At the risk of further inflaming Denis McGrath, and perhaps further proving his point (see "EDIT" at the bottom of that post), this 94-item list of unanswered Battlestar Galactica questions might be part of the reason that "fanboys" have a problem with shows that purport to have continuing storylines. (Heroes is another one that's run into continuity problems, and has seen similarly negative reaction.) Moore came up with a realistic "re-imagining" of the original series that held a lot of promise, but over four (or is that six?) seasons the show has set up so many threads—ropes, even—that have been left hanging that it's hard to see how that promise can be kept.
I enjoyed the first season of Galactica, but as it's worn on the questions that seemed so intriguing to start with have been replaced with more of a feeling of "what nonsense are they going to come up with this week?" That feeling definitely contributed to my comment a few days ago that "Weird is good, but generally best in moderation." Would The Prisoner be as highly regarded now if it had run for three seasons instead of one, and we found out that Number Six's memory had actually been removed by the aliens that sent him from space so he could objectively evaluate the effectiveness of the mind-control virus they'd distributed in the 14th century that, through an unforeseen side-effect, was the real cause of the Black Death, and that the ever-changing Number Two was an insane Catholic priest who had developed shape-changing abilities after sneaking aboard the aliens' spaceship during the initial landing 600 years ago and was just biding his time until he could take revenge on Six's father (the commander of the mission) for messing up his plot to overthrow the Pope?
Actually, you know, I might watch that....
2 comments:
My favourite part of the list, from item 83:
"Note: Kara 'dies' and disappears into a storm, reappears in the Ionian Nebula two months later claiming to have been to Earth, goes crazy on Galactica, is given the Demetrius to find her road back, finds Leoben in a Heavy Raider, who convinces her to find a damaged Basestar so that Kara can talk to its hybrid. The hybrid intimates to her to unbox D’Anna, who has seen the faces of the Final Five on the Algae planet in the hope that Final Five will reveal themselves and the route to Earth. Three of them do this unwittingly by means of mysterious music that leads them to Kara’s Viper, which now mysteriously is receiving an emergency locator signal that the Colonials can trace back to Earth."
So obviously, Kara's real talent is being able to float on heavy gusts of plot.
I started typing up a comment to this excellent post and then realized it was way too long to live its life as a comment! And so I put it here instead.
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