective might have different expectations. And seeing all his comments about writing the finale definitely helped it go over better.




The show had wonderfully written characters and great drama. . .but they completely dropped the ball on the plot towards the end.  The plot was pretty solid up until the exodus from New Caprica, when they started to get kinda shaky with it, but by season 4 they were completely off the rails.

Good characters and good plot are not exclusive.  He set up a show, teasing from the original miniseries, on a massive overarching plot. . .then doesn't follow through when the show actually becomes a hit and people start asking questions about that plot.


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## Ahnehnois (Feb 24, 2014)

wingsandsword said:


> The show had wonderfully written characters and great drama. . .but they completely dropped the ball on the plot towards the end.  The plot was pretty solid up until the exodus from New Caprica, when they started to get kinda shaky with it, but by season 4 they were completely off the rails.
> 
> Good characters and good plot are not exclusive.  He set up a show, teasing from the original miniseries, on a massive overarching plot. . .then doesn't follow through when the show actually becomes a hit and people start asking questions about that plot.



I don't really strongly disagree with that. To me, the New Caprica storyline was the high point. I do think there were plenty enough positives to keep watching, but it did seem like the show lost some of what it started with.


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## trappedslider (Feb 24, 2014)

Fun Olmos fact: he was in the running for the role of Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek 3, but lost out to Christopher Lloyd because Lloyd was taller. He was also offered the lead role in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but he turned it down.

and today is his birthday too


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## Kramodlog (Feb 24, 2014)

WayneLigon said:


> That was it, and no, it wasn't.



Umm... yes it was.


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## bone_naga (Feb 25, 2014)

I have to say I enjoyed the finale. To a degree I thought that the "God did it" was a bit of a cop-out, but even so there wasn't a perfectly clear answer on the matter of religion. Some people felt it was kind of preachy but I kind of liked Gaius's take where he said it really doesn't matter what you call it, God or gods or whatever.

Anyway, whether you like the religion aspect or not, there was a clear ending where the storylines were all wrapped up, viewers who paid attention could read between the lines on some of the events, and there was plenty of action before it slowed down for the finish.

I was much more disappointed with the Dexter finale. That was just garbage.


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## gamerprinter (Feb 25, 2014)

Eh, not that I was hoping for a non-religious finale, but the point that "All this happened before. All this will happen again." was pretty well ingrained from the beginning. When clues were revealed, that coincided with their holy texts, the religion angle was pretty well established. To assume a total logical and scientific explanation for everything as the expected conclusion would be counter to the way the entire show was presented. I never assumed the ending would have been any less 'religious' the entire rest of the show. It made sense within the context of the mythos it presented. Would I have preferred a better ending, sure, but it wasn't terrible. Of course when Apollo's decision to not build a town and go their separate ways, that was a bit... meh.


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## wingsandsword (Feb 25, 2014)

While I understand that Ron Moore was going more for a character-based drama, significant breaches of continuity like the whole Tomb of Athena star map being ignored (the whole point of the huge Season 1/Season 2 cliffhanger) detracted from the show as a whole.

I understand he didn't want to emphasize plot as much, but at least being consistent with it would have gone a long way.  Personally, when I realized the show was being picked up for a second season, and was becoming a smash hit I would have sat down, figured out in at least some detail what the Cylon plan was, what the real deal was with Earth, and at least a vague sketch of the overall direction of the show.  As it was, it seemed like they were just pulling new stuff out every few episodes trying to top it for how awful they can make life for the Colonials.

As for how religious the finale and last episodes were. . .

Yes, religion was part of the show from the beginning, but it was very ambiguous which (if any) of the religions was right.  

Roslin's visions could have been prophetic, or they could have been drug-induced.  Baltar's vision of Six could have been his own mental breakdown at guilt for causing the collapse of civilization, or it could have been Cylon biotech implants, or it could have been an angel.  Baltar's knowing the right place to attack on the tylium refinery could have been divine guidance, pure dumb luck, or a brilliant flash of insight.  The prophecies about Kobol that came true could have been prophetic, or they could have been just vague enough that almost anything that happened there would count as filling them.  When Starbuck came back, we were left wondering what happened.  Was she a Cylon created clone, created from DNA taken while she was held captive, placed in a Cylon-manufactured Viper?  Was she somehow sent by God/the Gods?  Had some weird Star Trek-esque space anomaly thrown her through space and time to meet with the fleet later and it only looked like she'd exploded?

Up until the last minutes of the finale, every single religious thing that happened in the show could have been explained as a coincidence or with science and technology.  Then "Surprise, it was God after all, and the Cylon religion was right!" didn't feel like as much of an answer as a cop out.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Feb 25, 2014)

wingsandsword said:


> Up until the last minutes of the finale, every single religious thing that happened in the show could have been explained as a coincidence or with science and technology.  Then "Surprise, it was God after all, and the Cylon religion was right!" didn't feel like as much of an answer as a cop out.




They could have not answered anything at all, I suppose, but any answer would feel weak, because it solves the mystery and the speculation.


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## The_Silversword (Feb 25, 2014)

I never really followed the show, I watched a couple episodes, I wasnt impressed, didnt like it. I was a huge fan of the original show, and i think they just changed up too much stuff. I thought the ships looked kooler in the original, and the Cylons too. Didnt like how they looked in the new series, they look just like humans, oh no! scarey!!


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## NewJeffCT (Feb 25, 2014)

MarkB said:


> The mystical/religious angle was always in the series as something some of the characters _believed_, but it wasn't until the last season, and Starbuck's return, that it became something that was presented as actually real - and even then they tried to keep the viewers guessing, and there were potentially other explanations.
> 
> In the end, it comes down to the same problem as the ending of _Lost_ - you've presented the viewers with a mystery, a puzzle with a lot of possible answers and a scattering of clues, and positively encouraged them to keep guessing and speculating. If you then finish the series by presenting them with the answer "a god did it", then you're short-changing them, because an answer that comes from outside the established context of both the series and the real world is essentially unguessable and renders all the prior speculation meaningless.




That's about how I felt about it as well.


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## Morrus (Feb 25, 2014)

The_Silversword said:


> Didnt like how they looked in the new series, they look just like humans, oh no! scarey!!




Only the sneaky spy ones.  Most of them look like this:


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## NewJeffCT (Feb 25, 2014)

Morrus said:


> Only the sneaky spy ones.  Most of them look like this:
> 
> View attachment 60762




And, the human looking cylons that were female seemed rather attractive, though the guys that were cylons were kind of schlumpy.


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## Sadras (Feb 25, 2014)

The show was rubbish, full of holes even in their own science, lame cop out in the end, and the final vision/premonition had no meaning. I ask you who has premonitions which mean absolutely nothing? Bleh. If it weren't for the hot chicks I would have stopped watching much earlier.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 25, 2014)

Yeah, they weren't that hot. Too skinny and really bad actresses. Especially Boomer.


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## NewJeffCT (Feb 25, 2014)

goldomark said:


> Yeah, they weren't that hot. Too skinny and really bad actresses. Especially Boomer.




Compared to the men, they were goddesses.  And, too skinny is your opinion.  

While Boomer/Grace Park may not be a great actress, she has found success in acting, moving from BSG to Hawaii 5-0, where she is the resident female sex symbol on the show.  And Tricia Helfer/Six got pretty good reviews for her performance in her role, if I recall.  Not sure about Lucy Lawless in her relatively small role, nor the woman playing Tory Foster.  Heck, even Ellen Tigh has a sexiness about her character.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 25, 2014)

I guess it is a question of standards.


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## bone_naga (Feb 25, 2014)

goldomark said:


> I guess it is a question of standards.



You have standards?


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## Kramodlog (Feb 25, 2014)

Who knew, right?


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## The_Silversword (Feb 26, 2014)

Morrus said:


> Only the sneaky spy ones.  Most of them look like this:
> 
> View attachment 60762




Hmm, I must of missed that in the couple of episodes ive seen. Maybe I'll give it a shot.


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## The_Silversword (Feb 26, 2014)

NewJeffCT said:


> And, the human looking cylons that were female seemed rather attractive, though the guys that were cylons were kind of schlumpy.
> 
> View attachment 60763




OK, you know what? Im definitely going to have to check this out, yowza!


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Feb 26, 2014)

NewJeffCT said:


> Compared to the men, they were goddesses.  And, too skinny is your opinion.
> 
> While Boomer/Grace Park may not be a great actress, she has found success in acting, moving from BSG to Hawaii 5-0, where she is the resident female sex symbol on the show.  And Tricia Helfer/Six got pretty good reviews for her performance in her role, if I recall.  Not sure about Lucy Lawless in her relatively small role, nor the woman playing Tory Foster.  Heck, even Ellen Tigh has a sexiness about her character.



Which role? Head Six? Shelly Godfrey? Caprica-Six? Gina Inviere?
In other words, yes, I think she's a pretty good actress.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 26, 2014)

Her change of hair made me hink of Kevin Sorbo's need  for a goatee when he played Herules' evil twin, Jerkules, cause he sucked as an actor and we needed a way to differenciate them.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Feb 26, 2014)

goldomark said:


> Her change of hair made me hink of Kevin Sorbo's need  for a goatee when he played Herules' evil twin, Jerkules, cause he sucked as an actor and we needed a way to differenciate them.




I think the characters felt different even if we ignore hair color. (Not to forget that some sixes actually had the same hair, and I believe in one instance head six even changed her hair color at least hairdo).


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## Kramodlog (Feb 26, 2014)

Well one was raped and broken, she didn't talk or move. She felt different.

Gaius' Six didn't change her hair the entire series. Maybe you're confused because you saw it a long time ago. Maybe she ain't that good an actress.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Feb 26, 2014)

goldomark said:


> Well one was raped and broken, she didn't talk or move. She felt different.
> 
> Gaius' Six didn't change her hair the entire series. Maybe you're confused because you saw it a long time ago. Maybe she ain't that good an actress.



Again, I may be remembering incorrectly, but there is an episode where Gaius is having his brain checked, and I think she might change it there. Maybe it's just the clothing, it's been too long.

But Gina was a bit more than the scenes in the holding cells.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 26, 2014)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> Again, I may be remembering incorrectly, but there is an episode where Gaius is having his brain checked, and I think she might change it there. Maybe it's just the clothing, it's been too long.



Probably clothes



> But Gina was a bit more than the scenes in the holding cells.



She did have different hair. And inherite a nuke.


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## Zombie_Babies (Feb 26, 2014)

I thought Helfer did a fine job.


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## Kramodlog (Feb 26, 2014)

She is one of the better actors of the show, I'll giver her that, but BSG exist alongside others shows/films/theatre.


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## Zombie_Babies (Feb 26, 2014)

So who's the best actor on TV now?


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## gamerprinter (Feb 26, 2014)

Well despite not the best ending, compared to all the negative responses in this thread and the comparison to the original show (which I also watched religiously when it was first aired) - I loved BSG, and thought it was the best show on television at the time, and think it was far, far better than the original. I especially loved the big CGI space battles, but also the little things like having ballistic weapons instead of ray guns. It was a great show!


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## Kramodlog (Feb 26, 2014)

Zombie_Babies said:


> So who's the best actor on TV now?



Is netflix TV? Spacey is pretty decent in House of Cards 2, even if the writting is not on par with the first season.


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## Herschel (Feb 26, 2014)

_I think part of it was the "Filler" leading up to it. It felt like they had three seasons worth of material but milked a fourth out of it, which included all the (seemingly endless) Roslin "visions" and that tripe.

I enjoyed the ending well enough but man, some of Seasons 3 & 4 really felt thrown in haphazardly to fill out the "mystical" storyline as well as screen time. _


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## Gonozal (Feb 27, 2014)

I honestly think the Finally was pretty ok, it's the end of the 3rd and the 4th season in general I don't like. It just feels drawn out artificially


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## bone_naga (Mar 1, 2014)

gamerprinter said:


> but also the little things like having ballistic weapons instead of ray guns. It was a great show!



Yeah, I liked that too. Along with the nukes. For some reason, a lot of sci-fi seems to completely ignore nukes as if the discover of laser pistols suddenly means we no longer want to destroy things on a large scale.


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## Grehnhewe (Mar 2, 2014)

bone_naga said:


> Yeah, I liked that too. Along with the nukes. For some reason, a lot of sci-fi seems to completely ignore nukes as if the discover of laser pistols suddenly means we no longer want to destroy things on a large scale.



QFT

Also, the aspect that they had to dial back their tech to deal with the cylons drew me into the show,


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## Kramodlog (Mar 2, 2014)

The 3 hours mini-series intro really is what got me into it. Very impressive work.


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## NewJeffCT (Mar 2, 2014)

Zombie_Babies said:


> So who's the best actor on TV now?




Bryan Cranston was the best actor the past few years.  However, now that Breaking Bad is done, it could be Kevin Spacey, Claire Danes and a few others.  A lot of great ensemble casts out there, too - Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc, etc.


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## Gonozal (Mar 2, 2014)

goldomark said:


> The 3 hours mini-series intro really is what got me into it. Very impressive work.



I completely agree. The miniseries is one of those episodes I come back to and watch quite often. As far as I'm concerned, the overall best episodes of BSG still are the Exodus episodes, though.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 2, 2014)

bone_naga said:


> Yeah, I liked that too. Along with the nukes. For some reason, a lot of sci-fi seems to completely ignore nukes as if the discover of laser pistols suddenly means we no longer want to destroy things on a large scale.



That's one oddity. The other is that they all like to make up fancy stuff like antimatter bombs and all that, and completely disregard how powerful this really would be and what kind of devastation it could wreak.

Worst example might be some of the Star Wars tech stuff. I am not really sure that the whole concept of "Hypermatter generators" and what not are supposed to be canon or just some fanwank, but it seems ultimately bullsh*t beyond belief. They make up giant numbers, and then have humans survive a blaster hit to the shoulder or giant walking tanks destroyable with two tree trunk.

It is a (tv)trope that science fiction authors have no sense of scale, but some cases are worse than others.


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## Gonozal (Mar 2, 2014)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> That's one oddity. The other is that they all like to make up fancy stuff like antimatter bombs and all that, and completely disregard how powerful this really would be and what kind of devastation it could wreak.
> 
> Worst example might be some of the Star Wars tech stuff. I am not really sure that the whole concept of "Hypermatter generators" and what not are supposed to be canon or just some fanwank, but it seems ultimately bullsh*t beyond belief. They make up giant numbers, and then have humans survive a blaster hit to the shoulder or giant walking tanks destroyable with two tree trunk.
> 
> It is a (tv)trope that science fiction authors have no sense of scale, but some cases are worse than others.




Yea, I can hardly enjoy watching Star Trek for any length of time for that reason. They shoot bombs filled with .5kg of antimatter at a planet and all it does is level a house, if that? 500g of antimatter (a typical photon torpedo) has about half the destructive power of the most powerful nuke ever detonated, it should completely eradicate a major city, not blast away a few planks of wood.

Then again Star Wars is so far out there that it's somewhat okay again. Helps that they don't even try to explain the stuff that's going on and that I usually only watch one movie at a time, compared to TV series where I tend to binge watch whole seasons.

A sense of "realism" is really what I like about BSG and to a lesser extend about Stargate SG1, stuff either feels in place or they at least try really hard to make it plausible.


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## Elf Witch (Mar 2, 2014)

I am still a huge fan of the original. I saw it as an adult and while it is now cheesy compared to how TV shows are done today at the time it was amazing. I am not a huge fan of the new show. I think the mini series and first season were well done but after that it started to feel as if the producers and the writers lost control of the story of the story they were telling. I used to joke that the cyclons may have a plan but the writers have no clue what it is.  I still have not watched the last season.

I think there are some really good ensemble casts on TV today Orange is the New Black has some amazing actresses on it as does Davinci's Demons, Criminal Minds, Black sails.


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## Derren (Mar 3, 2014)

Mustrum_Ridcully said:


> That's one oddity. The other is that they all like to make up fancy stuff like antimatter bombs and all that, and completely disregard how powerful this really would be and what kind of devastation it could wreak.




Not that BSG didn't also have that problem.
How many nuke hits did the Galactica survive in the pilot?


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## Hussar (Mar 9, 2014)

Barring a direct hit in which case nukes would be very effective, why would nukes be particularly more effective than conventional explosives?  Presumably space faring ships would have to be extremely heavily radiation shielded and in a vacuum explosive force is largely irrelavent. 

Doesn't really matter how big the bang is in a vacuum.


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## Derren (Mar 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Barring a direct hit in which case nukes would be very effective, why would nukes be particularly more effective than conventional explosives?  Presumably space faring ships would have to be extremely heavily radiation shielded and in a vacuum explosive force is largely irrelavent.
> 
> Doesn't really matter how big the bang is in a vacuum.




Dont forget the heat a exploding nuke radiates. A often overlooked aspect in SciFi is that heat management is quite a problem for spaceships as they have no way to remove excess heat besides slowly radiating it.


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## Umbran (Mar 9, 2014)

Derren said:


> Dont forget the heat a exploding nuke radiates.




Careful there.  The nuke doesn't directly generate all that much heat.  It generates lots of hard radiation, which gets absorbed by the atmosphere around it, which then heats up as a result.  This is where a lot of the shockwave action of the bomb comes from as well.

If you set it off in a vacuum, the radiation will just streak away in all directions without being absorbed.  If you set it off next to a space ship, the ship merely absorbs that portion of the radiation coming at it.  You may instantly melt or vaporize material, but you aren't left with a long-term heat dissipation issue.  

In general, explosives are a lot less impressive in a vacuum than they are in atmosphere.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Mar 9, 2014)

Hussar said:


> Barring a direct hit in which case nukes would be very effective, why would nukes be particularly more effective than conventional explosives?  Presumably space faring ships would have to be extremely heavily radiation shielded and in a vacuum explosive force is largely irrelavent.
> 
> Doesn't really matter how big the bang is in a vacuum.




That's one of the challenges in space combat; near misses are not nearly as effective as inside an atmosphere unless you're pushing a good sized cloud of shrapnel, because you don't get the benefits of the blast and heat effects.  I supposed you could theorize some super-material that you could surround a nuke with that would become ultra-velocity shrapnel instead of being converted to molten material or plasma (it is sci-fi, after all), but you're better off going for the direct hit, especially against a (presumably armored) capital ship.

There's the benefit of EMP from the nuke explosion, but if the space fleet has nuclear ship-to-ship proximity weapons I'd assume they would harden against EMP.  We do that for military electronics today in an environment (theoretically) much less likely to see a nuclear strike.

Ultimately the near miss value is for radiation, which appears to be quite dangerous close in if not shielded (see this NASA paper).


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## Umbran (Mar 9, 2014)

Olgar Shiverstone said:


> I supposed you could theorize some super-material that you could surround a nuke with that would become ultra-velocity shrapnel instead of being converted to molten material or plasma (it is sci-fi, after all)




Here's a simple solution - take an old, dead Battlestar.  Set the nuke off *inside* it.  The entire ship becomes shrapnel and debris...


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## Hussar (Mar 9, 2014)

In other words, make REALLY big bombs.  That would work.

One scene that always bugged me from BSG was when they showed a machine shop making cased rounds for Vipers.  I know, it's SF and we're not supposed to get too wigged out by that sort of thing, but, jeez.  There's no way you could accelerate a round fast enough to be effective in space based combat with a cased round.  Anything powerful enough to make the round go fast enough would disintegrate the round itself.  Anything slower would mean that the rounds would never be able to hit anything beyond a kilometre or so since you couldn't lead the target enough.

It always bugs me when SF shows, set in some future technology time, use technology that isn't even to todays standards, let alone centuries ahead of us.  We already have electric guns and rail guns and x-ray lasers.  Why on earth would I use dumb 25 mm rounds?  (dumb as in no guidance system, not dumb as in stupid)

I mean, even today, in modern dogfights between aircraft, it's almost never going to come down to guns.  It's going to be missile fire most of the time with guns primarily used against slow moving ground targets.


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## MarkB (Mar 10, 2014)

Hussar said:


> In other words, make REALLY big bombs.  That would work.
> 
> One scene that always bugged me from BSG was when they showed a machine shop making cased rounds for Vipers.  I know, it's SF and we're not supposed to get too wigged out by that sort of thing, but, jeez.  There's no way you could accelerate a round fast enough to be effective in space based combat with a cased round.  Anything powerful enough to make the round go fast enough would disintegrate the round itself.  Anything slower would mean that the rounds would never be able to hit anything beyond a kilometre or so since you couldn't lead the target enough.




Vipers don't seem to attack targets much further away than that in any case. Most combats we see take place at relatively close ranges.



> It always bugs me when SF shows, set in some future technology time, use technology that isn't even to todays standards, let alone centuries ahead of us.  We already have electric guns and rail guns and x-ray lasers.  Why on earth would I use dumb 25 mm rounds?  (dumb as in no guidance system, not dumb as in stupid)
> 
> I mean, even today, in modern dogfights between aircraft, it's almost never going to come down to guns.  It's going to be missile fire most of the time with guns primarily used against slow moving ground targets.




BSG's technological schizophrenia was part of the show's quirky charm. It's an odd mix, as though they'd developed effective space flight and AI technologies while everything else was still at 1970s tech levels.


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## Olgar Shiverstone (Mar 10, 2014)

Hussar said:


> One scene that always bugged me from BSG was when they showed a machine shop making cased rounds for Vipers.  I know, it's SF and we're not supposed to get too wigged out by that sort of thing, but, jeez.  There's no way you could accelerate a round fast enough to be effective in space based combat with a cased round.  Anything powerful enough to make the round go fast enough would disintegrate the round itself.  Anything slower would mean that the rounds would never be able to hit anything beyond a kilometre or so since you couldn't lead the target enough.
> 
> It always bugs me when SF shows, set in some future technology time, use technology that isn't even to todays standards, let alone centuries ahead of us.  We already have electric guns and rail guns and x-ray lasers.  Why on earth would I use dumb 25 mm rounds?  (dumb as in no guidance system, not dumb as in stupid)




Well, it does depend a bit on range.  Modern 25mm cannon are effective beyond 3000 meters, and that range would be extended in space (no ballistic arc, no air resistance).  So if the range is close enough and your target isn't exceptionally maneuverable, that +1000-1500 meters per second of velocity imparted by the gun is going to be sufficient to hit your target. The target's absolute speed is irrelevant; you just need enough delta-V to get to the target before it gets out of the way. The real challenge is predicting your target's flight path sufficiently.

That assumes some reason that you only have engagements at what is effectively knife-fighting range -- bad sensors, super-stealth, EMP fields that kill smart seekers on guided missiles, or something.

It's still silly, of course. Mostly fiction, less science.


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## Mustrum_Ridcully (Mar 10, 2014)

I actually read something about the possible effects of nukes in space - and while things are different without the atmosphere, they are not ineffective at all and making a spacecraft tough enough to survive a near hit is non-trivial. 

I suppose the thing to remember is - yes, the atmosphere absorbs radiation and heats up, generating a massive heat wave. But it doesn't mater whether we are in vacuum or in an atmosphere, the explosion spreads outwards evenly, so with our without atmosphere, the same amount of energy is hitting a target at distance. In one case, it might be superheated air, and in the other, it might be hard radiation, the energy hitting you is roughly the same, and if air can absorb hard radiation and heat up, what do you think other materials will do?


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## tomBitonti (Mar 10, 2014)

Edit3: Links to the Cover Page and Table of Contents:

"86th Congress, 1st Session; House Document No. 86"

SPACE HANDBOOK: ASTRONAUTICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
STAFF REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASTRONAUTICS AND SPACE EXPLORATION

http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/spcover.htm

http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/contents.htm

---

There is this:

http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/nuclear.htm#REF17-1



> When a nuclear weapon is detonated close to the Earth's surface the density of the air is sufficient to attenuate nuclear radiation (neutrons and gamma rays) to such a degree that the effects of these radiations are generally less important than the effects of blast and thermal radiation. The relative magnitudes of blast, thermal and nuclear radiation effects are shown in figure 1 for a nominal fission weapon (20 kilotons) at sea level.1




And:



> If a nuclear weapon is exploded in a vacuum-i. e., in space-the complexion of weapon effects changes drastically:
> 
> First, in the absence of an atmosphere, blast disappears completely.
> 
> ...




A important consideration which is pointed out in some of the notes relating to nuclear weapons in space is a comment about the extra vulnerability to people: That is, because of radiation concerns, as pointed out above, in manned spacecraft, people can be a relatively vulnerable component.

Edit: To put some numbers on this, the charts show (approximately; the charts are hard to read in detail):

20KT Explosion

Air:
1000 RAD at about 0.7 miles
500 RAD at about 0.75 miles
100 RAD at about 0.8 miles

Vacuum: 
1000 RAD at about 8.5 miles
500 RAD at about 13 miles
100 RAD at about 28 miles

The question then turns on the effectiveness of shielding, and on the relative vulnerability of electronics (I'm guessing the electronics of today are a lot more vulnerable than those of 1957, which is the date given for the referenced document.)

Edit2: Wow, some nice charts in that report, some very useful for game designers:

http://history.nasa.gov/conghand/mannedev.htm

Thx!

TomB


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