On BSG....
Feb. 17th, 2006 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Not too bad. Few things....
1. How many times has that poor whatever-rank-he-is given that little lecture to a pilot? Poor baby.
2. So we just skipped a month? Since when do we randomly skip ahead months?
3. I could kill Roslin right now. Wanna increase the population? Go and gather the people on the planets. Though, really, I wouldn't worry about increasing the population until you can make sure everyone is getting adaquate nutrition and such.
4. So... how big, exactly, were the colonies when they were first set up? It seems like (and I could be wrong) they weren't big enough to have vastly divergent religions (or even brand-new ones!) or languages in 3000 years... but they *were* big enough for each world to have a wide variety of races, instead of what I'd expect, where people'd intermarry enough so that you wouldn't see that so much as a difference from one world to another. And this is even counting the apparent decline they went through immediately after colonizing.... I'm confused.
1. How many times has that poor whatever-rank-he-is given that little lecture to a pilot? Poor baby.
2. So we just skipped a month? Since when do we randomly skip ahead months?
3. I could kill Roslin right now. Wanna increase the population? Go and gather the people on the planets. Though, really, I wouldn't worry about increasing the population until you can make sure everyone is getting adaquate nutrition and such.
4. So... how big, exactly, were the colonies when they were first set up? It seems like (and I could be wrong) they weren't big enough to have vastly divergent religions (or even brand-new ones!) or languages in 3000 years... but they *were* big enough for each world to have a wide variety of races, instead of what I'd expect, where people'd intermarry enough so that you wouldn't see that so much as a difference from one world to another. And this is even counting the apparent decline they went through immediately after colonizing.... I'm confused.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 09:31 am (UTC)2. That was odd. If I wasn't such a geek and completely glued to my tv during Scifi Friday, I would have missed Lee's two second explanation.
3. Why they hell did she take Gaius at his word without any further investigation? That's what really surprised me. Yes, let's make lots of babies to consume our neverending supplies of food, water, air, heat, clothing, fuel, and living space. At least the folks left on Caprica could have provided more of the above, and more importantly, adult humans capable of learning how to maintain the ships.
4.I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Are you asking why everyone on the show wasn't the same race, or why each race wasn't representative of specific planet? The first one is obvious. As for the second, I'd just guess that using one language across the galaxy would be a practical necessity. I'm sure there's a word for it that my brain can't find at the moment. A global, err...universal religion doesn't seem that far of a stretch for me either. It just depends on who was in power at the time of colonization. With interplanetary travel, I think racial diversity as we know it could still exist as the people who inhabit a planet interact with those just passing through. I daresay it might be a bit easier to change the way a given population looks than the way they think. Hence, the crazy Geminese.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 09:43 am (UTC)2. I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Are you asking why everyone on the show wasn't the same race, or why each race wasn't representative of specific planet?
Well, I wouldn't expect it to be one planet, one race - but I do think it was unfair for us to think that all Geminons were black and now they're not all black. It got me thinking. Unless the original colonial groups were VERY large, OR there's been a lot of immigration between the twelve colonies, surely we should be able to see at least *minor* things - this planet tends towards red hair, pale skin. That planet has a weird genetic illness the other colonies don't. Whatever.
As for the second, I'd just guess that using one language across the galaxy would be a practical necessity. I'm sure there's a word for it that my brain can't find at the moment.
Auxlangs don't work, though. And even when you *do* have an international language, people speak it differently - there's big and glaring and obvious dialects. Look at English! It's as close to an international auxilary language as we've got right now, and the people in India don't speak it like the people in Canada, who don't speak it like the people in Scotland! And in India and some of Scotland and parts of Canada, it's a *second* language. I refuse to believe that on twelve different planets, there's really only one language, after 3,000 years or so of linguistic evolution and interplanetary war that only ended because of the Cylons rebelling.
A global, err...universal religion doesn't seem that far of a stretch for me either. It just depends on who was in power at the time of colonization.
3,000 years, isn't it? How many religions have appeared on Earth in that time? And we're talking *twelve* planets. Where's our alien Wiccans? Ba'hai? Mormons (well, okay, point taken on the mormons....) I *really* refuse to believe that the only choices are mainstream religion, literal mainstream religion, atheist, and cylon.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 07:41 am (UTC)2. I've always assumed there was tons of migration. I mean, they've got spaceships and stuff. However, my only experience with BSG is with the current show. All I remember from the previous one is that they tended towards tight pants. *shrug* It just doesn't strike me as weird. I didn't even make the Geminese being black connection until Friday.
3. Resistence is futile.
These were the people who created sentient machines in the first place. I've always assumed that before the war, the colonies were controlled by a system of governemnt akin to Big Brother. Not totally, but just corperate enough for unified language and religion not to seem farfetched. Their religion does revolve around more than one god, so it would be interesting to see more devotion to each world's patron deity. Yes.
Another reason is simply because this is an American show. Perhaps you're expecting too much? It'd would be quite rare and very deliberate of them to go through the effort of choosing different dialects or accents. They would also have had to be willing to run the risk of being campy and sounding like Klingons and becoming more of a niche show. Stargate doesn't even come up with the universal translator excuse when we KNOW that they're running into hundreds of cultures that don't speak English. Firefly is the only show that I think did that well...
Perhaps they wanted to distance themselves enough from us so that people won't get caught up picking out specific religions and drawing direct parallels? Or perhaps they wanted to clean slate to keep us from being distracted from the personal drama that we lurve? I do not know. I've just been too happy with BSG existing to question much of anything.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 12:44 am (UTC)Well, Ron Moore's stated that after colonization, all colonies went through a crash of some sorts, hasn't he? And then had to build up again. Plus, we know that the Cylons were built to fight their presumably incessant wars against each other. Seems likely to me that there wasn't much immigration.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 09:31 am (UTC)2. That was odd. If I wasn't such a geek and completely glued to my tv during Scifi Friday, I would have missed Lee's two second explanation.
3. Why they hell did she take Gaius at his word without any further investigation? That's what really surprised me. Yes, let's make lots of babies to consume our neverending supplies of food, water, air, heat, clothing, fuel, and living space. At least the folks left on Caprica could have provided more of the above, and more importantly, adult humans capable of learning how to maintain the ships.
4.I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Are you asking why everyone on the show wasn't the same race, or why each race wasn't representative of specific planet? The first one is obvious. As for the second, I'd just guess that using one language across the galaxy would be a practical necessity. I'm sure there's a word for it that my brain can't find at the moment. A global, err...universal religion doesn't seem that far of a stretch for me either. It just depends on who was in power at the time of colonization. With interplanetary travel, I think racial diversity as we know it could still exist as the people who inhabit a planet interact with those just passing through. I daresay it might be a bit easier to change the way a given population looks than the way they think. Hence, the crazy Geminese.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-20 09:43 am (UTC)2. I'm not quite sure I understand your question. Are you asking why everyone on the show wasn't the same race, or why each race wasn't representative of specific planet?
Well, I wouldn't expect it to be one planet, one race - but I do think it was unfair for us to think that all Geminons were black and now they're not all black. It got me thinking. Unless the original colonial groups were VERY large, OR there's been a lot of immigration between the twelve colonies, surely we should be able to see at least *minor* things - this planet tends towards red hair, pale skin. That planet has a weird genetic illness the other colonies don't. Whatever.
As for the second, I'd just guess that using one language across the galaxy would be a practical necessity. I'm sure there's a word for it that my brain can't find at the moment.
Auxlangs don't work, though. And even when you *do* have an international language, people speak it differently - there's big and glaring and obvious dialects. Look at English! It's as close to an international auxilary language as we've got right now, and the people in India don't speak it like the people in Canada, who don't speak it like the people in Scotland! And in India and some of Scotland and parts of Canada, it's a *second* language. I refuse to believe that on twelve different planets, there's really only one language, after 3,000 years or so of linguistic evolution and interplanetary war that only ended because of the Cylons rebelling.
A global, err...universal religion doesn't seem that far of a stretch for me either. It just depends on who was in power at the time of colonization.
3,000 years, isn't it? How many religions have appeared on Earth in that time? And we're talking *twelve* planets. Where's our alien Wiccans? Ba'hai? Mormons (well, okay, point taken on the mormons....) I *really* refuse to believe that the only choices are mainstream religion, literal mainstream religion, atheist, and cylon.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-21 07:41 am (UTC)2. I've always assumed there was tons of migration. I mean, they've got spaceships and stuff. However, my only experience with BSG is with the current show. All I remember from the previous one is that they tended towards tight pants. *shrug* It just doesn't strike me as weird. I didn't even make the Geminese being black connection until Friday.
3. Resistence is futile.
These were the people who created sentient machines in the first place. I've always assumed that before the war, the colonies were controlled by a system of governemnt akin to Big Brother. Not totally, but just corperate enough for unified language and religion not to seem farfetched. Their religion does revolve around more than one god, so it would be interesting to see more devotion to each world's patron deity. Yes.
Another reason is simply because this is an American show. Perhaps you're expecting too much? It'd would be quite rare and very deliberate of them to go through the effort of choosing different dialects or accents. They would also have had to be willing to run the risk of being campy and sounding like Klingons and becoming more of a niche show. Stargate doesn't even come up with the universal translator excuse when we KNOW that they're running into hundreds of cultures that don't speak English. Firefly is the only show that I think did that well...
Perhaps they wanted to distance themselves enough from us so that people won't get caught up picking out specific religions and drawing direct parallels? Or perhaps they wanted to clean slate to keep us from being distracted from the personal drama that we lurve? I do not know. I've just been too happy with BSG existing to question much of anything.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-22 12:44 am (UTC)Well, Ron Moore's stated that after colonization, all colonies went through a crash of some sorts, hasn't he? And then had to build up again. Plus, we know that the Cylons were built to fight their presumably incessant wars against each other. Seems likely to me that there wasn't much immigration.