Topic: What's your favourite TV program of the moment?

[8ullfrog]

I remember you shooting down Admiral Edward James Olmos on behalf of your husbando, and that was depressing, and then you watched some Minbari series, which, yeah, that's a hell of a space yarn, but BSG was far more simple. You've got your overly religious colonials from the 12 colonies of kobol, and you've got your sexy cybernetic assassins, most hardworking of all, Tricia Helfer.


As to Harry Stamper, he'd probably shrug off liberal logic before self cremation on a quest to the sun, but then I REALLY want mr. c's Harry Stamper quest. Yeah, 12 neutron bombs is quite a big step over Armageddon, but I can't deny I'd watch it. Hopefully they'd kill off Damon Wayans for no reason other than I demand it, plus they'd make it funny, because it's 1998, and social justice isn't a thing, so eddie griffin is A-ok with that really uncomfortable poo, now that we think about it.


Seriously though Mr. c, stop making me thirst for this legendary Harry Stamper quest. Because honestly, one thing the 90's gave us over a rather bleak and scary reality was competency porn. Which even if Harry Stamper sacrificed his life for humanity, the thing he would take most pride in, was that he got the job done.


That being said, he probably would have preferred not dying, and you know, none of his friend dying. Plus the whole coming back to earth and laughing at tax paying liberals thing.


Because yeah, they didn't want to pay taxes. Ever.

[6pairsofshoes]

I don't really follow you.  Don't know about Edward James Olmos doing much beyond being an inspiring LA teacher in some movie or tv show, Stand and Deliver, I think it was.  But my memory isn't what it used to be.  My husband's taste and mine diverge widely -- he's much less adventurous.  I never really watched BSG and haven't felt much motivated to watch it.  Maybe it's because of the wasted hours watching Earth Final Conflict, which I inexplicably watched like a slow motion train wreck I couldn't look away from.  I don't have much time to devote to such long series.  I lost interest in Star Trek after the initial series, so I suspect I'm not one for BSG either.  Something about characters whose main differentiation consisted of modeling clay on their ears or foreheads sort of puts me off aesthetically.  I got pretty bored by ST the Next Generation.  I had to look up Minbari, had no clue what that was.  I've never watched that at all, so I'm somewhat confused by the reference.

This may be heresy, but there's no accounting for taste.  I am looking forward to the next season of The Expanse, though.  I'm watching Counterpart and am having trouble keeping up with what's going on.  Too many threads. I'm tempted to go find some blog to explain WTF is going on as not only are there two identical sets of characters, but there's all these underground groups and oddball sects that you need a scorecard to keep track of.

BTW, I just read Olmos' biography and he was in a 1980 Japanese film called Virus.  Has anyone seen that? It sounds intriguing.

[8ullfrog]

It's also the year of blade runner... right now. I'm disappointed.

Edward James Olmos had a no rubber heads clause in his BSG rider. If one appeared, he would scream like a little girl, faint, and never return to set.

A while back I riffed off Babylon Berlin. Babylon 5 was a fairly cheesy sci-fi series on TNT turner bought when he couldn't get trek. It begins with a war of extinction against humanity by the Minbari, after a disastrous first contact where we kill their version of Jesus Christ and the Pope rolled into one. I still say it was their fault...


Some really interesting stuff happened in B5, but the writers really did seem to be getting themselves off far too often.


Earth Final conflict was painful. I only ever watched it when home sick from school on WGN. It was actually co-launched with the abysmal Night Man - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Man_(TV_series)

The expanse cribbed off BSG hardcore at the start, to the point I stopped watching it around the time they found the girl and the thing.

BSG began with a good time holocaust of 12 worlds because the Colonials used the machine form cylons in all manner of slave labor. One of their worst ideas was using them for war, which they were exceptionally good at, and decided to kill the colonials.

They stopped ten years in, for reasons no one knew until fairly late in the series. They declared armistice and bent off into space. 40 years later, they came home. It was not a happy homecoming, and resulted in the nuclear bombardment of the 12 colonial worlds, hence, colonies and colonials. Edward James Olmos is VERY unhappy with them.

It's 4.5 seasons, thanks to a writers strike, and quality drops sharply when Jaime Bambers character gets really fat, and things turn into a soap opera for no reason. Oh and everyone loves Starbuck even though she's a horribly abusive alcoholic with suicidal tendencies. She does occasionally get punched in the face though. Tricia Helfer is a very pretty lady but I haven't seen her in anything since burn notice. I understand she's doing a retroactive blog about BSG, so maybe that'd be more your speed than the actual show.

[6pairsofshoes]

Thank you so much for that useful synopsis, as it helps put all of those series into a much needed perspective.

Blade Runner, despite its critical acclaim, never did much for me.  I felt like it dumbed down a rather complex book.  I read really bad reviews of the sequel, which I never watched.  I'd rather just kick back with another Philip K richard novel.  I am interested in the next season of The Man in the High Castle, which also varies a good deal from the novel.  The production values are really good.   And there's no Rutger Hauer among the Nazis.  How they managed that is beyond me.   Instead we have Rufus Sewell, that one British actor who plays pretty much every thing from Zen to Lord M, to head Nazi to a guest appearance on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.  Some guys get tons of work.  He's one of them, and Matthew Goode is another one.  We like to comment "that guy gets a lot of work" when we see such actors in yet another series.  The ones who bridge the pond for fatter paychecks on this side of the Atlantic are notable for their ambition and versatility.  Hugh Lawrie is another, although since his "House" he's been pretty much absent.  I expect he can kick back and cash those residual checks now.  But I digress.

I should check out some of those series. I need some late night entertainment that isn't too taxing.  The second quality I seek is something that is relatively accessible to stream for free.  Right now I seem to have run out of those things that my husband won't watch, so BSG might fit the bill if I can manage it.

[6pairsofshoes]

Haven't seen "A Knight's Tale."  Thanks to grad school, I missed about 2 decades of movies, except for the occasional art house film on campus. 

I did stream the first episode of the 2004 revamp of BSG after accidentally finding the first 5 minutes of the 1978 version with Lorne Greene.  He is best known for Bonanza, the tedious Western series, and Alpo dog food commercials ("meat.  it's a dog's natural food.").  I usually don my running shoes when I see him starring in something.  He gives me the willies for some reason.  Maybe it's that abnormally round head of his.

So I next get the Olmos version of BSG and there's robots running around with shooter arms and some blonde bad girl vision who seems to be working for the robots that not everybody can see, but you know she's trouble.  Then everybody else is enjoying high stress levels and drug induced insomnia while the President gets to keep a running reduced population count.  Maybe I missed something.  Maybe a little narrator voice over to tell me what the hell is going on.  That would have helped.

It didn't seem like a bad show and oddly enough I ran into a NYTimes article about good televised dramas that actually included that on the list.  So I'll watch some more.  One thing that was quite striking, though, was the degree to which the technologies of special effects and cinematography in both television and film have advanced in the last decade.  Even this show, filmed in 2003-04, seemed remarkably dated and sort of primitive -- although a giant leap past the 1978 version.  I expect the production values will improve in the coming seasons.

[8ullfrog]

Wait, did you just watch 33 instead of the miniseries? Tricia Helfer actually carries a lot of work as multiple characters. Basically, it's just baltar who has a six in his head. Is it Madness? Is it a chip in his head? Is it an Angel? Is it a Demon? The answer WILL disappoint you. But the human form Cylons run in lines. So you've got Ms. Helfer, who is model line six, but other models are SPOILERS.


During the series, they used the shorthand "head six" for the vision, and Caprica six for the actual incarnation. There are many other sixes out there. My favorite was the political six, Natalie. She's in the famous last supper photo the show put out.

The drug induced insomnia is a real world problem, I once had to write a school paper on an American Pilot who wiped out two teams of Canadian Special Forces because they had him on too many go pills (amphetamines) and he decided they were the enemy.

Unless you're talking about President Laura Roslin. She uses the controversial "chamala root" treatment to bolster her claim as "the dying leader" of colonial religion. That won't come back to bite her in the ass... at all.
Seriously though, 33 just drops you right the frak in, with no time to explain. Miniseries is pretty long, but it's a good 'un.

My favorite bit is in the literal last ride off Caprica, an old lady asks Baltar to read her lottery number, as she can't find her glasses. Take another look, they're on her head.

My mom does that, a lot.


Not only were the SFX REALLY EXPENSIVE, they actually had to cut back. There is a deeply painful emotional scene in which Edward James Olmos destroys a prop I won't mention because spoilers.


Turns out that "prop" was a $200,000 Museum piece, So they had to go real human for the drama after that, as shooty space ships cost money.


A lot of the roughness with the effects is intentional though. You may notice shots that are far away, as if they set the cameras up in the wrong place, or poo hitting "The camera" where no camera would be.


My dad really loved the 70's BSG, me, not so much. It's essentially space Mormons.


As to that survivor count, The colonials went from 50 billion souls to 50,298, in about 12 hours.

At the time, the show was routinely called "The best show on television"  a claim they continued to use well after the writing decline.

[6pairsofshoes]

I watched BSG Season 1 via the site you told me about a while back.  Thank you again for that.

There are still people on some planet, Caprica, with the shooter robots running around and that woman in white, blondie, up to no good.  Shoot her and there's another one, so she's clearly some kind of evil replicant. 

The blonde one on the ship keeps spouting quasi scripture at the Gael or whatever his name is:  good looking conflicted brunette guy.  I'm often in search of glasses that I have in pocket or other absurd proximity, so I can relate.  I used to have better than 20:20 vision, and then I got old.  Ha.  Some 13th ship they thought was lost suddenly shows up but they're suspicious and finally blow it up as it looks like a Cyclon ploy.  How did they come up with that name, Cyclon?  It sounds like a washing machine or a new synthetic fabric.

[8ullfrog]

Cylon. Inherited from the 78 series. They like tossing out colloquial slurs. Toasters and Chromejobs for the mechanical version, Skinjob for the human form. I think Skinjob dates from Blade Runner, but it's been a long time since I viewed the film. Like on VHS and Blockbuster existed.


I think the miniseries really would have helped out a lot, but you're already to the point where Lee smoked the Olympic carrier. That gives him series long PTSD. They made a movie about it. Seriously. RAZOR 2009.

Honestly, given a few deleted scenes, which don't count, so don't worry about it, those metal Cylons hate like you wouldn't believe. Those gun arms on the chromejobs are a kindness.

Essentially, Colonel Tigh, played by the very skilled Michael Hogan, had his own "quint moment" like Robert Shaw in jaws. He explains the Cylons liked to go for aft fire control stations and vent the ships, but along the way, they'd use those spidery claw hands to rip out stomachs. Yeah, that would have been a very different BSG.


Colonel Tigh first witnessed death after he gunned down an old model cylon centurion (They used the '78 models in flashbacks) He found a fellow crewman disemboweled.


Michael Hogan is a treasure, really, he is. By the way, he's supposed to be 78 in the series, and Adama is supposed to be 73 I believe.


Gaius Baltar (I think you called him gael) is probably my favorite character in BSG, aside from a few times they hand him the idiot ball, and he really naffs up. As a self serving narcissist, he really should have ducked when the idiot ball came flying for him.


Essentially, ALL OF THE SERIES is his fault. He thought with his richard, and it caused a holocaust. Specifically, he got hired to rewrite GPS... for the military. Cause he was buddies with the President.


He was sleeping with a Blonde, whose name he never bothered learning. She offered to "check his code" which he believed was a Raytheon style swerve. And it Kind of WAS!


Natassi (her fake name he never bothered learning) worked for Integrated Systems Engineering. (Raytheon, boeing, Haliburton, whatevs)


So the GPS update goes out, and everyone is frakked. It's an off switch, for everything. War of the Worlds level poo. It's not really even a virus, it was a legit update.


And Galactica was running windows 98. So they live, because they were the shittiest ship in the fleet. Like if the USS Midway launched for Operation Enduring Freedom.


In fact, Starbuck gets hit with the Windows Update beam, and is confused, then shreds the cylon with the machine guns on her fighter. Kinda fun scene.

[6pairsofshoes]

I found this useful article in salon.com.  https://www.salon.com/2008/04/02/bsg_explainer/

So is the miniseries described here the Lorne Greene stuff from the late 1970's?

[8ullfrog]

No Lorne Green ever in nBSG. The theme song does show up later as a colonial or military anthem, but it's a blink and you'll miss it moment.

Miniseries essentially explains most of the stuff you're having trouble with. Also has my favorite scene in the series, where Lee is actually REQUIRED to hang out with his dad. There's not a lot of love lost there, and Jaime Bamber sells the crap out of the scene.

I read your salon guide, can't say I dig their take, but it's mostly accurate. Apollo is Lee's callsign. It WAS Richard Hatch's name in the original tho.


He plays a very different character down the line, I think you'll "like" him. He never gave up on reviving battlestar.

[6pairsofshoes]

So I'm looking at the site you recommended to me a while back and there are several shorter features:  BSG The Plan 2009 (112 min); BSG 2003 (183 min); BSG Razor 2007 (104 min).  The 183 minute one sounds like it might lay the groundwork for the series I'm currently watching (Season 1, 2003).

It would help if you can direct me to which of these will allow me to patch together some of what's going on.  The episodes are sort of jumping around and it's hard to get a coherent narrative out of them.  I'm up to s1:4 now.

[8ullfrog]

Don't watch the plan yet. It's essentially a curtain being pulled back on the Cylons and their true motives. It also came out after the series ended.

BSG 2003 is more than likely the miniseries, and should definitely clear up the parts that are bugging you. The series was pretty good at show not tell, aside from a few ass pulls.

Razor is fuzzy, it jumps around quite a bit, but officially, it slots in the middle of Season 2, after the episode "The Captain's Hand" You can actually skip it and not miss much, but it's a fun movie in it's own right.

Good news is you haven't really hit any "holy frakkin poo" moments yet, and the miniseries should defog things quite a bit.

That being said, what did you think of the prison ship episode? Tom Zarek originally played Apollo in the original BSG, so it's essentially Apollo v Apollo.

Also fun political poo, there was a teachers riot on Caprica over people not getting paid, so the President had them shot. I thiiiink it got mentioned in that episode? It's been a few years.

[6pairsofshoes]

I'm somewhat confused by the whole concept of Caprica.  If I understand, the Cylons pretty much killed everyone who wasn't on a ship, so wtf with these stragglers running about on Caprica, and why, rather than kill anyone, if the Cylons can pretty much replicate and infiltrate humans, do they need to exterminate them?  There's plenty of fuzzy logic to go around here.

The need for water and offering to have the prisoners earn get out of jail points made some sense and the election issue also, but I missed the guy who was the prisoner anti hero being the old Apollo.  That sort of stuff flies over my head.  I tried watching that miniseries but it was just a continuous showing of the first few episodes of the series 1, no difference whatsoever, so whoever uploaded it was confused.

I just finished blondie trying to get Dr. Gaius charged with conspiring with Cylons and failing.  They have a goopy cylon ship that the hotshot hot blonde pilot managed to fly off the moon she'd crashed on after shooting it out of the sky.  It's not clear what happened to whatever was flying it, or maybe it was auto controlled.

At this point, I think we're hijacking the thread.  I have frequent insomnia so I'm watching the series.  The production values seem pretty primitive and the character development is rather thin, so I can't say it's up to the standards of The Expanse, but I suspect that had a bunch more money thrown at it and it's filmed much later so at least there's more cool stuff.  I also find the sad unknowable nostalgia of the race that set up the amazing infrastructure and then died intriguing.  Julia Mao is interesting in that she basically gets sacrificed to a technology that is little understood by her evil father.  That's a far cry from "our robots are trying to kill us and doing a fine job of it" unless that's how you are reading the vestiges of the alien civilization that created the various gates, transportation systems and other devices created by the protomolecule.  I had the impression that whatever killed that nameless civilization came from outside of it, but I could be wrong.  They've pushed release of the next installment of the series (books) until March, I believe.

[8ullfrog]

Elevation, and the colonials have much better anti-radiation meds. It's sci-tech, to be sure, complete cowpoo in our world, but I believe you've already seen how it works.

Helo and Sharon tracked down meds, right? Those are anti-radiation. They're about as unpleasant as the meds from the fallout video games.

Rad-x gives you a limited defense against radiation. RadAway violently purges the radiation from your system... rectally. You can understand why a TV show might want to avoid this.

Survivors on caprica, and I guess golly the other 11 planets, are those who were at high altitude when the bombs came down. Caprica is an irradiated shithole. People are essentially lucky rats.


Anyway, back on Caprica, the cylons are hunting the rats. They want to kill the humans, because they believe they have inherited life from God.

Seriously. Humanity were the Children of God, Cylons were the children of Man, and they don't much like them.


The infiltration is not perfect. They've got 12 models. If they pushed that poo too hard? They'd show up on surveilance cams, poo like that. The miniseries... watch it. I don't want to ruin surprises that blew my frakkin mind when I saw them.


Imagine 12 people. now imagine they have twins. Now imagine that again. And again. And again. That's the weakness of the human form cylons.


Eh, maybe the copy you got was bent? I'll track down the original. I've had it on USB stick since 2003, but that helps you not at all.


The cylon raider is a cylon. Starbuck blew it's brains out, and is flying by ganglial responses. It smells really bad.


The water shortage is because terrorism, but yeah, they could all die. Roslin and Baltar explained supply shortages in the miniseries, it was actually pretty good compared to "We'll just replicate poo" from most Scifi.


Shelly Godfrey is another six. She isn't just trying to prosecute Gaius, she's also trying to seduce Bill Adama, and I honestly think he's embarassed for her.

I'll gladly throw a BSG thread up to stop stomping the thread, and if anyone with a stinkin' badge wants to move it, well that'd be alright with me.


I don't want to get to involved with the series Caprica, as it was an embarassing soap opera, but the whole dad using his daughter for evil economic purposes? well it's all there.

If you're wanting a dead civilization that directly lead to the damnation of their children? BSG Season 2.


There is also an interesting toll that might be Scriptural, or might be literal, that any ship that sets down on Kobol must pay a price in blood, but that's getting WAY ahead of ourselves.



Essentially, BSG starts on the Armistice station. An old Colonial officer shuffles through paperwork while something docks with the station.


You should see


UNIVERSAL LOGO
THE CYLONS WERE CREATED BY MAN.

THEY WERE CREATED TO MAKE LIFE EASIER ON THE TWELVE COLONIES.

AND THEN THE DAY CAME WHEN THE CYLONS DECIDED TO KILL THEIR MASTERS.

That was actually really difficult to track down, I used swatchseries, but I kept being redirected to either a fake Virus warning, or the charmingly named game, CXXX Wars.


Anyway, swatchseries labels it episode 0.

[goldshirt*9]

Nowt.
The Six nations is coming up though