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Battlestar Galactica's Last Days
bowman9991 writes "If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? You wouldn't expect a mainstream television show to tackle such philosophically loaded questions, certainly not a show based on cheesy science fiction from the '70s, but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape. The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again. SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program. It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,' the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq."
My superior technology gives me the moral right to impose my will on a technologically inferior culture called Slashdot!
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
"If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back?"
:)
If my country were invaded and occupied by a foreign power, I would ensure that I obey the cease-fires and give peace a chance, and not hide like a coward amongst my own women and children as I target the enemy's women and children.
"If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible?"
Sure, I'd sign the cease-fire, even though it would lead to 100 deaths because the Islamic savages don't abide by treaties and cease-fires anyway. I wouldn't be responsible for the other side breaking the pact.
"Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture?"
It's not about being technologically inferior, it's about being culturally inferior. Grow up kids, quit kicking Israel in the shins! If the islamic savages choose to behave like deviant youth then the only thing they will understand is a spanking. So yes, it does.
"You wouldn't expect a mainstream television show to tackle such philosophically loaded questions"
You wouldn't expect Slashdot to post such philosophically loaded articles. Unless they're about Linux vs. Windows
BSG doesn't so much tackle moral questions as sort of run past them.
Battlestar clearly parallels events in today's society. The cylons will elect Simon to be their new leader and Cavil will retire/get boxed while the rest of the cylons sing "na na na na"
The writers don't know what it is.
Anybody want my mod points?
The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
I'm sure it's a good show, but get real here. Television will be pretty much the same after BSG than it was before BSG.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back?
Some Iraqis thought so. I personally prefer the Red Dawn scenario, but to each their own.
If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible?
Technically, yes. Even though you signed the document under duress, you could have refused to sign it knowing you would be killed for not doing so. Ultimately, it is the person with the gun who is responsible.
Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture?
No, but that didn't stop the European (and now American) powers from doing so anyway.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I guess it is meant to read "questionable beliefs" not "questionable believes".
In the beginning I really liked the show. It had a good mix of action, technology and drama. However, the last few seasons have been fairly "meh" for me because it has turned almost completely into a soap opera. Don't get me wrong, the soap opera stuff is OK but now there very little of the original mix that attracted me in the first place. It's just not the same show that it started out as.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
The ad that Slashdot is choosing to serve with this story is for Al Jazeera. Am I the only one that thinks that's kind of funny?
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Sorry I have to type more in my comment.
Could start a rant but why!
Is this an article or an add? I'm not quite sure...
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
Hi,
BG (season 4.5) exposes another more significant dilemma for me: Imagine you're a resident of a third world country (e.g. Germany or UK) and even capable and willing to pay for your favorite TV series. Would you wait months or years for it to acess it legaly or just download it immediately from the asinus electronicus? What if your wife is even more anxious to see it than you? Having a gun put against you head can not be compared to the pressure applied to one in such a case.
Hard choices :-)
Yours, Martin
but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape.
That's... hyperbolic. I haven't seen an episode of the fourth season yet, nor do I plan to. I just lost interest when I started feeling like the writers didn't know where they were really heading.
So I'm clearly... well, not hostile, but indifferent... to the show, but it should be noted that this "story" is nonsense. SciFi shows have been doing this for, literally, decades. Tackling moral issues of the day was the point of The Twlight Zone and Star Trek (TOS). More recently, Babylon 5 earned a pretty solid reputation for discussing (and very definitely not answering) moral conundra. Even Deep Space Nine (where BSG producer Ron Moore once worked) did a pretty good job with the same thing.
So I suppose if your point is "BSG continues the tradition", then fine. But the tone of the summary and article very much make it sound like this is revolutionary.
Next thing you know, they'll be a non sci-fi show about these very issues. It might even get decent ratings!
Battlestar Galactica is one of those series that I'm sure I would enjoy if I watched it as rapidly as possible. Commercial free and at my own leisure.
Watching LOST is painful due to the seemingly infinite periods of time between seasons. Guess what I'll be doing tonight...
But hopefully BSG can have a cheap DVD or BD bundle for the entire series for people who enjoy sci-fi but didn't follow the series across its run.
I was a kid when the original BSG was on in the late 70's, and so remember it fondly (I can still remember how sad I and other kids were when they cancelled it). And when I heard they were bringing it back as a miniseries, I was skeptical to say the least. My first thought was "Jesus, can't Hollywood come up with ANYTHING original anymore?" and my second thought (after hearing that Starbuck and Boomer would be female) was "Oh great, and they've made it politically correct too, even better." At that point, I vowed I would never waste my time on it.
Then a funny thing happened. I was flipping around and caught a bit of the miniseries, a way into the first night (just after the nukes hit). It was the scene where Helo and Boomer put down on Caprica for repairs and are faced with a mob fleeing for their lives. It was one of the most powerful and dramatic scenes I had ever seen on television. The contrast with the original, where the colonials seemed to forget that their entire civilization had been wiped out almost immediately after it happened, was just stunning. And the obvious connection to 9-11 was immediate and visceral (I don't think this series could have been made before 9-11, certainly not with this kind of gritty realism).
From that point on, I wasn't a skeptic.
And just when I thought I had seen the best it could offer, along comes the first season and it somehow managed to get even BETTER. The premiere episode of that season ("33") was absolutely brilliant, "Hand of God" was touching and dramatic, and "Kobol's Last Gleaming" bordered on an almost mystical experience (the opening to that two-parter has to be the harshest montage to ever grace a television screen).
Now, the series has had its ups and downs since then. They've never again equalled the quality of the miniseries and first season, IMHO (though individual episodes like "Flight of the Phoenix" have come close). But even at its worst, this is still the best thing on television.
This skeptic will miss you greatly. Nothing else even comes close.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Blow myself up - No that's just stupid as that limits the number of enemy i can kill. My objective is not to die for my country/planet but to make the other bastard die for his.
gun at my head to sign - I'd sign, after all it's self presevation, and no I wouldn't be responsible (in my mind) as they forced me to sign, so they were going to do it anyway.
Joss Whedon, creator of the classic science fiction western series Serenity, declared, "it's so passionate, textured, complex, subversive and challenging that it dwarfs everything on TV."
the series was called firefly. the movie was called serenity.
http://kered.org
Now, my figures may be way off, but it looks to me like the last episode of BSG pulled in less than 2 million viewers, unlike Chuck, a fun show I'm currently enjoying, which pulled in around 6 million. (Do correct me if I'm way off).
BSG is a show with a very vocal audience, who enjoy discussing and dissecting every issue all over the internet, despite my best attempts to avoid them. However, I'm not sure it's actually that fun to watch. It certainly wasn't at first.
Who is the fifth cylon? I really couldn't care less. I don't hate BSG, but just to put some perspective on things, for most people it isn't that big.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Seriously, when it went from Battlestar to sci-fi version of general hospital, myself and most people I know pretty much moved on.
In case no one noticed, is the topic post simply forgetting Star Trek. It to "ran past" the issues but it did present them. It should not be neccessary to recite examples but it seems like it is required.
Hmmm a man who's half black feels he has the moral right to enslave a man who is half white.
An integrated crew, and even a miscegenating kiss?
A prime directive that , to rephrase it a lot, basically said other cultural values are equal valid as your own technologically advance society, hung out before the audience every week.
The futility of doomesday logic?
Even the trouble with tribbles had a message that Russians and Americans still have common desires and interests.
On the otherhand this was what early science fiction was about. Long before Andy Warhol and crew got the idea of decontextualization as the means to seeing things as they are, science fiction was mainly about seeing what happens when you transplant a cultural norm into a different society, usually by means of a technological story telling device.
it was not all techno whiz larry niven (who later on also started contemplative sci fi with the Mote in gods eye) or space opera flash gordon.
think about flowers for algernon, or the canticle for lebowitz, the lathe of heaven, farenheight 451.... Or for you young kids, Ghost in the shell.
Star trek was designed to grab the flash gordon audience and show them a short 1 hour play about moral issues under heavy syrup.
Galactica is in this tradition, not in the tradition of "Buck rogers" or star wars.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Gene Roddenberry had been using parallelism and morale dilemmas in his show for decades. As a matter of fact, I thought the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is even more cheesy than the first. Whats up with this camera guy, does he have Parkinsons or something? No, I do not deny Star Trek can be cheesy either but at least it doesn't make me feel dumber for having watched it.
I could never get into this series, and (as evidenced by many a post here) even people who used to be into it eventually fell away due to the Lost effect (the realization that the writers didn't have a pre-planned plot arc). To me, it always felt like "what if the FX channel did a 'Babylon 5'-esque series while re-using a 70's franchise?"
I don't think this is as influential a series (or event) as TFA (or the poster) claims it to be.
Instead of assuming the Cylons are using their technological superiority to enforce their view why not consider...
both specie know faster than light travel, how much superior can you get if you can break that? I guess you can throw in the ability to transmit memories across space
how about the fact that we are now only learning, everything isn't what it seems to be.
While I could occasionally see some parallels to exaggerated actions of Bush and Co that exaggeration was so extreme at times that it bordered on ludicrous. If anything BSG jumped the shark one too many times that too much has become both silly and interesting at the same time. Every time they introduce a new interesting angle they lose with the previously mentioned shark jumping explanation
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the most recent episode but I loathe seeing the explanation of Starbucks corpse and crashed viper. While I love the story twist I have little to no faith in them pulling it off anymore.
Honestly past 2.5 all I got was an impression of angst expressed improperly in some story arcs. In other words they tried to portray the Cylons as Bush and Co yet at the same time Roslyn had her supposed Bush and Co events. Yet neither really worked because they were always exaggerated beyond the point of belief.
If I could tie what the story is portraying to something in real life it would not be Bush and Co. It would be Hamas versus Israel versus Fatah. Both sides being victims of stupid hard headed actions and ideology, throw in some religion where if God did come back down neither side would recognize him because they would be to wrapped up in proving they are right.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
So I guess it was an add.
Poor product placements. No doubt the reason this show is being canceled.
when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
This is just about the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Slashdot in a very long time. If one were to poll the public on this subject, I'm quite sure a substantial number of people wouldn't have ever heard of the SciFi channel to begin with, let alone have a clue that there's some obscure show called BSG on there or be able to remotely describe what the show is about. Nor would they give a flying rat's ass. The Sopranos, now that's a show that had a measurable impact on TV. Regardless of the quality of the show, BSG is going to fade right back into the obscurity from whence it came, with only mom's-basement-dwelling geeks remembering the first thing about it.
Next question.
I agree, though I'm hooked on BSG at this point. It was just before season 3 started and a friend gave me all of the first 2 seasons as rips. I watched like 1-3 episodes a night for a couple of weeks, and by the time I finished those I had a couple of eps in season 3 to watch. (note, I've since purchased the DVDs for all those eps, but the DVDs weren't out at the time, the net was the only way to get caught up).
Viewing it commercial free in that format was great, you really got sucked in and didn't want to stop watching, and I would go right to the next episode. I've told friends who want to get into it that their best bet is to wait till its over an d get all the DVDs.
Similarly I've yet to get into Lost simply because I don't want to wait between episodes and deal with commercials. I just will wait till the show end and get the DVDs then.
As it stands even when I watch BSG now I DVR it on Friday and then get around to watching it commercial free some time Sunday or later in the week.
who says sci-fi is too preachy?
Oh, and Muslim isn't a race, fucktard.
THL phish sticks
A subtle/background role in changes in direction for the USA. I bet the now deceased (previous) administration secretly (to the public) and openly (behind closed doors) loathed BSG, but convinced themselves there was some advantage (such as re-re-re-downloading themselves back into power come Jan 20, 2009) to not ringing up some execs on the West Coast.... But, maybe baby Hera nixed that?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
In the end it will come down to the Adam-a family being the biblical adam--the origin of man. Somehow the human race will struggle to some new planet and start over shore of their technology but in paradise. Till they are once again expelled as a consequence of their seeking knowledge -- that is biblical "know" and carnal knowledge's purpose is the creation of new life--that is cylons with independent will.
The ultimate irony is that endure the rigors of space and the time it takes will require sturdier carriers of the seed. Namley the hybrids are the next generation of humans.
A few pure cylons will stay behind on the radiated planet since they are immune to radiation.
It will turn out the mechanical cylons sis not create the wetware human like cylons as is generally assumed. after all where are the missing links? No instead it will turn out that when the mechanized ones that are created by the tranpslanted human hybrids encouter the left behind cylons they will be enslaved by them and then return to conquer the hybrid humans.
starting the whole story over.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
When has the U.S. done that in recent memory?
It hasn't. Dunno if you've noticed, but lots of Arab countries are our allies in the GWOT.
Episode 4.11 was more depressing than, I dunno, being at work. Seriously, this is entertainment?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You're saying that TV will never be the same after this show goes away, when what you mean is that it will become more the same. In either case, you're wrong, thankfully there will always be other good shows at some point.
If only they could hold a camera steady enough for long enough to not give me a headache, I might actually be able to watch the series. I really do want to watch it, but every time I've tried I've ended up with a headache within the first few minutes and have to stop it.
RE: Blame the cylons. Blame the dead government. Blame everybody
Reminds me of a president we had.
BSG isn't even decent sci-fi, and it's creators aren't Martin Luther.
:)
The character's personalities have been re-molded so many times it is ridiculous:
* Adama is outraged at the idea of a teacher being president and forcibly takes over the government (only to give it back), yet rolls over for "Democracy" when a *known* criminal, traitor, and lunatic (who mumbles outloud to NOBODY) is elected. Nice job!
* Trained, hardened, reasonable, and resourceful soldiers *suddenly* resort to STRAPPING BOMBS TO THEIR CHESTS to fight the enemy.
* Fighter pilot spontaneously goes lawyer. (no offense to lawyers or pilots)
* Some human ships are filled with normal humans, others (same training and organization) are filled with bloodthirsty sadists with no regard for the lives of others (Pegasus). I hope U.S. aircraft carriers aren't like this
On the bright side, the visual polish and effects are very slick.
Essentially, the show is crapsh!t.
Explanation? What explanation?
Slight correction, it is now Barak Hussein Obamas war on terror.
I watched the last ep. of the previous part and though for all the world it was "planet of the apes" again. I still couldn't form an emotional bond to any of the characters.
As a sucker for punishment, I watched the restart episode (last night inthe UK) and still felt it spent far too long on close-up shots of people looking confused - especially the guy with the eyepatch.
So far as moral questiosn go, all I can say is GO CYLONS They're far more interesting that the human (if that's what they turn out to be) characters int he show.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
humm the 1st part sounded like what is happening in Palestine and Israel...but def a good show !
GWOT = Global War on Terror look it up.
"It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as "the enemy", the crack down on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq."
It's hard not to see them when the show is written that way.
> when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
A little melodramatic, no? When the final episode of All in the Family ran (not the shitty spinoffs) TV changed. Same as M*A*S*H. Same would hold true for Sesame Street. Look, BSG was entertaining and even thought provoking (at times) but it's hardly something that 20 years from now people will be watching TV and say, "Wow! If it wasn't for BSG, TV would be totally different."
Bark less. Wag more.
On the other hand, the kill ratio in Iraq for coalition forces is 100:1 (1 coalition soldier dead for every 100 enemy combatants). Numbers like that make suicide bombing start to look pretty appealing.
No, that just means the bomber has lost the conflict but is to stupid to admit the fact. If suicide bombers had any tactical or strategic purpose to what they were doing, then perhaps you might have a point but they almost never do. They simply walk into a random crowd and kill a bunch of random people and accomplish nothing.
It doesn't weaken the stronger military by any meaningful amount, it just pisses them off. Even when public opinion is against a war suicide bombings aren't going to cause our military to quit and go home. At most it financially stresses the stronger party but it's hardly going to bankrupt the economy. We want out of Iraq but it isn't because of the suicide bombers - it's because it is a stupid, wasteful and unnecessary conflict which we should not have started in the first place.
The Japanese started using kamikaze tactics in WWII when the leadership already knew or should have known that the war was a lost cause. It was a futile and cowardly act by their leaders which in the end changed nothing. Similar actions in Iraq and other places will have similarly futile outcomes.
Nice way to slip that little bit of slant in there, shows how you really feel huh. You know what, the fact is that since 9/11 there have been ZERO attacks on American soil because of his leadership.. yes a lot of tough decisions were made, but I for one am thankful to him for making such difficult decisions and very possibly saving many American civilian lives. I'm thankful to Mr. Bush for making the rough decisions that he faced.
It's OUR war on terror, and Obama will continue it one way or another.. obviously making new and different decisions. But don't kid yourselves into thinking that he's going to suddenly start kissy facing with the leaders or Iran and Syria.. he's going to continue with very similar policies towards these terror-sponsoring countries that were created by Reagen, upheld by Bush Sr., endorsed and continued by Clinton and GWB.
If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back?
Fuck no. I'd blow up the other guy.
TV can maybe illustrate moral issues. Human morality can be explained using simple examples. For example if a man could fall off a bridge if not saved by you he would stop a train running below it and it would save three people that are trapped on the tracks a little off. Most people would say they would not stop that man from falling and save the other three.
Now what if you had to push that person?
Active vs. passive is an interesting theme that can be easily explored in a 45 minutes storyline. What is right, what is wrong morally? What is good or evil?
But current political stuggles are far more complex. For example most (if not all) interrogation situations where torture is involved to gain intel from terror suspects the possiblity of saving human lives is far, far remote. The intel gained could, much further down the line maybe help in finding people that might plan a terror attack that could be discovered by other means as well. The chances for that intel to be crucial is (in reality, not in movies) so remote, that you could question or torture some random people taken off the streets and have the same chance. And in many cases the people held in Gitmo are just that. Random people that were grabbed off the streets of some town in Afghanistan during the invasion.
But many people watch 24 with Jack Bauer and believe that things work like that in real live. I chose 24 here, because it is a much better (or worse) example. In that series the people tortured are withholding crucial intel that could save many thousand lives directly. The chances for such a situation in reality is zero.
As far as politics and political issues involving morality go TV series like BSG are not teaching us anything. They actually cloud things up. They mislead.
Some of them are good for entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.
They grew a big enough backbone to stand up to you, despite the fact that you're war criminals who drop nukes on cities.
This has to be a troll but I'll bite anyway.
Comparing ethics from a time of total war is absurd beyond measure. Shall we get into the atrocities committed by all sides? There's plenty to go around. A nuke in a time of war is no more unethical than any other kind of massive scale bombing. FAR more people were killed with conventional bombing on both sides during WWII than by nukes and yet the nukes are somehow special? The nuke just has a bigger bang for the payload.
War is horrible but once there is a war the MOST unethical thing anyone can do is to prolong the war. It should be ended as quickly as possible and this is usually accomplished by using the most overwhelming force possible. Dropping two atomic weapons on Japan brought the war to an abrupt end and probably saved countless lives. Yes it was a horrible thing to do but there were NO options that were not horrible to consider. None.
Would look for the answer to deep philosophical questions on a fucking television show.
The problem with you leftist liberal pansy ass slashnads is that you rarely have to actually live within your own delusions and if you did, you would have been conquered, subjugated, enslaved or destroyed long ago and would not be posting your drivel.
P.S. That show and the whole of the scifi channel sucks, commercials every 7 minutes and the lamest lineup of all time. The only thing good there is Scare Tactics!
what they're not telling you (yet) is that they are ALL cylons, it's just that not everyone knows it yet
The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.
I'm sure it's a good show, but get real here. Television will be pretty much the same after BSG than it was before BSG.
Now, I wouldn't say that...
I mean, for one thing, BSG apparently has allowed for the possibility of more than one fourth season. How many have they had now? I guess after this final fourth season they'll finally move on to season 5.
Bow-ties are cool.
The last episode of BG will come and go and TV will still be the same. The "moral dilemmas" that are easy to find parallels in real life politics are easy to find because you want to find them.
When Dan Quayle spoke about the negative impacts on society when Murphy Brown deliberately became a single parent, everyone was falling all over themselves claiming "it's just a TV show" and claiming that Quayle was an idiot for even suggesting that TV might have some relevance to real life. When they find deep, meaningful parallels to real life, "TV will never be the same". Please, pick one and stick with it.
Now you've verged into one of my pet beliefs: that movie and TV SF (let's call it "science video") can never be "real" SF in the sense that (for example) Heinlein is SF. The problem with SV, as with all movies and TV, is that it aims at a mass audience in a compressed format. That means thoughtful exposition and intellectual complication, which is how the genre engages most of its readers, are off limits. Indeed, many people who work in the media don't even have the background to do it properly.
One reason I became a rabid trekkie early on was that TOS went further than any previous SV in trying to be real SF. One of their best inventions was Spock, who's a genuine alien, not just because he doesn't look human, but because he doesn't think human.
And yet even this key character is not carefully thought through. In an early episode, we're told that this guy's physiology is so alien that McCoy's instruments go wild on him. Later in that same episode, we get a melodramatic scene relating to his relationship with his human mother! Apparently nobody had the background to appreciate the inconsistency between these two facts. Or probably somebody did (TOS had some good scientific advisers) and the producers said, "Whatever, we need that bit of drama near the end, we're not looking for an audience that will know the difference."
Another example: Star Trek has always followed the convention that space fleet officers have naval ranks. But they've always carefully avoided the dual use of the word "captain" that's standard in real world navies. (In English-speaking countries, "captain" refers both to a rank equivalent to an army Colonel and a commander of a vessel, regardless of rank. In one of my favorite naval historical novels, The Sand Pebbles, the Captain of the U.S.S. San Pablo is a Lieutenant J.G.) A small complexity, but apparently deemed beyond the capacity of TV audiences.
Though I've always thought that this complexity was stomped on after the fact. Notice that in TOS, Kirk wears wrist insignia that anybody who knows naval ranks would recognize as a futuristic version of the "one and a half rings" of a Lt. Commander. That's about the right rank to command a ship with 400 people. But officially that's insignia of a Captain and all the other officers (regardless of rank) wear a single ring. Right.
And of course, we don't even want to talk about sound in a vacuum....
Nonsense. It's an awesome show as long as you stop thinking that words have meaning.
Or just stop thinking.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Since when in the last 8 years did any of you idiots ever SHUT THE FUCK UP?
Seriously, you all think you're so damn brave comparing Bush to Hitler in public forums, but you KNEW you would suffer NO CONSEQUENCES.
The Brits have a word that describes you morons exactly - wankers.
Your all big, bloody WANKERS.
Assholes.
What?
And how is this different than Star Trek TOS, which did the same thing in many regards during its own original run?
Personally I'll miss 6.
And while I'm at it what is this fascination with naming the most fascinating, sexy, robots "Six"? Not only BSG, but also Tripping the Rift come to mind as examples?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It is a space opra.
2001 was science fiction.
Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, and even a little Douglas Adams were science fiction writers. They wrote about how society changes around technology and envision life in the context of new technology.
BSG has nothing to do with science fiction. They don't contemplate the benefits or dangers of science. They use it as nothing more than a backdrop. The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)
"YOU BASTARDS!"
I thought it was sad when they killed Cally, and left her baby in the arms of a Cylon...
Ellen Tighe's death, too, was just pitiful. It'll be nice to have her back. <Saul>PARTAAAY!!!</Saul>
So how come all the nice (read: human) chicks get killed, with the only one who manages to survive being that slut Stardoe? I suppose with Dualla outta the way she'll get Apollo now.
Cylon chicks don't count as 'nice': look at all those headcase sixes - hell they shoot _each_other_!
My favorite character remains the Baltar inside the head of "Caprica Six": we're so used to the way the Six in Baltar's head loves to frack with him, it was highly amusing to see that that cuts both ways, and that he gives back at least as good as he ever got.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
So, you are saying that that suicide bombers should just shut up and die?
No I'm saying they are tactical imbeciles who are defeating themselves. What difference does it make if they die in a hail of bullets or by blowing themselves up? Dead is dead. In the hail of bullets option they just might live to accomplish something another day. But doing it via suicide out of mere spite is just stupid, not to mention psychotic.
When given a choice between a miserable existence given to you by a hated enemy or taking a few "enemies" with you when you die, what would YOU chose?
Nice strawman argument. Taking enemies with you is fine but only if there is some tactical or strategic purpose to it. Claiming there is something ethical or justifiable about killing yourself and taking a bunch of innocent people with you is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Furthermore, even enemies don't have to remain so forever. The conflict between the US and Japan was about as intense as it gets. Millions lost their lives and there was such intense rage we can barely comprehend it 60 years later. Now Japan is among our closest allies and it didn't even take a single generation. Just being on the losing side of conflict doesn't doom the combatants to an eternity of misery. Life moves on and only those who dwell on past injuries will be doomed to a pathetic existence.
A slow death or a quick one?
We're all going to die. Why not try to accomplish something productive before you go?
Vengeance or humiliation?
Vengeance against whom? Explain to me how the 3000 victims in the world trade center were in any way deserving of their fate.
Doing SOMETHING or nothing?
A suicide bombing accomplishes nothing so I'm guessing you are voting for doing nothing. Dying is easy - actually doing something productive is hard. Suicide bombers are mentally unbalanced people taking the easy way out.
Think about it, it may be seem stupid and the bomber may have lost the conflict
but just sitting around and letting someone push you around is not something most people would be willing to do
There are plenty of ways to push back that don't involve killing other people. Ghandi and Martin Luther King led peaceful revolutions that last to this day and led to them being honored throughout the world. I've never heard of a suicide bomber ever having any lasting effect on the world.
Real people change. Over time, stress and normal life change the way we respond.
Regarding your, specific, points:
* I don't find it hard to believe that a principled person like the character of Adama would, once he had made the decision to honor the civilian government structure Roslin had set up and supported by his son, would continue to do so even when things didn't go the way he'd like. Much of his original justification for keeping power in the beginning was because the emergency situation of the destruction of the 12 colonies was still in progress. By the time that other stuff happened, time had passed and people were a little more used to the state of things. It became more normal and less of a unusual situation.
* In real life, to my knowledge, all US fighter pilots are required to have college degrees. Assuming this holds true for the Galactica world then it makes sense that, when faced with a lack of trained lawyers in a ~40,000 person population of mostly military personnel, he may be one of the most educated people available to fill the role. Also, most people couldn't have been trusted to give Baltar an honest defense or, more likely, would never have been willing to be his lawyer in the first place.
* Of course U.S. aircraft carriers are like this. Human nature says that a certain part of the population with be bad people and that you don't really know until push comes to shove. Most people on both ships would be normal people who will do what they are ordered to. The main difference would be the handful of people on the command staff. Those people would have been hand picked by the captain and would, most likely, match his/her personality. Remember, at least one of them did dissent when ordered to do something criminal (and was promptly shot in the head for insubordination).
I think most of the problem with people who find the personality re-modeling or the acting a turnoff is that we are so used to generic action/sci-fi TV/movie acting where personalities are, locked in stone, stereotypes and lines are written to be melodramatic. This show, as far as I can see, is trying to portray fantastic situations and how real people might respond to them.
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Bunk, that show is full of craptastic, overblown, melodramatic writing that doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of today's issues, which just so happen to be ones the simpletons of the apologist left can't even bear to look at as they would tear down their security blanket of delusional fantasies. It's lightweight, ham handed allegorical philosophical pabulum isn't worth peoples time.
Then there's the prepubescent, egotistical chest thumping to make it look dramatic and "military" that really comes off like badly written anime. That show needed more Jack Nicholson, truth; you can't handle the truth sort of thinking that simply accepts they are all Cylon's and carries on not getting tied up in knots about what flavor of meat they are. They should have avoided going full retard.
Then again, I do so like the laser blasts and fembots, every show needs fembots ;)
I love the show, but from what I can see, just about every single character should have been pushed out the airlock for insubordination at least twice. I can't imagine a real military functioning at all like the Galactica.
Sig intentionaly left blank
"It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror"
Read a book, watch Star Trek, etc. That theme has been repeated over and over decades before Bush was elected.
Your own cultural bias is creating meaning and associations where none exists.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
>> labeling one race as "the enemy"
Radical Islamic terrorists are not a race. Just because most happen to be of a certain race, doesn't make it a war against this race.
Of course, the writer knows this, but feels the need to resort to the equivalent of name-calling in his argument.
I found the current BSG boring, meandering, and nihilist. I didn't watch it enough to hear the preaching.
I was a fan of the original series. And I preferred the original Starbuck.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
'nuf said
You will be better off. Of course you could still tell me to stop drinking and smoking and I wouldn't hear that. Still BS Galactica?
Get up!
Never following the BSG before, couple of days ago I taped the whole day of last season's episodes, and was relatively amused by it until the expected, but always disappointing happened:
1. Scene A: Guy got shot in the knee, blood all over, open wound and fractured bones close up, as realistic as it can get, well done, you did the good job, I feel little sick.
2. Scene B: Cute Indian actress, love scene with ex-president-turned-saint, about to undress, I feel better already, okay, she is undressing, removing last garment possible... and silly me, seasoned to realism, open fractures, blood and guts... expecting to see a tiny little bit of otherwise shapely acress' body... ah silly me... no realism here.. all we will see is standard issue bra and nothing more, because:
2.1. Blood, open fractures and guts, is good for you
2.2. Women breasts, is bad for you
And this happens over and over and everybody just whistles and pretends all is good and does not care and instead of having a realistic realistic tv, we have half realistic tv, and for other half we must all hide and sneak into wast expanses of silly and often extreme fields of what is referred to as porn...
Your comments are very judgmental about what people should do in a given situation. You seem inclined to believe they would make rational choices accordingly. But people aren't very rational. They seldom "do the right thing", assuming they even think about it consciously and assuming it matches what you think the right thing should be.
Your comparison with Star Trek is telling. When Battlestar Galactica presents moral quandries it leaves much of the interpretation up to the viewer. Star Trek, on the other hand, resolves them: it is unsubtle in claiming what's the right thing to do. I won't make big claims for Galactica, but in my mind Star Trek's treatment is much more superficial. (And very culturally specific: I find many of Star Trek judgments and values quite foreign to me. I'm Canadian; our culture is about as close to the American one as is possible.)
On a slight tangent: Um, how can you know this? We only know about secrets that aren't kept, not the ones that are. Unless we're keeping them: a sample of one is not a reliable indicator of anything.
"the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,'" as in "when white will embrace what's right"?
"If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? "
Can't we all be friends?
Israel
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
BSG has nothing to do with science - fictional or otherwise. The characters still wear spectacles and use telephone handsets!
Mostly, it's a study about how individuals respond to various fictional situations - and in that case all it tells us is that they respond in many and varied ways: all of which are well known and not particularly profound.
The one aspect that *is* interesting is the way the cylons are turning out to be just as human as the, errr.... humans are. However, that only takes about 30 minutes to explore - not 4 series.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Did I miss something? Is Showtime not picking up the second season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl?
* Some human ships are filled with normal humans, others (same training and organization) are filled with bloodthirsty sadists with no regard for the lives of others (Pegasus). I hope U.S. aircraft carriers aren't like this :)
Read about the famous Milgram experiment:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Humans can override their reluctance to perform unpleasant acts. All it takes is "authority". In the example you give the authority is an unremitting martinet. She summarily executes one of her most senior officers because he balks at following an order he knows to be wrong. Unsurprisingly the other officers do not question further orders... US aircraft carriers *can* be like this - that's one of the lessons of the Milgram experiment, and one of the BSG's parallels.
I agree with your sentiment, although how i got there is different. Considering the situation their in I'm willing to let some stuff like what you said slide. However I really don't care about that. I found the show incredibly depressing. Everytime they get a break, something as bad, if not worse, seems to happen, and there's no hope. I gave up part way through the second season. I won't miss the show, at all. And everything I'm hearing about the "spinoff" makes me glad I stopped watching.
Honestly I'd be happy with more pew pew lasers, less wah wah crying. Probably makes me shallow but oh well.
....are what I like most in a TV show, book, or movie.
Yep, there are BSG characters who are far from likeable (Baltar, Tigh). But sometimes those same characters will do the right thing, or even the heroic thing.
There are also characters who are very likeable (Roslin, at least IMO) who will do something downright vile in what they conceive as a higher cause.
This is still pretty rare on most of television, and it's why BSG stands out.
Some human ships are filled with normal humans, others (same training and organization) are filled with bloodthirsty sadists with no regard for the lives of others (Pegasus).
The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.[1]
Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early.
You can't take the sky from me...
War is horrible but once there is a war the MOST unethical thing anyone can do is to prolong the war. It should be ended as quickly as possible and this is usually accomplished by using the most overwhelming force possible.
Wrong. The fastest way to end a war is to unconditionally surrender. This does not necessarily lead to the lowest number of casualties though as I imagine (and thankfully only imagine) would have been the case if the UK had ever surrendered to Nazi Germany.
What started off as a fine little space opera became a morass of tangle and contradictory plot lines in Season 4. Ron Moore is a total hack who should have plotted the show arc out. Now, BSG is essentially Dallas in space.
What a wasted opportunity to say something interesting about the human condition.
You missed one very clear difference between what was portrayed in BSG and what happens in the real world.
In the real world those being sent in are clearly brainwashed, they aren't even grunts, they are victims of an ideology which is essentially forcing their hands.
The BSG bunch who first decided to blow themselves up came up with the idea and people stepped forward. They also were targeting military targets and not innocent civilians.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You forget the countless lives, possibly even the planet itself, that may have been saved by dropping those two bombs. They showed nuclear weapons to be such terrible devices that since then nobody has ever dared to set one off in anger. Showing empty houses being blasted to smithereens does not have anywhere near the same impact as seeing pictures of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We were fortunate that the weapons were used before two countries had large stockpiles at their disposal.
The day after I lose my mod points I read this post! Excellent
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
Sci-fi has always been good for this type of things. That's why I enjoy it so much. Honestly, have you read Star Wars? Jedi Philosophy is where it's at.
Because RUSSIA had just entered the war against Japan. There was absolutely no reason to drop those nuclear bombs, because the last thing the Japanese wanted was Russia occupying the Japanese islands. We can thank General Curtis Lemay for convincing President Truman of the necessity of dropping those bombs. We can also thank him for all that firebombing too.
I don't accept that mass civilian casualties are the norm of warfare. It is WRONG.
Ok I'll bite
- Intelligent leader balks when unknown element with no trust rating tries to assert power. Relents when he decides the new element has a positive benefit/cost ratio.
- Desperate survivors of a holocaust who mostly never saw combt before their homes and families were wiped out of existence by a superior military force and who are cut off from all normal supply lines and logistical support resort to improvised guerilla warfare and traditional asymetrical tactics, as were probably defined in one of their field manuals anyways.
- Fighter Pilot from influential family with history of military and government service at the highest levels spontaneously goes Governor, then President of the most powerful country on the planet. Side note: Lee Adama isn't the only person, real or fictional, that has followed a stint in the military with a career that didn't mirror what they did in the service.
- Military unit's actions are strongly shaped by the personality and actions of their leader. Custer's men followed him to their deaths. The holocaust was perpetrated by men considered to be some of the finest, most elite soldiers alive. Other units of the german army were just regular people convinced they were protecting the interests of their homeland, and were not horrific war criminals.
Essentially, your points are crapshit and you just don't like the show.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
This whole thing was written by frakkin' Cylons, you can't trust any of them!
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
"SW: The Clone Wars" is much happier and upbeat, despite the knowledge of what the main character ends up doing. BSG is being depressing on purpose.
Atlantic Mag on BG, Jan09
"Where a proper space operaâ"from Star Wars to 2000â(TM)s Scientological BattleÂfield Earthâ"advertises with chilly pride its remoteness from life as we know it, the retooled Battlestar Galactica has plunged into the burning issues of the day. Suicide bombers, torture, occupation, stolen elections. Homosexuality, reproductive rights, religious fundamentalism, genocide. All of it grappled with, workshopped outâ"diegetically, you might say. With crater-voiced Edward James Olmos in the role of Adama, and the Galactica itselfâ"rather gaily lit in its â(TM)70s incarnationâ"now steeped in an atmosphere somewhere between that of a diving submarine and a backstreet in the Victorian East End, Moore and Eick have pushed and pushed at the hot buttons. UnÂaddressed as yet: steroid abuse, the slow-food movement, and the declining standard of international travel. But thereâ(TM)s still half a season to go."
What's with this, dood?
"SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program." As effectively? Hell no, they did it a thousand times better! BSG really brought home the idea to me that suicide bombing actually makes a lot of sense sometimes. I can't imagine a news program could ever have done that. I think SciFi is like comedy in our society - useful for discussing difficult things that are taboo to discuss openly. Certainly they are following in the traditions of Star Trek in this regard(not the most recent series which were drek).
I'm not sure if I would characterize it as being too depressing.
More to the point is the characters are always depressed. With most shows you look at the characters and think, "I respect that person and they seem like a likable individual". For BSG I frankly can't think of a single character for whom I could actually say that, maybe Baltar since he actually has an interesting personality but that's about it.
SPOILER
When a certain character died last episode I didn't even give a damn. Back when Billy died in season 2 or something it was actually interesting because the characters still had redeeming qualities. But at this point I just don't give a damn. You can take a character people like and put them through hardships and depression and it resonates because people care for them. But if they're depressed for the entire damn show people don't like them and don't care.
I stole this Sig
"and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again"
Yeap. It'll be all digital.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
the submitter meant Arab? The less intelligent among us have conflated Muslim and Arab, and not been able to integrate the idea of Islamofacists not representing the broader Muslim community, just like we frequently attribute the more negative aspects of Christianofacists to all Christians. Perhaps the author did this on purpose, or perhaps it was inadvertent. But without knowing, calling him/her a ...tard was unnecessary.
I always love to see people with an axe to grind against the United States so eager to so utterly trivialize the Japanese. They are not a people to be trifled with, especially in war. All of this historical revisionist nonsense about how they were all ready to give in is so disrespectful to them individually and as a separate and independent culture and nation.
The Germans didn't give in so easily. They were fighting street to street all the way to Berlin even when all that was left were old men and boys. Why should we expect any less of the Japanese?
You're like some fundie that selectively chooses what part of scripture they will acknowledge.
Funny you should say that about the selective quotation of scripture. Your "analysis" ignores the United States Army Air Forces' own Strategic Bombing Survey on the atomic attacks, which produced a report that stated, among other things, the following (boldface emphasis mine):
Further, it is clear that leaders in the US had signs of this before the Strategic Bombing Survey was completed. Japanese codes had been cracked, and messages were being intercepted. The Allies knew that the Japanese ambassador in Moscow had been ordered to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had been talking about surrendering a year before that, and the Emperor himself had started suggesting in June of 1945 that alternatives to fighting to the end should be considered.
Interesting fact: the Russians had agreed to declare war on Japan 90 days after the end of the European war. The actual date of the end of the European war meant that the Russians were due to declare war on Japan on the 8th of August of 1945.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
Watching LOST is painful due to the seemingly infinite periods of time between seasons.
Hmm, I found watching Lost to be painful for a completely different reason.
sic transit gloria mundi
Look at what the situation would have been had everyone survived and made it to graduation.
Your best pilots decided to perform an illegal maneuver ... in front of their COMMANDING OFFICERS ... and their families ... and whatever media is broadcasting the event ... and any undergraduates attending ... and so forth.
Yes, let us just flaunt our immunity to Star Fleet regulations.
Even the BEST scenario should have resulted in all of them facing disciplinary charges and then being kicked out.
And the "best" pilots didn't realize that? And the Wesley couldn't conceive of it with his massive brain?
The entire episode makes no sense. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrokenAesop
Duty means disobeying legitimate rules about legitimate dangers and lying about it ... but it's okay because someone else will take the blame and you will be forgiven and all will be forgotten. Where's the honor or duty in that?
I've never seen such a bunch of sappy losers as the characters in BSG.
Reinforcing the lie, "Life is sad, random and mean and you can't do anything about it. Now go wallow obsessively in your misery." Random, my ass! --Heck, it's a world where when you have the audacity to celebrate even the smallest event, (your 100th flight), a freekin' missile 'randomly' chooses that moment to go off and destroy you and the moral of your entire crew. What bullshit! When event after event like that occurs, it's not random at all. It's deliberately sought out misery disguised as "Reality" Oooh, BSG is so real! It's just like life!
Stories carry a message, and BSG's message is one of despair. The Earth just happens to be a bombed out, radioactive ruin? Oh yeah. That doesn't break pattern, does it? Even if life were a series of random events, which it isn't, then BSG is still giving a false image.
The question is this: Why? Who benefits from broadcasting misery and despair into the heads of all the smart people who are responsible for engineering the infrastructure of our world?
Stupid, stupid rat creatures.
-FL
But Afghanis and Iranians are mostly Persian, not Arab. And we don't seem to demonize the Kuwaiti's much. The left-leaning people like to demonize the Saudis.
When I was in Iraq, I never heard to be on the look out for a Muslim or an Arab. It was usually "a guy missing 2 fingers and an eye, driving an x colored, y model vehicle that rides low to the ground" or something like that. (Bomb making has a harsh learning curve I guess).
Some people have political hay to make by spouting hyperbole like "labeling one race as the enemy" like they know what the fuck they are talking about.
THL phish sticks
Just catching on I see. And notice how BSG was supposed to end when a new administration took over?
The suicide bombings in Iraq don't target the U.S. military. It targets the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, and the Iraqi people.
The suicide bombings in BSG didn't target the Cylon Centurions. It targeted Colonial police under Cylon rule.
just sayin'
You can't take the sky from me...
Even if you take this argument, I think dropping Hiroshima was enough to make the point. I often wonder if the Japanese would have surrendered quickly regardless of the Nagasaki bomb.
I mean, 3 days is not a lot of time to recover from the shock of the first one and understand the true damage, imho.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
You're right, I don't like the show, but:
;)
:)
- Intelligent leader balks when unknown element with no trust rating tries to assert power. Relents when he decides the new element has a positive benefit/cost ratio.
--> Sounds good, I agree. In the case of Baltar, however, it doesn't compute. I guess I don't see Adama as the "Oh well, Thats Democracy, I'll just keep my mouth shut about the mumbling traitor that was elected" kind of guy.
- Desperate survivors of a holocaust who mostly never saw combt before their homes and families were wiped out of existence by a superior military force and who are cut off from all normal supply lines and logistical support resort to improvised guerilla warfare and traditional asymetrical tactics, as were probably defined in one of their field manuals anyways.
--> Despite NOT behaving anywhere near that for at least 1 season.
- Fighter Pilot from influential family with history of military and government service at the highest levels spontaneously goes Governor, then President of the most powerful country on the planet.
--> In one day? I went from lawn mower mechanic to computer scientist, but it took longer
- Military unit's actions are strongly shaped by the personality and actions of their leader. Custer's men followed him to their deaths. The holocaust was perpetrated by men considered to be some of the finest, most elite soldiers alive. Other units of the german army were just regular people convinced they were protecting the interests of their homeland, and were not horrific war criminals.
Certainly it has happened before, and Cain's personality is definitely passed to the crew of the Pegasus. Conceded. Cain is _also_ the leader of the Galactica. The mindlessness doesn't seem to trickle down to Galactica though (i.e. The rest of the army doesn't fall in line). Meh, I'll give you this one
What right have you lost?
Habeas corpus.
It's kind of a big deal. You should read about it.
So should you. Are you a terrorist fighting US forces on a foreign battlefield, and doing so in plain clothes/not in the uniform of a standing army? Then Habeas never applied to you in the first place. In fact, the Geneva Convention says you should be executed via firing squad upon capture.
So far, terrorists that happened to be US citizens have gotten civil trials. So you can retire the "loss of Habeus Corpus" bullshit.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
". If you fight an enemy "fairly", you'll end up with equal casualties on both sides, thus abusing the soldier's trust in their superiors. In war, you don't fight fairly, you minimize your own losses."
"You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win wars by making that other poor bastard die for his!" - GC Scott in Patton
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Don't forget about the projected Japanese death toll in the event of a land invasion.
Don't forget that the japs had been negotiating a surrender with the Russians for about a year before someone chose to murder hundreds of thousands of civilians to obtain an unconditional surrender to the US.
They weren't negotiating a surrender with the Russians... they were hoping to use a diplomatic alliance with the Russians as leverage against the Anglo/American part of the alliance. They wanted to use Russia as bulwark against invasion, and didn't want to give up some of the spoils of their conquest. What they didn't know is that we had broken their codes and were listening in on all of their machinations. We knew exactly what they were trying to do.
This clown is trying to paint a picture of those poor Imperial Japanese... they tried so hard for peace, while those savage Americans were just determined to use their nukes on someone.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
"If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible?"
Yes, you are responsible for that what you sign.
The signature is valid as it would be on court.
You should always check what you actually sign. If you do not agree with what you are signing, then you do not sign it. It is simple as that.
And in finance, the corporation leaders are those who are responsible what corporation is actually doing. They are the people who should control things.
If employee does something against leaders authority, employee gets punished from that action, but so does the bosses who did not do their jobs and control the situation. If boss wants employee do something what is against law or other things, it is their job too to complain it and denie to do it.
If general is giving order to shoot civilians, soldiers job is to not follow that order and report that for judges etc. If general orders soldier to kill civilian and soldier executes the order, both are responsible for the murder.
Life is tought and power gives big responsible for those who has it.
In this time world, leaders thinks they are above the law and responsible for actions what they order or they silently allow to happend. They are the persons who are #1 in the line to get responsible things what has happend. It is their job to keep things running correctly, by law, rules and moral.
Now if US presidents gives order to give millitary support for militants in the south-america and they kill civilians, the US president is responsible for that.
If the senat or just a one senator gave the order, they are responsible for the act in first hand, but president (etc) is responsible for that happening and is not good leader why she/he should step down because she/he can not control the country at all.
It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,' the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq.
What crackdown on free speech? When did this happen, and how has it affected anyone's ability to say, record, broadcast or publish whatever they want? And when did one race get labeled "the enemy"? Which race was it? And what exactly were the effects of this labeling which didn't happen?
What nonsense. But no worse than many reviews on TV shows, movies, gardening, or cooking which never fail to throw in some gratuitous, mindless slam at Bush.
The show dragged out a whole bunch of interesting concepts which were interesting when you looked at one. They took everything they could get their hands on and spent a fortune making a show with lots of big questions and no real insights.
I liked the original. It had a sense of self.
The new one is the kitchen sink of science fiction/religion/political now (with no insight into political tomorrow).
Bored now. CLICK.
* In real life, to my knowledge, all US fighter pilots are required to have college degrees. Assuming this holds true for the Galactica world then it makes sense that, when faced with a lack of trained lawyers in a ~40,000 person population of mostly military personnel, he may be one of the most educated people available to fill the role. Also, most people couldn't have been trusted to give Baltar an honest defense or, more likely, would never have been willing to be his lawyer in the first place.
This and the episode with the fuel production crew going on strike pretty much killed any positive opinion I had of the show. Let's examine the situation: 40k people, mostly civilian. A handful of highly trained military including fighter pilots, a necessary component of warfare as conducted in the series. Training new pilots is an expensive and time consuming proposition, you have to spend a substantial amount of time at each location to train, I'm not saying days, but at least a day to plan and then execute training sorties. You have to have the resources to fuel them, which given how they spent a whole episode hunting down a source for fuel seems to make it rather rare. Now, take the second best pilot (as I recall he's the best technical pilot, and Starbuck is the best pilot) in the fleet, and tell him, "Yeah, it's ok to quit now, we don't really need you." Then you have to waste weeks to train someone else to fill his slot, of course they won't even be close to his skill level so it won't really be a replacement. The only thing keeping the remaining human population (at this time in the series) from extinction was the military and the fuel. Why would you throw it all away because you have daddy issues?
I was afraid to watch until they completed the series. Last time, they thought I was Buck Rogers!
the difference between BSG and other SciFi shows that deal with real issues, such as B5 and Star Trek, is that in those shows, there are mostly larger than life characters, such as Capt Picard and Kirk. this makes the show harder too relate to, because real life isnt like that. in BSG though, all the characters are deeply flawed, allowing anyone to easily connect with and sympathize with the characters. in addition to this, the unique technique with which BSG is filmed is much more like a Nat Geo documentary than a TV show. this makes it easier for the viewer to feel like they are apart of the events, rather than watching it on a screen.
You've got to be kidding me. The only people that believe that are people that see the name and think that it must somehow be related to Al-Queda.
The only reason Al-Queda gives them, and nobody else, their videos is because they know that Al-Jazeera will not edit it out of journalistic integrity.
Al-Jazeera is one of the most trusted news sources in the world, even moreso than the BBC. They're about as fair and balanced as news actually gets.
FOX is just a Republican talking point recitation machine. They're pretty blatantly in the pocket of the party. Heck, they started launching into jokes about assassinating the president shortly after his inauguration. You wouldn't find shit like that on Al-Jazeera.
and nothing of value was lost
An interesting article, but I can't help but be amazed and somewhat concerned about how someone who demonstrates recognition of inherent inequality and complex subject matter being potrayed can equate the fictional events with real events when he doesn't even seem to have the correct facts about the real events that he is purporting the program parallels.
Fact: It wasn't a technologically superior 'race' that hijacked our airliners and killed three thousand plus people. It was an organization bent on chaos and destruction that has hijacked a fundamentalist religious groups' motivating 'holy war' to their own ends.
Fact: There haven't been any Guantanamo Bay atrocities, that all occcured in the prison in Baghdad.
Fact: There hasn't been a clash of religious beliefs. Al Quaida is only using that as a front to enslave (Islamic Fundamentalists) fanatics to their own ends.
Fact: The author does not know anything more then what is printed in the papers about the 'torture' that is said to have occurred. He also doesn't have a clue about its efficacy either.
It is true that BG is one of the better SF shows, but I doubt that "Television will never be the same".
If only the writing of the author would rise to the level of the show(s) he's supposedly going to miss instead of being a poorly researched, with shaky conclusions, morally condescending, and re-hashed article from the two 'rags' he quotes from (Newsweek and Time)
Great show? definitely. great article - Not so much.
One of the things I've found rather depressing (in a "I can imagine this would happen" manor) is how quickly the citizens of the colonies turned to rioting and civil disobedience. As far as they were aware, they were the last surviving humans. And yet, they found the prospect of martial law so undesirable that it nearly sparked a civil war. Had I been Adama, I would have declared martial law the second he chose to fly. Civil niceties have no place when every second you are literally fighting to survive.
In addition, the sadistic Cylon Police on New Caprica felt depressingly realistic too. Anyone who says "It's a beautiful World" is either forgetting about the humans, an idiot, or very naive.
... I must say that it did strike me from the beginning, how everything and its cow in that show was based on what was going on in the USA at that time.
What do we have in Galactica? Some religious crazy person of a president, telling the people to follow "the gods". A community where everything revolves around military. Some "terrorists" ("He's a Cylon! Put him in the brig! Or airlock him" = "He's a terrorist! Detain him! Or kill him!"). I have yet to find a concept that is not a mirror of American society.
Sure, this might be why it resonates with the people in the USA. But still it shows the same insane and morally wrong ideas, coming from those that we are expected to put our minds in.
A US propaganda film could not do it better. Oh, wait...
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Normally I watch series in one go, just take a day off school and start watching in the morning. Same with books.
Most Israelis have served in the IDF and most of them have as a result commmitted war crimes. That doesn't prevent CNN from giving them media time so why should people on the other side of the struggle not get media time?
**Life is too short to be serious**
Thing is when you hear biased coverage from one side you dont know what is fact and what is spin. However when you hear coverage from both sides the parts which are common to both the stories are very probably the facts and you can safely ignore the parts not common in their stories and hence get an unbiased view of events.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Everyone keeps harping about Baltar's "role" in the initial attack.
Big deal. He was duped by spies. So was the rest of the entire Colonial government and military.
No, Baltar's TRUE sin was giving a fucking NUCLEAR WARHEAD to the deranged Six, Gina, so that he could get laid. The same NUCLEAR WARHEAD that she then used to kill about 3000 Colonials in orbit around New Caprica, and several ships, including Cloud Nine.
He gave a NUCLEAR WARHEAD to an enemy agent. THAT was evil. And yet you hardly hear about it.
-Steve
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hate how it is so trendy for writer/directors/producers to make such vibrant commentary on political issues. Granted most directors I have met, (with the rare exception of Donald Bellisario) have been liberal, pot-scarred, hippies. Sadly I have come to expect this type of bullshit.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." ~Me
I am looking forward to the next episode where Obama.... err... Adama declares you... err.. the civilians the enemy.
Aljazeera; Find out what you're missing, you bunch of Infidels!
Moore started on TNG (in the middle of it's run iirc). He did have more influence by the time DS9 came around though - so your point is still correct.
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
Hmmm. All this time I thought we as a nation were at war.
Silly me, apparently.
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...