I just finished Season 3

[Duskofdead]

Due to work related time constraints, I pretty much can't continuously follow most of the popular shows while they are airing new episodes. Lost is pretty easy to catch up on because various sites host the entire episodes so you can catch up at your leisure, but for BSG I usually have to wait for the season DVD's to come out. I just caught up on Season 3 tonight. (Possible spoilers ahead.)





































HOLY FRACK! When I started watching this show, I was blown away with how tense and suspenseful and gripping it was. I don't think I have ever cared so much to know what's going to happen next in any show. The whole atmosphere of this show just drags you in and makes you part of it. Even when a lot of action isn't going on, the drama is always very well acted, never hokey, and never cheap or cheesy. You really feel the tension all throughout.

I thought eh, strong start, but a show couldn't possibly stay this good through several seasons. Wrong. I think the season 3 finale was amazing. Lee's speech was incredible at Baltar's trial... I had been sitting there skeptically wondering how the heck any argument could possibly have any resonance whatsoever regarding fairness or acquittal for Baltar, and they came up with an amazing speech that Bamber delivered amazingly. Of course I still want the guy dead (anyone notice he is getting more and more like a Charles Manson as the show goes on?) but the show's ability to deeply contrast both sides of issues is amazing. And when four of the final five Cylons were revealed, and Lee ran into Starbuck at the end of the episode, I swear every bit of skin had goosebumps. Amazing, Amazing show.

Sorry for fanboism. No show has ever been this amazing IMHO.

[Graham Kennedy]

Absolutely with you on Lee's speech. It honestly turned me around on that issue; up to them I would have cheerfully had Baltar shot. After lee finished speaking I was thinking that finding him not guilty really was the right thing to do.

A lot of shows suffer from what I call Heroic Exemption Syndrome. So for instance in Star Trek, we are point blank told that a Captain has sworn to sacrifice his life, his ship, his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive. But then in an episode like "Justice", Picard blatantly violates it for no god reason, and subsequently absolutely nothing happens to him, because... well who knows. It's bad writing, because they set up a situation that should have ramifications, but then because the characters are Heroes there aren't any.

BSG sets up situations that look like that, too... but in his speech Lee actually pointed it out and rubbed their noses in what they had been doing. He pointed out that they ignored the law whenever they feel like, that they break the rules left and right, that they let people off from facing the consequences just because they are important people. But in actually recognising it, and addressing it, and even making it a central theme - "The Emerging Aristocracy" - they turned what is a weakness in other shows into a flaw in theirs. Superbly done.

And it helped that the delivery was a bit of acting fit to knock you out of your shoes, too!

[Chris Propst]

A very good description. If you take it in the context of Ronald D. Moore's involvement in TNG, DS9, and then BSG, you can kind of see this writing trend emerge in the development of those shows. Of course, Moore was always petitioning for more serious events happening in TNG with lasting effects. For example, he wanted Picard to lose an arm during his torture by the Cardassians. Of course, the powers that be didn't want any of these scary grown-up things to happen. Then, of course, DS9's darker, more working-class tone was set by everything down to the uniforms. This is most subtly observable in the meeting between Picard and Sisko - one of my all-time favorite scenes in Trek. Everything Picard says echoes his attitudes through the TNG series - but we get a new perspective on it. We get to see 'the little people' (as Q described O'Brien), the common people that form the backbone of the Federation. The irony of Picard lecturing Sisko about Starfleet officers serving in an ideal environment while sipping tea in a comfortable chair - even down to the more contemporary class distinctions and even racism (Picard's White British aristocratic manner) telling a black man from New Orleans how to be a starfleet officer.
Yet we never really were explicitly exposed to the real consequences of such an aristocracy as it is only subtly hinted (even the fact that there is little to no canonical evidence the Enterprise-E did much during the Dominion War besides diplomatic service.)
But in Battlestar Galactica, freed from the restrictions that come with Star Trek and people's dedication to preserving Roddenberry's vision, these things can be expanded to their fullest extent. Even things like the relationship between enlisted and commissioned officers. Noncoms were mentioned almost exclusively an issue in DS9, mentioned maybe once in TNG. And even then, there were never any real issues. One of the most compelling issues for me was the episode when Admiral Adama threatened to kill the Chief's wife if he didn't call off his strike. Contrast this with Voyager, where an integrated crew of ENEMIES got along like a family. After I started exploring scifi other than Star Trek, namely B5 and BSG, I am seeing the limitations that working within the Trek universe includes. I cannot help but get the feeling that DS9 might have represented the farthest extent that Trek could go. Voyager and Enterprise suggested that there was little to do after DS9 took Trek in revolutionary directions.

[Sionnach Glic]

A good analysis, I mostly agree with what you said.