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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 12:50:04 GMT -5
Hrm. My reviews are mixed. I loved the first 65 minutes and the last 5. The intervening Lord of the Rings-style denouement took too much time and was deathly boring. Too much time killing people and saying long goodbyes. I don't think Baltar is God after all. I think God went unrevealed...and wasn't that an "it"? You know "it" doesn't like that name? Yeah, I think the New Earth stuff could have been...shaped more gracefully? I think part of the problem was that they were having scheduling problems shooting some of the actors, especially Tamoh (who gets shot early on after "carrying Hera" establishing shots and then is not seen until one "walking through generic grasslands" scene) and CKR (who, should be noted, shows up six times in file footage for one brief awkward bit of new dialogue); both were shooting other series in Vancouver (Dollhouse and Shattered, respectively) and got sort of stuck in anyhow, unrehearsed and not particularly meaningfully. People on the internets are also hating on JB's hair, which is for his character in L&O:UK. All of s4 has had places where the structural difficulties of shooting in the real world show through the fiction, especially damage to character continuity due to the writer's strike: suntans that come and go, weird instantaneous weight gain and loss, problems with actor availabilty changing emphasis on relationships. The flashbacks in the Daybreak episodes obscure some of the problems, but one wonders what would have happened if the last episode had been shot without scheduling conflicts. Julia, it was weird watching Dollhouse second last night, when one of the first lines Mellie says to Paul is that he doesn't seem to learn anything by being shot.
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 13:01:18 GMT -5
I've read at least one article which contended that populations of humans dropped below 10,000 world-wide more than once in evolutionary history; the numbers I've seen for the size of the groups which populated North America are in the hundreds, total. If Hera is "Mitochondrial Eve" it implies that the Gallacticans (less likely, the Cylons) were carrying a plague which did major damage to the H. erectus population they were surrounded by, or that female H. erectus or H. erectus X televisicus individuals were at severe reproductive disadvantage. Because otherwise the math just doesn't work. Comparing it with Pern is instructive; Pern went back to the worst kind of feudal tyranny because people tried to hang on to tech they couldn't manufacture, and the extreme conservatism necessitated by trying to keep geriatric computer systems running left them fucked when things broke. Julia, the universe building has a lot in common with LeGuin's Hainish Cycle, where seeding H.sap. variants across the galaxy was an intentional experiment. I was also really surprised that Hera is Mitochondrial Eve, if for no reason than the fact of her being the only hemicylon on the planet - it implies that not only did Galactica's humans outcompete the natives, but also that Hera's line outcompeted the "pure" human lines, too. I thought it was a huge coincidence given there was only the one of her. But, then, perhaps God wanted it that way. Dave and I were thinking in terms of the actual groups we saw, which seemed to be very tiny - a couple hundred at most walking along...and where were all the children? No kids at all among the settlers, or did the producers neglect to show us any of them? I would be onboard with the leaving behind of most technology, since, as you say, it's not something they can replicate...but some things would be handy, like the aforementioned antibiotics, and I would have converted the ships to usable tools as much as possible before destroying them, most likely. Lots of metal for good farming implements, if nothing else. I just worry that none of them actually knows how to farm, so a generation of using technology as a minor crutch might be handy. I just looked up the timeline of human evolution on Wikipedia, and what stopped me cold is that the Y Chromosome Adam is only 60K BP- again, no way of telling how many individuals held that Y back them, but it's 90K years more recent than the Mitochondrial Eve. I was just reading the Metafilter thread on the BSG series finale, and it, as well as Jacob's review on TWoP, seems full of the usual stupidity having to do with wild humans: everyone dies by thirty (NO. NO. No 1000) wild animals kill everyone, et'c and so on. I need a more adept computer user than I to do a simulation combining all the bad demographic assumptions into one model; the time I tried to run a very simplified version by hand, using published mortality and morbidity figures derived from archaeological data, I couldn't keep any population smaller than 100 (which is ten times the usual minimum band size) going for more than five years. Or, as someone on my flist said: Icky nature! Get it off me! Julia, not that I think Ron Mooore is converant in issues in population anthropology, just that the modern common-sense models don't stand up to careful analysis.
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Post by Rachael on Mar 21, 2009 13:04:54 GMT -5
Dave and I were thinking in terms of the actual groups we saw, which seemed to be very tiny - a couple hundred at most walking along...and where were all the children? No kids at all among the settlers, or did the producers neglect to show us any of them? i have no idea if this is what they intended or just what i took from it, but personally i interpreted the main group they looked at through the binoculars as a hunting group. i guess maybe i interpreted them that way just because it seems to be the way ancient peoples are usually depicted. (well, that and the spears, or at least what looked to me like spears) No, actually I meant the Galactica human groups, which were never shown to be more than a few dozen - undoubtedly for casting purposes - extras aren't hugely expensive, but why bother?
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 13:14:54 GMT -5
If Hera is "Mitochondrial Eve" it implies that the Gallacticans (less likely, the Cylons) were carrying a plague which did major damage to the H. erectus population they were surrounded by, or that female H. erectus or H. erectus X televisicus individuals were at severe reproductive disadvantage. Because otherwise the math just doesn't work. 150,000 years ago was recently enough for Homo sapiens to be evolving/have evolved (depending what date one believes) from H. erectus in africa. i agree that it seems like the writers knew enough about the science to make it sound like they knew what they were talking about to laypeople, but that they didn't really put it to the most accurate use. i thought of that, too. Hi, artemis: I'm the one here with actual academic background in Anthropology, BTW. And yeah, 150K BP is within the H.erectus / early H. sap. transition, and I suspect was chosen for that reason. I suspect Mr. Moore did the same thing I did: googled Timeline of Human Evolution and took the first result to Wikipedia. (Which is why problems with Wikipedia should be of interest to anyone who cares about issues of scientific concepts in popular culture). LeGuin puts a lot of effort into retconning the Hainish stories; the earliest ones, like Rocannon's World are pure space cololialist stories, and it's only as explained later that the space test-tube aspects show up. Julia, not that that's meant to say they aren't worth reading; the fact that she puts so much thought into the Colonialist aspects to begin woth makes the over-riding Hainish experiments story convincing.
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 13:25:50 GMT -5
OH- about kids; it's a matter of availability of child extras in Vancouver, I think. Even the Stargate shows rarely have many (and in the scene in SGA where the Athosians are released from Michael's prison, three of the six kids are Joe Flanigan's boys). I suspect that the labor and education law in BC is not matched with the kind of human infrastructure present in LA.
One of the first people I got to know in fandom was a studio teacher/child welfare rep, and I left with new appreciation of just how expensive and labor-intensive it is for children to be used in any kind of continuing production. A child featured player, essential to the plot, is not that much more expensive than a child extra doing a walk-by.
Julia, Me, I would have just not used the stupid "people walking single file" shots, anyway, they were...insufficiently interesting or meaningful.
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 14:02:50 GMT -5
Also, I saw these names in this order Athena, Helo and Hera and it struck me that time is moving backward: Athena and Helo (Helo is to Apollo as Aten is to Ra, specifically the Sun's disc as the engenderer of life as opposed to the humanized aspects of the sun god) give birth to the Great Goddess/Mother of the Gods, which is recursiveto say the least, if not entirely ass-backwards.
Julia, this stuff makes my brain hurt, some days.
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 14:59:50 GMT -5
Also, because I myself found the promos last night confusing, the other project which is confirmed, and possibly done shooting, and will be aired on Scifi SyFy is The Plan, to whit: The Plan (TV Movie) Main article: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan On August 7, 2008 Sci-Fi Channel officially announced the production of a two-hour TV movie which will air after the final episode of Season 4. Written by Jane Espenson and directed by Edward James Olmos, The Plan storyline begins before the attack on the 12 colonies and will show events mainly from the perspective of two Cylon agents.[18] Confirmed cast members include Olmos, Michael Trucco, Aaron Douglas and Dean Stockwell.[19] Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Rick Worthy, Matthew Bennett, Callum Keith Rennie, Michael Hogan and Rekha Sharma will also feature.[20] The movie began production on September 8, 2008.[20] Julia, from wikipedia's BSG main page
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Post by Julia, wrought iron-y on Mar 21, 2009 17:13:53 GMT -5
Question: is Kara Thrace Isis, Orisis, or Horus?
Julia, pretty sure I've thought more about this in the past sixteen hours than Ron Moore did in five years...
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Post by Karen on Mar 21, 2009 17:47:35 GMT -5
Of course, Baltar stays.
Oy, to the Battlestar ramming the Cylon colony imagery.
Sperm to egg? Or 'up yours'.
Oh, the metal cylons marching alongside the humans is so cool and freaky.
Go Boomer! I don't think it'll save your soul, but at this point, that isn't really the point, is it?
Caprica - straight to DVD and digital download?
Robot vs robot. whoa.
Oh shit. LOL! Now, THAT I didn't see coming at all. It's the Doublemint twins.
I did that see that coming. Goodbye Boomer.
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Post by Karen on Mar 21, 2009 18:02:35 GMT -5
NOT Helo.
Frack.
Hera. stop running.
It's like Hera and Roslin are one.
Except they aren't.
Hera. Baltar and Caprica. Ok. This is a little weird. Is this Hera's vision?
We've been here before.
The opera house. Except it's not. The Five.
Fuck. Cavil nees to die.
"I see angels." Another force at work.
Dreams/prophecy to a chosen few. God is not on any one side. A force of nature - beyond good and evil.
Requires a leap of faith. Hope not fear.
"We'll give you resurrection."
"Everyone, stand down." Interesting. All Cavil wanted was resurrection.l
Does he have to die first? One could only hope that would happen.
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Post by Karen on Mar 21, 2009 18:09:46 GMT -5
Oh. Oh. This is not going to be pretty.
Nope not pretty at all.
Except for the part where Cavil offed himself. The coward.
Jumping blind..Kara leads them to their distruction.
There must be some way out of here.
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Post by Karen on Mar 21, 2009 18:52:42 GMT -5
Ah. Being forgotten. That's what scares Kara. Galactica will never jump again. Her back is broken. Earth. She's so pretty. The gang's all back together again. Mostly. Prehistoric earth. This is so frickin' cool. A clean slate. Centurians are set free. Ah. Sam is going into the sun. Bloody hell. OMG. Kara is breaking my heart. "See you on the other side." The perfection of creation. The beauty of Physics, the wonder of mathematics. Gaelin - going to England, I'm assuming. Earth is a dream. Oh. Is he going to do what I think he's going to do? I am not liking this. Kara. Don't leave Lee. They are always leaving each other. whoooooshh......and she's gone. And so is Laura....nice gesture with the ring. Helo is alive! Yay! Hera. Heheh. The things men do for love. Baltar want to do some cultivating. Oh good. Adama just wants to build another ship on high for his love. 150,000 years later. All of this has happened before. Let a complex system repeat .... something surprising will happen. So, Baltar is God. Hah! Of course he is. *snort* What a great ride this series was!
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Post by rich on Mar 22, 2009 9:53:53 GMT -5
First, to Onjel for calling it. Second, have to disagree with folks about the value of the bucolic, "let's start over" dying, disappearing, "what are your plans now?", etc. scenes. BSG may not follow the rules of Science Fiction but it does follow the rules of character-driven drama which, IMO, is what it truly is: All the major characters come to know themselves. Everyone is left in touch with who they truly are. Third we seem to be skipping past what is, IMO, the central scene. The showdown in the CIC. The higher power, through the "Opera House" vision/prophecy guides Human and Cylons to a place where they must decide whether to end the cycle of violence. In that scene Balthar, for all his many, many faults, is indeed God's spokesperson. Initially the answer is yes, but proves too difficult to carry out. Tyrol exacts vengeance on Tory for Callie's murder. The cycle begins anew.
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Post by Karen on Mar 22, 2009 13:14:56 GMT -5
"please continue stating the perfectly obvious. it fills me with confidence." oh, cavil, you are too funny. ;D He was that. He had the best one-liners.
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Post by Karen on Mar 22, 2009 13:15:35 GMT -5
I prefer it to be squishy. It was appropriate.
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