Battlestar Galactica (the "new" one) - my first watch-through

Mediaclub
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Everyone keeps telling me I’d love it, including a former coworker who gifted me a tank top set. I’d only ever seen the miniseries and a few episodes from the first season.

We’re watching from the beginning. There are a bunch of things I missed the first time around, like the President insisting on calling Lee “Captain Apollo” to distance him strategically from his father, and allow him to be himself aka on her side, because she needed him.

I mean, I sort of know what’s coming. It’ll be torture to watch everyone compromise on their ideals and harm each other but this is what relaxes me these days because it’s so much better than real life. Plus since it’s imaginary, we as viewers get to feel better about ourselves in our judgement of them. Escapism is the best!

Another ringing endorsement. I do enjoy it though.

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Its probably one of my top favorite shows of all time; though its probably the last “gritty” show I watched without reservation before getting burned out on them.

Please feel free to tap me for Battlestar geek out mom\ments.

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Same here!

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I watched the whole damn thing and I was cynical and bitter by the end, but the first episode of the actual series after the miniseries - 33 - is one of the best episodes of television ever written IMO.

But @judytuna I would love to hear your thoughts periodically if you keep watching it! The show reinvents itself several times, which is both pleasurable and extremely frustrating.

How dare you make me sort of nostalgic for the mid-2000s…

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Ok so

WHAT

WHAT

THEY JUST HAD CHIEF DO THE BODIES UPON THE GEARS SPEECH

DID THEY REALLT JUST HAVE THE BODIES UPON THE GEARS SPEECH IN MAINSTREAM MEDIA

WHAT

WHAT IS HAPPENING

THEY JUST "ONE YEAR LATER"ED THAT SHIT LIKE IT WAS NOTHING AND ELDER ADAMA HAS HIS TERRIBLE MUSTACHE BACK AND IS SMOKING CIGARETTES WITH NO FILTER AND LITTLE ADAMA IS POUTING BECAUSE STARBUCK MARRIED HOT ANDERS?!?

WHAT THE FRACKING FRACK IS GOING ON HERE

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That is the most appropriate reaction to that part of the show, yep.

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wait what

welp i'm never sleeping again

they didn’t just actually kill starbuck did they

what

what

i did not see that coming

i mean i was getting ready for like mystical shit but like

what

they did not

i mean surely she will be back and not just as lee’s spirit animal

right

right

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Your really mirroring my journey through that part of the show right there.

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I am loving this thread! You bring back so many memories!!

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haha thanks everybody. i feel totally blindsided by this show constantly! it’s way better to have a screaming outlet!

oh wow the president called back to the captain apollo bit i mentioned in my first post. i’m impressed. the memory of this series is long. and it was such a character moment.

finished season 3

soooOoOoooOOOooo four of the final five have been revealed. i had previously accidentally spoilered myself with tighe and chief but sorta forgot so i was still blindsided by the reveal. i was also shocked by hot anders and billy#2. like totally shocked. i liked tighe muttering “said the joker to the thief.” i couldn’t believe they were using a song with words for the first time in the background music but then i realized what song it was and it was ok. hahah. was a sitar-like instrument really in vogue in the 00s? and bulgarian chanting? was it multicultural “we’re a salad bowl” stuff? it was celebrated for a time wasn’t it? i don’t care that reveal and the pastel nebula colors and “all along the watchtower” with colonized sounds was awesome.

i am really shocked they went there with lee and his dad. like what a fight. about sons stepping out from fathers’s shadows across three generations. and the grandfather being an asshole. it’s different from the reverence for elders that i’m used to. i’m shocked lee’s ready to give up flying and his career to go be a lawyer now. i think that was a bit much, though it makes good drama. and they were half-fighting over who was more devastated by the loss of starbuck? i liked that they had the wrecked model ship in the back with tilted masts after the outburst. i’m amazed with how daring this show is. they really commit to “you hurt the ones you love the most.”

lee looks way better in that uniform than in a button-down lol (sometimes i’m annoyed at how obviously straight i am. of course i’ve been in love with little adama since the get-go despite the overacting lol. actually i think he completely nailed it in the starbuck-apollo episode and wasn’t overacting then hahah. but of course i would think that.)

i am also shocked they went there with cara and her mom. that was so mean! and i’m weirdly glad they gave cara closure with her mom in whatever dream-alternate-reality state leobin took her to. cara’s character has it so rough; i’m glad they gave her something nice. it didn’t feel overbearingly cheesy which surprised me. maybe because cara is so rough and her story is so rough. maybe because we have been set up to love her so much. maybe because katee sackoff is such a goddamn star. she’s so incredibly magnetic.

i’m fascinated to learn that the earlier show was mormon propaganda. knowing nothing about the predecessor, i imagine this show in conversation with it: “i see your religiosity and raise you not only paganism and oracles but also astrology! hahahah!! fuck you!” i’m really impressed. i haven’t seen a depiction of religion like this. it’s … a kind depiction. and kind to skeptics and believers alike. usually we have to pick a side. in the x-files scully wore her cross and that was fascinating but it only showed religious iconography or scully praying in a few episodes in service of something else. right? sorta. like it was an important and tantalizing part of her character, the unexpectedness of it, but it wasn’t central to the show. what am i talking about? “i want to believe” is central to the show. i mean xf was more critical of centralized, organized religion, as it’s critical and suspicious of any authority. because the nineties. bsg celebrates a bottom-up paganism, which i think is super interesting. i have some … Thoughts about the black woman spiritual elder like in Star Trek. and then the priest was an old white man, but irreverent and irritating, and then also a goddamn cylon lol.

brain vomit lol

i am loving this show.

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i’m all the way up to, but not including, Daybreak (all the parts), the final episodes of the show. that means i’ve finished season 4 (up to the “mid-season finale” with the soaring and epic and then frakking crushing reveal of Earth), and almost all of “season 4.5” aka “the final season” according to the blu-ray boxed set.

and this show is SO MUCH! SO FAST!

i have discovered bear mcreary’s blog. IT IS THE BEST THING EVER. IT’S JUST WHAT I NEED. he’s the composer of the score, and starting at the beginning of season 3, he wrote a blog post every week about the episode that came out that week. it’s fascinating–when he wrote a post, the work of scoring had happened months ago, and he looks back with a little distance, and even talks about the episodes he’s scoring for the future. it’s funny to read it eleven years later.

a few posts are really outstanding. lots of spoilers!

  • the season 3 finale has a surprise! well, lots of surprises! “Crossroads, Part II”
  • an epically musical episode, “Someone to Watch Over Me,” got a three-parter. part 1, pre-production work; part 2, everything he did on the set; part 3, episode analysis

AUUUGHHHHH it’s SOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOD

(posting this a few hours after i wrote it)

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and now we’ve finished the series! i feel heartbroken and happy and sad all at the same time.

what an epic show

GODS the final scenes were TORTURE to watch. i thought each one was the last and then the screen would come back up and i’d be like AAUUUGHHH MORE TORTURE WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO TO US NOOOOWWWW

the starbuck poof! i feel wrenched. i mean it was obvious she was going to leave him when the camera lingered on lee too long and lee was talking at her facing away from her, but i thought we’d come back to her back as she walked away, not literally nothing. auuughhhhhhh it’s wrenching. i can’t believe they waited until the LAST EPISODE to show their first meeting, underscoring everything they did through the series, all the longing, all the regret, all the tragedy, all the laughter, all the challenge, all the “but they’re right there all i have to do is reach out and…” … this is some seriously next level starcrossed-lovers shit right here.

i’ve never seen a show go so far out on the “you don’t end up with who you want to end up with. you get whatever’s left” limb before. chief yelling about how he actually loved boomer and only married cally cuz she was there and she smells like boiled cabbage… kara and lee…

ok so kara is an angel. her poof is not what i want, but somehow i feel all right with it. i guess it’s the perfection of something unattainable.

SPACEPARENTS! I LOVE OUR SPACEPARENTS!!! is the implication that bill goes off to die alone, because, as he said, he can’t live without her? lee says “i understand, dad” but i don’t understand! i loved that laura gets a front-row seat to the first and last epic nature documentary her people will ever see… that was incredibly sweet. i guess we are supposed to not know what bill does. maybe he builds the cabin and makes a garden and feeds himself somehow and dies of old age. or maybe he shoots himself, because his monologue (to laura, who he’s just buried) goes “i built it. you should see the easterly light it gets in the mornings.” so i’m so scared he just dies right there. or maybe gets in his viper and flies into the sun with the rest of the fleet. OH GODS IT’S SO GODSDAMN SAD

i can’t believe idealistic/cynical duality lee talks the entire people of the twelve colonies into not building a city and losing all that technology.

i think it’s awesome and hilarious that the best parts of humanity that they passed down to us was astrology. lolololol. and the greek gods. i’ve already read some AU fanfic that had them speaking in greek to us.

i was SHOCKED at anders becoming a hybrid in the previous episode, haha. even though all these clues were there.

thinking back through the series… i was shocked at the “all along the watchtowers” reveal. i don’t know the song that well but i’ve definitely heard it, and i recognized the line “said the joker to the thief” when colonel tigh said it.

and then in the piano episode just two episodes and a lifetime ago, i was UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY SHOCKED when kara’s father’s song turned out to be the Final Four theme played under bsg’s “all along the watchtowers.” it was SO GOOD. i feel like i should not have been surprised, lol, but i was. the moment it all came together and her ghost-father-apparition banged the keys and out came those first repeated three chords… IT WAS GLORIOUS

it’s been a real treat reading bear’s blog right after watching the episodes.

my only critique of the music stuff is “lol orientalism much” SIIIIGHHHH everything is problematic. like hiring white people to play japanese instruments lol. nothing is perfect. bsg is a product of its time.

i think bsg is epic, grand, brilliant, heartbreaking, dramatic, and right up my alley. i’m really glad i’ve watched it.

now to watch the whole thing again with director’s commentary on =D =D =D

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oh my gods there was a bsg ballet and there were bsg concerts in socal and at this one, katee sackoff went on stage to play “kara remembers” with bear on the piano live AHHHHHHHHHHH

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RqYwOTJK-4

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Yay!

Also, they auctioned off like… everything in the show!

Did you want a Kara Thrace uniform? Ballots from the Baltar/Roslin election? A FREAKING RAPTOR OR VIPER?!? Yeah you could get those online for a while.

(Raptor walk through during auction)

(Cylon raider)

(KARAS VIPERRRR)

I was super broke, and wanted to try to get a single ballot and even those were like ~$250 at the time. :frowning: Still was super awesome!

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what! kara’s viper?! which one, regular or angel? lol ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
edit: the beat-up looking one, and it never met the reserve of $60,000 so if you can rustle up the cash it seems like you could get it still?! lol

i want a uniform so bad

lol here is a plush set Battlestar Galactica Viper & Raider Plush Set – Quantum Mechanix

here is katee sackhoff talking about a replica YouTube with edward james olmos talking at the end lol

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I feel like their habbit for having a shows worth of content shoved into the small few moments before the OPENING really drove this home for me when I watched.

This really sums up my own final impressions of the show. I know a few people who didn’t enjoy the ending. But I feel like it ended in the only way it could that was both emotionally and philosophically consistent with everything which came before. I think its pretty singular amongst long form live action scifi that way.

Not a whole lot of TV show’s get me to cry, but man. I cried hard when Roslin died. That was so damn heartbreaking. And I knew it was coming for so damn long. I called her “Moses” the whole show; and that is the thing. Moses doesn’t get to set foot in the promised land.

I remember Edward James Olmos was pushing for a graphic novel about Adama’s last days on earth. I need to see if that ever happened.

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Oh my god Judy, I kind of regret not getting back into the show with you as you watched til the end. Honestly I am not a huge fan of most of the way it went after the time skip onwards, particularly the end, but I love that you loved it so much, and you’ve got me to reconsider some stuff. I wonder what I would think now with a rewatch. I do still think the miniseries and most of the early seasons (with some massive stinking exceptions) were the best the show has ever been and “33” (the first episode of the series proper) might have been both the show’s best episode and one of the best shows on television…

Also I never knew that Bear McCreary kept a blog about the show!! Incredible. He’s seriously an epic TV composer, he’s done so much work. I did used to listen to some of Ron Moore’s ad-hoc showrunner’s commentary he used to host as mp3s on his personal site (he would pour himself a whiskey every episode and you could hear the ice clinking in his glass IIRC). Did you know Ron Moore was living in Berkeley at the time? Not sure if he still is. He and his wife are working on Outlander now (his wife is the costume designer on the show).

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let’s watch it again @malatesta =D

i’ve noticed (in real life, about real life things) that it takes me a day to feel things. after a day, i got pretty mad about the finale, actually.

what happened to

what happened to roslin’s proclamations of saving the fleet? saving the people? they saved the people just to have them disperse all over the globe? i mean i sort of get that as diaspora but i wanted them to stay together. i didn’t want all the families to split apart, i didn’t want the family of the fleet to split apart. i get that roslin had to die for the story and so we could feel something but why’d the rest of the fleet have to split apart too?

if i were part of the last vestiges of a civilization, i’d want to stick together. i wouldn’t let lee adama, however much i perhaps unwisely worship him, singlehandedly decide for us that the best of humanity doesn’t include cities.

look at what i just found in the footnotes of this wikipedia page lololol

Of Duduks and Dylan: Negotiating Music and the Aural Space by Eftychia Papanikolaou; in Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica, edited by Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall, 224-236. New York and London: Continuum, 2007.

here is a pdf copy of that essay:

it can be found in this book:

https://www.worldcat.org/title/cylons-in-america-critical-studies-in-battlestar-galactica/oclc/165958598

this essay is referenced in other essays such as Battlestar Galactica: A Vehicle of the American Road

https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-7/jones/

Battlestar Galactica premiered when 9/11 was still a fresh infliction on the American soul, and with the show’s vivid depictions of issues such as terrorism, racial tension, and suicide bombings, it established its allegorical nature and fostered an open and honest dialogue about these issues with its audience.

Battlestar Galactica specifically operates as an American road narrative through allegory: its “American” nature stems from its commentary on 9/11, whereas its “road” nature manifests itself in the pilgrimage that the fleet takes through uncharted space.

i really love this. i read a few essays on frontier theory in college (and have asked @malatesta about it on talkgroup, lol), so i love that people are writing critical essays on this show and connecting it to scholarly stuff i’ve come into brief contact with.

i need a piano for this book: Battlestar Galactica - Piano Solo - Sheet Music | Sheet Music Plus

until i have a piano to play them on, i’m listening to the composer play some of them himself via this playlist, and also a pianist released an album of themself playing the whole songbook! i really love it =D

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