the listing continues!

[pocochina]

BSG is another show that has been pretty formative for me, though unlike AtS, I have kind of been able to process and mostly have good feelings toward it.

One influence that BSG has had on how I watch shows is that I apply the Laura Roslin Test to fictional 'verses now to see how much credibility I give the major conflict. The Laura Roslin test is

Comments

[jedi_of_urth]

I agree that what the show needed to do, and to a certain extent was trying to do, was make them need each other. But once the alliance got going I feel like the Cylons stopped developing and we were beaten over the head with the humans needing to accept the Cylons but not the other way around.

I disagree about the mutiny plot dong anything for that, because I saw those episodes as really unbalanced...or really awkwardly balanced. Because they were giving the mutineers all the points I thought needed to be addressed (except I think Lee got in one or two 'duh not everyone is okay with this' points) yet the show portrayed them as being in the wrong and everyone needed to bow down to the will of Adama. I feel like the Gaetas of the resistance got lost because we were supposed to see them as Zaraks. And after that the human's rightful resistance to/fear of/anger towards the Cylons was all brushed away and we were supposed to see things as all being happy (as much as anything was happy by that point in the show) and settled. We just weren't allowed that many different viewpoints on the subject by that point in the series.

But I feel like that stays implied rather than foregrounded because that would emphasize how aggressive they are AND how self-protective and justified the humans' antipathy toward them is.

Which I think is a shame, and really awkward for the series to have done. I feel something of the show, it's characters, it's realness, and it's complexity was all lost for not acknowledging these issues.

[pocochina]

I disagree about the mutiny plot dong anything for that, because I saw those episodes as really unbalanced...or really awkwardly balanced.

Definitely awkwardly balanced, but I do feel like it was an attempt. I just think it happened too late to counteract so much of the Cylons! have! feelings! too! SO DON'T BE A MEAN HATER AND CRITICIZE THEM FOR MURDERING EVERYONE

Also it was one of those cool storylines that pits all of my favorites against each other and nobody's right and everybody's miserable and that is my FAVORITE THING EVER, so.

Which I think is a shame, and really awkward for the series to have done. I feel something of the show, it's characters, it's realness, and it's complexity was all lost for not acknowledging these issues.

It was still very, very good, and more ambitious on this front than anything else I've ever seen, but...it had a bit more potential, for sure, and this was part of why I was left thinking it wasn't quite fulfilled.

[jedi_of_urth]

more ambitious on this front than anything else I've ever seen,

To be sure this is something I get into one-way arguments with TVD over too, and in that regard BSG was at least more aware that nobody was right in the conflict than TVD acknowledges the vampires are a legitimate threat (but then I'm in the very small Bill Forbes Appreciation Society and think the Founders' Council is usually perfectly justified in the things they do, so...yeah).