Battlestar Galactica - How not to do internal consistency

A game of Battlestar Galactica the board over the weekend got me in the mood for watching the series again. The 2004 one, Christ, not the original, fuck no. I never watched more than the first two seasons because the second half of the second season was a massive nose-dive in quality, and from what I heard it never really recovered. And no, "that episode" in season three does not count as recovery.

However, the "personality of the week" issues that would haunt the show later were always lurking in the shadows in the form of some of the most fucking lazy plotting and internal consistency I have seen in sci-fi, which was pretty amazing considering how anal they were about tracking things like number of ships remaining, etc. To make those issues more bearable as I travel though the show I'm going to damn well complain about them here. Not issues which careful analysis revealed, but stuff dumb enough that I spot it as it's happening.

Season 0 Episode 1

The stupid starts early with the very first scene of the negotiator on the space station. Oh yes, it's a great intro to the Cylons but it doesn't half make them look stupid. Three Cylons go onto the ship so one of them can get some action before all of them get blown up by their own basestar (which the series can't seem to make up its mind if they're called this or baseships, you think the military would be a little more particular about this). The episode "Scar" in season 2 is going to make this scene even dumber, so really this scene should actually undermine the entire premise of the "Scar" episode.

Our second scene of stupid is the woman who decides to leave her baby with the woman who, only moments ago, she was clearly uncomfortable with touching her child. Thankfully those two feet she covers allow her to converse with her husband. Loudly. Across a crowd. As you do.

Glowing spines during sex.

Oh fuck me a child actor. Why? Whyyyyyyyyyyyy? He is not long for this show, thankfully. It is going to be hilariously awkward when he's hanging around in Boomer's kiss scene later though.

Laura Roslin forbids them from jumping away from the incoming Cylons so... the civilians on her ship can die with the other civilians? I mean the writers are so fucking lazy and this is so fucking dumb that they don't even try to justify it. This entire scene exists simply to create a cliff-hanger and give Apollo a hero moment.

Season 0 Episode 2

Oh god, another child actor!

Oh look, Laura Roslin, who only in the previous episode wouldn't leave civilians behind, is now approving a plan to leave civilians behind.

Adama somehow knows this guy is a Cylon. How? And why didn't have have him in chains or shot several scenes earlier? There clearly can't have been a suspicion Cylons look like humans because in a later scene he and Saul are going to puzzle over what to do about it as if it's a new problem. Nope, Adama knows because the writers want to wrap this one up and can't come up with a good way to have the colonials find out this information.

No one is giving Baltar shit, indeed Gaetar is sympathising with him. WTF? Microsoft have a security vulnerability and the net goes wild, but this guy writes (or so they think) something that allows the Cylons to wipe out humanity and no one bats an eyelid.

Ah, the first mention of the Cylon detector. This is going to be the single, stupidest on-going problem with the show, and the writers are only going to make it worse as the show goes on. At least at this point it's make-believe, even though someone like Gaius Baltar should realise that the second he mentions Cylons look like humans and that he has a means to detect them, that he is going to be asked to use this. Again. And again. And even if he didn't, you think his head six would have been readying an excuse for him to use later. But really, in a show based around the paranoia of "the enemy is among us", the entire idea of the cylon detector is so terrible it should never have made it past draft.

Starbuck blows up a missile near Apollo's ship, with no negative effect. I'm pretty sure in earlier scenes this very event has been used to cripple ships and send them off-course.

So, why is Starbuck out there without support? Is the "what?" supposed to indicate she didn't hear the recall? What kind of shitty recall is this?

Conclusion

The mini-series is actually pretty damn awesome, better than I remember.

Season 1 - Episode 1 "33"

Everyone is touching some photo, but no doubt it will be explained. Outside the show. In an FAQ or interview or something. Nicely done, writers. Probably worried they'd have to explain how the photo got off the planet it was taken on, and how it was developed and printed.

A single ship fails, the ship which coincidentally just happens to be the ship being used for tracking the fleet. Somehow. Events take a rather nonsensical turn at this point because the writers want to keep the connection to God which means they can't put a proper explanation on the screen because that'd ruin their cool moment. So instead we get silliness. Was it just a malfunction? What a massive fucking coincidence that the only ship to have a problem just happened to resolve all the problems, both of tracking and of Baltar. And why jump in 33 minutes after that ship? You didn't catch the fleet the first, what, 258 times, so why tip your hand and make this your last chance when you'll invariably fail again? Go go Cylon stupidity.

Why put nukes on the Olympic Carrier? They know Galactica can detect them, so what's the point? A feeble hope that President Roslin is in full retard mode again?

Why is the Olympic Carrier here at all? If the Olympic Carrier can jump to the fleet's location then why do the Cylons only arrive 33 minutes later. I guess they couldn't just jump right into the middle of everyone and launch missiles. Oh wait, yes they could as established in Season 0. They've had hours to plot this jump!

Oh look, another pointless Cylon death! Yep, they decide to sort of give-away to Helo for some reason that Cylons look like humans and once again kill a six for no reason. Guess she likes dying, sorry Scar episode but you have a lot of explaining to do. This plan is especially brilliant as having thrown suspicion on humans, they have Boomer make an unexpected appearance. Thankfully Helo isn't thinking with his brain at this point.

Conclusion

It's kind of sad that the show peaks this early. It's arguably the strongest episode in all four seasons, and it's one of the few to actually capture the feel of the colonials on the run from the Cylons.


Season 1 - Episode 2 "Water"

Oh god, the stupid Cylon detector is back. Naturally the genius and head six are completely unprepared for this completely predictable request for the single most useful thing the fleet could possess beyond a food generation machine.

Wait, did Adama and Roslin just reverse personalities? She wants to deploy the military to a civilian ship? I mean, this is part of the show prepping Roslin the stone-heart, but it really doesn't feel like a good fit based on what we know about her.

Conclusion

This is a really tight episode with lots of great character moments. I personally love seeing the beginning of the fall of Boomer as she and the Chief go full on denial. But it also ties neatly into issues like supply problems and the lax way in which Galactica has been run. It also has a plot which makes more sense than 33.

Although I loved the initial pilot, it did contain a massive error that was perpetuated throughout the series and that ruined the show for me. I couldn't get past episode 10 or so b/c this fundamental flaw just F'ed the show for me: this business with not being able to medically detect a Cylon. Unless you assume that BG science is not like our Earth science, this makes no sense whatsoever. Either a Cylon is physically different from a human, which means that detecting them is very easy, or they are physically the same down to the molecular level, which means that they ARE human, unless you assume some hand-wavy science fantasy or pseudo religious hocus pocus fu. The pilot starts out as a hard sci-fi type of show and in theory the whole show has a certain hard sci-fi zeitgeist but that the "undetectable Cylon" thing just ruins it. I mean what with all the Gods stuff, you could just call it science fantasy but then you totally throw out any kind of predictability and the show loses what made the pilot good.

For example, the pilot rocked b/c it contained a classic "Cold Equations" scene when the President's ship warped out to escape destruction while the rest of the civvies got nuked. That's awesome and most weeny-Hollywood sci-fi would have pulled that punch. But BG hung in there. Then, within the very same pilot they crapped all over themselves with the whole quasi-mystical "undetectable Cylon" crap. Bah.

They have a method by episode 3 and are able to detect them by episode 6 or so, and I'm going to have a field day with that one.

The plotting on BSG generally hit mediocre only occasionally. Keep in mind that as ridiculous as it was, a) it provided a pretty awesome ride on those first few seasons and b) it was about the only show in town, in terms of sci-fi on TV. Later on the terrible plotting got even more terribad and overwhelmed the show's good points, but for those first several seasons it managed to work.

I've been rewatching it as well. And the whole "we can detect nukes" thing is randomly turned on and off for plot reasons.

"Hey guys, why is there a nuke on this ship that shouldn't have nukes for the past month?", and being able to detect nukes onboard ships well away from the fleet, but the minute they're told a bomb is on a ship they suddenly have to walk hand scanners around the place to find it.

It's a good series, but they do back themselves into corners with the plot pretty often, and then just hand wave it away instead of trying to figure out how this would make sense.

I'll give you that for Season 0 Episode 1 through to Season 2 Episode whatever-the-end-of-the-Pegasus-arc-was and no more. It smells of classic "our run was extended and we have no fucking idea what to do" cock-up.


Season 1 - Episode 3 "Bastile Day"

President Roslin is fine with deploying troops to stop rioting, but not sending prisoners to get essential supplies without consent. Got those priorities straight.

Wow, that's a lot of men with guns guarding the prisoners. Five minutes from now they're all going to go grab lunch together.

Opening all the cell doors? Doesn't strike me as the greatest plan Lee. Perhaps a show of hands?

For a man everyone has supposedly forgotten Zareck is recognised immediately. By everyone. Including the entire prison army he recruits. And guard.

Helo, having just escaped from the Cylons (who should be looking for him) decides to enter the city shouting. Good to see that military survival training is paying off. He then follows-through by pointlessly expending his valuable ammunition to kill a rat. Brilliant.

Oh look, the guards all went and grabbed lunch.

So Lee starts hitting people for no particularly good reason. No one attempts to obstruct him or anything, he just starts punching. Way to escalate the situation, Lee. And he's been built-up as the calm and level-headed character.

Sooooo, why is Lee kept unrestrained near Zarek? The Lee who showed he's happy to punch the first thing that comes near him. TAKE ZAREK HOSTAGE! Oh wait, no, they're just going to converse.

Baltar admits he made up the previous Cylon detector, so naturally they'll be a lot of blow-back for this. Oh wait, no, there'll be none, because they're reliant on him. For what? They were dependent on him for this and apparently he made it all up. No one else can count grain? No mention of the poor bastard they left behind? No sudden concern that they still have a Cylon agent on the ship because the guy they threw off was picked at random?

Oh Lee, you so dumb. You respected Zarek until he resorted to violence and hostage taking, yet the reason his book was banned and you know of him is BECAUSE HE BLEW UP A BUILDING.

Oh fuck me, the stupid Cylon detector is invented. No, show, no. You don't want to do this.

Oh great, Starbuck is the best shot out of the cockpit too.

Starbuck, how dumb are you? There's like a million guns pointing at Lee and your best advice is that he kills Zarek, even though having him hostage is the only reason he's still alive? Fucking genius.

There's.. there's a laser sight on the sniper rifle with scope? Oh fuck me. As if that wasn't bad enough, she doesn't even have it on, so getting aim was pointless because she fucks it up by enabling the laser.

Oh great work Lee, you've left them the ship. Oh but they have no weapons. Except the ship. In the hands of a man who wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.

Conclusion

I'm not a fan of this episode, Lee is an irritating idealist tit who doesn't seem to realise there are only 50,000 people still alive, and Zarek is two-dimensional evil. However, Baltar has some great scenes where he struggles to fight against head six and perhaps better himself. Unfortunately for him he loses.


Season 1 - Episode 4 "Act of Contrition"

Remember when the Cylon raiders were a terrifying occurrence? When a few raiders could jump in and instantly decimate ships with their missiles? Well the writer's don't, and the raiders will never represent any kind of threat to the colonials outside of Season 0, indeed they become a joke enemy. Wow, sure am afraid of that Cylon pursuit now. So Starbuck engages eight of them and what should be a massacre as they unleash their missiles on her, becomes a farce because the missiles are magically gone. This will never be explained, not even some throwaway line noting how these were scouts and not raiders. What we've got here is some lazy fucking writing, the writers needed to have Starbuck kick ass and they changed her enemy to suit. It's the low point of the series because it removes all tension from all future raider confrontations.

Conclusion

This was a really clumsy episode, the writing is no where near strong enough to pull off the kind of mental trauma plot they're shooting for with Starbuck. It has its moments though and I do enjoy that Galactica's own worst enemy continues to be their own lax attitudes. Oh, and it introduces the doctor and you have to love him!

I'm looking forward to the part of the series near the end where they simply couldn't write a confrontation between two or more characters without one of them pulling a firearm. It reminded me of that bit in the US The Office where Michael explains that he always pulls a gun in an improv scene because that is the most dramatic thing that could possibly happen.

Re: Raiders:

They basically treat them as idiots past episode 1. Instead of amazingly precise hardware that is piloted by a creature designed entirely to do this well, you see the humans basically considering 10-1 odds a fair fight. The humans smack them around in bulk with any ancient hardware they can find.

But I can't wait for the stealth ship appearance in your re-watch. That thing breaks the plot completely, is used once, and then thrown the fuck away because it breaks the plot completely and will never be rebuilt because what the shit were the writers thinking?

Oh god the stealth Viper. Built from fucking spare parts no less! That's like the episode from TNG when they find the top secret Federation ship with a cloaking device that doesn't just cloak, it can pass through solid fucking objects! They equip the Enterprise with it, and in the next episode it's like it never existed. Shame on BSG for pulling that kind of shit.

edit: Oh, and speaking of internal consistency, I can't wait for the episode when Starbuck stumbles across a Raider she shot down, climbs in, and learns to pilot it in minutes. Before that, it was pretty established that Raiders are Cylons. The whole ship is a being. It even has the glowy red eye in the front. Why are there controls inside for a humanoid to pilot it? It makes no fucking sense, show.

As one reviewer pointed out, doesn't this mean Baltar has a fully functioning cylon detector in his pants?

I can excuse the Raiders getting their arses handed to them. At no point are they really shown to be great in a fight; the Cylon advantage is in their devastating effect on all the shiny technology that the military was relying on so heavily.

Guess which one they went with.

They had guided missiles, the colonials don't. The end. Beyond that there is, as others mentioned, the fact that they are constructed entirely for the purpose of fighting in space, this is a devastatingly huge advantage. But because the writers are fucking lazy they resorted to the cliche of the good guys being the brave few fighting the impossible odds, when really they should have been running like mad or employing huge number advantages in carefully planned surprise attacks.

Have you seen Moore's initial bible for the show?

Oh yeah, this bugged the shit out of me, you have these Cylons, who glow during sex, have incredible strength compared to a human, and yet are completely undetectable? Does not compute. It should be very trivial to detect them. Of course, I could let that pass if it wasn't for all the other stupidity and just bat-shit character swings. The only show worse than BSG was Heroes as far as that's concerned.

To be fair as far as the religious sci-fi wankery goes, that was a staple of the original series as well. Even though I hate and loathe when sci-fi resorts to stupid fantasy tropes, like prophecies. (Though in general these days, I am incredibly tired of prophesy in creative work)

Not just guided missiles, they don't have to worry about G-forces, so should be able to pull off maneuvers that would kill a normal human or cause them to black out.

To be fair, the glowing spines were only in the mini-series and didn't appear in the series-proper.

The prophecy was fine when it was "Is she a prophet or is she having cancer hallucinations?" Roslin traipsing around with her nutty zealot pal while everyone around her rolled their eyes made for a great contrast with the heavily religious Cylons.

Then it all went to shit.

Season 1 - Episode 5 "You can't go home again"

Ah, so now we're assuming the Cylons are better and faster than the colonials, despite losing a fight which primarily consisted of 7-1 odds. Yes, a sound assumption.

Seriously, how is Roslin not noticing Baltar talking to himself RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER?

Considering the number of nukes detonated near where Helo landed, this city seems to be in pretty tip-top shape.

Ah yes, the next genius survival move of Helo, going top-side to make some breakfast while whistling. Fuck me, how did this guy survive two hours on this planet?

Big surprise, centurions arrive to ruin the party, but it's all part of the plan. That would work better had the stupidity been suggested by Boomer!

Helo, FFS, will you stop bouncing every time you fire a gun!

So why is there a hatch on the fighter?

Oh look, Starbuck can see through the Cylon visor. Seriously? Why is it even there then?

The tentacle rape fantasies are coming true as Starbuck makes Japan proud!

Starbuck comments on what a great flying machine this is and proceeds to completely outmanoeuvre a viper. Seriously, it's like the writers are spitting in my face.

Conclusion:

Despite the silliness of the raider I rather like this episode, I think it exposes some of the humanity of the military and does well at putting the military and civilian leadership at odds, and not on the sides you would have expected based on the early episodes. It would have helped if the cables in the ship had looked more organic or something, like Starbuck was squeezing nerve endings or something, but a hearty thumbs up for this one.

I like how your reviews poke holes in the ridiculousness of the episode, then often end in an approving tone.

The religious stuff initially didn't bother me that much; it actually worked in the context of a civilisation that was founded in the ashes of an earlier, space-faring one. Some of the prophecy stuff worked for the same reason. It really did start to go to shit later on though..

Season 1 - Episode 6 "Litmus"

Apparently Captain Adama doesn't possess the good sense of his XO. Why request an armed detail against a foe -- that even when weakened almost killed you -- when you have the power of voice?

A Cylon kills himself, because Cylons do that a lot. Oh future Scar episode, you so dumb.

It's never made entirely clear why the Master at Arms needs to operate without command review, especially as all the previous incidents are presumably her fault because she's responsible for internal security.

Standing on that roof over-looking Helo in full uniform with your Cylon buddies is probably not the best plan when all he had to do was lean back on the boxes behind him to see you.

"I know I'm a Cylon" Boomer looks uncomfortable with the idea of being beaten up and suffering pain, yet aren't all the Cylons going to meaningless deaths all the time, and part of that is the painful process of resurrection... oh wait, that BS isn't introduced until Scar.

Conclusion

Back when this show started one of the promises was how continuity would matter. This episode delivers. It builds off all the security issues that have happened before, all the little secrets that have been kept and runs with them. It's a great episode, even letting Adama have his hero moment, only for it to bite him in the ass later. Hell, it doesn't even end with sunshine and roses in this episode because Adama is happy for the less important crew member to take the fall so he can keep his planes flying.

Fuck yes.

Agreed 100,000%! This is the episode that got me into the show, and it was kinda sad that only one other episode (Exodus, Part 2) even came close to being as great as this one.

My memory ranks the first half of season 2 as, on average, stronger than season 1. I'll be interested to see if that bears out.

Same here. I saw "33" without having even seen the mini-series/pilot, and I thought to myself "whoah, this is a show that's going to go places". I was right, but unfortunately, they turned out to be very low-quality places.

Same here, I saw this ep before seeing the mini-series, and totally saw the mini-series after that.

Yeah, I believe the latter part of season 2 is when it starts to fall apart, mostly with Black Market. After New Caprica especially, it never recovers, I think.

It's sad that as the show went on, my favorite episode was the lawyer and his cat, and the interaction with Apollo. I can't even remember his name, but he plays Crowley on Supernatural now. To me, the invisible cat episode was heart-wrenching. BSG tries a lot to do that, but rarely succeeds.

Romo Lampkin for president! I loved that guy! It helps though that I've adored Mark Sheppard ever since his turn as Badger in Firefly.

Amusingly Black Market is directly after the Pegasus arc. They go from their strongest to their weakest in one episode. We're going to have some fun with that nuke Baltar has later too.

Oh lord, I loved the Pegasus arc. Then again I still have a mega crush on Michelle Forbes. ;) I do love the music for the intro for the Pegasus too.

Also, folks, if you're a BSG fan, and you ever get a chance to see a live BSG concert with the show's composer, do so. Fucking. Amazing.

That was pretty typical of Galactica. They'd blow their wad in two or three fantastic episodes, then you'd have a half season of crap.

I honestly thought the end of the Pegasus arc was one of the weaker displays of the writers painting themselves into corners.

"Well, they're going to have to kill each other, and come to terms with that. Oh look, they don't! Uh.. so how do we resolve this and get the show back on track? I KNOW, DEUS EX CYLON!

Apparently all the people besides me who thought this show was a piece of shit do exist, and have been hiding out in this thread. I made it a little into season 2 before giving up.

I made it through the first three and a half seasons. The show had its high points that were generally worth sitting through the low points to get to, at least from my position. Exodus Pt. 2 was the last of those highs, within a season after that I'd totally lost interest. I also think initial excitement over having a science fiction show on TV took it pretty far as well, that excitement helped folks overlook the cracks.

Exodus Pt 2 is the one where the ill-advised occupied colony got rescued with in-atmosphere hyperspace-jump badassery, right?

I had the sense to stop watching with that episode. I thought about all the episodes before, and concluded that was likely to be the high note that would never happen again.

The mutiny episodes in the final season are the last of the high points post Exodus, in that the show finally got back to decisions having consequences in regards to the fleet, which had been entirely left out of the show in favor of soap opera/hokey religious bullshit.

I think a lot of fans held out until the end because the creators were adamant, much like with Lost, that it would all make sense and that the consistency was going to be there and they totally weren't making shit up as they went along. A lot of fans of the show sat through the final season and just had a sense of "WTF" at the end.

Yeah, that was where the show pretty much stopped being awesome/good. Downhill from there. I'm still pissed off about the finale.