You know those Cylons do love to gossip. . .

Ginger Yellow wrote:

QUOTE:
Personally I like the Big Story Arc approach - the first season got a bit tiring with the whole -of-humanity-in-peril-every-single-episode narrative.

In the middle, though, are episodes with a self-contained story that starts and ends within the hour, but which pushes the big story along as well. For which, see ep3 of the new series, which is a corker.

Horse, how have you seen the next two episodes? its not fair. and can i have copies?

I'm a TV critic (although I'm not reviewing Battlestar), and no you can't. The people at Sky would nuke me.

I got eps 4-6 today. Ep4 has some very well-written two-handers but it is, again, rather uneventful.

Awful review in The Guardian, although the comments are worth reading.

(Incidentally BG got less than a quarter of a million viewers last night on Sky One - Lost regularly tops 1m on the same channel.)

QUOTE:
Hmm ... sci-fi - a forced marriage between two sections of a bookshop to create another. I mean, they don't do it with other sections, do they? Hum-trav, pol-poe, min-bod-spi-his, bio-spo ... well, sports biography clearly exists. And actually science fiction has nothing to do with science. So all of the above is nonsense. Most probably all of the below, too.

What I'm trying to say is, I'm not very good at sci-fi - in books, on television, anywhere. There's not enough food in it, or baths - the important things in life. When was the last time you saw a bathroom on a spaceship? Or a kitchen? Or a bedroom for that matter, and any of the things that go on in there? It's so concerned with the massive issues - time, space, war, distant galaxies, the future of the human race - that it forgets the little things that make life interesting and human and sensual. Sci-fi has no smell.

The Horse, I'm not sure if you meant "awful" as in the show was panned, or "awful" as in, damn, what the hell is this person going on about and why are they drawing a paycheck to write about this. If it was the second thought, then I whole-heartedly agree. Though not quite as clueless and bad as this Guardian review of The Wire, it sure wasn't good.

I meant the second one.

That's a shocker isn't it.

If sky one was on virgin they'd almost double those viewing figures (I'd imagine)

That review of The Wire is pretty wide of the mark, isn't it?

It sure was. I use it as my measuring stick of egregiously stupid and hackish criticism. I've never understood why some TV criticism is done by people who have a natural dislike of TV. Of course, in the US this is becoming less of an issue as many TV (and film) critics at mainstream news organs have been fired in the latest round of newspaper downsizing.

On the good side of TV criticism, I'd put Alan Sepinwall who writes for the Star Ledger in NJ and has his own cite. Here are some of his BSG reviews.

I am actually up to date now. It is a unusual pleasure to be able to wait for the next one to be posted online.

oh... and unbox Xe... I mean D'Anna.

How long before a complete DVD series? (Lyra?)

Exclusive footage of the Cylon civil war.

So we've caught up with The Horse's posts now, and apart from ep. 4, I'm not sure where the "slow" accusation is coming from. We're only six episodes in and already we've had Starbuck back from the dead, possibly a Cylon, Starbuck going a bit nuts, Starbuck looking for Earth with half of the main characters, civil war among the Cylons, raiders and centurions getting free will and using it, a raider recognising Anders as a Cylon, Baltar becoming a fully fledged messiah, Tory embracing her inner Cylon and killing Callie, Tigh developing a fucked up relationship with Six, Chief Tyrol losing it and being demoted, Lee quitting the fleet and taking on Roslin, Roslin going dictator-lite, the Threes about to be deboxed and much, much more. That seems like quite a lot for six episodes. There hasn't been all that much space combat, it's true, but new BSG was never really about that.

1-2 were slow, I didn't say any of the others were. 4 was a bit uneventful. 5-7 were cracking.

Overall, though, I do feel it's been a bit talky. And it's getting a bit too mystical for my liking.

Talky is good, as long as it's well written. We need more talky sci-fi and less wizz-bang.

Sure, but it used to keep both those balls in the air.