DPP: Mix & Match
Sep. 6th, 2011 08:08 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
callmeonetrack.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no_takebacksI love the early seasons of BSG. There was a sense of humor, a sense of hope, a sense of humanity...all of which slowly got leeched away from the show in later seasons in favor of darkness, doom and cylons. I often comment that I wish that tone of the first 25 episodes could have gone on forever. That I would have liked to see how *that show* resolved.
However, the last few seasons aren’t all bad. We never would have gotten to seen Tigh with his eye patch if not! Or, that gorgeous brig scene in Six of One. So here’s my question--where would you stop the show or change its navigational course (i.e. "My personal canon ends with Unfinished Business Extended") and what would you graft on to it or keep from later seasons?
Maybe they'd never find the Pegasus and that would change things, but Lee would still quit the fleet? Or perhaps all you needed was a perfect 13 and you wanna end it at KLG1 but give Tigh an eye patch from the beginning?
Or the reverse...maybe some of you like seasons 3 and 4 much better than the early seasons, so you'd wish themes in those two happened earlier and there were just a few things from 1 and 2 you'd keep...like the Colonial Day water fight?
Basically it's all about cobbling your ideal or preferred show together from what we saw. What would you take? What would you leave?
However, the last few seasons aren’t all bad. We never would have gotten to seen Tigh with his eye patch if not! Or, that gorgeous brig scene in Six of One. So here’s my question--where would you stop the show or change its navigational course (i.e. "My personal canon ends with Unfinished Business Extended") and what would you graft on to it or keep from later seasons?
Maybe they'd never find the Pegasus and that would change things, but Lee would still quit the fleet? Or perhaps all you needed was a perfect 13 and you wanna end it at KLG1 but give Tigh an eye patch from the beginning?
Or the reverse...maybe some of you like seasons 3 and 4 much better than the early seasons, so you'd wish themes in those two happened earlier and there were just a few things from 1 and 2 you'd keep...like the Colonial Day water fight?
Basically it's all about cobbling your ideal or preferred show together from what we saw. What would you take? What would you leave?
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Date: 2011-09-06 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 01:25 pm (UTC)Now, I'm kinda all about mood shifts. Although, since they usually tend to go from lightness and sweet to 'Oh Gods THE PAIN!" they do tend to be pretty hard on the heart, but I like the different angles they give characters to play. I'm also a big angst whore and love when shows go all super dark. But the absolute sweetness of their early interaction in the show is what hooked me so I certainly couldn't do without that either.
The only answer I can come up with, being unable to give up anything pilots related, is that I wish we could've removed everything else and just have had the entire show happening in the background and focused all the main plot on Kara/Lee. Haha. Yes, I am THAT selfish. But if we'd gotten a whole season of Mini Pilots and Flirting Pilots and Frakking Pilots and Finally Happily Ever After Pilots, well then I could have died happy without losing anything I couldn't do without (I.e. everyone else). :P
Kidding...sorta.
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Date: 2011-09-06 01:28 pm (UTC)Shippy-wise, those kids got screwed over every which way till Sunday. And it happened at the beginning of S2 when our favorite tub of goo showed up (bless him). From then on our ship was locked in mortal combat and the writers could never decide if they wanted it to survive or not. Was there a bigger picture in mind (even if it only shows up by accident)? I dunno. But it's something I want to take another look at.
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Date: 2011-09-06 01:56 pm (UTC)Made me laugh a lot. I only recently realized that Kara/Sam really existed in just 2-3 episodes: Farm, LDYB 2 and UB flashbacks. After the NC occupation, the show (or Kara) was pretty much done with Sam. Kara spent the whole season 3 repeatedly showing Sam and the viewers that she considered her marriage to him as mistake/finished/technicality. I understand that they kept Sam around until EOJ (they wanted for the pilots to have an affair not a legit relationship) but dragging Kara/Sam as anything other than friendship into season 4 and fully reviving it in 4.5 was really a mockery of what they'd shown us about them up to that point.
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Date: 2011-09-06 02:39 pm (UTC)I've had to work through so much on that front. I think I often come off as as Sam-hater, but it's really not him I hate-- just the way he was used by the show. He was the human stumbling block to the K/L dynamic. That was his only purpose (and to eb the lead singer fo Sam and the Secret Cylons). And yes, I was deeply (DEEPLY!) enraged with the sudden importance their relationship was given in 4.5, especially as it was, so counterintuitive to everything we had seen before. **suppresses angry flailing even after all these years**
But these days, I mostly feel sad that his character wasn't treated with more respect. ToG deserved better than ... a ToG. : (
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Date: 2011-09-06 02:42 pm (UTC)I mean, at even Dee got some free will in how she met her end.
Poor ToG. :(
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Date: 2011-09-06 03:09 pm (UTC)I'm exactly the same, I actually like the guy a lot even though he must have lots of self-respect issues if he lets Kara treat him so badly. (Staying in a relationship bordering on being abusive has nothing to do with unconditional love for someone but everything to do with the person's own fears and insecurities.) Sadly he is not a character in the story but rather a "plot device". The writers clearly wanted to write Kara/Sam off much earlier and kept including all these possible endings into the story (Kara leaving him on Caprica, his pneumonia, Kara pushing him away, Kara's affair...) only to bring it back in the next episode. 2-3 times I am OK with it but when it happens 10x I stop enjoying the story and just wander what is going on in the writer's head. Sam could have been so happy with Seelix. He deserved better.
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Date: 2011-09-06 03:40 pm (UTC)I know Woman King and Dirty Hands get a lot of flack, but they are in the style of the first two seasons that I adore so much. Post-exodus there would be more of that and more from the "rebel" cylons early on. I'd also split it so that it was the Leobens, Sixes, and Simons versus the Cavils, Dorals, and Sharons with Boomer being a switch to the rebel side with the sixes and co. I want to see them work on creating a functioning society with Kara and Lee still having a fallout but resolution happening when Kara's NC trauma is actually dealt with.
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Date: 2011-09-06 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 05:40 pm (UTC)Also no dues ex machina, i.e. dying and coming back if you're not a cylon, magical, final five cylons, etc. Instead, make humans and cylons alike work for it!
I really wish that Sam had either died on Caprica or found a purpose. As a plot device, nothing about Sam changes if he's dead until he becomes a cylon. Or if he's so necessary, make him something of him. (This goes for Dee too post-New Caprica, really.)
Oh, and quit being clever with relationship and let Lee and Kara be together. ;)
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Date: 2011-09-06 05:54 pm (UTC)I like this idea a lot.
Oh, and quit being clever with relationship and let Lee and Kara be together. ;)
And leave the pigeons at home? Yikes. That's a lot to ask... ; P
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Date: 2011-09-06 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 08:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 08:25 pm (UTC)For me season 2 is kind of perfect, in how it has a lot of lighter episodes but some really intense ones too. I admit I was pulling my hair out now and then wanting to know who was and wasn't a cylon at some point, but by the end I honestly couldn't give much of a crap about the final five because the show had sailed pretty far past the point where I felt like it would change how we felt about any of the characters, and humans were inevitably going to make peace with the cylons anyway. So I actually missed the more human-focused storylines, as much as that maybe makes me a bad sci-fi fan. I did like S3/S4 and a lot of the cylon characters but a lot of what was done with the cylons season 3 and onward got mixed reactions from me, as I recall.
When it comes specifically to K/L, if it had been up to me, they would have danced around each other in season 1/2 UST limbo and then finally figured it out at the end, either when they could be together or it was tragically too late, either one. I felt a bit let down by them just having an affair and then reacting inconsistently to each other for the rest of the show.
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 08:35 pm (UTC)As far as the psychology goes, I think he took comfort in the "well, at least she took the trouble marry me" thing and got some special snowflake feeling from that. But still, yeah, it wasn't healthy and it wasn't good. Poor bb.
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 08:39 pm (UTC)And I think it would have been far more interesting too if the final five had been revealed when people might have actually reacted strongly to the point of them being traitors in their midst and all. Honestly, after you have Kara miraculously regenerate and refuse to even seriously explore the possibility/repercussions that she's a cylon, what's their to get excited about. No one really batted an eyebrow at her return and she wasn't even something they were familiar with, presumably.
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:39 pm (UTC)I'd never actually considered before how many storylines could seem almost like set-up to get rid of Sam. Woah. The only thing I kept thinking was how old it got that Kara seemed to practically forget Sam existed except for when he was in immediate danger (which was interesting to an extent, because it made a lot of sense with Kara's character and her past, but was exhausting to watch repeatedly when I wanted to kind of like the relationship but was repeatedly shown how messed up it was).
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:41 pm (UTC)YES. There was SO MUCH PROGRESS in 4/4.5. I just think a lot of folks-- the nonshippy peeps in particular-- got so exasperated with the S3 fightin' and angstin and affair havin' that they just wrote them off. And that's a shame really. Because there was some really good character development stuff going on.
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:47 pm (UTC)My jumping-off point is pretty consistently the end of S2. There are elements of story built up to that point that would probably carry on to be resolved in similar ways to what happened in parts of S3, but it's S3 and beyond where the show threw out most of the emotional narratives.
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 08:53 pm (UTC)THIS. It just got so damn hard to like anyone. For me, it wan't until after Maelstrom that I actually gave a damn about anyone again. But I do maintain that 4/4.5 showed great potential at times, though it was wildly uneven.
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Date: 2011-09-06 08:59 pm (UTC)Forget destiny
Date: 2011-09-06 09:38 pm (UTC)Leoben had all the traits of the highly skilled and charismatic psychopath manipulator, and even though I love BSG for not being black and white, I really have problem when someone like that is portrayed as being good for Kara cause he helped to embrace her destiny. I like the idea of Leoben using Kara, convincing her about the destiny and her trusting him, flying into the maelstrom, coming back, remembering that stupid song, deciphering it, and finding ruined cylon Earth, thus fulfilling her destiny as the harbinger of death. The song was written on Earth 1.0 and it activated the Final Five who lived there so it makes more sense if it lead them to the cylon Earth rather than Earth 2.0.
Season 4.5.: No more destiny but mutiny and its fallout and searching for habitable planet in cooperation with the rebel cylons. Finding Earth 2.0 in some logical way. I don't mind if there is luck, mysticism and God's will involved as long as it is not a complete 'deus ex machina'
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Date: 2011-09-06 10:15 pm (UTC)I am sure that lots of people feel about those scenes differently. Maybe I didn't get them but they just felt like a complete waste of time.
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Date: 2011-09-06 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-06 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 12:08 am (UTC)Part of me wants to stop before The Farm. And I like the Farm. Or maybe right after they get back from Kobol. No, Final Cut! Final Cut! End right there on the old BSG music. Or on Flight of the Phoenix when they were all still family. Aww! The Pegasus arc was a good arc but it was never my favorite. Things got so dark after that. I'm still shocked that they would try to rape Sharon like that. Gosh.
Pilots-wise and Kara-wise, I'd stop on Dirty Hands. With Kara scoffing at Chiefy and Seelix becoming a nugget. :-D It was the last time, Kara was, well Kara. I know some people love what I call, Kara2. And I love her too. I do! A Kara divided can not stand! But, I don't think we ever really had a light moment like that with her and Chiefy again. When Tigh gets her to get out of bed when she doesn't want to. Where Chiefy tells Cally, it's good to be small. Where Dee laughs at Billy and Gaius still talks to himself in the lab. I would have never tired of that show.
I liked the later bits, some of them. I liked the Farm. I liked Kacey and how she chanted, "Kara, Kara, Kara!" Aww. I liked that Felix got more screen time and that Ellen wasn't just a promiscious silly woman but loved her man to the end, and once was a leader and a scientist. I do. But I miss that earlier show very, very much.
This comment made me a bit sad!
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Date: 2011-09-07 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-07 01:15 pm (UTC)Some acknowledgment of their love and connection. SOMETHING! Why was that so hard? *sad forever*
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Date: 2011-09-07 08:00 pm (UTC)Frak the special destiny. It still makes me want to RAGE sometimes that Kara got caught into this whole messed-up "destiny" loop and effectively became a figurehead to get them to Earth - seriously, they already had that in Laura, why involve Kara too? And I really don't like the implication that "embracing your destiny"= death.
Or maybe that's not it - I've seen brilliant execution of that idea on Buffy, which left me sobbing like a baby but also feeling that this was a logical end to the story, because it was something Buffy'd been wondering about through almost the entire season. With Kara, it was just a spell of serious mental instability and then suicide (if I can even call it that) in the grip of a delusion.
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Date: 2011-09-07 08:06 pm (UTC)I'd also skip Sam getting shot and the goo tub because Kara seems to be unable to let go of relationships if she feels guilty about them/responsible for bad things happening to them, and if Sam was healthy and in his right mind at the end of the series I really do think they'd have split up of their own volition.
And if it comes right down to that, skip the poof. Like I said once before, the point that Kara's return was not within the bounds of logic had already been made, the poof isn't strictly necessary to reinforce that. She's suffered enough being a supernatural back-from-the-dead, why can't the writers just let her enjoy a second chance at life since she earned it?
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Date: 2011-09-07 08:08 pm (UTC)Seriously, just LEAVE THEM ALONE in that field at the end - no poofing required!
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Date: 2011-09-07 08:12 pm (UTC)*sigh* I miss that earlier show so much, too.
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Date: 2011-09-07 08:15 pm (UTC)It's terrible that they got cheated out of it, but in a weird way, the lack of verbalisation of their true feelings in that last scene seemed very in keeping with how most of their relationship played out - more about what they aren't saying/doing to each other than what they are.