Fascinating. But Rom Moore's hair still scares the tech out of me.

and that is why we ended up with angels for an ending... id got with the tech the tech over angels for an ending

I meant to type "Ron" obviously, not the '70s toy/Marvel comics character (whose head did look like a toaster, fittingly).

Uh yeah, I think we already knew that.

Still a great show :)

Green is not a good color for you Ron ; )

Yeah, we kind of guessed they were making things up. I wonder if the consultants made an effort to keep things internally consistent, or if they just went with the flow?

I also wonder how much tech it takes to get Ron Moore's hair to do that?

So I guess steady camera work is one of these evil "techs" he fights?

I lol'd @asfs. Indeed, it seems steady camera are an evil "tech" that must be de-tech'd.

to put simply Ron Moore has a never ending supply of hair products like 'Murray's pomade'

Makes him sound less like a science fiction writer, and more of a paid Hollywood hack.

Kinda makes me wonder just how much the invisible people (IE:The ones we hardly ever hear about) were responsible for the greatness of nuBSG. Cause I'm honestly getting the impression that this guy couldn't imagine his way out of a paper bag.

Oh well, another case of something being great in spite of it's creator. Kinda like the old BSG and Glenn Larson. Haha.

What a douche. Why would he say something like that? Thanks for ending BSG after 4 seasons and avoiding that cliche - and then telling us how lame Star Trek was in comparison to your oh so cool BSG. Lame dude, some of us grew up on that and found it entertaining. TV doesn't always have to provoke deep conversations about the nature of the human condition. what a tool.

Yes, please, more on this Ron pomade tech!

Attack Moore all you want, folks. It really doesn't change the fact that he's right.

Technobabble has always been a conceit in Trek. Certain death is always avoidable by doing XYZ to the deflector dish, reversing the polarity of the whatever, or narrowing the annular confinement beam. If all they had to do was say "tech" and have somebody else fill in the gaps, it says a lot.

Attacking RDM won't change it. Hair remarks won't change it. Whining about the end of BSG won't change it. Complaining about the shaky camera bit without reading his justification for "naturalistic science fiction" won't change it.

What it comes down to is this: if the writers simply had to write "tech" and let random lackeys fill in the blank, does the technobabble have meaning? Yes or no question.

With "hair wings" like that, he is certainly living up to the retro-technology he used in Battlestar.

"does the technobabble have meaning? Yes or no question." YES It was far more entertaining and enjoyable.

Tech me, I thought that was Bjorn from Abba for a second there!

i will take the old tech over tech lines instead of the angel krap he had to put into BSG unfortunately.at least trek used inventive futuristic scientific means to an end.

"does the technobabble have meaning? Yes or no question."
No. Definitely not by the time they were writing Voyager, where the scripts were rife with 'tech the tech' to get out of many situations.

It must be nanites that keep his hair in a permanent 70's Farrah Fawcett wave.

If you watch the whole video, you'll see that he is really teasing the show, not mocking it. He was involved in many Trek shows for a long time, which, in my opinion, gives him the right to point out some of the areas of the show that could have been done better. He clearly loved the show, and dedicated years to it.

And say what you will about the hair, he wears it well.

In a way he is right. Even though I did enjoy all the modern series', I think this rant is just bitterness aimed at Paramount. This very site has covered the ill will he had leaving VOYAGER, and how he wanted it to be the way he made the new BSG. Either that, or his roots have anchored themselves to his brain.

So this would be the same Ron Moore who took the best show on television and turned it into an unrecognizable mess in just two seasons?

Yeah, here's an idea: let's NOT listen to him.

Moore is hardly the first Star Trek writer to come clean about the "just write tech and the consultants will fill it in" method of scriptwriting they used on the last four Trek series. They were just not very well-written shows.

Of course, as others have pointed out, BSG's ending had angels, which kind of deflated the four years of mostly good writing that preceded it.

Much as I love Next Gen, it is indeed rather like he says. DS9, on the other hand...

This is hardly a new story, on the con circuit for years, and the shorthand had largely gone by mid-Voyager, mostly never used on DS9. What it was originally was to keep the mere writers from mucking up canon with their own invention... and let the show tech have life. In reaction to TOS's randomness. But there's gems and clunkers alike, regardless of TECH shorthand.

The technobabble in TNG was incidental anyway, it was always only a plot device..what mattered was what the characters were experiencing, ths STORY...

What an airhead.

He can hardly disparage any other Science Fiction after the "Touched by An Angel" Series finale debacle that retroactively destroyed Battlestar Galactica.

Ron Moore: Tech = bad
Ron Moore: Angels = good

what technobabble is to Trek, love triangles were to Moore's Battlestar, personally I'll take the technobabble

I love how everyone takes his words completely out of context. He obviously likes Star Trek, if you know anything about the person.

The fact is, technobabble really is meaningless, and the story and characters are what matters. The tech is just an excuse to explore some facet of humanity through escapist means.

Some of you act like it's some massive slap in the face to Star Trek as a whole, but that's not the point he was making at all.

@HeroPower

I couldn't agree with you more. He's upset for the same reason I am about Star Trek. It just got to much about the technology. Just look at all the fanboys that argue about Nacells and crap.

time for nerds to gather up on the internet and bash moore for no good reason other then to sound like a typical angry nerd, the man responsible for awesome trek and the greatest scifi show ever conceived.... yeah ur opinion matters. frakin nerd

and so Moore makes a soap opera and calls it sci-fi, and goes cheap on the props by going to garage sales and gun shows, and the greatest shows in sci-fi are somehow wrong because he and the other studio pukes cant be bothered to learn the technology their show is supposed to revolve around. Soap opera on a spaceship isn't sci-fi without the science.

What a complete twat. Battlestar's ending was a complete cop out and far too farfetched to be believable. Why would you choose to discard all of your tech, including medical tech to start fresh. Star Trek is the far superior show/movie by a long shot.
I won't be watching Caprica or anything to do with Battlestar after such a weak ending.
God and angels...pah! At least give me something even halfway believable!

Sorry but there has never been anything awesome about Trek, sans William Shatner. It's been boring, dull sterile science fiction from the moment it was first put on the air back in the 60s.

I'll give it the credit it deserves in that it inspired a lot of our current day technologies like Cell phones and MP3s, but as far as entertaining, thought provoking scifi goes, Trek is at the bottom of the list, and damn near the television;/movie equivalent of Ambian. .

I'd also hardly consider BSG new or old the best scifi series ever conceived. Perhaps the best scifi show re-conceived this decade. But that is still saying a lot to it's credit cause there have been a lot of reboots lately.

Damn good show, though I have a feeling if this guy was solely responsible for it then it would be about as entertaining as watching the Viet Nam channel on satellite or Heroes on NBC. =-p

"does the technobabble have meaning? Yes or no question." - Yes, the consultants did have an overall continuity with current theoretical science. There are many books based on science concepts that grew out of TNG and the later series' technobable and how the science of the time effected the tech on Trek.

As for Ron Moore- I am not sure what to think. There are times he sounds very sinical about the writing on Trek, and there seem to be times he remembers it fondly. I think basicly, he feel that doing something similar to Trek on BSG would not be "growing" as a writer.

Liked BSG, hatted the ending... Always have had deep disgust for this simple-minded idea that primitive=spiritual. The Quakers were very smart users (and innovators) of the newest tech of their day, and they were pretty big on the spiritual....

Ron, I'd Like To Quote You From That Police Show Cameo You Made A While Back:

...YOU SUCK!

Tech that, loser.

3 words for Ron Moore

GOD DID IT

Send the one-trick-pony back to the barn....

I love internet nerd trolls. The BSG ending was fine. Well done actually and beautiful. Sure the ending "God Did it" moment wasn't that great but the series still ended very strong. Way better then any trek series did.

Knock Ron all you want but BSG won a Peabody award. What did Trek ever win.

If Ron Moore is in the headline or subject, be sure to cue the onslaught of hate and vilification. Frakking-A people. Get over it already. Ron Moore et al wrote a story. You didn't like the end of it. TOO BAD. Some of us loved the story for the whole journey. I found it quite beautiful. And for the umpteenth time, "Angels" are an allegorical reference. Symbolic. Something "other" or more evolved. Beings of Light, if you will. If he had spoon fed it to you with technobabble sprinkles you'd probably still be drooling at his feet. That's the point. He didn't want to spoon feed the audience. The story lets you read between the lines and interpret the ending in different ways. In life, most endings do the same.
You're free to dislike it. Why not leave it at that? Or, I dunno, write something better and more to your taste yourself.

'They're Angels', 'God did it', and 'They all die horrible, meaningless deaths'.

Ron Moore is dead to me.

If you look at the best ST episodes, not the most action-packed and explosion-riddled, the ones that were character driven, thought provoking, and made you say, "wow", at the end, the thing they have in common is that they could all have been every bit as good with no tech whatsoever. is a hack's trick, deus ex machina, for covering up bad writing.

@Knock Ron all you want but BSG won a Peabody award. What did Trek ever win.

Millions and millions of fans through several generations, 4 spinoffs, nearly a dozen movies, and the respect of countless "tech people" who were inspired by Trek to created the high tech society we live in today.

What has nuBSG inspired? It was an awesome show no doubt, but it will never reach the same plateau as Trek, and I hate Trek, but love BSG.

You're right Moore, using "tech" speak is far inferior to having someone die, then reappear with a brand new fighter never explaining how or why. Then have the new fighter tell them how to find earth and then having the character disappear with no explanation. Talk about drinking your own kool-aid. Hey Moore, if I wanted to entertain myself with fictional stories about magical spirits and unexplained miraculous resurrections I would read the bible. Your show was science fiction, next time don't forget the science!

Battlestar Galactica dealt with religion and faith to begin with back in the '70's!! Or has every fan forgotten about the episode where Apollo faced the Devil himself?!

Ron Moore, putting the BS in BSG!

Every episode of BSG from when Starbuck's fighter exploded was horrible! Not explaining how or why certain key events happen in your show doesn't make you creative, it makes you incapable of filling your own plot-holes.

BTW, if Caprica is even half as boring as that 2 hour pilot, it won't make it past it's first season.

@SethSJ - I'm trying to forget...

okay so he is saying the tech in Trek is like the mcguffin in Hitchcock?

I buy that method in nuBSG, and it worked until the crxpulent ending which WOULD have been far better had RDM believed in science as part of the plot.

clearly we now know what went wrong with the finale.

It sounds to me like he is taking a jab at all the "hard" scifi fans who say that God in BSG was a deux ex machina and that using him/her was lazy writing since he is saying that technology was just that in Star Trek.

Plot? Ron Moore didn't like the idea of a plot

It's the Characters Stupid....

Remember...

Ron needs tio write something original for a change and see if he can do it without a controversy hook, and paid marketers from Skiffy bolstering him.

BTW Ask Joe Haldeman's Lawyers, Virtuality wasn't an Original Ron Moore creation.

So to date, RDM is 0 for 0 in the original creation department

He's a Professional Re-Writer

Moore's got a lot of nerve considering he replaced tech babble with religious babble. Give me Star Trek [tech] [tech] [tech] any day of the week over a show that abandons science altogether in favour of angels. Angels! For the love of [tech]!

Also, he seems to think he's enlightening us all, when in fact Gene Roddenberry openly talked about this decades ago.

Insulting Star Trek doesn't change the fact that BSG was pretty ridiculous & served up one of the worst finales in TV history.

"It's a rhythm and it's a structure, and the words are meaningless. It's not about anything except just sort of going through this dance of how they tech their way out of it."

I guess this explains the crappy accounting explanation used by Quark in the DS9 episode "House of Quark". I can imagine Moore saying: "Oh, just use the mad-libs tech template and stick some accounting jargon in it. No one will notice."

Since it was a main plot point, it should have merited the effort to pick up an "Accounting for Dummies" book.

I mean, the movie "Office Space" did their homework.

If you are whining about BSG something brought you along for the ride or you don't really know what you are whining aboutnbecause you heard about it second hand. Trek has always been fruit juice light in a wine world. I stopped watching TNG after 3 episodes because it was so bad. Even years later when wehad a trek marathon (3 days straight of TNG) I walked away mostly unimpressed. BSG had me rivited till the end, and even the angel ending didn't completely turn me off. BSG wasn't meant to be pop, it seems more a 4 year commentary of religion and polotics, Trek was always a vanilla everybody helps everybody fantasy.

i just want to know why so many holodeck stories.lazy writing maybe?

“And say what you will about the hair, he wears it well.”
So does an Orangutan, but I don’t want to look like one

Star Trek's tech has been inspiring. Besides the TV shows and movies, the Trek universe has also been a mining source for science fiction novels, none of which left the reader wondering what happened in the end.

And yet Star Trek was full of far more interesting show that explored real science fiction ideas and concepts, whereas BaGa did nothing new or interesting.

aww people are afraid of TV shows that support the faith of 1 billion people across the earth. God's so easy to except that people make it hard to believe in. I'd rather believe in the foolishness of God than the wisdom of men.

Oh, ye short of memory... the white lights (or angels, or more highly evolved beings) were part of the original BSG mythology. Heck, they were part of the new BSG from the pilot. Bad you if you're such a poor viewer not to have seen it.

Is he really complaining about technology based cop-outs in SciFi? I'd say that at least beats religious "god's plan" cop-outs.

Shame Ron Moore went all hypocrite on his "Mission Statement"

Mission Statement
Battlestar Galactica: Naturalistic Science Fiction
or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera

Our goal is nothing less than the reinvention of the science fiction television series. We take as a given the idea that the traditional space opera, with its stock characters, techno-double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian histrionics, and empty heroics has run its course and a new approach is required. That approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealistic genre.

Call it " Naturalistic Science Fiction."

This idea, the presentation of a fantastical situation in naturalistic terms, will permeate every aspect of our series:

Visual

The first thing that will leap out at viewers is the dynamic use of the documentary or cinéma verité style. Through the extensive use of hand-held cameras, practical lighting, and functional set design, the battlestar Galactica will feel on every level like a real place.

This shift in tone and look cannot be overemphasized. It is our intention to deliver a show that does not look like any other science fiction series ever produced. A casual viewer should for a moment feel like he or she has accidentally surfed onto a "60 Minutes" documentary piece about life aboard an aircraft carrier until someone starts talking about Cylons and battlestars.

That is not to say we're shooting on videotape under fluorescent lights, but we will be striving for a verisimilitude that is sorely lacking in virtually every other science fiction series ever attempted. We're looking for filmic truth, not manufactured " pretty pictures" or the "way cool" factor.

Perhaps nowhere will this be more surprising than in our visual effects shots. Our ships will be treated like real ships that someone had to go out and film with a real camera. That means no 3-D "hero" shots panning and zooming wildly with the touch of a mousepad. The questions we will ask before every VFX shot are things like: "How did we get this shot? Where is the camera? Who's holding it? Is the cameraman in another spacecraft? Is the camera mounted on the wing?" This philosophy will generate images that will present an audience jaded and bored with the same old "Wow -- it's a CGI shot!" with a different texture and a different cinematic language that will force them to re-evaluate their notions of science fiction.

Another way to challenge the audience visually will be our extensive use of the multi-split screen format. By combining multiple angles during dogfights, for example, we will be able to present an entirely new take on what has become a tired and familiar sequence that has not changed materially since George Lucas established it in the mid 1970s.

Finally, our visual style will also capitalize on the possibilities inherent in the series concept itself to deliver unusual imagery not typically seen in this genre. That is, the inclusion of a variety of civilian ships each of which will have unique properties and visual references that can be in stark contrast to the military life aboard Galactica. For example, we have a vessel in our rag-tag fleet which was designed to be a space-going marketplace or "City Walk" environment. The juxtaposition of this high-gloss, sexy atmosphere against the gritty reality of a story for survival will give us more textures and levels to play than in typical genre fare.

Editorial

Our style will avoid the now clichéd MTV fast-cutting while at the same time foregoing Star Trek's somewhat ponderous and lugubrious "master, two-shot, close-up, close-up, two-shot, back to master" pattern. If there is a model here, it would be vaguely Hitchcockian -- that is, a sense of building suspense and dramatic tension through the use of extending takes and long masters which pull the audience into the reality of the action rather than the distract through the use of ostentatious cutting patterns.

Story

We will eschew the usual stories about parallel universes, time-travel, mind-control, evil twins, God-like powers and all the other clichés of the genre. Our show is first and foremost a drama. It is about people. Real people that the audience can identify with and become engaged in. It is not a show about hardware or bizarre alien cultures. It is a show about us. It is an allegory for our own society, our own people and it should be immediately recognizable to any member of the audience.

Science

Our spaceships don't make noise because there is no noise in space. Sound will be provided from sources inside the ships -- the whine of an engine audible to the pilot for instance. Our fighters are not airplanes and they will not be shackled by the conventions of WWII dogfights. The speed of light is a law and there will be no moving violations.

And finally,

Character

This is perhaps, the biggest departure from the science fiction norm. We do not have "the cocky guy" "the fast-talker" "the brain" "the wacky alien sidekick" or any of the other usual characters who populate a space series. Our characters are living, breathing people with all the emotional complexity and contradictions present in quality dramas like "The West Wing" or "The Sopranos." In this way, we hope to challenge our audience in ways that other genre pieces do not. We want the audience to connect with the characters of Galactica as people. Our characters are not super-heroes. They are not an elite. They are everyday people caught up in a enormous cataclysm and trying to survive it as best they can.

They are you and me.

Sorry, but Moore is wrong. What they did was consult the experts on the theories surrounding the technical stuff. The writers were very serious. They didn't play around. They wanted to get as close to the actual truth as possible. Moore may have the "tech" game with Galactica, but TNG took it very seriously.

I thought this was an interview with fabio.

BSG did what classic science fiction does--take a premise (in this case, an invention gone bad) and explore the consequences. They were being chased by cold-blooded (or no-blooded) machines, with hardly time to breath. No inspecting every anomaly along the way.

Of course it's going to be like an opera. Scifi explores the effect of circumstances on people, otherwise you're just reading an encyclopedia entry. It helps you imagine yourself in their place.

(Personally, I'm fine with the ending. If the religious are too much for you, then think of it this way: if you went back in time a thousand years and showed them a flashlight, an ultrasound, a camera, etc...)

And I like Star Trek too. Sad for the person who only watched 3 episodes, because I know how painful the first couple seasons were. Sorry if you didn't see "The Best of Both Worlds".

P.S. Star Trek TNG won the Peabody for "The Big Goodbye".

Oops, sorry, I meant to say, "If the religious implications..."

I don't understand why people were surprised by BSG's ending. It was alluded to the whole way through the miniseries and all four seasons. And I don't think that they were "angels" per se; just a higher power that had been guiding events. Maybe they were spiritual, maybe they were advanced beings. I think that having a figurative address and telephone number for them would have detracted from the story. Leaving it mysterious was better (other that the fact that you get endless forums full of people moaning about angels). Would you seriously have preferred a technobabble explanation of the whole thing? I certainly wouldn't have. And please please please sort your captcha out. I now have to copy every post I write before submitting because it always fails

ron moore is meaningless!

let me get this straight: Moore was against using "tech" as a deus ex machina....and that's why I loved seasons 1 and 2 of BSG so much

but ultimately, his answer was to replace the *figurative* deus ex machina of "tech"....with a LITERAL deus ex machina, of god and angels?!?!

I no longer worshipped BSG season 3 onwards, its not the best scifi show ever anymore, just a good one.

how they have fallen

why the hell is he writing sci-fi if he doesnt like the science/technology aspect, I guess thats why BSG was just a soap-drama in space rather than actual sci-fi.

Go read some Olaf Stapledon or Arthur C Clarke, Ron. Back when sci-fi writers werent affraid to actually use technobabble and science because the audience wasnt so anti-it. Shame these days sci-fi fans are just soap-drama fans that want their soap in space.

bsg is the best show i have ever seen to be honest. Even season 4 was ok. this was a dumb move for him to say however, if he cares about what all you nerds who Absoulety hate on everything think.

Ah but Trek was believable. This is why many things in BSG did not make sense. Having a phone on ship was one thing but why would a highly advanced race like the Cylons or even the humans use Nukes? This makes no sense in that the tech does not match. You have jump drives and resurrection ships but you still use nukes?

I likes BSG but in an attempt to make the show more of a drama many things that make great scifi were lost. We all know that explosions in space do not make real noise this is reality but I think I am safe in saying that scifi fans don’t want reality the whole premise of scifi is to think beyond reality. How boring would Star trek have been if there was no sound during the battle with the Borg?

Careful Ron, or your going to get teched in the back by a 50 year old virgin wearing starfleet pajamas.

I love all the haters that show up everytime RM is even mentioned. Its like you all have secret crushes on him.

You all are very amusing.

Why does one show have to be superior to the other? They certainly were not competing shows.

Some people like one show over the other, some people like them both, still others didn't like either show.

The response to Ron Moore should be simply: So What??? It wasn't your show, you didn't create it. What is the purpose of criticizing it?

People are often too worried about what other people like or don't like. Take care of what you like and not worry about other people.

I personally liked both shows. I watched them both. I liked them for different reasons and personally don't care if others liked them or not.

Does anyone know where I can get a whig like that?

How is pulling the final five out of his ass any different? I mean, he came up with the final five story line without knowing who the final five (literally the 'tech' in the show) were. And then he plugged them in later. It's the same thing. Except that DS9 was a better show than BSG.

K'Rik, it's always amusing to see you pop up every time your Cult Leader Moore is mentioned.

Do you still genuflect every time his name is mentioned?

This is a shame to see people putting down BSG, badly. It was a AMAZING show with good characters, good acting, epic battles in space. I cannot believe people like something like DS9 better. Yes season 4 was not quite up to par with the others and bored me a couple episodes, but the finale was OK and i am so glad i found out about this series a short time back. It truly is one of, if not the best shows i have seen on tv, fine sit and bash shows like this, and they will just make more reality crap or bad sci fi.

"Knock Ron all you want but BSG won a Peabody award. What did Trek ever win."

um...a peabody award. tng won for "the big goodbye" oh so many moons ago.

for the record, i enjoyed bsg's ending and can appreciate what ron was trying to say.

At times, I scratch my head as to what the script would look like for the final episode if it were written by some fans. It would be totally exposition driven (as opposed to focusing on “gasp” the characters) and would debunk the whole “God thing” in favor of more rational explanations.
---------------------------------------------

The fleet has arrived on Earth

Lee to Starbuck: So, Kara, are you ghost or an angel?
Starbuck: I am neither. You see, when my ship blew up I [tech] and [tech] so I am really Kara.
Lee: Wow, that’s totally believable since it doesn’t involve God. I love you, Kara.
Starbuck: And I love you, Lee.
Lee and Kara kiss [RDM note: Have to put this in for the shippers]

Adama: Roslyn, don’t die, I can’t live without you!
Roslyn: Actually, I’m fine now because of the [tech] that Doc Cottle gave me.
Adama: That’s great and totally believable!
Adama and Roslyn kiss [RDM note: Have to put this in for the shippers]

Head Six and Head Baltar: We are glad that it all worked out in the end.
Saul: Are you angels?
Head Six: Of course not, we are projections from the future using [tech] to bridge the gap of time in order to tell you to not give up your technology.
Saul: That’s a relief. Where did you get this time travel technology?
Head Baltar: Oh, this funny little guy in a time ship that looked like a phone booth showed up and used a sonic screwdriver to [tech] and [tech].
Saul: Wow, that’s totally believable since it doesn’t involve God.

Lee: Hey, is that Boomer, Kat and Gaeta over there? How are you all alive?
Boomer: We found a way to use The Force to come back from the other side of The Force so that we could be here to tell you to not give up your technology.
Lee: Wow, that’s totally believable since it doesn’t involve God. That’s great, guys!
Boomer, Kat and Gaeta all kiss [RDM note: Have to put this in for the shippers]

---------------------------------------------

Yeah, that would have been much better than an ending that was character driven, focused on touching scenes with real emotions as opposed to pure exposition and left some ambiguity behind the greater mysteries of the universe.

It's not that BSG didn't have some great episodes, but it peaked midway through S2 with the Pegasus episode. It lost it's footing in the second half of the season and never really recovered. I kept watching because they'd produce an Exodus Pt. II every once in a while (one of the best hours on TV), but once those epic space battles were replaced by mysticism and thinly veiled political analogies, I just stopped caring.

The once great characters were, one by one, turned into vile people that I could no longer root for. Until finally, I only cared about Tigh, but then they made him into a freaking cylon, undermining the brilliance of Exodus Pt. II, ruining that character for me too.

And then there's the notion that a species on the brink of extinction, would choose to put so much faith in their annihilators. Not once, did the cylons prove trustworthy, they kept on betraying the humans all along. Especially the eights. I don't understand how anyone could have been rooting for crazy, suicidal Adama during that coup. He was betraying the remnants of the human race and I won't even get into Roslin's insanity. These were unstable people making stupid decisions, yet no one had the right to question them?

I actually liked the finale, despite its chessiness, but that's only because my expectations had been so demolished at that point. People rip on B5 all the time because it was only 80% genius and 20% crap. But that was good enough for me to call it a great show. BSG was only 20% genius and 80% crap, and that makes it a failed show, IMO. It got my hopes up and then let them down. I'm glad for the good, but it's not even in the top five for sci-fi.

Listening to moore whine about this is like listening to kanye west criticize the award show manners of others.

Yeah, who's Moore to comment on the writing for Star Trek? What does he know. Wait - he was actually a writer for Star Trek himself?

Head Baltar to Head Six: You know that Q doesn't like to be called God.

I frakkin despise any do^chebag who attacks BSG. It takes a real fool to attack the greatest tv show ever made. But I know their motive.

As I have said and will continue to say, atheists/secular humanists are the bane of our society. These are depraved individuals who spend their time bashing everyone who promotes anything that goes against their illogical and unscientific humanistic paradigm. These people have had enough time in the sun and now a new era approaches and their backwoods view of life and nature have no place in modernity. We tolerate their teachings and societal influence at our peril. They caused both world wars and the cold war. Millions were murdered as a result of their actions and teachings. Millions are still being murdered today with their culture that promotes infanticide and moral relativism. Truth doesn’t matter to them – only growing their flock. Well their day is coming to an end as BSG’s success has proven.

And in case anyone is ignorant, angels and spirituality played a central role in the plot of the original BSG series.

The very familiarity of the technology in BSG was what really turned me off of that show. That and all the soap opera-y crap like making some of the humans turn out to be 'stealth cylons!?'

~~A phone should look like phone.~~

Yes on earth it should. But a phone that was developed by an advanced society on a planet millions of light-years away should NOT look like one of our phones. Look at the diversity of design that exists right here on this planet.

The characters of BSG should NOT have been wearing pinstriped suits with ties, or driving around in Hummers(In the flashbacks) or eating freeze dried Ramen noodles that are exactly like the ones we can go and buy at the grocery store.

I tried to watch the new BSG and I simply could not get into it. It was too convoluted and too melodramatic. The original BEG was an action adventure show. Ron Moore took it and made it into a soap opera. Not a space opera which would have been better but a SOAP opera. With everyone winning and fighting and complaining.

The problem was I did not like any of the characters and if you can't like the main characters in a show then there really is no hope for it is there?

If Ron Moore wanted to make an SF show that dealt with realistically familiar technology and situations, then he should have created an original show set here on Earth.

I have always assumed that most SF fans are intelligent enough to know that there is no sound in space but are willing to put up with that little glitch in order to have a more exciting battle scene. It would be pretty boring with no sound wouldn't it. As far as his "Where is the camera" remarks. It's a shot of a spaceship flying through space for crying out loud! we don't need to have a camera angle that would have been shot by a real camera mounted on the wing or set in some location where a real camera would be! Sometimes you just want to see the ship fly past.

Watching online geek fights is so much fun.

Some fine examples of that awesome Trek writing:

- Let's go have a holodeck adventure and, oh crap, [tech] went wrong!
- Blow the whole world to crap and... RESET!
- "Shades of Grey" from TNG
- Space hippies
- "These Are the Voyages..." from ENT
- We're too scared to kill off anyone but nameless crewmen, and thereby become predictable.
- TRANSPORTER ACCIDENT!
- Secret alien invasion/conspiracy!
- I fell in love with a ghost.
- Character *yawn* development episodes... *zzzz*

If the worst Ron Moore did was say "God did it," then he's forgiven many times over in my book.

And that why I'll just re-watch my Firefly and (more specifically) my Farscape DVDs.

@The characters of BSG should NOT have been wearing pinstriped suits with ties, or driving around in Hummers(In the flashbacks) or eating freeze dried Ramen noodles that are exactly like the ones we can go and buy at the grocery store.

Normally I would agree with you, and I agreed with you through most of the series, until the end when we found out why they wear the same types of clothes and drive the same types of cars etc. I had a lot less problem with it once it was explained as part of the story.

Did Ronald Moore have "Babylon 5" tags in his scripts for when he wanted to rip themes from B5?

He tries to act like he's so original when he ripped off B5 not once (DS9) but twice (new BSG)

Hypocrite

This isn't exactly news. I knew the writers on Trek used "tech" as a placeholder when TNG was still in production. I was in high school at the time.

Don't blame the magician for revealing the simplicity of his tricks. There's a sucker born every minute.

yo douche ima let you douche but doucheman was the greatest douche of all time ya

There we have it folks, the worlds ills are caused by Aethists.

As Per McTex, a Loyal member of the Fundimentalist Church of Ron Moore, and his Holy Show.

By McTex at 3:31 PM ON 10/13/09

I frakkin despise any do^chebag who attacks BSG. It takes a real fool to attack the greatest tv show ever made. But I know their motive.

As I have said and will continue to say, atheists/secular humanists are the bane of our society. These are depraved individuals who spend their time bashing everyone who promotes anything that goes against their illogical and unscientific humanistic paradigm. These people have had enough time in the sun and now a new era approaches and their backwoods view of life and nature have no place in modernity. We tolerate their teachings and societal influence at our peril. They caused both world wars and the cold war. Millions were murdered as a result of their actions and teachings. Millions are still being murdered today with their culture that promotes infanticide and moral relativism. Truth doesn’t matter to them – only growing their flock. Well their day is coming to an end as BSG’s success has proven.

And in case anyone is ignorant, angels and spirituality played a central role in the plot of the original BSG series.

I still can't believe they let this arrogant jack-*** make movies... He kills everything he touches when he re-imagines them. The whole reason he re-imagines them is because he simply CAN'T IMAGINE ANYTHING new on his own...

Errr... hardly revelatory. Anyone familiar with star trek would and should have figured that out decades ago. Furthermore, there have been magazine and internet articles about this subject floating around for an equaly long time. No biggy.

[Moore said the retro-technology he used in Battlestar "was really a reaction against Star Trek." He added, "I just decided from the outset that I wanted a phone to look like a phone."]

He wanted a phone to look like a phone. Thousands of years ago. On another planet light-years from Earth.

Well...He was on really solid logical and "tech" ground there.
No doubt about it.

The world's ills are caused by humans. Humanity is a fallen race, imperfect in all ways and totally willing to plunge into depravity. But it is primarily atheism/secular humanism which encourages humans to embrace our depraved nature and to spread our weakness to commit horrible evils, while simultaneously instructing its faithful to abandon guilt and moral absolutes.

That is why do^chebags like you and all the other BSG bashers do your bashing. You can't tolerate people like RDM who successfully revolutionized modern storytelling using a distinctly anti-humanistic thematic plotline.

The genius of BSG is that it both fully understands human nature and it depicted ideas based upon centuries-old universal truths. In this sense, BSG is very unSciFi. It is more similar to the works of CS Lewis than an Asimov or Lucas. So it is no surprise to find so many degenerates rushing to pile on your gutter attacks.

By callahan at 11:01 AM ON 10/14/09

There we have it folks, the worlds ills are caused by Aethists.

As Per McTex, a Loyal member of the Fundimentalist Church of Ron Moore, and his Holy Show.

Yeah, those glowing spines while they are being humped, or LeeBob and Stardoe going at it, even though both were married to others was a very christian addition to the Ron Christ's devinely inspired opus....

I never realized Religious Nuts were so into Moral Ambiguity...

kryche
~~Normally I would agree with you, and I agreed with you through most of the series, until the end when we found out why they wear the same types of clothes and drive the same types of cars etc. I had a lot less problem with it once it was explained as part of the story.~~

So you had to wait for the end to find out. I couldn't make it that far. These may seem like nitpicky details but details are important. Because if they aren't done right they can be very distracting. Everytime I saw some one wearing a suit and tie suddenly the illusion that these people were from another planet millions of lightyears away and in no way connected to us was broken. That and I really could not generate any simpathy for any of the characters. They were all really unlikable.

It's worth pointing out that there's a difference between a science fiction concept that's at the core of a story ("City on the Edge of Forever") and just some technobabble that's needed to get the crew out of a jam.

It's also worth pointing out that the [insert technobabble here] that he's describing is every bit the same as a note in ANY genre that read [have staff writers resolve this plot point that I'm too dumb to figure out myself].

I didn't watch BSG until I read something like a five page article about how bad the ending was, which got me interested. I then watched the entire series in about three weeks. The religious aspect was ALWAYS there. What did everone want for an ending?

Wow - you are one prime example of a major do^chebag. And not too bright.

Who said anything about Christianity? Not that you have an inkling of an idea about what it means to be a Christian. Adultery is a fact of life because humans are imperfect sinners. Examples of adultery are found all throughout the Bible - you know that book that Jews and Christians consider holy? Jesus himself is descended from King David, who maybe the most famous adulterer in history.

Obviously I am not a religious nut. I am not even religious. Obviously you are a wacko humanist who attacks anyone or anything that holds spiritual beliefs. As I said, atheist nuts hate BSG for ideological reasons as it offends their dogmatic worldview. You alone have validated my argument. Thanks.

By Callahan at 1:18 PM ON 10/14/09

Yeah, those glowing spines while they are being humped, or LeeBob and Stardoe going at it, even though both were married to others was a very christian addition to the Ron Christ's devinely inspired opus....

I never realized Religious Nuts were so into Moral Ambiguity...

I'll go with a science "tech" ending any f-in day before - She was an angel the whole time. GTF outta here you tool bag!!! ANGEL was the lamed writers cop out I have ever seen, or even heard of!!

BTW, I do know about the "angels" in the original series. I was just 2 eps and was not the *whole* story ending for cripes sake, not to mention one of the main characters!!! lame cop out ending. I was hoping for a ful circle kind of thing where we would find out how SB came back, was the Viper an *angel* to????? GTF outta here LOL......

@TheDocToRx

Wow you are an idiot. Did you actually watch the show? Starbuck was not an angel. She never was an angel. She was always a human being. Yes, there were angels in the show, like the Angel 6 or the Angel Baltar. But Starbuck was not one of them. She was a resurrected human kind of like Lazarus. What's this - Lazarus? You mean we have precedent in our own literature? lmao

BSG was not dumb-downed for stupid people, which probably explains why you had such a difficult time following the plotline. And the ending was neither deus ex machina nor a coup out.

Thanks for being another do^chebag who validates my argument with your intellectually-weak anti-theist POV. Maybe now you should bash Shakespeare for bringing back Hamlet's dead father.

Relax, dudes. Attacking other people, contrary to popular belief, does not reinforce an argument. And while some of you may not like what I am about to say, let me save you the trouble of writing a rant: I am Catholic, widely read, a huge fan of serious sci fi, and reasonably familiar with Mormon symbolism, plus I watched BSG up until about midway through the third season (which was so badly done that it completely lost my interest). I know what I am talking about on pretty much every front here, and there is no ground to accuse me of pushing a atheist agenda. That said:

The problem with talking about Battlestar Galactica in terms of science fiction is that it is not science fiction. Just like Firefly and Star Wars weren't. Laser guns and spaceships is not all there is to sci-fi. All three shows had sci-fi trappings, but really were very different stories. Firefly was essentially a western with spaceships. Star Wars was a fantasy story with spaceships. And BSG was a soap opera (with a lot of rather obvious political/religious allegories) with spaceships.

This is not, in and of itself, a bash against any of those series. All of those genres are worthy in their own right. They just aren't sci-fi. Speaking from a literary standpoint, the core theme of science fiction is the transformations societies and individuals undergo as they explore new facts, knowledge, and ideas - most commonly, sciencey stuff, but philosophical, and cultural ideas generally count too. Religion is rarer, but does get worked in there sometimes.

The original Star Trek series did this now and again. They couldn't do a long-standing storyline due to their episodic format, but single episodes touched on this all the time. From TNG on, sadly, Star Trek sort of lost this idea in favor of a focus on character drama, which appeals to a wider audience. Which is where the problems began, because the changes and the new ideas became relatively unimportant. They started "teching the tech". And when you just "tech the tech", you don't grok the consequences of the tech, and its the consequences that make good sci fi. That's what Ron Moore is getting at, and whether you like the man's work or not, he is right about this.

That said, his work, and BSG in particular, is not really as solidly sci fi as he claims. Yes, BSG has got the transformations and the culture meeting new ideas and the yada yada. But what BSG lacks is a willingness to explore the consequences of those ideas. BSG is first and foremost a character drama ("dumbed down" or not, this is largely because that's what Ron Moore and the studio execs hear Joe Public wants to watch), and secondly a religio-political allegory. It's primary focus is A) the relationships between the characters, and B) promoting a particular point of view. It doesn't have the "let's explore where this trend leads" attitude that defines real science fiction. The nature of allegory requires that the writers have their conclusions first, and write the story to support it. Good sci-fi is written the other way around: You start with a "What if...?" situation, and explore the results.

But honestly, I was never that impressed with this guy's work in the first place. Allegory and soap opera always make me feel that someone is insulting my intellence, and the sack-of-bricks Mormon philosophy in BSG was more egregious than most.

I think what most people are objecting to is that Moore is stating something that is pretty much obvious. Everyone knows that Star Trek was full of technobabble and most simply accepted it as a part of that series format. So he mearly comes across as another Trek basher and I think there are enough of those around here already.

ron moore explains exactly why I liked DS9 more than all the other star trek shows

So what Ron Moore's saying is that Trek was MacGyver with better tech consultants?

No, Ronnie is just whining, oops, I mean saying what he's been saying for years...

That being:

"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa They wouldn't let me do what I wanted!!! Whaaaaaaaaaaa I'm a Genius, After all, They wouldn't let me turn Star Trek into my Angsty, dysfunctional daydream, where everyone is having sex, and feeling despair because of it whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q111/scape13/my_hair_is_a_bird-257x300-1.jpg