What TV SHOWS are you watching?

The second season was not as good as the first. I was bummed about the one who went to Valhalla.

For some reason I decided to rewatch the "mini-series" of Battlestar Gallacttiica. The three hours or so that came out before the official series started.

It still holds up.

The scene where Rosalin is taking the oath of office and her hand is shaking...so damn good.

Also, watching the scene where Rosalin makes the decision to abandon the slower than light speed ships and escape with those that can make the jump and you hear the radio chatter of those being left behind. Fantastic. My wife said "that made me queasy. That was horrible." I said "I know!"

Can you believe that show came out 14 years ago?

^I also think the show holds up super well through season 3. The 58 (?) minutes episode from season 1 still sticks in my mind.

The first three seasons of BSG are the best sci fi television ever made. So many unforgettable moments, so many great characters and story arcs. I loved watching it when it was on, I loved how excited everyone was for such a high quality, sophisticated and well-written sci fi show.

It was such a shift from Trek, Babylon 5, and other sci fi shows before- for once is show like this wasn’t saddled with bad hair, terrible set design, lame showtune references, and odd airtimes. It also helped that everyone on the show was sexy as hell- which in retrospect, was a little more CW than we’d like to admit.

It’s not that the later episodes are bad...there are some very good ones...it’s that the overall impact of the show sort of petered out into disatisfying resolutions. And WAY too much time spent on the Cylon ships, which sort of looked like a minimalist sex shop.

I’ve been meaning to revisit some of the better episodes myself.

BSG started great with the mini-series. Season one was still great. Season two wasn't quite as good. Season three was very hit or miss, and the final few episodes convinced me that I didn't need to see the final season.

Michael Barnes wrote: The first three seasons of BSG are the best sci fi television ever made. So many unforgettable moments, so many great characters and story arcs. I loved watching it when it was on, I loved how excited everyone was for such a high quality, sophisticated and well-written sci fi show.

I know it's your opinion, and you are entitled to it, but you are just wrong. Good sci-fi isn't made up on the spot the week before the episode is shot. It was a really good show, great even until they hit New Caprica. Went to from bad to worse after that. The Starbuck as Jesus episodes were pure garbage.

Michael Barnes wrote: It was such a shift from Trek, Babylon 5, and other sci fi shows before- for once is show like this wasn’t saddled with bad hair, terrible set design, lame showtune references, and odd airtimes. It also helped that everyone on the show was sexy as hell- which in retrospect, was a little more CW than we’d like to admit.

First of all even BSG had an entire episode dedicated to a boxing competition among the crew. Like WTF man! I'm rewatching Babylon 5 off DVD with the kids now (the government here has had a crackdown on VPNs the last few months making streaming anything a gamble when the kids are home). The thing about B5 is that seasons 1-4 are a masterpiece where seemingly minor details in a fluff episode (they did a boxing episode as well, ugh! and at times are obsessed with baseball) end up being important to the overall arc. Lumping in Trek with B5 shows an lack of sophistication. You could literally watch any random episode of Trek and you wouldn't miss a thing. B5 was the first show of it style when you had to watch every episode in order to get a complete picture. All at a time when there was no Internet streaming and almost no one had a DVD player. BSG came at a time of TiVOs in the average geek's house. Given the advancements in television, recording devices, special effects, and appetite for nuance B5 is lightyears better than BSG.

Of course like everything else the studio fucked with all sorts of things. Forced them to write in a pretty fly boy related to a studio big-wig. Made them compress seasons four and five into season four because they didn't know if they were going to get a fifth year (and they did and even I'll admit it isn't great).

The first season of Battlestar Galactica was the best show on television at the time. It seemed to me to decline each season after, and I still haven't finished it. Season three was painful to watch.

Twenty minutes into "33" I thought jeeze, this is kicking ass! I think that was the high water mark.

Babylon 5 was still in the goofy fun era of TV sci fi, where everything is clean and works properly and people crack jokes for the audience. I liked it, but there no grit. I like my sci fi gritty and broody.

I thought the first season of BSG was OK. As repo said, the miniseries was really well done and I was compelled by that to watch the first season. Then the second season arrived... That was just bad. It was poor sitcom bad. There was the episode with Apollo on the gambling ship or something like that? It was just really short-sighted. "This is character development on this week's different kind of ship in the fleet, without even having the class and technique of National Geographic!" Pass. I stopped at the end of that season and never went back. I've had many friends tell me that the writers took the hint and seasons 3 and 4 were vastly better and really engaging, but I've just never bothered. I wasn't encouraged by later hearing about the end of the series and the divinity themes.

I still think the best sci-fi TV has been segments of series or certain episodes of a lot of things: Star Trek TNG, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Orphan Black, and Firefly. But I don't think there's ever been a series where I was dying to see the next episode like The Wire or Breaking Bad. Most of it's just been recycled themes and obviously TV budget SFX, which has made most of it pale in comparison to books and films.

Jackwraith wrote: I've had many friends tell me that the writers took the hint and seasons 3 and 4 were vastly better and really engaging, but I've just never bothered. I wasn't encouraged by later hearing about the end of the series and the divinity themes.

Your friends lied to you about seasons 3 and 4. If you were disappointed by season 2, you will feel like punching your lying friends in their faces after watching season 3. The truth is that many fans (of whatever) have drunk the Kool-Aid and lost their critical faculties. Their fannish opinions are a debased currency. Remember that "fan" is short for "fanatic."

I never got into BSG reboot. I prefer the one from the 70s and was legit scared by the Cylons. For me, Next Generation is my favourite and I really loved original V and 70s BSG. That’s about it for me

Well, in my humble opinion, you are all morons.

BSG in its entirety is an excellent run. I don't give a fuck how the story was developed, only that the use of Hendrix, as a long lost activation signal, was inspired to cap off an excellent storyline. When they first used that idea it sent a shiver down my spine because I knew nothing about the plot only that I recognised the signal. Really original idea.

Of course, if you stopped watching after one season, you'll have no fucking idea what I was talking about.

Every season was worth it for me while B5 just got boring rapidly (I did watch all of it but I was singularly unimpressed) and Trek had a zero long term story arc.

Good sci fi is hard to write and even harder to be original but I think BSG did just that.

I was rewatching BSG recently (due to the Starship Battles game) and agree, it still holds up. "33" as Sag says is probably the high point. The Olympic Carrier is probably my favorite scene/series of events in the entire run.

Good timing, as I'm rewatching the series right now as well.

I loved most of the series when it came out:
Seasons 1 & 2 are excellent.
I really like Season 3 because they dared to do something radical, but I understand why most people hate it.
Everything after that is crap.

I could go on with my opinions about TNG, DS9, B5, and Firefly, but really the important observation here isn't which ones are good or which ones held strong for their entire run-- it's the fact that we have so many quality sci fi shows to argue about. We even have Stargate, a show I've never watched but that lasted something like nine seasons? That's pretty amazing.

People often talk about how we're in "Peak TV" right now with the improved writing and show production, and I think a lot of that originated from these genre shows. Quantum Leap then LOST then Game of Thrones made it okay to be nerdy and love sci fi and fantasy. You see it all over the place now. It's a great time to be a geek.

...i'm still sleeping alone tho

Sagrilarus wrote: Babylon 5 was still in the goofy fun era of TV sci fi, where everything is clean and works properly and people crack jokes for the audience. I liked it, but there no grit. I like my sci fi gritty and broody.

Now Sag might, but did Then Sag? TV like most other forms of expression, is a product of it times. Audiences (or maybe studios) wouldn't let something as "broody" as BSG go on air until after HBO (with the Sopranos) paved the way. Even then it still took a while. Broody was out of the question at the time. It is also unfair to call original Trek out for not having any arc, there were not many forms of VCRs out at the time (were there any?).

I disagree on the grit. There were plenty of "war is hell" episodes including one, "GROPOS", where almost all the troops sent to help out a foreign liberation died during the assault. There was a main character, Londo, who felt trapped by his societies obligations and followed a tragic arc. The first three seasons deal with the rise of fascism with the Nightwatch. The Minbari deal with the rise of militarism in their government. The PsiCorps in it's entirety is grit (in my opinion). An entire race is wiped out because they refused to ask for help in dealing with a plague (which they believed only afflicted sinners), as well as another race that killed their son after medlab performed a simple surgery they didn't agree with. An entire episode deals with torture. Sure there were tons of fluff episodes, of course there were there were 110 episodes and 6 films. I'll agree there is a bit much fluff. There is also a cut of the Phantom Menace that takes away a lot of stuff (Jar Jar stepping in dogshit, Jar Jar grabbing fruit with this tongue, Jar Jar making his face numb by sticking it in the podracer exhaust, etc) that makes that movie good.

Then again I can watch B5 with my kids, BSG is totally out of the question. Even if much of the grit flies over their heads. When they are old enough and have enough nuance to play the game we will watch the show (at least until New Caprica). Even when we pull out Shadows over Camelot we play without the traitor as it shows on their face immediately, sigh.