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.

Everyone should watch babylon5!!! Yes there is eye candy. I will just have to watch it again. You know because of you asking and it being so vital and more important than anything else I need to be doing right now, because the whole of MN need to know the answer so many people I've met online and mentioned babylon5 to have mentioned loving watching it. Spent much of my degree chatting in chat rooms about babylon5. I was devastated when it finished. Loads of fans campaigned for the 5th series and were disappointed, I don't think we really understood it had been written for four so the fifth was disjointed. It finished in 1998.

BSG bits that made me wonder? Well the point of the flashbacks in the last episode - at the time, before watching Caprica, I thought it had something to do with that. There were bits that got me wondering at the time but when I watched it with the films I understood far far more, like the two totally different cavils attitudes - where did that come from? Exactly what doom did Kara Thrace lead them all to or did I miss that bit? Not exactly massive problems just bits that made me think, which is good really, to be honest I like a series that means I think when watching it and seeing the arc of all the characters.

Babylon5 had similar things that when watched with the movies were answered in the movies. You can just watch the series like with BSG but watching it with movies just opens the experience.

YoSaffBridge. Amazing.

"Who is he?"
"He's my husband?"
"Well, who in the goddamn galaxy ain't?"

I watched Serenity before I had seen Firefly. I remember this was the exact moment when I decided I loved the film

Oooh ... it sounds great, I will watch it.

I think the flashbacks are mostly emotional closure - the narrative requires that Lee and Kara's realtime relationship takes a backseat to Adama/Roslin and is also a bit toned down because Kara isn't really part of the world any more. But all of us watching are geared up emotionally for something dramatic, so they had to put it into the backstory to keep us happy.

I also think they're good at showing us why that relationship couldn't ever work out (though I must admit I do not understand why Kara didn't simply dump Zac - I would have! ).

IIRC Jamie Bamber also has a theory about the flashbacks that was quite intellectual-sounding and persuasive. However, I must sadly admit that having wasted my time watching cast interviews, I'm hovering on the belief he's possibly a bit smug about said intelligence compared to Katee Sackhoff's, which is a little crap.

thurlow, you do brighten up my life.

I am realizing I am actually an utterly shallow, objectifying person.

Oh well.

Objectifying is fun. DP has just gone off in a strop as I had an episode of Firefly on half an hour ago and I made a passing comment about what I would do to Nathan Fillion. He's in the kitchen now muttering to himself (I actually think he's just annoyed I watched the Christina Hendricks episode without him)

Getting back to the original point, one of the things I always loved about BSG was that so much of it wasn't really explained to you - how or why Caprica 6 was in Baltar's head, or what happened to Starbuck. I've seen the whole thing twice and I still don't particularly understand. But I don't care that I don't understand.

I watched Caprica first after finding it on lovefilm then went on to watch BSG. I thought it was great for setting up the background for BSG and liked the show itself but there's no comparing it to BSG - its a 4pm team drama vs a meaty 9pm sci fi. OH just watched BSG with me and by the end we were binging on 4 episodes at the good bits.

Because she's an angel, of course. Or some other nonsense.

I loved it SO MUCH when it turned out that regenerated Six (the one actually ON Caprica) had a Head-Baltar.

I do like not everything being explained, because for me that makes it better.

I think the flashback things bothered me because I thought it was leading to the Caprica series which of course it didn't!!

Does anyone know about the whole Kara Thrace will lead the human race to it's doom thing???? Am I going to have to watch BSG again as well to try and answer it?

YY, I totally agree - I don't like things being explained.

I do not get the doom thing - except, I suppose, the implication of Hera/'mitochondrial Eve' is that the race that survives is human-Cylon hybrid, not pure human, so in that sense, she does? Maybe?

I would have bloody loved Caprica to be a series about the back-story, with the flashbacks as a backdoor pilot.

But I must accept that my, ahem, appreciation of the Lee/Kara storyline is possibly not reason to write such things (and it would, I think, have been an inevitable disappointment).

Ouch. Yes, I can imagine. Mockney is always cringe-inducing.

humps - yes, you do win! Go on, tell all ... where'd you go?

(Must admit the arrow of Apollo looks shite. Also, now I think of it, mildly symbolically disturbing.)

I've just thought of something that really bugs/confuses me.

When Galen finds out Callie's baby isn't his son, he seems to just hand him over to the biological father (who I've only just realized is Edward James Olmos's son).

Why?

Later on that bloke is shown looking after the toddler, so it's not like the Chief just gives him the opportunity to have some contact - it seems like he genuinely just gives him up. Is he a really shit father who doesn't actually like his own child (not impossible) or is it really bad writing?

Huh, that's funny ... the idea of that exhibition leaves me cold, and for me would ruin it. But I love cast interviews and knowing how people interpreted it to themselves as they were acting. And I'm especially glad I watched these, because I would never have known what an awesome job KS does with Kara if I'd not seen what she's like in real life.

Baiting your DH seems entirely appropriate.

Yeah I can see why that would annoy. Maybe it was bad writing. Not sure though....

Is Kattee Sackoff very different from Kara then?

I don't often go near making of's and the like either. I don't mind them from writers or producers but I don't like them from actors. I think it's because I like characters so much more - as in (back on that shallow note ) I fancy Mal Reynolds not Nathan Fillion, Jimmy McNulty not Dominic West, Sherlock not Benedict Cumberbatch etc. I can't stand actors. So I try and stay away from things that remind me too much that favourite fictional characters are played by actors, dahling.

Yes. She's very, very girlie and quite shy/self-conscious. But she also speaks with a completely different set of stress patterns, which is something that always really impresses me. I mean, James Callas sounds like Baltar - that's just how he speaks. And Jamie Bamber, even though he's shifting accents, still has more or less the same speech patterns.

I'm just very interested in how different actors do things, I guess. I think it's very impressive.

I do know what you mean about them being disappointing at times, though!

i love makings-of, but mainly because I like knowing the acting process etc. especially love when an actor has a different accent as a character!

I don't usually watch anything with the real person talking iykwim. If they're a dick then it puts me off the character a bit and makes it harder to imagine Mal/Lee/any pretty man doing The Sex with me. . I should probably but I get the feeling you lot have similar thoughts!

James Callas (Balthar) is in both the Bridget Jones films as one of her (gay) best friends, which I caught on TV a week or two ago. It was most jarring.

You're blunter than me, o0, but you're certainly not wrong

I found Baltar being Bridget's gay friend Tom really amusing.

Yep, I totally went off McNulty when I heard Dominic West's RP thespian drawl. He was much filthier as McNulty. Of course, now he's played Fred West with such aplomb I've completely gone off him.