Battlestar Craptastica, It is to Meh

[akirlu]

Home sick again today. Had been sliding downhill over the weekend, and have been battling the chills all day. Am I not supposed to get *well* before I get sick again? Feh. Main upside is, I've been able to catch up on some commenting over in deathless_pose.

Last night, Hal and I watched about two-thirds of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. I had heard good things about the new series, so we had earlier gotten the first disc of Series 1 from Netflix, only to discover that the first disc of Series 1 does not, in fact, start at the beginning of the story. So now we're watching from the beginning. I have to say for me, keeping my disbelief in the air has been a challenge almost from the very beginning. To wit, Cylons pulling up, totally undetected and walking in unnoticed and unchallenged, to the outpost space station humanity left behind expressly for the purpose of meeting Cylons at. I understand that not much has happened in the last few decades, but does this mean that the station, even if under-manned, has no remote sensing equipment, no alarms, no guards, and no regular pattern of checking in with home base? We're supposed to believe that the only person on the entire base is one old guy who sits around in a giant empty room falling asleep over his protocols? Er, hmm.

And once the Cylons kill the guy, still undetected, and then go on to bomb an entire space station to flinders, no automatied distress call goes out, and no serious alarm goes up anywhere in the colonies when an entire base falls out of contact? Nobody even notices let alone gets majorly alarmed by the fact that, hey, our only point of contact with the at-last-check-hostile Cylons has been blown out of the sky? Er.

And then, when finally someone thinks to notice the base has gone unresponsive, the one and only battlestar commander so paranoid about Cylon intrusion methods that he won't allow computerized landings on board his ship, who refuses to network any of his computers for the same reason, gets a message suggesting he might check up on the only base between humanity and the Cylons, he decides to just blow it off? Perhaps not so much.

Meanwhile, back in the colonies, basic high-security procedures are so mindbogglingly lax, and military and defense computer systems so monolithic, unified and free of firewalls, need-to-know protocols, isolated systems, or any kind of data-quarantines at all, that a single scientist who's been turned by his mole-lover can somehow get her access to absolutely every system and subsystem of the entire defense computer complex, including passwords, protocols, and data, of twelve planets without anyone noticing or, well, raising an eyebrow???? No.

So when we get around to everyone traipsing around Caprica within close *visual* *range* of *multiple* mushroom clouds, and Baltar walks away unscathed from a blast so close that it shattered all the windows of his house, well, the rational mind has pretty much given up the ghost and gone off to gibber in a corner.

So, on the whole, meh. The show is *less* stupid than the original, and can be quite dramatically compelling at times, but I wouldn't say it's even remotely free of stupid bits.

Comments

[avram]

I was pretty bored and unimpressed about two-thirds of the way through the miniseries. The last third picks up a bit, but it wasn’t till the first episode of the series proper that I was hooked. I mean, there are still problems, even into the third season, but I’m hooked.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I have actually seen the first ep of the first series (we went ahead and watched that disc out of order), and, eh. We'll probably carry on watching for a bit, and I do agree with various people that the new series goes a long way in cleaning up some of the hokier mannerisms of the original, but given the raptures my sources were in, I think it's going to be hard for me to ever be impressed with this series. "Better than the original series" is still damning with very faint praise.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Maybe I missed something.

I'd assumed that the guy at the meeting point hadn't just been sitting there for umpteen years, that humanity had received a message that the Cylons wanted to meet, and that's why he was there. The unexpected part (besides the Cylons achieving human shape) was that they didn't want to talk, but just kill. (I mean, it was known they were hostile, but why bother to show up at the meeting point if all they wanted to do was attack? What was really unexpected was their desire to taunt and subvert.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'd say you missed something. The narration explicitly says that the base had been set up and left as an embassy to the Cylons, and for years humanity had been sending an envoy and the Cylons had sent nobody. Then one day, out of the blue, the Cylons just waltz in and start kicking butt.

But yeah, now that you mention it, the Cylons first destroying the embassy base is another plot stupidity, because really, just in case you aren't fighting an enemy who are a bunch of complete morons, why warn them that you're coming by taking out their base? It would make more sense to leapfrog the base and just start hitting the homeworlds.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

OK, it'd been a while since I saw it. My reading of the narration was that the human ambassador showed up on a periodic, regular basis, at times set in whatever agreement established the meeting point in the first place; he wasn't just stationed there permanently. That parses the misremembered version I posted above.

If the humans really weren't expecting the Cylons to show up, it's not so surprising that they didn't detect them. And if the Cylon attack on the planet was close to simultaneous with the one on the meeting point - or was there something that renders that impossible? - the one couldn't serve as a warning for the other.

As for the computer password business, I just take that sort of thing as a given in fiction, the way I take perfectly-formed spoken sentences. What I had a hard time believing was that that nebbish of a man could be a top scientist, or that anybody would stake anything on either his firmness or his integrity.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Whether the ambassador himself was there all the time or only at the appointed times, it still doesn't seem plausible to me -- or at least it doesn't seem in accord with non-idiocy -- that the station had no crew, no alarms, no means of detecting an armed ship approaching, no regular contact with the rest of civilized space such that an armed ship could pull up, and a bunch of fully armed Cylons would march in on the ambassador unannounced, unchecked, and still *armed*. As portrayed, he's just sitting there dozing over his dossiers when the Cylons march in. What, there was no one who made them give up their weapons when they came on board? There were no adjutants who did the usual ceremonial hoo-hah, the stuff that foreign services everywhere live for? It's idiotic.

If the humans really weren't expecting the Cylons to show up, it's not so surprising that they didn't detect them.

Didn't detect them when they pulled up to the station??? Didn't detect them when they presumably came in through the docking locks fully armed???? Didn't detect them as they marched en masse through the station?

And irrespective of whether the humans had grown lax, still they must have put the station systems in place when they were expecting the Cylons to show up -- protocols for greeting ambassadors and passing visitors through base customs, if nothing else, but surely also little things like staff, ciphers and regular message exchanges for keeping in touch with home system, and pre-set emergency message beacons in case of disaster (which in space, needn't be enemy action after all), and some rudimentary system for detecting large objects in nearby space just in case they're about to be hit by an asteroid or something.

Yes, I agree, if they were unimaginably moronic and obtuse, then indeed, stupid behavior isn't surprising. What I'm complaining about in the first place is the fact that, as described, they were unimaginably moronic and obtuse. I find that objectionable in characters I'm supposed to empathize with.

And if the Cylon attack on the planet was close to simultaneous with the one on the meeting point

Yes, but that's the point, see, it wasn't. As played in the narrative, there's time for the whole business of decomissioning Galactica to play out, and Galactica to get the message suggesting they might check up on the base which is out of touch, and a whole bunch of other stuff to go on.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Didn't detect them when they pulled up to the station???

Detect them with what? I thought this wasn't a human station, but a neutral unstaffed meeting point. And that nobody was expecting the Cylons to show up anyway: they never had. I figure the human ambassador goes out in a one-man shuttle, as a meaningless routine.

In a universe in which Donald Rumsfeld never expected an Iraqi insurgency, a much more likely prospect, this doesn't seem unlikely to me.

protocols for greeting ambassadors etc etc

No protocols. They have no diplomatic relations, and not even any contact, other than this. I'm reminded of the Korean DMZ at the height of the Cold War, at the very least.

As played in the narrative, there's time for the whole business of decomissioning Galactica to play out

Are you sure this happens after the attack on the meeting point? And even if it does, that the humans had found out about it?

Yeah, as I recall, the attack is the beginning of the teaser, but that doesn't mean it's chronologically the first event - narratives of this kind often drop back into flashbacks. Even more often, they begin with a warning to the audience of danger and then cut to a simultaneous scene of the protagonists being blissfully unaware of what is happening elsewhere. Surely one of those is what's happening here.

This is all trivial nitpicking compared to something else that I just recalled. Isn't it stated that the humans had created the Cylons in the first place? So this is yet another story of robot servants who go all inexplicably wiggy and attack their masters. How tiresome.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Detect them with what? I thought this wasn't a human station,

Sorry it says again in the narrative that humans built it, and as I suggested elsewhere, rudimentary large-object-detection systems seem like a good idea if only to account for comets, asteroids, and miscellaneous space junk. Nobody else is portrayed as having no sensor systems, why should humanity build the base without them, especially when they are building it right after a war?

but a neutral unstaffed meeting point

You're kidding. There is no third race, who would build it? And the idea of a completely unstaffed base is, well, dumb. Orbits have to be maintained, maintenance schedules kept up, somebody has to man the airlocks, and so forth. Nothing is proof to entropy, and a base built at the end of the Cylon war would have been built with minimal automation, hence, staff.

I figure the human ambassador goes out in a one-man shuttle, as a meaningless routine.

Yes, it seems the writers figured that, too. I find the idea implausibly stupid for reasons that obviously don't occur to you, even when I mention them. Who the hell let the Cylons in the airlock? If the airlock opens to all comers, why on earth would humans who just got done with a war build it that way, so the Cylons could be lying in ambush the first time humanity showed up at the meet point? If the airlock opens to all comers, then why hasn't the base either been stripped for parts, occupied by squatters, or outright stolen for scrap?

No protocols. They have no diplomatic relations, and not even any contact, other than this. I'm reminded of the Korean DMZ at the height of the Cold War, at the very least.

You're claiming that the U.S. had no diplomatic practices in place at all just because we had no formal relations with Korea? You can't possibly be that ignorant.

Are you sure this happens after the attack on the meeting point?

Yes, actually, I am. There are internal cues to the story. The attack on the homeworlds can't have happened way earlier in the narrative, or, among other things, the scout shuttle couldn't have been on Caprica from Galactica just in time to rescue Baltar, while the attack on Caprica is still going on.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Humans may have built it, but that doesn't mean they have to have staffed it. I rather doubt the Cylons would have agreed to the treaty if it had included human-staffed sensors on the neutral meeting point.

An unstaffed base is not a dumb idea in sufficiently cheap science-fiction. It's a staple idea the same way the overly simplistic security codes are.

I said the human-Cylon relations reminded me of the Korean DMZ at the height of the Cold War, and added the phrase, "at the very least." I didn't say "identical to." You really want to jump to conclusions of my ignorance here. Whatever under-the-counter contacts did go on across the DMZ, they were extremely strained, minimal, and uninformative compared to what went on across the Berlin Wall, and far more than in Berlin and other critical boundaries, events along the DMZ often occurred in complete uncertainty as to what the North Koreans were doing. Remember the Pueblo?

In BSG, complete absence of other contact between humans and Cylons is specified in the set-up. That makes it more like dealing with North Korea during the Cold War than any other real-life diplomatic situation I can think of. Not "identical to." Jeepers.

Your citation of the timing of the shuttle-rescue scene is evidence for my point. The attack didn't happen earlier in the narrative, it happened LATER. The attacks take place AFTER the decommissioning etc. scenes, even though the teaser appears in the movie beforehand.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Humans may have built it, but that doesn't mean they have to have staffed it. I rather doubt the Cylons would have agreed to the treaty if it had included human-staffed sensors on the neutral meeting point.

The defeated side in a war doesn't usually get to raise those sorts of objections.

An unstaffed base is not a dumb idea in sufficiently cheap science-fiction. It's a staple idea the same way the overly simplistic security codes are.

Ah, so you agree it's stupid, it's just a stupidity you were willing to accept in the context of "sufficiently cheap science-fiction". It's a piece of hand-waving I'm not willing to accept, since the series has been promoted to me in the context of "good SF".

My point about ambassadorial protocols seems to be going by you entirely. Even if you posit absolutely zero contact between two sovereign entities, the point is that foreign service organizations exist, in part, to observe protocols, make obeisances, dispense honors, and generally do the dainty. When we open diplomatic relations with any sovereign entity, it doesn't happen in a vacuum, the legation doesn't consist of one guy, walking in tabula rasa. Ambassadors do not travel solo. Protocols, best procedures, gaggles of functionaries, and, oh yeah, embassy guards, are all part and parcel to the whole idea of an embassy. The protocols may be rusty or mothballed, but if you have a foreign service, you have protocols.

Your citation of the timing of the shuttle-rescue scene is evidence for my point. The attack didn't happen earlier in the narrative, it happened LATER. The attacks take place AFTER the decommissioning etc. scenes, even though the teaser appears in the movie beforehand.

Can't have done, the message that the base has gone off line and would Galactica like to check up on it comes to Adama before the decomissioning ceremony. Really. The actual details you missed in watching it do not support your theory. The basic chronology necessitated by events internal to the miniseries is that the attack on the embassy base happens, then there's a long enough lag for the fleet to notice that the base is offline, then the decomissioning of the Galactica happens, then the attack on the homeworlds begins. Nothing else is supported by events.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If they don't get to raise their objections, they don't have to sign the treaty. Even the Japanese after WW2 got one (1) concession from the Americans.

I still don't really see a problem with the unstaffed space station. It could have automatic controls to ensure it doesn't fall out of orbit. It doesn't have to be every-last-detail SF, just good. People have been picking at technical points in SF masterpieces for decades, that doesn't make them bad SF.

You seem entirely to be missing my point about the relations between the humans and the Cylons. There are no relations. Just the one meeting point at regular intervals. There isn't any more.

OK, as I said, it's been a while since I watched it, so it's easy to forget. But I still don't see any problem with the chronology. The point isn't really what happens when, it's when it's noticed. If the only message that came through is that the base is offline, then the attack on the planets could easily have happened later ... later enough so that the shuttle could land on the planet while the attacks are still going on. Maybe that's why the Cylons insisted on an unstaffed base.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

If they don't get to raise their objections, they don't have to sign the treaty. Even the Japanese after WW2 got one (1) concession from the Americans.

There's no indication whatever that the base was set up under treaty agreement, anyway, you realize? Moreover, the experience of the Swiss at the end of WW2, and for that matter the Treaty of Versailles actually suggests that whether you effectively have to sign the treaty or not probably depends more on what level of bastardy of the winning side.

I still don't really see a problem with the unstaffed space station. It could have automatic controls to ensure it doesn't fall out of orbit.

I already addressed this. Automation is Cylon vulnerable. That's been established already. A station that was built right after the end of the Cylon war would have been as automation averse as Adama is portrayed as being.

You seem entirely to be missing my point about the relations between the humans and the Cylons. There are no relations. Just the one meeting point at regular intervals. There isn't any more.

No, I get that. I have all along. What I don't get is how that is responsive to my point about how a diplomatic bureaucracy works, which you seem to be missing still.

Maybe that's why the Cylons insisted on an unstaffed base.

But wouldn't explain why humanity would be stupid enough to fall for it. Again, it's the posited unlimited stupidity of humanity as portrayed that I'm objecting to. If you're going to argue with me by giving me other ways that one can interpret the internal-to-the-story-humanity as having been yet more stupid, I'm not sure how it helps your point.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

There's no indication whatever that the base was set up under treaty agreement, anyway, you realize?

There isn't? Correct me if I'm misremembering again, but I thought the whole bit about the annual meetings was part of the agreement that ended the earlier war. Using the base would be a part of that, whether it already existed or not.

A station that was built right after the end of the Cylon war would have been as automation averse as Adama is portrayed as being.

I recall Adama's automation-aversion being depicted as seen by the other characters as paranoid and slightly cracked. And certainly there's plenty of automated (on that level) stuff on the planet. Are these evidence, in your view, of the other characters being stupid? If so, I'd have thought that would be Exhibit A on your original list.

What I don't get is how that is responsive to my point about how a diplomatic bureaucracy works, which you seem to be missing still.

No, I get it, and I've gotten it all along. What you don't get is that I disagree with it. That's not how things are set up here. You can't demand expectations of the human-Cylon diplomatic relationship. There is no human-Cylon diplomatic relationship, except for the annual meeting to which the Cylons never come. That's it. There is no more. This is specified in the set-up. Nor is this unbelievable. The kinds of under-the-counter things that go on in the real world between countries without diplomatic relations - undercover spies on location, monitoring of transmissions, communication through neutral third parties, and so on - these aren't available to the humans here. (The Cylons, it turns out, do have undercover spies, which further ratifies the point.)

But wouldn't explain why humanity would be stupid enough to fall for it.

Again, I don't see how that makes the humans stupid.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I thought the back story was that as part of the Cylon/Human peace accords the humans and Cylons were due to meet at the space station every year, but the Cylons never turned up.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

The issue of Boltar and his survival is still an open one and it gets freakier still when you see what happened from her perspective in Season 2.

The tech is low stuff did get to me to start with but I was able to ignore it.

[samildanach.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, there's a throwaway comment before the Galactica decommissioning ceremony about Fleet asking them to check out Armistice Station, because they haven't called in -- "probably a communications malfunction".

I wasn't exactly hooked after the miniseries, either, and there continue to be points that aren't very well thought out. But enough things work well (some very well) that I'm glad to have stuck with it. (Need to bump season 2.5 to the front of the Netflix queue -- done.)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, there's a throwaway comment before the Galactica decommissioning ceremony about Fleet asking them to check out Armistice Station, because they haven't called in -- "probably a communications malfunction".

Yeah, I couldn't remember the exact wording, but I caught that yeah. But the throwaway is made to Commander Adama, he of the anti-networking protocols so strict even his own son is surprised. Either Adama is a bugfuck paranoiac by contemporary fleet standards, or he isn't. If he's going to be painted as the lone worry-wart among the great unwashed of mindless sheep, then he has to act like it, and acting like it includes not taking it as given that it's just a malfunction without checking on that.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I'm going to ROT-13 spoilers in case you'd rather wait until you find some things out in later episodes.

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[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Oh, *dear*. That's either startlingly bad writing, or someone's gonna have a lot of 'splaining to do as to when the switch occurred.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

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[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Okay, so the answer is "startlingly bad writing". Given the history of the Cylons as I understand it, that's just not possible.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Why not?

[avram]

Because William Adama fought in the first Cylon War, before skin-job Cylons were invented. And he married and had two sons, so if he were a skin-job, the Cylons would have had to fake not only his military records and his own memories, but his relationship with other humans.

Also, if he’s a Cylon, then Lee (and his late brother, Zak) are the first human-Cylon hybrids, which invalidates a whole other plotline.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd forgotten he fought in the first war. You're right, that would have to be substitution.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well, unless for some reason there were "secret" skin job Cylons seeded in the human population already before the first Cylon war, also invented by humans but kept a secret from virtually everybody. But you would have to tell an awfully convincing story why that would be the case.

[avram]

That's a claim made by one of the other Cylons, playing head-games with President Roslin, not something that's been established as true.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

No, there was a five-second scene that showed him acknowledging it late last season.

[avram]

I don’t remember anything along those lines.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

He was sitting on a couch, talking to a Sharon.

[avram]

Isn’t that the scene where he asks her why the Cylons hate humanity? That makes no sense if he’s a Cylon and knows it. And if he’s a Cylon and doesn’t know it, then his reactions would be the same as if he was human.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I remember him saying something about people knowing she was a Cylon, but they didn't know about him, yet. It's been a while since I saw it, though.

[avram]

My roommates are working through the second season on DVD, and I’m watching it along with them, so I’ll keep an eye out for that scene. (We’ve got a ways to go, though; we haven’t hit “Pegasus” yet.)

Was the scene in “Sacrifice”? I’ve found an online script, but don’t know how accurate it is. (Just search for “Boomer”; there are two scenes with her and Adama in that script.)

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I think that might have been it; it's hard to know without the visual.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

I couldn't watch more than 30 minutes of the miniseries. Nbh could and did watch the whole thing.

I got hooked during the regular series.

[blufive.livejournal.com]

I'll join those saying "stick with it". It takes a while to get going, and occasionally flags for a an episode or two, but when it's good, it's really good.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I probably will, in a dilatory manner, keep watching the eps as they filter up through the Netflix queue, but I have to say the response I'm getting is starting to remind me of my experience with the Illearth trilogy. "Keep reading, it gets better." Er. Hmm.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I once put down a novel at about page 100. A fan of it subsequently told me that it does have a slow beginning, but it gets better around page 101.

Uh-huh, I thought, and went back, took a running leap through those first 100 pages (to remind myself of the plot) and continued reading in full on page 101 for a while.

And discovered that it did indeed get better.

However, it was still bad. Better, but still bad. Considering your views of the mini-series, you might not find the regular series much more to your liking.

[avram]

The major virtues of the show are the acting, the dialog, the emotional drama, and the art direction. The major flaws of the show are scientific inaccuracy, an occasional tendency to sacrifice logic for drama, and the fact that the writers are making most of their plotlines up as they go. Liking or disliking the show will depend on how those virtues and flaws weigh on your personal scale.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah. Thanks for this. The specifics of what is good and not so good about the show give me a clearer idea of why I might find it worthwhile, or not. Certainly, the show is not without its charms --I quite like the reinvention of Starbuck, and dealing with many of the cheesier names by making them call signs, and the nod to the idea of Butlerian Jihad -- but it's good to know that I should never expect the show to make my story logic centers happy.

[avram]

Another thing to keep in mind: The characters are flawed. Adama is an old crank who’s only risen as high as he has by using his wife’s political connections. The Galactica was about to be turned into a museum; anyone assigned to her was either mediocre or a discipline problem. (Or Adama’s son, or a Cylon spy.) So occasionally they’ll do stupid things.

And Starbuck is one of my favorite parts of the show too. Katee Sackhoff has the most amazing control of her face — you can see not just a surface emotion there, but two or three other emotions running under it, sometimes in opposite directions.