16 June 2008

We're all Frak ups!

So I've been slowly rewatching Battlestar Galactica over the last few weeks or so. Way back when (actually about a year ago :s) I was watching the updated Battlestar Galactica for the first time and hit a roadblock at the end of season 2 - there was nothing I felt in the story that inspired me to keep on watching. Following on from watching the simply awesome Totally Rad Show (which I still need to write a Podcast Review for, arg!), they are (obviously) big fans of the show and revealed to me, at least, that the fourth season of BSG will be the last.
I thought to myself, "hey, I'll push through onto season 3 and before I know it I would have seen it all. Now, back in the day I had some criticisms of the show, which can be found here. [As it turns out, it is the most popular post on the mirrored wordpress blog I started up a while back, but no longer maintain, so that's quite cool]. For those worried about spoilers, there are no big ones following that link, more the gist of the plot. There maybe some following the read more link, but hopefully not too big.


As of Monday evening, I rounded off the end of season 2, I had reached the point at which I didn't feel the need to carry on watching. The main reason is the terrible rushed ending. Not to throw out too big a spoiler, but in the last episode (I believe it's a double ep), they do the classic "One year later" halfway through. I didn't like it at all. It would seem more natural to have the one year later occur between the end of season two and start of season three, but then there wouldn't be the cliffhanger (be careful!)

On a more flippant note, what the hell is going on with their stationary. It seems all documents have had their corners removed and it pisses the crap out of me (which apparently has been defined as one of my sayings now). Firstly there's the simple loss of space on a document lost to these corners, it doesn't make sense to just lose the corners, it would still require something rectangular to store it all in, or are they going to cut the corners off them as well?!? What happens when they staple documents together? They obviously can't use the corner cos there isn't one.
More importantly, it seems like it was an aesthetic decision to give the show a distinct "other worldly" feel. It's a change for change's sake, if only to remind us, hey these are people, but they're not from Earth, so how can we make them different? You can just imagine the board meeting:

"hey, let's cut off all the corners from the books!"
"Yes! Great! and while we're at it, let's paint all their skin green!..."


The same can be said for the naming of the twelve colonies, yes we all got it almost immediately, they're named after the contellations of the zodiac. There was a lame scene where they revealed the "old world" names for them - Caprica,

What happens when they staple documents together?

or Capricorn, dun dun duurn! ZOMFG! All they did was swap out the end of the names with A's or On's. Lame.

I think I even saw an octagonal data disc one episode, now that just doesn't make any sense with respect to how a disc is read, i.e. it's rotated about its central axis, so logically a circle would give the most area for a defined radius compared with other shapes. Come on, humanity here is a space-faring race, even we have worked that out long ago.

That being said, Battlestar Galactica is one of the best sci-fi shows I've watched/watching. It is sci-fi but has grounded feel to it, and thankfully avoids very convenient future tech solutions which Stargate became incredibly guilty - too much mention of out of phase bollocks. "Why don't they fall through the floor?!"

Latest: I've watched the first few episodes of season three, and it's actually been pretty good for the most part, although I was left feeling a little sceptical now they managed to return the status quo it seems *rubs chin* oh well. I may throw out some more thoughts after finishing watching season four, but following the twitters of the TRS guys do not hold a lot of hope for season four *looks worried*

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