Well, I think those are 2 complementary but diverging viewpoints.

One: the series was good at the beginning, but things were getting stale and changes needed to occur to keep it compelling.

Two: the change in direction starting with New Caprica and going out to the Cylon POV and Earth and nonexplainable stuff took the series the wrong way.

You can agree with one and two, or you can agree with one and disagree with two, or you can disagree with both. Personally I liked the overall idea of what they were doing, although I think it fell short in execution towards the end. They'd written themselves into a proverbial hole. Lost had the same problem, but unlike BSG I'm not sure I really agreed with the overall plan once I knew it.



The Jedi Master

True, I know quite a few fans who didn't like season 4 so you're not the only one. All I can say to that is to each their own but how I see it is that I'm glad Ron Moore wasn't afraid to take chances with the show instead of just putting it on cruise control and letting it become stale. There's no doubt that season 4 changed a few things in a radical way,

1. Lee changing from military to civilian (politician)

2. Cylon civil war followed by Colonial mutiny. This changed the dynamic from a purely colonial vs. cylon one to a colonial vs. disgruntled colonials weary of war vs. rebel cylons vs. cylons with Cavil's camp.

3. Starbuck not being the same Starbuck that we knew before.

4. Less space combat, more character study/dialogue scenes.

5. Radical role change for Gaius Baltar. Going from scientist/Colonial president/cylon prisoner to leader of a new religous cult.


So when you have these many changes during the final season of a show, you're bound to make some fans unhappy. I was not one of the unhappy fans though.

Out of all of those, the only one that really affected my enjoyment of the show was #3, and not because it happened but because of how it happened and was explained. Well, wasn't explained.

I figured you guys would get a laugh out of this,

I concur.

Tyrol was bad enough but BSG jumped the shark with Tigh and Ellen, for me. Two of the elder members of the fleet, who within approximate working timelines were youngsters during the first Cylon war when Adama was doing the heroic business; Tigh being a longtime buddy of Adama; displaying variable human ageing characteristics with the other "finals"; flashbacks showing the alternative skinjob concept in its infancy among Cylons at that time; etc.

The justifications introduced for the contradictions and the messy back-story of those five became so convoluted I tired of this whole arc very quickly.

That Five / Temple / Prophecy thing was fundamentally surplus to requirements anyway; for me the whole skinjob thing would have worked so much better if it was just something Cylons did, in the quiet years, to pump out a few young hottie clones like 6 and 8 to infiltrate humanity.

Back when Cylons were sneaky, one step ahead, single minded and dangerous. Not the jarringly contradictory confused schizophrenics in need of some wuv and religious enlightenment of the later series.

I appreciate the need to branch out, but the universe was so rich there were many other avenues they could have branched out into without tearing into the core tenets.

IMHO

Cheers, Spinner

The original BSG portrayed the cylons as a monolithic group with no free will of their own and were literally robots in their unquestioning obedience to their masters and in their goal to wipe out the last remaining colonials. That may provide enough depth for a 2 hour film but not a long running tv series.

I completely agree with the approach of the new BSG making the cylons a seemingly monolithic and unquestioning entity in the miniseries and early stage of the show but then later on showing how the cylons themselves continue to evolve and ultimately question their own programming as Boomer and D'Anna did for example. That type of rubric allows for a show with a much deeper and varied philosophy and commentary on what it is to be human.

Of course, in the end human = Cylon + THEIR humans. Which pretty much blurs the whole thing up anyway.




The Jedi Master

I hear SyFy is working on a Gay Vampire wrestling in space reality show. Their execs think it's a winner.

Their execs think anything that's really low budget is a winner.



The Jedi Master

Unfortunately their SyFy Original B crap movies get decent enough ratings to warrant them making more. I think I read somewhere on IMDB that those original SyFy movies average about a 1 million dollar budget each.