There was no plan

Saturday, June 17th, 2017

“The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. There are many copies. And they have a plan.” Actually, no, the Cylons never had a plan, Ronald D. Moore recently admitted:

Moore said this was, essentially, just something co-executive producer David Eick thought sounded cool, that audiences would love and that they could figure out later. They never did and, said Moore, “For the next 14 years of my life people have asked me ‘What was the plan?’” In short, “There was no… plan.”

Comments

  1. Bob Sykes says:

    There weren’t enough copies of Grace Park.

  2. Magus says:

    Became obvious pretty fast they had no idea what they were doing. I honestly find that insulting to the audience. There Wan implicit agreement between creators and consumers: you promise to know wtf you are doing, I promise to get emplotioaly involved.

    I mean really. Spend a f weekend plotting out the Long arcs. It’s not that f hard. Embarrassing really. BSG, Lost, etc.

  3. Ted says:

    Since the cylons were more deeply spiritual than the humans, I always thought they were seeking a conversion by humanity.

  4. Slovenian Guest says:

    And there is no spoon!

  5. Searpea says:

    When I figured out the Cylons were rudderless I stopped watching the show. If I remember correctly, it was shortly into Season 3. (I also began wondering if the producers had a clear idea of what the story arc was).

  6. Graham says:

    I remember wondering how an AI civilization develops the capacity to half-ass everything.

    Eventually even the deep-historical backstory for BSG, and its eventual outcome, made no sense. And the less said of Caprica, the better.

    It was a hell of a decline for a show that had such promise at the start.

  7. Anomaly UK says:

    This is the curse of modern television. It’s often said that creativity has migrated from film to long-form television, and there’s a lot of truth in it, but the serial form has taken away the single story arc.

    The first couple of times you can watch a series and enjoy it believing that there’s an underlying single story, but then you lose faith in the whole genre and can’t get it back. There’s no TV drama at all that I’m watching now, and I can’t really imagine ever bothering to get into another one.

    Are there any exceptions? Series that have gone on for three seasons or more without decaying into obvious make-it-up-as-you-go-along or abruptly being cancelled?

  8. Graham says:

    I sometimes prefer more traditional episodic network drama for that very reason.

    Blue Bloods has been on 6 or 7 years and is still good. They can have some character evolution, although even that is mostly steady state at this point. There are at most a few thematic through lines, but stories are essentially episodic. You can have quality within that framework, even if episodes are uneven.

    It’s the cable [and a few network] shows that aim for a longer story arc and elevated narrative that most spectacularly fail. I thought Lost was always stupid, but plenty who liked it saw it fall apart and die long before the end.

    BSG failed for having such lofty storytelling ambitions and high concepts to which its runners could not live up.

    Still, the original movie, much of the first season, and some later output was good. Just it started to get stupid on New Caprica [I think I was the only person I knew who didn't think Col Tigh using suicide bombers was the great moral dilemma the New York Times thought it was; or at least I didn't see the same dilemmas they saw in it]. And got worse as they tried to come up with and explain the ‘final five’ and the ultimately failed way of telling the history of the humans and AIs.

    OTOH, season 1 premiere “33″ is one of science-fiction’s best ever takes on the submarine movie.

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