to ask you to indulge me with chat about Battlestar Gallactica, even though it ended ages ago?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I never watched it when it was actually on. I am currently re-watching to distract myself from various irritating and tedious things going on in RL. I love it, I think it's brilliant. I especially love how they write the women as being pretty much as physically strong as men (and able to beat men at boxing), but without bothering to explain the details of it. And I love the religion side of it.

But here's what bugs me:

1. How does Adama never cotton on that his son is in love with Kara? I know he's not the most perceptive father, but come on!

2. Why do they never replace the glass panel in the control room with something non-shattering after the first, oh, hundred times it breaks?

3. What the fuck is meant to be going on with Lampkin and his (very dead) cat?

Thank you.

And obviously, Thrace is an adorable PITA.

Spooky you should mention it. I only realised recently my husband has never watched it (! I really should have given him a "required watching/ reading" list). Anyway I've lately taken to watching NCIS and there was a battlestar joke (no spoilers from me). When I turned grinning at husband he clearly did not get it. Humph! ;-)

Ice planet not nice planet!

Yeah, o0, it should annoy me more than it does. It does make me feel like a bad feminist that I really can't sympathise with Dee at all for being cheated on.

I just feel like, well, you knew he was in love with someone else, and you didn't like her very much, so why couldn't you steer clear FFS?

sight - YY, I thought the religion stuff was so clever. I really liked how well-rounded all of that was, so Kara was realy plausibly both this irreverent, disobedient person and also quite deeply religious. I liked that a lot.

orange - watch it again! It's worth it.

honey - oh, goodness, yes, finished it and this is one of many, many re-watches.

I just realized I never properly chatted about it because of watching it after it came out, and I love being able to talk through the little details.

So spoiler away!

Btw, karron, if Adama thought that was platonic love he really needed to have a chat to Tywin Lannister about normal sibling bonding.

(I have just watched the ep on New Caprica where Lee - who has a really bad dye job in this ep, btw - is busy gasping about Kara getting married and Adama is all 'la la la, she's happy, that's nice'. Honestly, man! Use your eyes!)

I really enjoyed Baltar's doublespeak, when he's talking to the woman in his head while there are people around, and seeming only a little bit unhinged.

The water tank business was when we were realising Boomer was a cylon. She almost didn't mention to water she found on the other planet.

We wanted to call cats Starbuck and Boomer, but realised we actually preferred Athena and people thought we were saying "Starbucks". Sad times.

I always wanted to give Gaius a slap. But he is so damn slippery I'd probably miss.

I thought Six was just brilliant. Tricia Helfer is a tremendous actress.

Yes, Baltar's unhingedness being put down to him being so intellectual is wonderful - and I love when Tigh gets the measure of him as a total dithering idiot.

Tricia Helfer is a great actress. She's the only one who I thought was convincing in different roles really.

Never, ever unreasonable to want BG chat!! Best television I have ever watched. I genuinely envy people who haven't watched it yet.

LRd, if your blod pressure is currently not high, google the message that the original Starbuck, Dirk Benedict, wrote in reaction to the character being cast as female. It's almost so much a parody of various misogynistic views that it's funny. Almost. Anyway, it made me very defiant in my unashamed fangirlness r.e. the new Starbuck.

Oh, yes, I envy people who've not seen it.

DH had to make me watch it as I really wasn't keen and spent the first two episodes making faces and insisting it was boring.

But then Lee took his top off and I was fine.

Shallow, me?

I've seen some of DB's comments - twit.

Oh, happy memories. I used to just LOVE this. Love to hear of the cats called after the characters.

My usual/old user name, whilst not exactly battlestar, is a nod to space travel.

It was all the 'ah ha!' moments that gripped us, I think and always seems like a forerunner for all the big box sets now. Things like (sorry, almost 5 years ago so memory hazy) the slow reveal of the cylons; the strains of 'all along the watchtower' when they get closer to earth; the cylon/human hubrids, the betrayals, the sudden violence.

Adama's mate, the one who lost an eye, Tigh, I thought was really well developed as the series progressed.

(Getting a bit random now) That boxing match between Starbuck and Apollo, which I thought was really quite a brave and interesting move.

"His character was all about making the right/good(?) choices even when they were hard."

No, I think one of the strengths of BG was that none of the characters were all about anything. They all had strengths and weaknesses and massive blind spots and buttons that were easy to push. And often there were no good choices, only least bad choices.

I think Adama had Kara linked with Zac/Zak/however they spell it in his head and then has moved on from there to think of her as a daughter -- so it just never occurs to him that Lee sees her as anything other than a sister. And I think her relationship with Lee is very different from the one she had with Zac, so he doesn't see the signs.

Not shallow at all.

Most films and TV, the women (aside from any features they should have as actors, or to fit with the role) have to be at least thiiiiis attractive, and the men only have to be at least this attractive (imagine I am holding up my hands at vastly varying heights).

For BSG the requirement for attractiveness in actors is evenly high for men and women.

I liked Helo. He seemed a bit dim at first, but he is the first one to start to understand that you don't have to be a person to be a human.

sight - yes, Tigh is a great character who really comes from very little at the start.

I love the boxing match. I love the way it's all set up that you know they are fairly evenly matched. I really shouldn't love it as I'm generally quite squeamish about violence and don't like the trope of violence as a substitute for passion, but .... somehow, I still do like it.

I'm also totally sentimental about 'I missed you'/'I missed you too'.

If anyone has read the Ender's Game sequels (Speaker for the Dead and co, not the Shadow ones), it all reminded me of Demosthenes' hierarchy of foreignness.

trills - oh, that's a very good point, actually.

Though I have to say, I think both Tricia Helfer and Katee Sackhoff are conventionally very attractive, while though I think Jamie Bamber and Tamoh Penikett are too, it's not really conventional good looks in either case.

But you are right, it's still much, much closer than lots of shows. And I like that there's as much male as female flashing of flesh.

I also love Helo and Starbuck's friendship, which is never remotely romantic and never vaguely threatens his relationship with his wife - that's quite unusual in TV, I think.

tort - yeeeaahh ... I find that plausible for a little bit, but then I just don't find it makes sense. Maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's that he doesn't want to believe his nice son is actually cheating on his wife.

Speaking of, though, something else I adore is the bit where Adama kisses Roslin when she's leaving, and Lee and Kara exchange this really uncomfortable 'eww, gross' look.

And Sam Anders too.

And Gaius Balter is like a dirty Julian Bashir from DS9, if you're into that kind of thing...

Loved this series so much - it boggled my mind at the end but I loved the genuine equality depicted. Time to revisit I think

Anders isn't a character that quite works, for me.

I dunno. He's fine. But he seems bizarrely unaffected by, well, everything that happens to him.

I was just adding him to the list of attractive men, that's all :)

In fact I could just keep going - all the younger men are just much more physically attractive than strictly necessary for the character, and their attractiveness is never mentioned in-universe - something that usually only happens to female characters.

Gaeta is quite cute, Billy was very sweet. The Chief (real name?) is a lovely teddy bear.

Tyrol.

Yes, though he looks terrible when he shaves his head!

But you're right.

Tyrol was clearly based on this guy.