[joncfc]

Newman doesn't want to talk about the plan in the basestar dev thread so i thought id start one here.

Anyone on here actually like it? Personally i thought it was a bit crap.  Yes im aware bg is primarily a character based drama but i thought the plan would have at least one space battle in it.  All we got were a few (ok about 50) basestars and a shot of a couple of battlestars having the lights going out but that was about it  

anyway, for those who haven't seen it, yeah, watch it on tv or dl a copy but dont expect to say wow at the end.

Razor was loads better.

[newman]

Newman doesn't want to talk about the plan in the basestar dev thread so i thought id start one here.

I have no problem discussing it here, though
I guess it all comes down to what your expectations were. I knew from the start that at the time of the actual filming of new material for "the plan", that all of the sets had already been dismantled. Therefore I didn't really expect something razor - like; I knew they'd rehash some of the old material, combine with some new that doesn't need to use the sets, and be done with it. That said, my expectations weren't too high, and for me "the Plan" delivered more then I had expected from it.

Spoiler:

I enjoyed seeing the fleet of Valkyrie type battlestars being shut down by the Cylons. I loved a closer look at some of the pre-fall colonies. It was pretty interesting seeing Cavil and Ellen on Caprica... I loved the basestars rotating into planetary bombing configurations and dropping MIRVs on the colonies. And throughout the whole thing, there's lots of Cavil and his cynical comments, and that's always good too. It was cool seeing some events that were only mentioned in the series (like the capture of Leoben on a civilian rtf ship).

See, this is exactly what "the Plan" was supposed to do - not get us more new stuff with large space battles, just offer a fresh perspective on what we've already seen, and for me, it accomplished that mission perfectly. It was never meant as a completely new addition to bsg, it was always intended just to expand and offer another view on one of the most interesting periods in BSG - the fall of the colonies and events that follow immediately afterwards. And as such, it delivers. Don't get me wrong, I'd have loved another "Razor" like thing, or another "Hand of God" or "Resurrection ship" type episode, but at the time, the budgetary and time constraints only offered a choice between "the Plan" as it is or doing nothing at all. And for me, a bit more BSG is better then none at all.

[General Battuta]

I knew what it was going in, but it was poorly written and (like much of late S4) felt contrived rather than naturalistic.

Jane Espenson's hand in the writing was obvious and EJO's direction has never been exactly inspired.

It was low-grade BSG, one of their worse outings. It did, however, have a decent opening.

[The E]

That it did. The new bits and pieces of the Apocalypse were worth watching, but what followed was not. Trying to cover the plotholes in the episodes (Like, where did that 6 go that was trying to frame Baltar as a traitor?) was a mistake in my book. Those incidents worked better when they were not explained further, especially when the explanation boils down to "Cylons really suck at running terrorist cells".
Then there are plotholes that were ripped open by the insertion of the black dude into the resistance on Caprica that were "fixed" in post by adding a line of voiceover...all while making Kara look just a tiny bit stupid during the episodes she spent in a Cylon embryo factory.

[General Battuta]

The more I think about it the more I dislike it.

It rendered the entire Cylon 'plan' into a temper tantrum by the Ones.

It trivialized the Cylon menace that propelled the first two seasons by making them look staggeringly incompetent.

And it featured Cavil drinking himself into depression because his minions had been defeated by the power of Love.

[Ace]

My main beef with "The Plan" was with its making every, single, thing they attempted to do fail. It could have been rectified a bit by showing some of the events prior to '33' from their perspective. i.e. how did they track the jump from Ragnar, and what happened with the Olympic Carrier. Having say half of the Cylon plots fail (being the main episode ones) would have worked better, and tossing in some plots that succeeded such as perhaps a subplot with Ellen confessing things to Cavil as a priest and the person who saved her life (similar to the Anders plotline) and her slipping in a line about wanting to help Zarek because she believes in his cause and knows Adama would never support a government with him as a leader even though Saul would be more understanding. (and the death of Zarek's man held captive then being Cylon caused)

Anyway, as with Razor it was too much of a "paint by numbers" job. Instead of an interesting twist on Cain's events it matched with everyone's speculation and what characters said too closely.

[Narvi]

The more I think about it the more I dislike it.

It rendered the entire Cylon 'plan' into a temper tantrum by the Ones.

It trivialized the Cylon menace that propelled the first two seasons by making them look staggeringly incompetent.

I haven't watched this yet, but you know that Season Four did that. I don't mind it much, though it does seem a little silly that the only reason the Colonies were wiped out was because the Five decided to tell the Cylons not to wipe out the Colonies.

And it featured Cavil drinking himself into depression because his minions had been defeated by the power of Love.

I... don't know what that means.

[FraktuRe]

It was great in the first 30 mins or so, and good for the rest of it. Just kind of a same i had re-watched the series recently so that it was too fresh in my mind.

I agree completely with newman, really.

Plus General B I've noticed over time that you have an unheathly obsession with hating on Jane Espensen, give it a rest already.

[General Battuta]

And it featured Cavil drinking himself into depression because his minions had been defeated by the power of Love.

I... don't know what that means.

Rewatch The Plan. Watch the scene with Cavil, Hooker/Strong Six, and her list of the reasons why all his minions failed.

Plus General B I've noticed over time that you have an unheathly obsession with hating on Jane Espensen, give it a rest already.

I wouldn't call this kind of criticism 'unhealthy obsession.' She was one of the major failure points responsible for BSG's decline. Everything else in the show stayed top-notch (although you may not like what happened to the effects), but the writing dropped off as the show went on.

Critics and myself agree: Espenson wasn't suited to Galactica. Neither, for that matter, was Angeli (who I'm happy to rant about just as much, though he wasn't responsible for such asinine fare as Deadlock.)

Shame we didn't still have Toni Graphia and Anne Cofell Saunders instead. I don't think anybody's going to dispute the fact that Pegasus or Flesh and Bone were straight-up better written than episodes like The Hub, Blood on the Scales, or Deadlock.

[Deckard]

Well, I mostly liked it, although perhaps I felt some lack of rythm at the end of the show. Not that I thought in a couple Vipers firing at "what you know" but... anyways and "virtual" tears one side I enjoyed the final show with my thumb up.

Suffice to say that I start to feel the Diaspora's neo-abstinence syndrome now on. Nevertheless there's not any hurry. Better a well done job than ... doh.. I hate lies... GO IT  ASAP!

[Morwen]

You guys know that the plans won't be out til the 27th right? And here we are talking about its plot...

[FraktuRe]

It's the 27th here, therefore all is well in the world.

[YIIMM]

I just had a look at some images someone posted on SFM of the Valkyries over Caprica and cropped it to show the flight pod of the foreground battlestar:

It's Valkyrie herself.

[newman]

I just had a look at some images someone posted on SFM of the Valkyries over Caprica and cropped it to show the flight pod of the foreground battlestar:

It's Valkyrie herself.

Yea, I've noticed that too. They were probably too lazy to make another name variant. The other ships are probably all Valkyries too Also, notice that none of the class have that ugly rollbar thing attached to the engines, the only time that was seen was in Scorpia shipyards. Since none of the footage showing the ship out of the dock features that extremely ugly addition, I'm going to assume it's part of the dock, or some engine maintenance/diagnostics package they slap on while the ship is docked and remove before she departs again.

[YIIMM]

The other ships are probably all Valkyries too

I'm certain that's the case, as well with any other Galacticas we might've seen

Also quite pleased about the rollbar thing...just looked a bit stupid/pointless to me.

[Angreifer]

I just watched The Plan. I found it...interesting. The different perspective was fascinating in that it did shed some light on some of the more mysterious Cylon motivations. I appreciated the Cavil-centrism, as he's a great character. The Plan also did a good job of tying together the end of Season 4 to the rest of the show, sort of like saying "See? It does fit!"

However, this was far from being the best BSG offering. The plot was, well...there was no plot really. The cuts from scene to scene felt erratic and forced, and I think they depended too heavily on footage from the show. I also think the amount of sex/nudity was excessive. It's almost like they realized with the pilot for Caprica that they could get away with showing boobs on direct-to-DVD content, and went nuts.

Am I glad that they made The Plan? All in all, I think I am, purely for the fact that I can never say no to new content from the BSG universe. However, I think they could have done better, and the whole product feels too forced.

[tikey]

The music during the credits was excessively awesome.

[NGTM-1R]

It would have been better if they had just said "There are many copies...but only one paste." and Cavil set out upon some vague highlanderesque thing to be the LAST CYLON STANDING.

Or something.

Yeah I'm pretty much with Ibn Battuta over there on the quality, except I'll come down harder on the show for writing deterioration than most of you would for the effects suddenly switching to Crayolas.

[Locutus of Borg]

The last scene is god awful.

Sometimes I even wish I'd never watched it.

The only thing I liked was the deckhand and her CYLON husband storyline.

[Lepton]

It bit.  Clip show with interstitial content to "form" a "story".  There was no Plan and the Cylons' crazy obsession with man's extinction never made any sense.  This "movie" did nothing to make it any more sensible.

Further, the fact that various members of various models of Cylon did not hate man and were not on board with the "Plan" makes those that we knew of in the series all the less remarkable.  It normalizes Cylon-Human relations to such an extent that the original relationships lose a lot of their power in the series.