Ron Posts, Finale Rating Options

[MrsRon]

QUOTE (Craziel @ Mar 26 2009, 01:02 AM)
But for some of us, the "end" is not simply the final coda between Head Six and Head Baltar, but the decisions upon arriving on Earth. Such is being discussed here (at least in part).



I couldn't agree more. It's not technology, it's your approach to it. Which makes Lee's "fresh start" stance all the more confusing. Of all the people on the ship, he understood the importance of approach, as evidenced in his offering of unity to the #3.

Adama's statement in the premiere: "sooner or later, the day comes that you can't hide from the things that you've done" - applies equally to whether your relationship with technology is one that leads to the technology turning on you, or whether your relationship with technology is one of abhorrence. I thought after that moment with the #3, Lee would understand that you can compromise with technology, even "cylons", instead of simply being locked in a dynamic whether either you dominate it, or it dominates you.

In a sense, many such days did come, since if we are to follow Lee's decision to it's ultimate conclusion, it took (or has taken) mankind 150,000 years to re-develop Kobol/Caprica-like pre-fall technology. A great many of those years were spent as simple tribespeople, or at least we can assume as much from the historical and archaeological record.

I guess what i'm getting at (as i've said earlier in the thread) is i'd like a little more justification of why a complex character who has made compromises with former enemies suddenly figures the best way to "break the cycle" is not to change how you look at technology, but that you use it at all.

I have no problem with where things ended up (present day), just the pivotal decision that took them there.

Sorry if this crosses the boundary into rabid over-analysis.


RDM here.

What Lee saw was that it would be all to easy for the people in the fleet to simply repeat the mistakes they had made before, most recently on New Caprica, where they had attempted to restart Colonial civilization with unhappy results even before the Cylons arrived and began their occupation. The Baltar administration had been a disaster, the social problems of the colonists had become profound and the entire enterprise was on the verge of chaos before the first baseship jumped into orbit. While Lee himself had made a leap of faith with D'Anna and agreed to work together toward a common goal, it was too much to expect almost forty thousand people to have made a similar leap and to begin anew if they literally brought all their baggage with them. His solution was to wipe the slate clean, remove as many temptations as possible to repeat their past mistakes, disperse the people and try to bring the best part of themselves to this new world they'd found.

Think for a moment of the temptations available to people of the fleet armed with all their technology as they start a new life on a world whose natives are literally living in caves and carrying spears. Would there be any way they would not be gods in that setting? Would they ever be able to avoid playing god and ruling over the indigenous peoples? As it is, he was asking a tremendous amount from the people in the fleet, asking them to bring ideas of literature, art, justice, and so on to the new world, and hoping that they would be embedded either in oral traditions or perhaps in the collective unconscious and survive down through the ages. Asking people to avoid using the massive firepower and amazing technological advantages at their disposal would be asking too much. Would any of the indigenous peoples even survive in that scenario? Is that the gift the people of the 12 Colonies would give to their new home? Complete displacement, possibly annihilation?

Lee's idea, while somewhat idealistic, was at least worthy of survival, and that after all, was really at the heart of the show from the very beginning.

[LurkRealClose]

Hey Ron/Mr. Terry:

Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed the entire series. Including the finale. I was excited to see a hopeful ending, for both the Colonials and for us. In the final episode, you made me laugh, cry, yell out loud, and grab Mr. LRC's hand for strength. I've always been very impressed with the way this television show has moved me.

It didn't answer everything the way I wanted it to, but that's because it wasn't my show. If I only wanted to watch television that did the expected, I wouldn't watch scifi.

Nicely played. *claps*


LRC

[LurkRealClose]

Thanks, Mrs. Ron, for putting up Ron's responses.


LRC

[TowelOfApollo]

I really appreciate Ron taking the time to answer the questions. It was an interesting read. Thanks to you both!

[ImzadiDax]

There you go folks.
That was a very tired man last night, who posted at my request. Try to be polite.
Maybe I'll be able to get him to do it again.

Thank you.

[steve2112]

QUOTE (steve2112 @ Mar 25 2009, 01:37 PM)
Just because we don't see what he intended doesn't mean we aren't capable of getting something out of it. I don't blame you in your feelings though. Whenever I used to post to the Dresden Files forum, all the book readers were in there, and they'd put down and rudely correct anybody that just "watched the show", and didn't read the book series. I felt the same way, that I wasn't sophisticated enough.

Maybe all of us aren't sophisticated to comprehend his message, but it's still a major topic of conversation. I think they should be happy with that at least, that people are still talking about it.

I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I don't berate people for knowing or understanding less than I do.


RDM here.

To be clear, you're free to have any reaction you want to the finale or any other episode for that matter. It's a work of art and there's really no "right" interpretation to take away on the part of the audience. I tend to discuss the intention and the ideas behind what was presented and I will take issue with people who ascribe certain intents to the piece that I think aren't there, but that should in no way be taken as some kind of slam or comment on a lack of sophistication on the part of people who choose to see something in the inkblot that I don't see.

Thank you to Ron and his better half for the summary and putting these in its own thread. I've responded to some of these posts in their original thread, but this one I missed.

The one thing about art and its interpretations, is that everyone is their own person and they can get many different meanings out of it. What's great about this sort of thing is like it or hate it, it causes discussion. The exchange of ideas is the greatest side effect of somebody seeing this work and possibly getting the completely wrong idea.

I used the word sophisticated because it seemed to be the big buzzword in this particular dialog. I did not intend to use this word to put people down, but everybody is on their own level, and people take what they see from this story and get their own meanings.

I personally see a lot of parallels in this story, with other stories.. I'll come up with the common denominator eventually, but it's fun thinking about it!

When you're done watching this show, I'd recommend watching some other movies so you come to understand my thought process..

1. The Ten Commandments.
2. Lord of the Rings
3. The Matrix

BSG fits right in there nicely.. LOL

[MaliB]

Thank you so much for reading, responding, and posting. You have both always been so kind to the poor, rabid fans (and the non-slavering ones) and it is really appreciated.

Once again, BSG is not, and never was, most shows.

[greycoupon]

Thanks, MrsRon!

Thank you MrTerry for answering my question!

I'm still not clear on the first part of it. Based on Terry's comments here I assume the Colonials did keep SOME technology and set up small settlements around the globe with 5-10,000 people at most. The lack of medicine seems to be what most people are coming back to. So they took antibiotics, tools, books and things like that and over time the medicine ran out, people died and just started to forget the Colonial history. Is that about right?

I enjoyed the finale but the massive length of the time jump keeps nagging at me so I am trying to make sense of it all.

Finding the Galactica as a relic in central America would have been awesome in a WTF way but I can see why you chose not to go there.

Can I throw out one more question. The "other side" that Sam speaks of seeing Kara in. This is heaven/Elysium or open to interpretation. Or reincarnation since that seemed to be a constant theme. I'm just glad Kara had peace at the end wherever she may be.

PS I cried with Baltar at the end!

[MrsRon]

I really appreciate Ron taking the time to answer the questions. It was an interesting read. Thanks to you both!

Hey TOP-
Should we sticky this ?

[steve2112]

Hey TOP-
Should we stick this ?

I'll tell you where you should stick it!!

LOL just kidding..

A central place for your posts and Ron's posts is a great idea...

[MrsRon]

Thanks, MrsRon!

Thank you MrTerry for answering my question!

I'm still not clear on the first part of it. Based on Terry's comments here I assume the Colonials did keep SOME technology and set up small settlements around the globe with 5-10,000 people at most. The lack of medicine seems to be what most people are coming back to. So they took antibiotics, tools, books and things like that and over time the medicine ran out, people died and just started to forget the Colonial history. Is that about right?

I enjoyed the finale but the massive length of the time jump keeps nagging at me so I am trying to make sense of it all.

Finding the Galactica as a relic in central America would have been awesome in a WTF way but I can see why you chose not to go there.

Can I throw out one more question. The "other side" that Sam speaks of seeing Kara in. This is heaven/Elysium or open to interpretation. Or reincarnation since that seemed to be a constant theme. I'm just glad Kara had peace at the end wherever she may be.

PS I cried with Baltar at the end!

In the episode, Adama says- 'we'll split up the supplies', we see them carrying packs of stuff...

[TowelOfApollo]

Hey TOP-
Should we sticky this ?

Before you posted this thread, I asked to have the original thread Ron posted in stickied. I'll PM the admins again and see what they think.

[BSGREB]

Ron, as a fan of the original, I also loved your version of BSG.

The only thing that really bothered me was learning that the showing of familiar constellations, as they got close to the Cylon Earth (Orion for example), was not intentional and that we are supposed to ignore that.

Why this bugs me so much is because I was so excited about BSG getting the science right.

It started when I first saw the Vipers fly like real spacecrafts. So many science fiction movies and shows have spacecrafts flying like an airplane in an atmosphere. It was so refreshing to see someone get it right.

As they started getting near the Earth, we started seeing recognizable constellations. I thought that we must have some really science savvy people behind this. I was really impressed at the thought and detail you guys put in it, and now I learn that that was just an accident and has no meaning. Those were not supposed to be our constellations. They were just the default on the star generating program.

Showing real constellations that millions recognize, and then saying they were not supposed to be our constellations? It is like showing a planet where you can clearly see Africa or North America and later saying “That is not Earth. That is an alien planet. Our planet software generating program uses those continents as a default. We didn’t think anyone would notice."

I’ll caulk it up as a mistake. We all make mistakes, so I can live with that. Still, it does bug me.

Over all, I like the show. I even like the ending. As an artist, I can appreciate you painting your pieces different than I would have. I have to sometimes defend my work. I like criticism, but don’t like it when the critics act like I didn’t put any thought into my work. I know your team put a lot of thought in your work.

Thank you for entertaining us these last few years.

Robert

[Dione]

Ron, thanks for posting, but I really have to ask:

a) What do YOU think Starbuck is?

Why did Boomer's story wind up the way it did in the end?

c) Why did you change it from the original script?

d) How could Cavil kill himself if the cylons have programming against their nature to self-terminate?

e) Why no closure between Kara and Leoben?

[MrsRon]

Ron, as a fan of the original, I also loved your version of BSG.

The only thing that really bothered me was learning that the showing of familiar constellations, as they got close to the Cylon Earth (Orion for example), was not intentional and that we are supposed to ignore that.

Why this bugs me so much is because I was so excited about BSG getting the science right.

It started when I first saw the Vipers fly like real spacecrafts. So many science fiction movies and shows have spacecrafts flying like an airplane in an atmosphere. It was so refreshing to see someone get it right.

As they started getting near the Earth, we started seeing recognizable constellations. I thought that we must have some really science savvy people behind this. I was really impressed at the thought and detail you guys put in it, and now I learn that that was just an accident and has no meaning.

Showing real constellations that millions recognize, and then saying they were not supposed to be our constellations? It is like showing a planet where you can clearly see Africa or North America and later saying “That is not Earth. That is an alien planet. Our planet software generating program uses those continents as a default. We didn’t think anyone would notice."

I’ll caulk it up as a mistake. We all make mistakes, so I can live with that. Still, it does bug me.

Over all, I like the show. I even like the ending. As an artist, I can appreciate you painting your pieces different than I would have. I have to sometimes defend my work. I like criticism, but don’t like it when the critics act like I didn’t put any thought into my work. I know your team put a lot of thought in your work.

Thank you for entertaining us these last few years.

Robert

RDM here.

First, you're talking about the star patterns in the backgrounds of exterior space shots and reading an awful lot into them. There was no deliberate effort on my part to put Orion or any other constellation into those shots, so if they exist, as opposed to being random coincidence, then I can only assume it was something inserted by one or more of our visual effects artists.

Second, I see no reason why you can't continue to believe that the patterns were indeed the constellations we see/saw from this world and that Galactica was getting closer to this world as the story progressed. It seems to me that the rationale you were propagating is perfectly valid and you can choose to think of it in exactly that way.

[jdjtcagle]

Thanks for posting Ron.

I've told MrsRon before how I enjoy your treatment of the fans. I absolutely loved the show and I'm not "usually" a huge fan of Sci-Fi. Other than watching MST3k poke fun at some of the more cornier ones. :-P

I have one question for you and I hope you can answer. Can you explain how Kara is the Harbinger of Death? I figured it had something to do with Hera being Mitochondrial Eve and the human race had eventually died off. What resolution did you intend with this plotline?

Thanks again

[larocque6689]

I'm posting these for Neuromanzr if you get around to them... !

1. Why are Ron Moore's angels so gritty, and ho rny?

2. If Kara was an angel too... then why wasn't she hanging out with the C6 and Gaias angels on Earth at the end?!

3. What happened to all the cy-clones after they freed the robots?

If Kara is supposed to be Jesus, then does that mean that the cy-clone in Galactica's hot tub was Mary Magdalene?!

[ThPrimes]

Thanks for the repostings and answered questions. Much appreciated!

[michealmyers99]

Thanks MrsRon for posting this.

I'm amazed at RDM's love and dedication to Battlestar Galactica and I'm glad I got to enjoy the ride for a while. While of course not everyone is going to be pleased with the outcome......please know that there are those that really took something from this series. To me it transcended everything I've seen before, it pushed the envelope, it made me question, etc. As these characters grew so did I and I think we all did in watching week after week, this journey of life as seen through the characters. Over the past few days I've really just started to digest the impact that this show had and will have for years to come. Thanks RDM and to everyone involved in this show..........it really has meant a lot to the fans and will have a lasting impact.

[DarkVegetaman]

I really appreciate Ron taking the time to answer the questions. It was an interesting read. Thanks to you both!

I agree. In all, I am fairly satisfied with where the show ended up. Everything didn't fall into place quite like I thought it would, but the journey was good and well worth it.

Thanks to Ron for answering the questions. That put to bed a few other questions I had, as well.