TVSquad

If they brought back SG1 and Atlantis and had the 3 of them running again.. I think the ratings would be the same if not higher than expected! This strategy to have Battlestar run by itself killed the show.. Cancelling SG1 well thats another rant..

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Let us not ignore that it's on a FRIDAY NIGHT (thank goodness for TiVo), and that the giant plot reset switch was thrown halfway through the season.

Seriously, watching last week's episode made it clear that everything that happened over the last 2.5 seasons is now irrelevant. They're basically right back where they started. All the Cylon occupation really did was give viewers a taste of what the Cylon war might have been like, and put Baltar into their custody where he could theorize about his place in it all. Oh, and they have the half-Cylon, half-Human baby. Yep, that's pretty much it. Even "Sharon" is back in uniform as a pilot. Tigh and Starbuck are all drunk and surly again, and Apollo can't stand Starbuck (and dropped the fat suit). Seriously, this last episode could have been the series premiere and no one would have noticed.

So what I'm saying is let's not write off to external forces what could just as easily be explained by the fact that the last two seasons have been made irrelevant. No one likes having their time wasted, and especially not on a Friday night.

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Total reset? No. Partial reset, ok, yeah, I'll give ya that. But I tend to look at it as less a reset than the ebb and flow of a war, twists and turns... good drama. The stakes are even higher now... there are fewer humans, and they're more desperate to find earth -- and Adama knows now he can't depend on the people he once could, which will make his struggle harder. The colonials have fought some hard battles, and now they're even more hardened... The trick will be whether or not the lessons learned with the little diversion to new caprica will play out logically as the series goes on. If not, then yeah, this was just a ratings stunt. but if the series can continue to evolve from here... time will tell.

(Did anybody else other than me think the whole "we don't talk about the other five models" thing sounds awfully close to the writers simply copping out? Forget the reset, if this is a cop-out, this is the real sign of shark-jumping. "Oh, yeah, those 12 models we've talked about since day one, forget about them... don't look behind the curtain. Our bad." Well, at least Adama and Laura aren't sleeping together... yet.)

Anyway, the ratings decline... dont think it's the series quality... it's the scheduling thing. there's a reason SciFi never aired new episodes in the fall before... it's rating suicide. They should have stuck with their old strategy. Eyes to big for their mouth.

Oh, yeah, and bring back Farscape. Atlantis, Farscape, Doc Who, and Galactica... now that would be a friday night.

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Greco, I did not see the "we don't speak about the other 5 models" as a cop out at all. I saw it as a new storyline setup.

But yeah, losing its Stargate lead in and having it try to go head to head with regular tv season is definitely what is hurting BSGs current ratings (let alone that nielsens are archaic and do not properly represent a viewing audience)

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No I don't think it's a "cop-out". If anything else it just makes it more of a mystery, and I'm pretty sure the writers know what they are going to do with them. There are lots of other storylines to keep us busy for now, and I have a feeling that we'll get some more info by the end of the season.

As for the ratings, I am a bit surprised. The Friday time slot doesn't help though. Maybe Sunday nights would be better?

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Ya, that is too bad. BSG is one of the greatest shows out right now. I have a feeling though that when the new Fall shows lose thier "newness" then BSG will rise again.

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As someone who has enjoyed this show from the beginning,
I have to say its starting to drag on too long. They are taking too long to tell the story & resolve anything.
Move on, tell another story.

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yeah, let's get the series moving already...

my guess is they'll find earth at the end of this season ... and find it ruined, we blew ourselves up in some apocalyptic war. And then galactica has to protect the remaining humans there from the cyclons. oh, and laura and adama had a baby along the way that turns into this super-intelligent fast-growing kid named cousin oliver... and marries caprica sharon's baby, who ages super-fast and is now a hot teen who solves crimes.

oh, sorry. that's just the direction they should go. if they're, you know, insane.

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What is Jericho's sci-fi theme? I thought it was about nuclear terrorism....

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I agree about Tivo. Thank goodness. And that could by why the ratings "appear" to be down for BSG. I, for one, cannot watch BSG while it airs, because the wife and kids would rather watch something else, so I have to watch it later. Or, if they mess with Tivo and screw up the recording, I'll have to find the episode elsewhere.

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Has anyone taken into account that they show BSG 3 times in a 5 hour period on Friday night as too give the (non-tivo) viewers options? Are the ratings only based on the first showing - or are they based on a combination of all 3?

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"Total reset? No. Partial reset, ok, yeah, I'll give ya that. But I tend to look at it as less a reset than the ebb and flow of a war, twists and turns... good drama. The stakes are even higher now... there are fewer humans, and they're more desperate to find earth -- and Adama knows now he can't depend on the people he once could, which will make his struggle harder. The colonials have fought some hard battles, and now they're even more hardened... The trick will be whether or not the lessons learned with the little diversion to new caprica will play out logically as the series goes on. If not, then yeah, this was just a ratings stunt. but if the series can continue to evolve from here... time will tell."

OK, so this argument really comes down to whether or not you can be "a little bit pregnant". You're either hardened or you aren't. You're either desperate, or you aren't. The past several episodes did nothing to really advance that. They were already hardened and desperate.

I really see this as a nearly complete reset. Hell, look at the Viper Apollo was flying. It appeared to say "MAJ. ADAMA" on it. Did they demote him again? I suppose they had to, since the Pegasus is completely gone, so there's nothing for him to Captain. We never really saw much of the rest of the fleet, so the fact that it's smaller now is largely irrelevant. Rosalin is President again, Baltar is still nuttier than a shit-house rat ...

I can see why they'd do this. It gets the new viewers into the story without having to constantly recap what happened, and gets viewers over the fear that if they missed the first two seasons, they'll never know what's going on. But there should be a pay-off for the fans, and I don't think a new call-sign for "Athena" is it.

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I definitely think it's the quality of the show sliding that's affecting the ratings. Ratings have been down since the first half of S2 and the writing has been subpar since the Pegasus episodes around the same time.

Hitting the big reset button at the beginning of S3 probably doesn't help either.

Nor do the increasing attempts to do some kind of meaningful political allegory -- never the show's strong suit -- which just don't work as well as the writers seem to think.

Being put against the network fall premieres is obviously a bad idea as well.

Finally, the lengthier seasons compared to S1 have really stretched the writers too thin; this is a show that needs tightly plotted 10-13 episode seasons that tell a concise arc. I think the biggest problem with the back half of S2 was that the writers blew their wad in the front half and then didn't really know how to follow it up. If they had ended the season with the Pegasus two-parter and then started a tighter S3 at that point, I think the ratings wouldn't have slid like they are.

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The pay off (imo) Rob was seeing inside the Basestar and seeing a bit more of how cylon operations go about.

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Look at the big picture:
TIVO/DVR ratings are just now starting to be taken into account(I watch live as well as TIVO). BSG is one of the MOST POPULAR downloaded series at ITUNES. And it premiered during the premiere season of all the broadcast networks. It would be tough for any cable show to compete w/ some of the crap that NBC,CBS,ABC, etc. air on any night. SciFi took a bold move by premiering during the fall...and it has not paid off. But is BSG any less popular than it was since last season? NO WAY!!! This has been the best season (in my opinion) yet. Those who say that the stories "are dragging on too long" are in a VERY TINY MINORITY!
Greco states: "Did anybody else other than me think the whole "we don't talk about the other five models" thing sounds awfully close to the writers simply copping out? Forget the reset, if this is a cop-out, this is the real sign of shark-jumping."
NO WAY!!! I found it an interesting plot twist/mystery: at least Baltar wants to know, and I'm sure more will be revealed in upcoming episodes about his query.
BSG just keeps getting better w/ each episode. I'm loving this season.

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I'm a big BSG fan, but it looks to me like the writers are running scared, and I don't know what they're running from. Watching the last ten or twelve episodes, it seems to me that they are pushing story lines way too fast, and not just in the occupation on New Caprica. They're moving so fast that the characters are becoming characterizations.

And they've totally glossed over some really salient points: why are the Cylons so bent on human destruction; why does Number 3 think that the humans wouldn't be resentful for being nearly wiped out. For all the interaction between humans and Cylons, they've really done nothing to flesh out the conflict beyond their personal relationships.

BSG needs to find their story again, and it's not about finding Earth. It's about the characters. I agree that recent episodes feel like a reset. They don't need to move the story faster. They need to remember that their characters are important, and not because they're pissed off one episode and working together the next.

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Wow I can't believe people are complaining about this show. Season 3 has been amazing so far and although Season 2 had a few crappy episodes it was still brilliant.

The Wire is perhaps the only drama better than BSG right now.

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"BSG needs to find their story again, and it's not about finding Earth. It's about the characters." fishpatrol

These first six episodes of this season have been some of the most character-driven eps. I've watched. Saul and Ellens' storyline was heart-wrenching. And Sauls' storyline is becoming so intriguing. Kara has gone through alot(even though I thought her scenes w/Anders in their split was a bit rushed). And the scene last ep. w/ Adama facing Saul and Kara was brilliant. I'm sure Ronald D. Moore ABSOLUTELY knows his show is character driven(isn't this why we all love it), and from what I've seen so far this season, he hasn't forgotten that.

We're only six eps. into this season(to those that have problems w/ this season). Keep watching. I'm sure you're going to be pleasantly surprised by upcoming developments.

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Ok. I love this show. Season 1, 2 and 3 -- it's all good. My biggest fault with it is the time jumps in between episodes. I am not just talking the "1 year later" variety....Their are numerous "1 month" late, "4 months later", who knows how much later jumps that happen weekly. Every day would be a struggle...Yet whenever they paint themselves into a corner the next week it is 60+ days in the future for them, and all of the side stories and charector plots that would have been evident in the fallout of whatever happened in the previous episode have all been swept away by the sweet passage of time that us the viewer never got to see.

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I agree with you cress-d, that the people who think this series is dragging too long is in a minority. This is not a slam dunk shoot em up action show. This is a well thought out, complicated, and cerebrial drama. Yes it is sci-fi and it is action driven, but it's a show that will make you think, as well as entertain you. Look at it this way, no matter how high a show's ratings are, no program can sustain a top level indefinately. There are bound to be hills and valleys. There is nothing wrong with the writing or the plots.

As for the search for Earth, it is the search, not the finding of it that is the real theme of this great show. Do not worry faithful, the writers will find plenty of good storylines for this very talented cast of stars.

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