Author Topic: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread  (Read 75541 times)

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
Basically, if the Valkyrie was also over 40 years old at the time of the fall, then how is reassigning Adama from a smaller 40+ year old ship to a larger, more powerful 40+ year old ship a punishment? Feels more like a reward to me. Sure, the Galactica was about to be decommissioned, but how much time would a 40+ year old Valkyrie have ahead of her at that point anyway?

The punishment angle always seemed stupid to me (what? Something stupid in the backstory for "Hero"? Impossible!). Even if Galactica was old, she still would've a crew and airwing that was several times larger than Valkryie's, plus a wartime history implied to be comparable to the Enterprise in World War II. Even if they ripped out the engines and tied it to a rock, commanding Galactica would've been a position of tremendous responsibility and prestige (like commanding the Constitution), nothing like being reassigned to a desk job or quietly encouraged to take a lobbying job in the civilian sector.

Luckily, our only evidence for that is Tigh's drunken rantings, and third season Colonel Tigh is the least reliable character in all of BSG-dom.

I guess we could pretend the Colonials used the same Valkyrie space frame because it's essentially good, and just kept updating it's systems and weapons over the years without too much external differences. So the old Valkyrie we saw here could be the original, and the ones in nBSG could be like tier 4 refits or something. That would explain almost everything apart from the modern lines that seem to suggest "modern light battlestar", not "1CW slugger".

It's also possible that the Valkyrie they mentioned was the larger battlestar, and the one see in "Hero" is it's replacement, which coincidentally shares a design with the smaller battlestars in the ghost fleet (which is needlessly baroque from a storytelling standpoint, and if they wanted it to be a different ship, they would've used a different name, but it's an option). We always had evidence that they kept ships cosmetically identical to Galatica in service (one in the mini, a couple docked near Pegasus in Razor), and Galactica was treated as an anomaly for never having had better computers installed, so the age of the hull design isn't a big deal.

Adama himself wasn't badly acted, but I didn't 'feel' Adama in the character.

He reminds me a bit of Starbuck, which makes sense (his second or third scene in the miniseries has him saying she reminds him of him), but I'd say the biggest influence is Joe Adama in Caprica. I love how young Bill pronounces "Adama" with the same accent as his father. Though (and this really goes back to Razor), I'm not sure how I feel about Adama being born as Admiral Badass. All I could think about after seeing the scene in the CIC with Commander Nash was whether that ever came back to Adama during the series. Like, say, right before his one-ship assault on Occupied New Caprica, or his one-ship siege on the Cylon Homeworld.

I just imagine him looking around the CIC, suddenly remembering the first time he stood in that spot, and hearing Nash say, "I think you're a cocky son-of-a-*****," and then picking up the phone and giving his New Caprica speech. The one that goes "You all know this mission is a one-way trip... to total success." And then thinking, It ain't being cocky if you're really that good.

I feel like it might've been more interesting (and, again, Razor set the precedent) if Adama actually had to develop his insane confidence instead of having it, and being able to back it up, for his whole life. It would've made him seem more relatable.
« Last Edit: November 17, 2012, 11:35:09 am by David cgc »

 
Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
That'd make him like the brat from gundam seed destiny... ugh, no thanks..
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Offline newman

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
David, you bring some interesting points - agreed about the punishment angle and I suppose that valk theory is possible (but I consider it something of a stretch, tbh). BTW, anyone else feel like the guy they had as young Adama in Razor did a far better job of convincing us he was Adama than the kid in B&C? I'm just not feeling the Adama vibe from him.
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Offline karajorma

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
The punishment angle always seemed stupid to me (what? Something stupid in the backstory for "Hero"? Impossible!). Even if Galactica was old, she still would've a crew and airwing that was several times larger than Valkryie's, plus a wartime history implied to be comparable to the Enterprise in World War II. Even if they ripped out the engines and tied it to a rock, commanding Galactica would've been a position of tremendous responsibility and prestige (like commanding the Constitution), nothing like being reassigned to a desk job or quietly encouraged to take a lobbying job in the civilian sector.

Luckily, our only evidence for that is Tigh's drunken rantings, and third season Colonel Tigh is the least reliable character in all of BSG-dom.

My thinking on it is this. I do think Adama is being punished by being given the Galactica. But the issue is that the Valkyrie Spec Ops mission is a complete secret. So they couldn't suddenly assign him to a garbage scow without people wondering why. It would draw attention to something they don't want to.

Sticking him on Galactica on the other hand, is a way of giving him a commission that gets him out of the way but doesn't actually look like a punishment to outsiders for the reason you state. Tigh on the other hand picked up on exactly why they did it.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2012, 03:28:38 am by karajorma »
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Offline Swifty

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
That's actually a really good explanation. To outsiders, it looks like his last command is supposed to honor his service before retirement. To those privy to the circumstances, it's actually a dead end job.

 

Offline newman

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
True, it was more of a way to slowly drum him out to retirement without making it too obvious as to why. Had the mission been a success they might have made him an admiral.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 

Offline YIIMM

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
According to prop uniforms Osiris is a battlestar  :wtf:

 

Offline NoSpin

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
According to prop uniforms Osiris is a battlestar  :wtf:

?

Well she came across as some kind of communication/recon ship. I was always under the impression a Battlestar was supposed to be able to successfully engage a Basestar, but the crew of the Osiris is acting like a Basestar will rip it to shreds. I know there are different classes, but I thought they all should be able to hold against one Cylon ship. Guess not?

I enjoyed Ep 3+4. Fun action and I thought the Ghost Fleet was pretty cool. It's a nice show to turn your brain off for and just enjoy the ride.

 
Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
According to prop uniforms, "Kobol HQ" is a thing that exists. And the "G" in "BSG-75" stands for "Galactica," since the "T" in "BST-39" stands for "Triton." No reason to get excited, especially if it's never legible on-screen.

Oh, incidentally, they must've been playing with more than just the Vipers from the early days of the show's CGI. The landing deck of Galactica has "BSG-75" written on it instead of "BS-75," like in the series, something that was present in the earliest publicity shots from the show, but was corrected long before airing (though it couldn't be removed from the version of the seal on the sets and uniform patches, leaving us with the somewhat-clumsy "Battlestar Group" retcon). Another fun thing is that the CIC had "Security footage" on some of the monitors of this shot and this shot from the miniseries.

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
I know there are different classes, but I thought they all should be able to hold against one Cylon ship. Guess not?

There's probably been more than one class of Basestar, considering there's more than one class of Battlestar. Or Osiris could be a pre-war class and as such the Basestars were literally built with it in mind.
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Offline newman

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
I've always seen battlestars as battleship/carrier hybrids with a minimum of two pods. If it's not a well armed and armored ship capable of deploying it's air wings, it's not a battlestar - and if it only has a single pod (hangar) it's probably more of an escort carrier. I have never seen battlestars as fragile, podless, reflective hull uglies that look like they'll fall apart if you look at them the wrong way. I wouldn't rely too much on B&C though, it's basically Galactica 1980 - The Next Generation. Or in other words, never happened :P
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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
I guess I'm not terribly upset about B&C 'damaging' the dignity of the franchise or not doing justice to its source material because I feel that that very source material ultimately took a giant steaming crap all over itself (although it's up for debate precisely when that happened). First with the increasing dumb culminating in a thoroughly unsatisfying and stupid finale in the main series, and then with Caprica. I really liked the idea of Caprica, and appreciate what they were trying to do, but the end result was...meh. The Plan also could have been a lot better and more interesting than it actually was.

All I wanted out of this was new ships and battles, and that's what I've gotten. Hopefully it will provide both a lot of new content and inspiration for modmakers. Frankly I have a lot more trust in fans like you to do justice to the setting than 'syfy'. You've already proven that you're worthy of that trust with R1.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
Your standards for the show proper are good but your standards for the battles are too lax. BSG hasn't had any good battles since the beginning of Season 3, and I'm including Blood and Chrome.

 

Offline An4ximandros

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
The Plan was not thoroughly planned. Quite frankly, Neo-BSG sucked post New Caprica.

And I am looking at you Angel "Six/Baltar", You ain't scapin' my opinion of how terrible an idea y'all were.

 

Offline YIIMM

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
For me, this will always be the pinnacle of the show's battles.

 
Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
There were only, like, three shots in it, but "The Captain's Hand" is my favorite cinematographically. The lighting style and animation were the same as in "Resurrection Ship" (which was also gorgeous), but the staging was more in-your-face and actiony, rather than the God's-eye-view from RS. There's one long shot of the belly of the Pegasus blasting out flack and launching Vipers (which was edited into three, go figure) that I adore.

I think part of the reason space battles became more sparse as nuBSG went on is that they wanted to do something novel with each one, so it didn't get to the point where it was like the old show, where they needed to punch up an episode so they played the same three pieces of stock footage from the pilot (though, would it have killed them to render one more "combat landings" shot? Hell, just take the old one and move the camera).

I finally watched "Forward Unto Dawn" yesterday. It was better than I expected, though it, like Blood and Chrome, had a lot of stock characters and cliché elements (albeit different, more modern stock characters and clichés). I think the most instructive thing for Blood and Chrome if it goes to series would be the main character's arc. One of the themes in FUD was developing leadership skills, and though it was kind of glossed over in execution (Lasky punches a guy who provokes him, and suddenly starts paying attention in class and his training squad starts listening to his crazy ideas?), it could be transferred over to Young Adama, especially if B&C doesn't end with everyone on Galactica magically deciding Husker isn't an annoying little prick after all. His long-term plot could be something like a cross between Lee's and Kara's. Lee, in that he needs to come into himself and find the ability to inspire the best from others, and Kara, in that he has none of Lee's humility or self-doubt, but all of her cockiness. So he'd be starting off where Starbuck did in the mini, as the best pilot on Galactica, but a second-stringer because of his attitude problem.

The trouble with doing a coming-of-age story like this is that you're walking a tightrope between naked wish fulfillment (see Wesley Crusher) and Goofus and Gallant didacticism (Beginning-of-episode Adama rushes ahead and is shot in the shoulder by a Centurion and his buddy has his guts ripped out while saving him. End-of-episode Adama methodically sweeps the Cylon base and eliminates all enemies with zero casualties.)

 

Offline newman

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
I think the most instructive thing for Blood and Chrome if it goes to series would be the main character's arc.

It won't, though, so it won't face those problems. Overall though, for those saying that it may be stupid plot wise but at least it's good action - it's not. It's dumb action, there hasn't been a single fight in it so far that wasn't boring. There was nothing even close to "Resurrection Ship", or the battle of New Caprica. The awesome moments got replaced by ones that break suspension of disbelief by being so silly/unrealistic that you know your protagonists have plot armor, so it becomes boring.
You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here! - Jayne Cobb

 
Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
Your standards for the show proper are good but your standards for the battles are too lax. BSG hasn't had any good battles since the beginning of Season 3, and I'm including Blood and Chrome.

Whaaaaa? Come on, what about the first parts of the finale battle? Or the battle for the Resurrection Hub? And the season 4 opener, while it had its problems, was at least 'good' by most standards.

Still, yeah; BSG was at its best when it was furthest from that stupid religious/mythological/jigsaw puzzle supernatural crap. 'God did it', apparently, and that would make God a complete monster who fuels xenocide for fun.
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Offline StarSlayer

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
The changeover from Zoic to inhouse ushered in a flood of lousy retcons and diminished technical prowess.  The Mark VII suddenly gets turned into a hand vacum, Pegasus spontaneously sprouts an extra turret mid battle, the raider shows up with a centurion frowny face.  Even New Caprica when compared to prior work shows a dramatic drop in overall quality.  While NC has lots of showy crap going on like the atmo jump and the Pegasus ramming if you actually compare the details between the zoic's work and inhouse you can see it easily.    Galactica was pitch perfect the first two seasons both from a CGI perspective as well as the much tighter storyline.

If you need proof just watch this bit from the Rez, take note as every battery and CIWS mount is utilized and every piece of lead is accounted for.  That simply doesn't happen after season two, heck in most of the battles I saw Galactica's main weapons sat in their cradles the whole time.
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Offline torc

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Re: [Spoilers] Blood & Chrome - The Discussion Thread
maybe you're right, but honestly i can't be so bad whit the In-House visual effects:
I love both MkVII and basestar retcon, and,as i said in another thread, the spaces backgrounds are less...well, ''empty'' :)
I mean they used nebulas, space dusts and a more coloured deep space,very different from the same black skybox used by Zoic.
« Last Edit: November 22, 2012, 02:52:56 am by torc »
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