quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Yeah. I've read some criticism of the trial from folks who know the legal system better than I do...
I always think it's funny when people criticize things like this. The other example I've heard is relating to the various ranks and how they don't really match up properly with real naval ranks. It's fiction and it's science fiction at that. I can see people criticizing a show like Law & Order if it got things wrong with a trial or if NCIS screwed up the ranks of it's characters but who are we to say that everything should be just the same for the BSG universe?
I agree with you, but to be fair, I'm familiar with that instinctive wince when a TV show or movie gets something wrong that you're familiar with. I get it all the time with fictionalized depictions of biology (or science in general). On BSG, for example, Roslin's being cured of cancer by Hera's stem cells just rankled- especially Balter's technobabbly explanation of his theory. Even though I knew it was Crazy Scifi Speak, the simple fact that it demonstrated a basic lack of knowledge about the subject on Baltar's part (and him a supposed expert!) felt sorta like nails on a chalkboard. Not something that can be helped, obviously- it'd be ridiculous to expect television writers to have the same level of knowledge as a college graduate in the field. But irksome on a primal level, nonetheless. So I understand where my lawyer friends are coming from.
posted
Well, Baltar isn't exactly a medical doctor.
He could very well have been just BSing everyone, as he tends to do.
I loved how, in the first season, Baltar kept trying to use technobabble on Adama who finally told him to shove it and quit lying. Just as an example of his tendency to do that.
Also, to someone earlier: All Along the Watchtower, cheesy? Bah! While a slightly more montagy "vipers heading towards overwhelming Cylon force while being shown with dramatic camera angles" would have also been cool, I thought it was awesome, and gave a totally different feel than normal, which helped with the situation.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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He isn't a medical doctor at all, and if his theory hadn't, y'know, worked, it wouldn't have bothered me. Of course, that leads to another pet peeve of mine- that "scientists" in scifi shows are inevitably super-geniuses in every field under the sun. Computer programmers who can also perform surgery and feats of genetic engineering, doctors with in-depth knowledge of quantum physics, forensic chemists who are also the Best Engineers Ever, et cetera. I hate to admit it, but we scientists aren't that smart! Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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That's always bugged me, too. "Hey, Doctor, you're a genius who designed a defense mainframe, right? Wanna take a crack at molecular biology and oncology?
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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There's a series of great post-season 3 interviews over at Entertainment Weekly with Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, and Ron Moore. They go into some of the rationales for the events of the finale (and clear up something I was worried about regarding Tyrol's character- that he might lose his essential "common man" nature).
My favorite quote, from the one and only EJO, regarding his personal scenario for the ending of the series:
quote:I wanted to come into [the present day], find Earth, cruise on top of it, see it for what it is, and as we're coming down to it, we're blown up, we're nuked. And then [someone says to] the President of the United States, which is [George W.] Bush, ''They've been taken care of. Thank God you saved the world again.'' And you turn, and you see who told him that, and it's one of the Cylons.
posted
In this episode, Flesh and Bone. It does kinda make you wonder if the "Adama is a Cylon" thing means anything considering this episode is also probably the first time the Kara Thrace destiny stuff started ... and look where we are now.
Still, more than likely it was just meant as a short-term hook into the next episode.
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posted
A thought just occurred to me. It seemed rather odd that Dee chose to leave Lee, given what she's said in previous episodes. Then I realized that perhaps the writers are trying to open up the possibility of Lee and Kara getting together. Depending on whether Dee really leaves him for good, Lee is now available. Kara refused to divorce Sam, but if her vows were 'til death, and if she really died, then technically she may no longer be married.
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quote: It seemed rather odd that Dee chose to leave Lee, given what she's said in previous episodes.
I thought it made a lot of sense. She loved him largely because he was an Adama. His choices put him against the Adama image. It doesn't suprise me at all that Dee would choose Bill over Lee.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote: It seemed rather odd that Dee chose to leave Lee, given what she's said in previous episodes.
I thought it made a lot of sense. She loved him largely because he was an Adama. His choices put him against the Adama image. It doesn't suprise me at all that Dee would choose Bill over Lee.
But which Adama image? The Old Man has his own image, but Lee's was always different, just as Bill's was different from his father's image of the justice defending lawyer of scumbags. I think Lee showed more integrity than the Admiral during the trial, and frankly, had the Admiral shut his mouth before mouthing off to his son, Lee probably would never have pressed Laura so hard.
That had to be excruciating. Lee was always her defender, even when Bill wasn't, and this time it seemed like the other way around. I hated seeing him do it, I really like Laura's character, despite her ruthless tendencies. I know he did it in reaction to Bill calling him a coward, so there's plenty of blame to go around, but watching her plead with him, and knowing he was just doing it to get back at his father, ugh! Drove me NUTS! I hope they can all reconcile though. I hate shows that spend 3 seasons repairing a father son relationship only to destroy it in a single moment. I think Lee's speech at the end might have gone a long way towards healing the rift, that and him jumping into a Viper at the end.
But anyway, like I was saying at the beginning, the Adamas have more than one image. Lee was following his own path, a little bit of his father, a little bit of his grandfather, and a little bit of his own mixed in. Frankly it struck me as rather out of character for her to abandon him without so much as hearing him out. Maybe it was residual from what he did to her with Kara, but leaving like that? Because he was associate counsel for Baltar? Odd reasoning considering how much she claims to love him.
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Considering that Laura and Bill reconciled after he overthrew her civilian government in a military coup and tossed her in the brig, I have little doubt that Laura and her "Captain Apollo" could mend fences as well. Whether they will or not is, of course, up to the writers, but I personally hope they do. They had a wonderful, complex friendship in the first season, which dropped to the background in the second and was almost entirely ignored in the third. A reconciliation would be a good way to bring that relationship back to the foreground (hopefully while simultaneously dropping the Quadrangle soap opera into a black hole).
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I don't know if this was mentioned on here anywhere, but as of March 26th, Sci-Fi will NOT be picking up Caprica as a tv show.
They're still apparently open to the idea of doing it like a mini-series, a la BSG, and seeing what the results from that are, before pursuing it, but it will not be a tv show anytime soon. It's still considered in development, and the creators are hopeful for a mini-series or direct to DVD movie.
The creators are looking at Season 4 as a possible last season, but looks highly unlikely to go past 5.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:But anyway, like I was saying at the beginning, the Adamas have more than one image. Lee was following his own path, a little bit of his father, a little bit of his grandfather, and a little bit of his own mixed in. Frankly it struck me as rather out of character for her to abandon him without so much as hearing him out. Maybe it was residual from what he did to her with Kara, but leaving like that? Because he was associate counsel for Baltar? Odd reasoning considering how much she claims to love him.
While there are different Adama images, I think the Dee was most attracted to the Bill part of Lee. She told him that the reason she married him was because he was so much like his father. When he rejected his father, he rejected the part of himself that she loved the most. I think that things have changed, and they could now reconcile if that's what the writers wanted.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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But as Jason, the reviewer at Television Without Pity said about it, no one could stand in the way of the Love Which All Of A Sudden, and so Billy had to die.
Great bit, that.
I think Billy was my favorite character on the show, actually. 20 years later he would have been leader of the remnant of the colonies (maybe even in less time than that, considering events.)
Then again, had he not died, he probably would have been the Cylon instead of Tory, who prolly wouldn't have existed.
Actually, I think I would have loved that.
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For some reason today I was thinking Kate Mulgrew would have made a great Cylon, perhaps if Lucy Lawless hadn't of been cast.
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BtRL is standalone -- FS2 went abandonware and Volition released the engine's source code, so people have been improving upon it for a while now. You don't need the original game to play it.
Unfortunately, it pretty much requires a joystick.
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I just got the Mac port of FS2 for this purpose, and have been going through the FS2 tutorial. I'm playing with a keypad at the moment, but yeah, I doubt I'll get much further without a joystick.
I wonder if HW2 total conversions work on the Mac version as well. I'll have to look into that after work.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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I downloaded and played the Beyond the RedLine last night. Awesome game. Its short, since its just a preview version, but I am so excited for this to come out in full version. There is nothing like flying your Mark VII through asteroids trying to kill the cylon raiders.
I may have to buy HomeWorld 2 for that other Mod. It looks beautiful. HW2 is available at Amazon for about $11.
Posts: 197 | Registered: Jan 2007
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Crap, I forgot to check into the Mac HW2 mod thing last night. Man, when I get sucked into Oblivion, I forget about everything! Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Define jumping the shark? Sure, Battlestar, Season 3, Episode 18. And 19. Oh, and 20. And probably about 14-17 too. This show really blows now. Sad days.
All Along the Watchtower? If they'd use the song without inserting the lyrics in the most corny, boring and inevitably horrific way possible it might have been okay. But no.
Jumped.
Its not that is AWFUL its that it used to be good. But its gone downhill like there's no tomorrow.
Posts: 2945 | Registered: Apr 2000
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Judging from the posts in this thread, the last few episodes have had quite a positive response overall. Not that that necessarily means anything, but as someone who was worried that the show had jumped the shark throughout the latter half of the season, I thought they really pulled it back up to BSG's usual high standards for the last two episodes.
Posts: 1321 | Registered: Sep 1999
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You know, I'm tired of people (I visit the scifi.com board for BSG, too, so I see it often) speaking of the show jumping the shark.
I think the term itself has jumped the shark, is not longer useful, and is merely used by people who don't like it anymore.
The storyteller's role is to take us and say "let me show you something."
What RDM and the rest are showing us is something surprising and different. If it was just the same, if they were still JUST running from the Cylons without any changes... it would be JUST A TV SHOW! And that would be the worst sin this show could ever make. It's what makes The Woman King the most loathesome episode of anything I've seen in a long time. It's mediocre. It's average. It's JUST television.
The twists are like the twists in a series of novels or a movie - only in a longer term. The tv format is perfect for the Epic story, which is what BSG is, really. One of the few shows to use television format for its strongest, greatest and most significant use.
Also, the All Along the Watchtower was one of the MOST effective things I've seen in a long time. I know, I've seen a lot.
The Woman King sucked, the one after that was kinda eh, everything after that was good in my opinion.
This is the same thing that happened in season 2.5, a lag, a kind of loss of momentum before they moved forward. Now they're finally moving forward.
This show is never static. Take New Caprica. Who does that? No one, except these guys. They craft a mold then they break it irrevocably, as things don't go back to the way they were, they never will. That's the way a good story does. It isn't the way television normally does. It's part of why BSG is, so far, truly a great Epic story.
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I thought that they combined two episodes into one and I didn't like that. I wanted to see more. There were plenty of episodes this season they could have dropped in order to give a bit more time and development for this.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Mar 2006
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Ahh, Oblivion. Twinky, get the Shiverring Isles explansion yet?
It revitalizes the whole game, with a metric ton of new material. Really good.
Yup, got it. I made a new character to take to the expansion areas, though, so I haven't actually started the expansion yet.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: twinky, you want to get there. Now. Drop what you're doing and go to the Shivering Isles.
They're not going anywhere. I don't expect to return to Cyrodiil when I'm done, and I figure the expansion is designed to be playable by a character who has completed the main quest line, so I can afford to putter around in Cyrodiil for a while before setting off.
I never did the Thieves' Guild or Dark Brotherhood quest lines when I originally played the game, and I wanted to, so I'm doing them now. Most enjoyable. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Boo@those factions. I hit stuff either with a big sharp sword (Oblivion) or a big blast of shotgun (Fallout). In the later, I might even talk my way out of situations. But sneaking around when I'm the champion of Cyrodill? Bah. Screw stealth.
Its weird too, I never liked Oblivion or Morrowwind to any degree like KOTOR or Fallout, but I always end up playing through the main quests of each game/expansion.
In any case this is definitely going to hit my other sinks of spare time, such as ... Hatrack.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Originally posted by 0Megabyte: Bah. I miss Billy.
Me too!
Thirded.
I just finshed catching up on the seasons so far, and i have to say that I totally see why they won that Peabody. Watching the entire searies over the span of a couple months was like taking a beating. Only, not in a bad way.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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He also started talking, I noticed, about the connections between our world and the BSG world, at which point RDM's wife said "you're going to faaaar..."
or something along those lines.
I sooooo want to see a Galactica 80 scenario done right.
That is, in this case it would be Galactica 08.
Modern day earth would be interesting, especially if they manage to escape the Cylons for a couple years at least.
Posts: 1577 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I bought the soundtracks to Seasons 1 and 2 of BSG.
Both are simply stunning and amazing. I can't stop listening. There's both tense and beautiful music, and music that I just need to crank up on my stereo.
I recommend them to everyone.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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I fully agree. There's a lot of very good music, many tracks which are very enjoyable outside of the show and only a handful of clunkers.
Its the first time I've gotten excited about music in a TV science fiction series since Babylon 5, which also had great music but even a lot of that was not too enjoyable outside of the show.
If you want to be totally complete, there is also a soundtrack for the BSG miniseries, but its not nearly as good as the two season soundtracks.
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Lyrhawn: I LOVE the BSG soundtrack. I think my hubby is getting tired of me listening to it over and over and over....
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I'm ridiculously excited for the S3 soundtrack, which is apparently due out in July or thereabouts. I get so excited to hear the themes recur - like in "Crossroads, Part I" when Tigh confronts Six, it's a rehash of the "Martial Law" theme from early S2.
And I got to sit next to Bear McCreary's bag at ComicCon last year. Posts: 3932 | Registered: Sep 1999
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I know it'd never be on there, as it wouldn't really make any sense, but I would LOVE it if they including a track with Lee's speech at Baltar's trial as a bonus track.
quote:<3 poundy Taiko drums
Is that what those are?
It seems like there's only three basic instruments on most of the more intense tracks, the drums, some sort of flutey thing (like what Tumnus played in LWW), and the bagpipes. But I love every second of it.
Bear McCreary's website says Summer 2007 for the release of Season 3. And this is the very FIRST tv show where I ever went to someone after an episode to say "Geez, did you hear the MUSIC in that episode?!" It's just stunning, and it captures the scenes it's paired with so perfectly, it just latches on to them.
The thing about soundtracks, is that the very best soundtracks almost sound like the music just magically spawned itself just for the scene they are linked to, because they fit so well, and they tie your emotions into the scene so well, that you can't possibly imagine someone could just make up the music for that scene and have it fit so well. And that's exactly what BSG does (Howard Shore does it well for LOTR too, and whoever did Pirates of the Carribbean is up there, Hans Zimmer is pretty good at it too in movies like Gladiator).
And as a last side note, it's fantastic music to jog to.
I wonder what the creator's of the show imagined the music would sound like, and how they felt after they heard McCreary's take on it. To be honest, I love the show, but the soundtrack has to be something like 35%-45% of why I love it so much.
[/soundtrack fanboy]
Edit: Checked a little further. BSG S3 soundtrack will be out in August, to coincide with the DVD release. All Along the Watchtower will be on it. His blog has a great explanation of how he wrote the original music for his version of the song.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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So I sent an email to Bear McCreary asking some questions about the third soundtrack, and he sent back a mass emailing, apparently he usually tries to answer individual emails, but his box was overloaded with mail about "All Along the Watchtower" so he couldn't answer them all individually.
The emails were almost entirely questions about AATWT, when it will come out, what version, how, can he send them MP3s, will iTunes have it, etc. He shot most of them down.
But he confirmed it will be on the soundtrack in August, it will not be on iTunes, it will have all three verses, apparently someone asked him if there will be a karaoke version of it, but that's a no go. There will be a live concert of the BSG music this August in LA (lucky punks), but no plans are in the works for a tour. He hopes however to get some music from BSG into a touring orchestra.
There will be no 2-disc set for the soundtrack, but it will have the "best of the best." But there's some hope of more music with:
quote:There are plans in the works to release extra material from each season that did not make the cut on any album so far. Most likely, these tracks will be released after season 4.
So that's encouraging.
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