Star Trek - Space: The Final Frontier

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All I remember from Ron Moore's BSG was that the ending was fucking retarded because he never planned the ending at all.
 
Dragged Into Sunlight said:
I also was annoyed about how indignant the cykons were about humans being mean to them or torturing them or killing them after they murdered them with nukes and then hunted them down and exterminated the remaining survivors. Oh gee, I wonder why humans are so pissed off and dont respect them as beings, Kind of weak writing.
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You murder a couple hundred thousand people in an anti-organic crusade, and suddenly, you're the bad guy.
Phillip Green said:
The influence of contemporary westerns on TOS is one of my favorite aspects of the show.
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And then Season 3 said, "Fuck it, here's an episode where Kirk and his buddies go to the old west."
Pedophobe said:
I'm more pissed about the procedural errors, they were egregious even by TV courtroom standards.
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How bad were they?
 
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
Yeah, Baltar's trial was really bad, I would say worse than most bad moments in BSG. In real life, prosecution would have asked two questions:

1. Were you elected as President of the Twelve Colonies? (Yes)
2. Are we at war with the Cylons? (Yes)

Proof of collusion with the Cylons regardless of Gaeta's testimony. A president that runs a Vichy government is guilty even if he's coerced into it, so I interpret the not guilty verdict yet another case of Adama's general corruption.
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The problem with Baltar is that he has a literal deus ex machina to bail him out of anything. It’s also confusing because the show keeps acting like he has to survive the fall of Caprica for some divine reason. He's supposed to spread monotheism. But the Cylons already believed in one God. That was the reason they nuked everybody. So God’s plan is...? The robots will introduce monotheism… and then also this British pervert will do it later.

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I think Ron was trying to do "Jehova can be good or evil” theme. But on the show religion is like 95% genocide and cults. It’s like every time someone says “God has a plan” the next scene is them launching nuclear weapons.
 
Captain Syrup said:
The problem with Baltar is that he has a literal deus ex machina to bail him out of anything. It’s also confusing because the show keeps acting like he has to survive the fall of Caprica for some divine reason. He's supposed to spread monotheism. But the Cylons already believed in one God. That was the reason they nuked everybody. So God’s plan is...? The robots will introduce monotheism… and then also this British pervert will do it later.
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Moore's BSG was weirdly religious for a guy who didn't understand religion that well.
 
Drag-on Knight 91873 said:
And raped the women to breed human-Cylon hybrids. Which is really silly when the Cylons can look like Tricia Helfer and Grace Park. Harvesting sperm (and eggs too, I guess) is really easy, so nuking humanity is 100% counter productive.
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I think the writers even realized this later on because they did that episode about Adama having to blow up the stealth ship they had spying on the Cylons during the armistace to provide some justification to what the Cylons did but it's a bit of overreaction to go full genocide on humans because they sent a surveillance ship to go see what was up after not hearing from the Cylobs for 40 years. They already had human models embedded in human society and they didn't seem all that bothered and would have probably left you alone if you just did your own thing off in your area of space. You could probably even find some humans that would be willing to try to figure out how to procreate with your hot human appearing models. Going from zero to NOW FIRE ZE MISSILES is a little bit much, don't you think
 
Hey Johnny Bravo said:
Moore's BSG was weirdly religious for a guy who didn't understand religion that well.
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Ron is always staring into the middle distance with this glassy eyed expression.

I guess he is still Catholic in the same way Scorsese is still Catholic. Which is… "culturally" Catholic but also extremely mad at God. So instead you make an entire TV show to argue with God.
 
Captain Syrup said:
I guess he is still Catholic in the same way Scorsese is still Catholic.
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The church still counts lapsed Catholics so number go up.
Captain Syrup said:
Which is… "culturally" Catholic but also extremely mad at God. So instead you make an entire TV show to argue with God.
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Well ... G-d says he isn't a Deist and then he acts like one for millennia. Show up or shut up lol. Things are rotten down here.
 
Phillip Green said:
Also, there's 50,000 surviving humans in a refugee fleet that's narrowly escaping annihilation from said genocidal cyborgs: time for another dramatic courtroom scene where our incompetent pock-faced leader pontificates on civil liberties... Fuck Ron Moore.
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Ro Laren was once again right. Also, I just got to the abortion episode. Yeah, abortion is probably a bad idea when your species is almost wiped out. Women gotta have the right to kill their children though, damn those evil religious fundies. Maybe a show about humanity struggling to survive shouldn't have VERY SPECIAL EPISODES when normal rules wouldn't really apply.
 
Pedophobe said:
Okay on review it wasn't as bad as I remembered but they did call one of the defense attorneys as a witness so he could give his opinion why his client should get off, as if that was some kind of evidence of anything.
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To be fair, that was supposed to be so he could testify that one of the judges had straight out said to him that he was going to find the defendant guilty no matter what before the trial had even started, thereby forcing a mistrial. The rest of it was deliberately bullshit, specifically to point out that the whole trial was bullshit as they hadn't really had a functioning legal system for years so the whole thing was a farce from the start.
 
XYZpdq Jr. said:
I def got DPRK vibes off Cardie Prime, but really it's probably like that sperg in Sonic Blast where he was sorta CWC-ish but it was more that he was just a general "lol sonic fans" and CWC is just SO DAMN THAT, so when you do "stalinist dictatorships" it's easy to look at pretty much the only dudes still rocking the style
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One of my favorite episodes of BSG is when O'Brien goes on trial and his poor lawyer keeps freaking out that he won't play ball in their system and he's scared for his life when he wins.
 
Hey Johnny Bravo said:
This is what his BSG series felt like to me, which is why I didn't like it.
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You have to believe in God a little bit for that show to work. If you’re just some spiritually dead guy eating Doritos (me) it’s four seasons of people going “this is all part of God’s plan” and I’m sitting there like alright man what’s the plan, are we gonna hear it or what.
m1ddl3m4rch said:
Well ... G-d says he isn't a Deist and then he acts like one for millennia. Show up or shut up lol. Things are rotten down here.
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Is history an infinite loop where humans invent AI and get wiped out forever? God is just sitting there rewatching the same movie over and over. “yo run it back, the part where the robots nuke everybody, shit's hilarious.”
 
Captain Syrup said:
You have to believe in God a little bit for that show to work. If you’re just some spiritually dead guy eating Doritos (me) it’s four seasons of people going “this is all part of God’s plan” and I’m sitting there like alright man what’s the plan, are we gonna hear it or what.
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Part of the point is confusion. "God" is not yet distinguished from "the gods". Fallible believers interpreting scripture, which scripture in the show is the Pythian prophecies, aka the rantings of a madwoman high on volcanic fumes, or a Python muppet pulling a religious Chuck E. Cheese. The confusion about an absent divinity and people acting on its behalf is part of the drama. I wish it were better executed though; anyone can write ignorance and confusion, but what about the ending.
Captain Syrup said:
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Is history an infinite loop where humans invent AI and get wiped out forever? God is just sitting there rewatching the same movie over and over. “yo run it back, the part where the robots nuke everybody, shit's hilarious.”
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Theoretically, or theologically I guess, the longest anyone has spent away from G-d is one lifetime. Those talking about how bad history has been and centuries of human suffering etc etc don't remember that individuals only experience one lifetime of events, not millennia of horror.
 
Hey Johnny Bravo said:
Moore's BSG was weirdly religious for a guy who didn't understand religion that well.
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The original show had them meeting the Devil at one point, but you are right that they don't really understand religion very well. DS9 understood religion better on a fundamental level where Kira admits that she takes what the Prophets say on faith and that she isn't being rational about it.


Goodbye Horses said:
To be fair, that was supposed to be so he could testify that one of the judges had straight out said to him that he was going to find the defendant guilty no matter what before the trial had even started, thereby forcing a mistrial. The rest of it was deliberately bullshit, specifically to point out that the whole trial was bullshit as they hadn't really had a functioning legal system for years so the whole thing was a farce from the start.
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Also, the entire courtroom was filled with people that lived under Cylon occupation. Even if you ignore the silly human Gestapo death squad subplot, they all lived in a town where Centurions were walking around and they can tell who the infiltrator Cylons are by sight. So the prima facie evidence is Baltar, who still retained his position as president, was doing the bidding of the Cylons. So, yeah, that guy that tried to kill Baltar was mad at the court ignoring the blatantly obvious because Apollo made some speech that convinced his father into voting not guilty, not what the show intends and that he has an irrational grudge.
 
What rankles me the most with modern Star Trek is that they feel compelled to make these long drawn out serial episodes when the core of Star Trek is the single episode self contained story. Obviously streaming is a different beast to terrestrial but I can't be the only bloke who would prefer a season full of one-and-dones instead of these grand melodramatic narratives.

What really twists the knife is that Star Trek - every single series up to Enterprise - was made for syndication. The formula for creating Star Trek episodes is we'll-worn and well-loved. Furthermore it's relatively cheap, with heavy reuse of preexisting sets and lots of shots that are just people sitting around a table talking.

If you want to make a Star Trek show, here's the blueprint. There's 8-10 main characters. Give them all three things they strongly believe in. Have an episode for each principle that affirm, and one that rejects it, possibly putting them at loggerheads with other members of the crew.

Give each character an episode that deals with something in their past. For each non human character, give them an episode that shows the strength of their races characteristics and way of thinking, and one that shows their weaknesses. Obviously some of these will be B plots, but that's still a few dozen episodes. But that's not even touching on the other reliable plots:

Guest character returns!
An Admiral is being evil.
A Captain has gone rogue!
Something dodgy is happening in the neutral zone!
The Captain is forced to work with an enemy against a greater threat!
R&R is interrupted.
A few episodes focusing on minor background characters.
Colonists have settled in a terrible location!
An evil alien attacks! (turns out we were the bad guys)
A utopian society isn't!
The rest of the crew has suddenly vanished!
Something's goes wrong when the ship in docked for repairs.
Something's gone wrong in a medical outpost!
Something's gone wrong in an observation outpost!
Something's gone wrong with a new experimental ship!
A fragile peace is being undermined!
A strange virus has struck the ship! (organic)
A strange virus has struck the ship! (computer)
There's some kind of time anomaly!
There's some kind of spacial anomaly!
People are aging abnormally!
The engine isn't working!
The ship has been boarded!
We've found people from centuries ago!
An alternate timeline! (that isn't the mirror universe)
The mirror universe, again!
Space whales!
The covert mission!
A strange probe!
The mystery of the long dead race!
Unstoppable intelligent cosmic phenomena! (possibly malicious)
The Rashomon episode!
The court martial episode!
The one where someone dies! (they get better)
The one where someone dies! (they didn't renew their contract)

This isn't even mentioning the episodes that purely focus on the aliens, either existing ones or brand new civilisations they might introduce. Nor does it include the season-spanning plot episodes or two-parter cliffhangers, but just by following these well established trends a room of competent writers could easily churn out a hundred episodes before they were forced to either retread old plots or come up with something novel.

Star Trek traded on these standard plots for the best part of sixty years. There was little melodrama, the characters were sensible, serious people, and it was consistently watchable (for the most part).

I just don't understand why of the half a dozen different series they've put out, that they can't just give us one (1!) that resembles the old Star Trek.
 
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