Star Wars & Sc-Fi Talk

bd popeye said:

Not me.. The best sci-fi in the 60s was the original Star Trek. I've seen those episodes so many times in the last 47 years I have the dialogue implanted in my itty bitty brain.

Click to expand...

But Popeye, Star Trek is in a realm of its own. In the subtle words of Mr. Spock: “Fascinating!”

I love the orginal Star Trek, DS9 and Enterprise..not crazy about Voyager and Next Generation.

When I was a kid growing up in Cincinnati Ohio I love these shows from Gary Andersen..I think Supercar was an evening kiddy show and I remember Fireball XL 5 on Saturday mornings.

[video=youtube;HmSzySQdctw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmSzySQdctw&feature=related[/video]

[video=youtube;6ifS2nP53Zs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ifS2nP53Zs&feature=related[/video]

I've seen a few episodes of the 'remastered' original Star Trek, the prints have been cleaned up to look fresh and the FX has been re done, but still looks faithful to the original. The Enterprise does a little bit more than sweep past the camera now in the same four or five FX shots endlessly recycled through the 79 original episodes. I liked the grittiness of DS9, Voyager needed a couple fo seasons to find it's way and I thought Enterprise was a brve attempt to try something new. Season four was really hitting the mark... then they cancelled!

I'm sorry some of you seemed to have missed the point about Battlestar (RDM). It wasn't about resurrection, it was about many things but not that. Indeed the Cylons had to learn that as long as they were immortal and could resurrect, then life had no meaning. They had to give up resurrection and become mortal to have meaning and purpose. The human race on the other hand had to learn to respect sentient life in whatever form it had in order to grow as a species, which is why they agreed to give up their technology at the end when they reached Earth, so that they could work on the spirit. As Lee Adama put it, "Our Brains have always outpaced our Hearts," so they left all the ships and weapons behind (dumping them in the sun) in order to go back to nature... for 150,000 years until we have clawed our way back almost to the point we were at when the Cylon wars began. It's about breaking the cycle of violence and learning our lessons, how can we be fit to meet sentient alien species when we have no respect for sentient artificial one we create? Or for ourselves for that matter.

Obi Wan Russell said:

I've seen a few episodes of the 'remastered' original Star Trek, the prints have been cleaned up to look fresh and the FX has been re done, but still looks faithful to the original. The Enterprise does a little bit more than sweep past the camera now in the same four or five FX shots endlessly recycled through the 79 original episodes. I liked the grittiness of DS9, Voyager needed a couple fo seasons to find it's way and I thought Enterprise was a brve attempt to try something new. Season four was really hitting the mark... then they cancelled!

I'm sorry some of you seemed to have missed the point about Battlestar (RDM). It wasn't about resurrection, it was about many things but not that. Indeed the Cylons had to learn that as long as they were immortal and could resurrect, then life had no meaning. They had to give up resurrection and become mortal to have meaning and purpose. The human race on the other hand had to learn to respect sentient life in whatever form it had in order to grow as a species, which is why they agreed to give up their technology at the end when they reached Earth, so that they could work on the spirit. As Lee Adama put it, "Our Brains have always outpaced our Hearts," so they left all the ships and weapons behind (dumping them in the sun) in order to go back to nature... for 150,000 years until we have clawed our way back almost to the point we were at when the Cylon wars began. It's about breaking the cycle of violence and learning our lessons, how can we be fit to meet sentient alien species when we have no respect for sentient artificial one we create? Or for ourselves for that matter.

Click to expand...

That's a good explanation there Obi Wan, but I would still disagreed with Captain Adama on only one issue...I would NEVER give up on the star ship Gallactica, no matter what. Can you imagine the price of that kind of ship in today's world is worth? My guess is $1 TRILLION US Dollar. Sorry the FTL technology and the ship itself is far more important than the internet. Mankind could travel to Mars in seconds with artificial gravity on board.

You wouldn't give up the ship, I wouldn't give up the ship either! I still hold out hope that Sam Anders failed to steer the fleet into the sun, and they are all orbitting still somewhere in the asteroid belt waiting to be discovered! Things remain well preserved in the vacuum of space, so even after 150,000 years they won't have decayed much and even though Galactica herself had a broken back and wouldn't jump again, so much could be reverse engineered from her! That was basically my fantasy idea for how they could continue the series, in the present day with astronauts stumbling on the remians of the fleet and... well fill in your own blanks!

Obi Wan Russell said:

I've seen a few episodes of the 'remastered' original Star Trek, the prints have been cleaned up to look fresh and the FX has been re done, but still looks faithful to the original. The Enterprise does a little bit more than sweep past the camera now in the same four or five FX shots endlessly recycled through the 79 original episodes. I liked the grittiness of DS9, Voyager needed a couple fo seasons to find it's way and I thought Enterprise was a brve attempt to try something new. Season four was really hitting the mark... then they cancelled!

I'm sorry some of you seemed to have missed the point about Battlestar (RDM). It wasn't about resurrection, it was about many things but not that. Indeed the Cylons had to learn that as long as they were immortal and could resurrect, then life had no meaning. They had to give up resurrection and become mortal to have meaning and purpose. The human race on the other hand had to learn to respect sentient life in whatever form it had in order to grow as a species, which is why they agreed to give up their technology at the end when they reached Earth, so that they could work on the spirit. As Lee Adama put it, "Our Brains have always outpaced our Hearts," so they left all the ships and weapons behind (dumping them in the sun) in order to go back to nature... for 150,000 years until we have clawed our way back almost to the point we were at when the Cylon wars began. It's about breaking the cycle of violence and learning our lessons, how can we be fit to meet sentient alien species when we have no respect for sentient artificial one we create? Or for ourselves for that matter.

Click to expand...

Bravo Obi Wan! You have summed up the series to its existential point. John Locke or Charles Montesquieu would have been proud.

Obi Wan Russell said:

I'm sorry some of you seemed to have missed the point about Battlestar (RDM). It wasn't about resurrection, it was about many things but not that. Indeed the Cylons had to learn that as long as they were immortal and could resurrect, then life had no meaning. They had to give up resurrection and become mortal to have meaning and purpose. The human race on the other hand had to learn to respect sentient life in whatever form it had in order to grow as a species, which is why they agreed to give up their technology at the end when they reached Earth, so that they could work on the spirit. As Lee Adama put it, "Our Brains have always outpaced our Hearts," so they left all the ships and weapons behind (dumping them in the sun) in order to go back to nature... for 150,000 years until we have clawed our way back almost to the point we were at when the Cylon wars began. It's about breaking the cycle of violence and learning our lessons, how can we be fit to meet sentient alien species when we have no respect for sentient artificial one we create? Or for ourselves for that matter.

Click to expand...

Not really because it was a cycle that starts all over again and they really learn nothing. The Cylons were telling that to Starbuck. So the "ressurection" thing which they made a big deal about turns out to be just a gimmick like with Lost and the mysteries of the island. No cycle was ever broken thus they never learned anything as the mocking consciousnesses of Baltar and Six expressed in the final scene taking place in the modern civilization erected in whatever thousands of years later after they settled on Earth.

The point was if you actually listen to what the two Angels said, This time it might just be different. The cycle is almost back to the point where Humanity creates artificial intelligence (just as we had on Kobol, The twelve Colonies and Earth, the REAL one before this one!), but in those previous instances Humanity failed to respect what it had created. This time, after having the DNA of Humanity remixed with Cylon DNA and Native Earth Human DNA (probably Neanderthal), we are hopefully just different enough from our ancestors to make the right choices this time. That is what 'Angel Six' was talking about, her belief that this time would be different from the last few times. Humaniity is a work in progress, and 'God' ("You know he doesn't like that name") has gone back to the drawing board several times already, and hopefully this time we will get it right.

Please stop comparing BSG with Lost, which like the X-files got to the end of it's run only to reveal the producers never had any idea what the 'Big Mystery' at the centre of the show actually was! BSG had a beautiful ending with a message, Respect Intelligent Life, and we are not the ultimate power in the universe!

You forget that Adama knew nothing about this cycle thus in the previous cycle he most likely said the same thing and look what happened. Just as the Cyclons told Starbuck that it was futile.

I am going to campare it to Lost because both series ran about the same time and TV producers always try to copy success. If you watched Lost, you don't see the parallels? A lot of character drama that in the end had nothing to do with what was going on with the main story. So all that drama between characters was just filler.

The difference between the shows was that BSG was going somewhere, and Lost was going nowhere! Lost was very classily done, but that just covers up the fact there was no central idea to reveal at the end, hence the huge chorus of WTF? when it ended.

Adama wasn't around for the previous cycles of Human/Cylon conflict, that's not what they meant. Different people and different Cylons each time (apart from the 'final five' who had the distinction of being present at two of the cycles), but they made the same mistakes each time. The hope is THIS time, ie Earth in the present day, we will make better choices than our ancestors did.

The twelve tribes of Kobol created artificial life, humanoid Cylons which became the 'thirteenth tribe of Humanity', but Humans and Cylons couldn't get along so the thirteenth tribe left for a new home world, which they named Earth. 1600 years after they left the People of Kobol suffered a catastrophe which probably stemmed from the creation of Centurion type Cylons, and the resulting war forced the survivors to leave Kobol and travel to the Star System Cyrannus, which had twelve habitable planets and was settled by the Twelve Tribes for the next two thousand years. Meanwhile the Thirteenth tribe on Earth, who had abandoned resurrection technology in favour of natural reproduction, had become a little too human, and had created their own race of Centurions, which they failed to respcet and this lead to war. Five of the thirteenth tribe (the final five) had recreated Resurrection and seeing the impending war approach had prepared a ship to take them away from Earth. They lacked FTL capable ships, so had to travel at high sublight speeds so the journey to Cyrannus took two thousand years in real time, but only a few years aboard their ship.

The final five travelled from 'Original Earth' to the twelve colonies to try and stop the humans of the twelve tribes making the same mistake the thirteenth tribe had, which was the same mistake the people of Kobol had a few thousand years previously. The Final Five just arrived at the colonies too late to prevent the first Cylon War, but they managed to bring hostillities to an end for the next forty years. They gave the Colonial Cylons the technology to create 'skin jobs' and ressurrection along with it in the hope that this new race (New thirteenth tribe?) would be a bridge between Cylon and Humans, but the first one they created (Number 1/ Cavill) couldn't overcome his own feelings of revenge against Humanity for what they had done to his Centurion forefathers, and he changed the programming of all the others to turn them into warriors. Their subsequent failure to completely wipe out Humanity was a reflection of the fact that they weren't created for this purpose, and those that spent time amongst Humans began to change their minds about what they were doing. Their hearts weren't truly in it you could say, apart from Cavill. Of the remaining Cylons, the models 2, 6 and 8s elected to remain on 'New Earth' with the Humans and join them. The Centurions were finally treated with the respect they deserved and were given control of their own destiny (and the last base star) in order to find a home for themselves. We may meet their descendents one day when we set forth across the stars once more...