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etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Sankara posted:

Delightingale is a cute name.

Great alt name, exercise 4-5 times in week and no blurry / snapchat filters for the profile headshot

5/5 for a Space Tinder profile

Mister Speaker posted:

I loved seeing Elias Toufexis in S1 of the show because I really only know him as Adam Jensen and I still find it hard to believe that that's his actual voice, not some rasp he put on to make Adam seem all the more gritty.

That voice comes out of that guy? gently caress off.

The churn monologue from Season 1 was was on the great break-out character moments for Amos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-rM5VyxVHk

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Blue Raider
Sep 2, 2006

Halfway through the first season and this show is good as hell. How was this a syfy show?

Mu Zeta
Oct 17, 2002

Me crush ass to dust

I think they were facing a bunch of backlash from the wrestling and ghost hunting so decided to air science fiction shows again. So we got Killjoys, Dark Matter, Expanse, 12 Monkeys and Magicians pretty much all at the same time.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



I'd never seen the original Battlestar Galactica so I'm trying it. It's actually pretty good!

Rather dull and lifeless in its energy levels, but I'm pretty impressed with the apparent budget and with the amount of worldbuilding they put in. The reimagined series really had its work cut out for it to add all the new stuff they came up with (like polytheism, nu-Cylons, the whole "secret sleeper agent" thread, corners cut off paper, Dune-style eschewing of computers, etc).

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Apr 6, 2021

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
BSG isn't the best ever, but it has a great atmosphere, and most of the issues that you would think would come up eventually do. And often times, the solution to "what do we do about this, we can't go on like this forever" ends up being "just suck it up dudes, we have to keep going and everyone has to pitch in."

twistedmentat
Nov 21, 2003

Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to
Back half of BSG gets way to up its own rear end on the metaphysical and spiritual implications of everything and that gets real annoying.

Tequila25
May 12, 2001
Ask me about tapioca.
Wait, are we talking BSG 1978 or BSG 2004?

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
Oh, I guess I misread a thing.

Mister Speaker
May 8, 2007

WE WILL CONTROL
ALL THAT YOU SEE
AND HEAR
The Expanse easily took BSG's crown for best sci-fi show ever, in my books. I still recommend the show to friends, but it's gotten increasingly more difficult to justify. Plotlines that were extremely impactful and relevant to the politics of the early '00s, today seem ham-fisted and tryhard. And the worst part, twistedmentat is right, is when they wrote themselves into a corner trying to tie up all the loose ends with bullshit religious angles in the last season.

I used to try to sell the show by saying "give me three hours and 45 minutes of your time [the runtime of the miniseries and 33] and if you don't immediately want to watch more I'll never mention it to you again." This was a surprisingly easy sell back in the day, but I can't even bring myself to subject people to that anymore, knowing how things end up. Usually if someone asks I'll say "watch Scar and if you like that maybe start from the beginning." I'm also very vocal about how insulting the series finale was, and depending on my mood will usually say "stop after season 3" or "stop halfway through season 4, you'll know when." But that's a tough one too, because even after the writing staff had disappeared up their own asses at the end of S3, they still shat out the occasional gem - the mutiny arc is one of the best in the whole series, if only for how they let Olmos chew the scenery like never before.

Data Graham posted:

corners cut off paper

This is my favourite little universe detail about BSG. Imagine being in the props department when that order came down. "They want us to do literally what???"

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
Apparently it was a joke during the miniseries. They were told to cut corners to save money, so they cut the corners off a bunch of books and paper as a joke. Then they had to continue doing that when it became an actual show.

Gangringo
Jul 22, 2007

In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one sat.

He chose the path of perpetual contentment.

Whatever the reason I loved it as a perfect way to get across the "like us, but not us" vibe of the colonials. There was some deep-seated cultural dislike of 90° corners on paper. It was so deep-seated that nobody ever felt the need to explain it.

That and the also never explained cultural references like "roll the hard six" or the "what do you hear" call and response were just masterclass world building.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Mister Speaker posted:

The Expanse easily took BSG's crown for best sci-fi show ever, in my books. I still recommend the show to friends, but it's gotten increasingly more difficult to justify. Plotlines that were extremely impactful and relevant to the politics of the early '00s, today seem ham-fisted and tryhard. And the worst part, twistedmentat is right, is when they wrote themselves into a corner trying to tie up all the loose ends with bullshit religious angles in the last season.

Though let's be real, the "ripped from the headlines (of 20 years ago)" bits of Expanse S5 have felt pretty drat tryhard in their own right :v:

But anyway yeah, the BSG I'm talking about is 1978. It's surprising me how much of the look-and-feel of the 2003 BSG actually goes all the way back. Including all the little "lived-in, daily-life world" touches that I had assumed were 2003, "gritty realistic TV" innovations, like all the rag-tag ships in the Colonial fleet — lovely Sagittaron freighters made out of modern-day-looking shipping containers straight off the Ever Given, cheapass moving company ships with goofy logos and slogans on their sides, cool Hotblack Desiato billionaire yachts with indecipherable text. Also the texture of the world below decks, the poor poo poo-on folks tearing at the flyboys' clothes and screaming at them in a conlang for hoarding resources — all that survived to 2003, but I never would have imagined they dated back all the way to the beginning.

But I can also sympathize with all the contemporary reviewers who dismissed BSG as a Star Wars ripoff — it had so much stuff that can really only be justified as cashing in on Star Wars imagery, like the fighter dogfights, the light-gray capital ships covered with greeblies, even the centurions had a very Darth Vader look about them. The story is about as different as it can be, but it was really hard to get out from under SW's shadow in the day, even if they'd wanted to.

All in all it's way less cheesy than I thought it would be. 2003 has (rightly, I think) taken over as "what people mean by default when they say BSG" as this thread has illustrated, but I kinda think the more time goes on they might each come to be seen equally as a product of their times.

Besides to add to the list of "stupid poo poo from the final season" I can never not point out that while the idea of a song that humanity knows as a dim racial memory is a cool as crap idea, "All Along the Watchtower", really? It's barely a song, like yeah I'm not saying it's not good, but it doesn't even have a melody per se, it's just a bunch of wailing on a single note while the bass line does three chords over and over. It's like saying the human race recognizes Also Sprach Zarathustra for its lyrics

Mister Speaker
May 8, 2007

WE WILL CONTROL
ALL THAT YOU SEE
AND HEAR

Data Graham posted:

Besides to add to the list of "stupid poo poo from the final season" I can never not point out that while the idea of a song that humanity knows as a dim racial memory is a cool as crap idea, "All Along the Watchtower", really? It's barely a song, like yeah I'm not saying it's not good, but it doesn't even have a melody per se, it's just a bunch of wailing on a single note while the bass line does three chords over and over. It's like saying the human race recognizes Also Sprach Zarathustra for its lyrics

Yeah the All Along the Watchtower stuff was pretty cool. Admittedly I thought it was a bit cheeseball that the melody intervals also ended up being the FTL coordinates for salvation, but the cylon activation stuff at the end of S3 was incredible and still gives me chills. When I introduced to the show a buddy from college who's a huge Hendrix fan, he got it right away - "why are they humming Watchtower?" and that made me smile.

EDIT: McCreary's cover of the song was also really, really good. That whole soundtrack really made the show what it was, and has been aped so many times in sci-fi since then.

Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Apr 6, 2021

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Mister Speaker posted:

When I introduced to the show a buddy from college who's a huge Hendrix fan, he got it right away - "why are they humming Watchtower?" and that made me smile.

A lot of people were mad about it being a real world song but this is exactly why it had to be. Didn't matter which one, just something the audience could recognize a minute before the characters did.

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
I like that Bear McCreary is so good that he got people to think that the notes he added were really part of All Along the Watchtower.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


It's hard to imagine any show ever having better music.

Mister Speaker
May 8, 2007

WE WILL CONTROL
ALL THAT YOU SEE
AND HEAR

Cojawfee posted:

I like that Bear McCreary is so good that he got people to think that the notes he added were really part of All Along the Watchtower.

The Final Four are humming the vocal melody in S3.

Also I guess you could say they are part of the song, just not at all in that sequence.

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius

Mister Speaker posted:

The Final Four are humming the vocal melody in S3.

Also I guess you could say they are part of the song, just not at all in that sequence.

The part that kara plays on the piano, I'm pretty sure that Bear created that himself to add to the song. That way it could be used as a stinger for things without actually having to play licensing fees every time it was used or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7zR4NgShIA

Mister Speaker
May 8, 2007

WE WILL CONTROL
ALL THAT YOU SEE
AND HEAR
Yes you're right. What I'm saying is that (as long as it's actually in the same key/mode) the notes are there, just not in the same order. I was being a pedantic music nerd. It's possible, though, that sequence is played in some small section of the guitar solo, which would pass most anyone's copyright arguments since it's not necessarily what 'makes' the song what it is (this is the crux of legal arguments in sampling or other plaigarism cases). I still think you're right though and it's an entirely new melody.

Since you've got me curious, I'll have to ask Hendrixbro to listen back to the cover and see what he thinks about exactly how referential it is. He's much more learned about the theory than I am - although I realized he didn't actually get the reference right away, since there are I think two subtle uses of the lyrics by the Final Four, well before the big activation sequence and before anyone hums anything.

packetmantis
Feb 26, 2013

Data Graham posted:

"All Along the Watchtower", really? It's barely a song, like yeah I'm not saying it's not good, but it doesn't even have a melody per se,

loving what?

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Cojawfee posted:

The part that kara plays on the piano, I'm pretty sure that Bear created that himself to add to the song. That way it could be used as a stinger for things without actually having to play licensing fees every time it was used or something.

Yeah this is what I'm talking about, or what I couldn't really figure out what they were trying to do. Like, how am I supposed to recognize this as the melody of AATW when the song doesn't really have a melody, and the melody they've added is one they've invented out of whole cloth?

^^^ The bass line is distinctive, yes, but the lyrics are sung in basically a mono/duotone, or kind of sing-talked, whether you're talking about Hendrix or Dylan. It's not a "tune", and the rhythm/cadence of the words aren't even in a consistent pattern that you could pick up on. The whole conceit relies on the bass line being the thing everyone perks up at

I don't know why I always have such difficulty getting this point across

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Apr 6, 2021

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


I dunno man. I watched it with my mom and she noticed it immediately.

Tighclops
Jan 23, 2008

Unable to deal with it


Grimey Drawer
I remember recognizing the song immediately and making fun of my lovely friends at the time for being uncultured swine

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



I mean it could always just be that I’m dumb and/or weird.

I’m not saying it’s a bad song or a bad choice or even badly executed; I guess I just found it confusing in the way they approached the device somehow.

What it reminded me of was when I read Spellsinger by Alan Dean Foster and he had the guy show off how good he is at guitar by playing a typical song from his time that really shows off the guitar’s capabilities, which was ... “Eleanor Rigby” :raise:


E: I thought if they’re going to do a racial memory tune I would have expected it to be something simple like “Mary had a little lamb” or I don’t know, “twinkle twinkle little star” would have been thematic

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Apr 6, 2021

Atarask
Mar 8, 2008

Lord of Rigel Developer

Gangringo posted:

That and the also never explained cultural references like "roll the hard six" or the "what do you hear" call and response were just masterclass world building.

Although in For All Mankind Moore is trying hard to make rolling a hard six a real thing :) But at least a character there is "what is that supposed to mean?"

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
Rolling a hard six is a craps thing I think.

PeterWeller
Apr 21, 2003

I told you that story so I could tell you this one.

I always figured it was a dogfighting thing. Six o'clock is directly behind you. So it's saying sometimes you have to pull a 180.

Tequila25
May 12, 2001
Ask me about tapioca.

Cojawfee posted:

Rolling a hard six is a craps thing I think.

Yup. "Hard six" is rolling two threes in craps. When you bet on hard six, rolling six any other way still is a loss. Overall, it's a 3% probability.

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe

Data Graham posted:

Yeah this is what I'm talking about, or what I couldn't really figure out what they were trying to do. Like, how am I supposed to recognize this as the melody of AATW when the song doesn't really have a melody, and the melody they've added is one they've invented out of whole cloth?

^^^ The bass line is distinctive, yes, but the lyrics are sung in basically a mono/duotone, or kind of sing-talked, whether you're talking about Hendrix or Dylan. It's not a "tune", and the rhythm/cadence of the words aren't even in a consistent pattern that you could pick up on. The whole conceit relies on the bass line being the thing everyone perks up at

I don't know why I always have such difficulty getting this point across
By this logic, most jazz standards don't have melodies either. Just because you're playing or singing around the melody doesn't mean there isn't one.

AATW's melody is composed of pretty simple and recognizable minor pentatonic riffs, but it does have parts that are not well defined because each performance of the same riff within the song gets improvisationally flexed to fit lyrics and the whims of the artist.

That said, I agree with you that the melodic stuff in this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXW5vpahqgU does not occur in the melody of the Hendrix AATW recording I'm familiar with, though it uses the same scale with a rearrangement of the rhythm guitar and bass from the Hendrix recording that have a similar feel. They're not as close as Ice Ice Baby and Under Pressure, but they're pretty close. The new melody from the Cylon song ends up being used as a separate theme and eventually a countermelody in the combined arrangement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BigolJfoANw&t=212s

Whether (as Cojawfee suggested) McCreary was asked to do it that way to specifically avoid rights fees is an open question but it would make sense. In any case I think it worked out great. I'm not a big Hendrix fan, but I could tell it was a reference to something I'd heard based only on the driving rhythm of the backing harmonies and the overall feel. It was great when the light bulb finally went on completely, and I wish I could experience it again for the first time.

Cojawfee
May 31, 2006
I think the US is dumb for not using Celsius
I don't know if you're referring to the arrangement of the entire song or the 9 note riff as being the same as the original song but not in the same order or whatever, but I'm specifically talking about the riff that kara plays. I just remember at the time that everyone associated the riff that McCreary wrote as being All Along the Watchtower when it isn't even in the actual song. So whenever something cylony was happening, the end of the scene would have the drums and guitar background bit playing and then that riff would come in loud as the scene ended. That's what I'm referring to.

Data Graham
Dec 28, 2009

📈📊🍪😋



Yeah. I guess I always felt like I was missing something, where everyone was talking about the upper-register ("Kara") phrase as being AATW, when the bass riff was the only thing notably from the original. Some kind of weird meaning-transposition thing happening in real time, where everyone's in on the evolution except me. Like one time when the news described someone being attacked with a "stiletto", and it turned out they meant a stiletto HEEL, i.e. a SHOE, as opposed to an actual stiletto (i.e. a knife). Or like cockney rhyming slang, where the original word you're alluding to is being deliberately elided, like "rabbit => 'rabbit and pork' => talk".

Anyway I guess my thing is that if I think of the music of "All Along the Watchtower", what comes to my head before anything else is the guitar solo, which definitely wouldn't work as a "racial memory" kind of thing since it's basically improv. I would have expected something more along the lines of "a simple, even childish melody that unaccountably exists in every human culture", like gynnan tonnyx or something.

But I guess them not doing "what I would have expected" hardly counts as a criticism. ...Except that that's BSG S4 in a nutshell :v:

etalian
Mar 20, 2006

Mu Zeta posted:

I think they were facing a bunch of backlash from the wrestling and ghost hunting so decided to air science fiction shows again. So we got Killjoys, Dark Matter, Expanse, 12 Monkeys and Magicians pretty much all at the same time.

Yeah plus the success of other networks for breakout TV shows like HBO really made them jealous when the whole SyFy network was a seen as the home of cheesy show like Ancient aliens and various bad supernatural themed reality TV Shows.

Groetgaffel
Oct 30, 2011

Groetgaffel smacked the living shit out of himself doing 297 points of damage.

Mister Speaker posted:

The Expanse easily took BSG's crown for best sci-fi show ever, in my books.
Best ever isn't either of those. It's Babylon 5. :colbert:

Mister Speaker
May 8, 2007

WE WILL CONTROL
ALL THAT YOU SEE
AND HEAR
Meh. Next thing I know you'll be trying to tell me Rush isn't the greatest band of all time, like those idiots in the Toronto thread.

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe

Cojawfee posted:

I don't know if you're referring to the arrangement of the entire song or the 9 note riff as being the same as the original song but not in the same order or whatever, but I'm specifically talking about the riff that kara plays. I just remember at the time that everyone associated the riff that McCreary wrote as being All Along the Watchtower when it isn't even in the actual song. So whenever something cylony was happening, the end of the scene would have the drums and guitar background bit playing and then that riff would come in loud as the scene ended. That's what I'm referring to.

Yep, agree completely. The major similarity is that the backup harmonies in the new Cylon song are a rearrangement of those in AATW. The melodic riffs are different aside from both utilizing the same minor pentatonic scale. It sounds like McC composed the new Cylon stuff to work as a countermelody but it's surprising how often serendipity strikes in this kind of stuff. I'd be curious to hear about how it all played out if anyone knows of an interview or something where he talks about it.

Azhais
Feb 5, 2007
Switchblade Switcharoo
Maybe they were humming the original version, not the Hendrix cover, ever think of that

Zorak of Michigan
Jun 10, 2006

Mister Speaker posted:

Meh. Next thing I know you'll be trying to tell me Rush isn't the greatest band of all time, like those idiots in the Toronto thread.

It's good when that happens, because you find out early who the cretins are.

Dreylad
Jun 19, 2001
The new BSG definitely didn't stick the landing but 33 is one of the strongest first episodes of any sci-fi show ever.

Tighclops
Jan 23, 2008

Unable to deal with it


Grimey Drawer

Mister Speaker posted:

Meh. Next thing I know you'll be trying to tell me Rush isn't the greatest band of all time, like those idiots in the Toronto thread.


April Wine was superior

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Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Hot take, but BSGs problem isn't that it leaned too hard into weird religious stuff, it's that it didn't lean hard enough into it. S1 ends with conclusive proof of the historical accuracy of the Colonial religion, Head-Baltar proves the existence of the supernatural to the audience, Pythia and the cycle of time explains the constant Cylon-Human wars across multiple different planets etc etc. Except the show never properly addresses how loving terrifying it would be to have your religion get proved to be correct especially as it happens 6 months after humanity almost gets wiped out. It just sort of skirts around the edge, using God as vague hand-wavey foreshadowing and mystery-teasing, then drops all mention of God for a while, and then suddenly brings it back and expects the audience to care.

And it's entirely RDMs fault. He openly admitted at the start of the show that he didn't have any idea what Head-Six's deal was. Which seems like something of an oversight given how important her deal turned out to be.

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