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.

May pack dd off to bed early and watch two episodes tonight. I'm worried about Starbuck; she's clearly losing the plot and about to face mutiny.

Whereabouts are you, kickass?

I do love Starbuck so much. She rocks.

YY, I loved trying to work it out. I didn't, needless to say.

It's great how it generally doesn't tie up all the mysteries, though.

I'm completely failing to go to sleep here, whoops.

I love BSG, as does OH.

DD's nickname/name shortening is Callie, after the BSG character (spelled differently, I know).

Starbuck is ace.

Never got into BSG.

DH loves it

Now. Give me Farscape, DS9, Voyager or the X-Files then im happy bunny

I loved this and still miss it. There are so many bad sci-fi series out there which I start watching and give up after a couple of episodes but this was class. Shame for Jamie Bamber that he's not really been in anything as good since. (Well that fireman thing on Sky was not bad, but I understand it's been cancelled). I heard the original BSG series (1970s) was quite cheesy, but I never saw that - can anyone confirm?

You might like Mitchell and Webb's take on it:

Am I the only one who watches the number of survivors obsessively each week?

Great for two and half series. Absolute drivel for the last series and a half. IMO.

The old version is on Netflix in the US. It is truly terrible. Almost no females in it, and they are barely allowed to speak. The leaders are all really old men, and the pilots all young men with Luke Skywalker hair cuts. Almost no acting required and wobbly sets with the obligatory "everyone duck left" to shoe that the ship had been hit.

For the modern series, I agree totally about why they would have shattering glass in the control room. Surely Perspex would be less if a safety hazard. I mean, imagine escaping the cylon attack only to be offed by a particularly nasty glass cut to the forehead.

Oh, thanks, well I'm not sorry I missed it then! Used to love the old Star Trek, though.

I love BSG, my brother was given the miniseries for Christmas and after that we were hooked! We ended up getting sky TV so we could watch it on Syfy and as I am a total skinflint that says a lot!

SPOILER ALERT

At the end I don't think the timing of arrival on earth is random. 75,000 years ago would tie in with the human bottleneck theory in evolution, where the number of humans was reduced and we are all descended from the limited number remaining. So it wasn't a super eruption but the arrival of humans from another planet as a decimated population which is responsible for the bottleneck. It was when I was re watching it that this occurred to me, the level of detail is amazing.

Lost was such a disappointing end but BSG was just amazing, I felt bereft when it was over. Time to fire up Netflix and start watching it again .

Marking place for later when I have time to gush about how great bsg is...

I thought they were idiots for giving up all of their modern medicine. Anyone with diabetes or similar, or bad eyesight, is going to be dead pretty soon.

Ooh, I didn't know that, merlin, I love that.

trills - yes, me too! I found that quite implausible. Though I think it would actually have happened as you see it starting to happen - with Adama calmly nicking the raptor to go bird-watching in. Everyone in a privileged position would just have hoarded and nicked stuff.

I was failing to sleep last night, and came across a youtube clip (which I can't now re-find), which is hilarious because some woman at an interview asks Katee Sackhoff whether she feels ok with a promiscuous character like Starbuck being a role model for young women, and KS manages this waffle that's basically 'erm, yeah, role models, uh ... orgasms! Orgasms are good! She likes those. Role models, uh ....'. I think this is quite a good role model thing, TBH, but you can sorta tell that it's not quite the response question-asker was expecting.

ooh merlin good theory!

Loved it. Like Babylon 5 only much less wobbly, bloody Fox cancelling the last series and reinstating it so it all looked messy.

Starbuck is wonderful, I wanna grow down to be just like her. I like Roslin too, a lot.

Funny, we've just started rewatching it for about the third time One of the best shows ever. All that wonderful, wonderful tv, and Lee Adama's arms. Sigh.

Seriously, it is amazing. Gaius Baltar is one of the great TV characters the recent times. I want to hate him, I really do, he's such a prick, but... oh, he's such a fun prick.

I remember reading somewhere that the woman who played Caprica 6 was once set up on a blind date with fellow epic sci-fi hero Nathan Fillion. I nearly overloaded thinking how good-looking that date would be

But I have worked hard to erase both the terrible fat suit and that god awful episode about the black market from my mind...

(I always thought that the casting of Mark Sheppard - Lampkin - in Doctor Who the other year was just a nice little nod to him having appeared in a lot of fun sci-fi)

All that wonderful, wonderful tv, and Lee Adama's arms. Sigh.

Indeed.

I've forgotten who Sheppard was in Dr Who now - he is great, though.

But oh, god, Lee's suit in those episodes! What the heck were they thinking?!

I do think the clothes are a really weak point. It's so well-imagined in terms of religion, and the music is good, and I love the visual stuff with Kara's artwork. But the clothing is just meh.

Sheppard was also in a few episodes of Firefly too.

One of the things I really liked about BSG was it felt like they had genuinely managed to create a sort of equal society. You never got the sense of anyone caring about anyone else's gender. They had mixed sleeping quarters, mixed bathrooms, even mixed boxing at one point, and it was never commented on. I liked that a lot.

The clothes were rubbish though. One of the places where the smaller budget really showed through.

I can't remember where I read it now, but it was some review of all the best TV shows of the decade, and they said that BSG's biggest problem was it's name. Because it's not really sci-fi, but people couldn't see past that.

MORE BSG TALK.

Or firefly or anything similar, I'm not bossy and demanding.

Firefly!! Love Firefly. Potentially my favourite sci fi series. My Callie was nearly a Kaylee

Ooh and stargate. OH got me the complete boxset of Stargate Atlantis for my birthday :)

thur - I can believe that. I love sci-fi and all genre fiction, but I think it's true people will have been put off.

I also heard that their viewing figures were way down from what they should have been because they knew people were taping it to watch later, and that doesn't count in the official ratings. Interesting.

So, then .... should they have ended how they ended it?

I love Roslin's ending. I think it's perfect.

I'm a die-hard romantic who hates the ending with Lee and Kara having no resolution to it.

Also, I really doubt Lee's capacity to survive on his won. He's a sweetie, but such a weak character.

I do feel quite annoyed that (as I read recently), when you think of it, all the female characters are dead or cylon by the end.

Roslin - dead
Sharon - Cylon
Boomer - Cylon/dead
Cain - dead
Ellen Tigh - Cylon (previously dead)
Six - Cylon
Dee - dead
Kara - double dog dead

It's true, isn't it?

Syfy is playing Firefly at the moment. I'm watching it every night - even though I have it on DVD

The things I would do to Mal. I mean, really. I'd break that man. Those trousers. That arse. I can't even think of vaguely decent, clean ways to express what I'd do to Captain Reynolds given half the chance.

Calm down, thurlow.

I myself do enjoy Jayne. I liked him in Chuck, too. He's just so tall. I'm genetically required to go for tall men, as a hereditary shortarse, and it's testimony to Jamie Bambers', er, acting skills I fancy him at all. But Jayne is a nice height.

I am sad Firefly was cancelled. I'd have loved to see them hit their stride properly. But then, they killed Wash, who is just wonderful.

Alan Tudyk is just an incredible actor. And IMO vastly underrated.