Frak this Podcast! #12 - The Hand of God

Very interesting point about how well Deep Space Nine was able to make new world building e.g. the origin of Odo from the Founders, work so well with established world building & character where they previous did not have clear answers. It definitely is possible to provide new information about a fictional world, or even a particular fictional character that works well with that was already established & deepens our understanding of the world and/or characters. To give another great Star Trek example of this, I want to quote Keith R. A. Decandido's wonderful review of TNG's "Dark Page" "It’s an impressive feat to take a character in serial fiction that everyone is familiar with and come up with a surprise revelation that retroactively illuminates their character and explains so much about them. Chris Claremont pulled this off in Uncanny X-Men #161, a comic book published in 1982, some twenty years after the X-Men debuted, revealing that Professor X and Magneto were once close friends before they were separated by philosophical differences. This has become so ingrained in the X-Men mythos—heck, they built an entire movie around it—that people forget that it wasn’t part of the original conception of the characters. TNG pulled off a similar trick here. (The franchise would do it again on DS9 with the revelation in “Dr. Bashir, I Presume?” that the title character was genetically enhanced.) So much of Lwaxana’s character is pulled into focus here, particularly her almost fanatical overprotectiveness of her daughter. And Barrett is brilliant, never losing Lwaxana’s trademark lunacy, but utterly convincing you of the tremendous pain she’s hiding. Her anguish, her sadness, her fear, they’re all heartbreakingly real. And the moment when mother and daughter wake up in sickbay and are holding hands is just a warm, wonderful bit." The above said, I am NOT particularly a fan of what BSG does in season 3 & 4 with retroactive world building & character backstory. You're actually wrong about the idea of it being consistent--it's really not. At least not all of the time. They are not consistent in the world building e.g. the fact that the Cylons had a homeworld of their own is retconned away to become the giant colon ship, the show is inconsistent with the dates of when the exodus of the 13 tribes happened & whether or not the 13 tribes left together or whether the 13th tribe left at an earlier date. This would have been fine if the in-universe characters had recognized the change and said something like "We've learned that our ancestors left Kobol earlier than we initially thought and we used to think that 13 tribes all left at the same time, but we know better now" and this could even have worked in universe given that we know that they don't have perfect records of their past, but they just change the world building lore & kinda hope we don't notice that they're doing it. The pinnacle of lore changing though is what they do with the final five Cylons. Making Tigh, Ellen, Anders, & Tyrol Cylons not only makes the world of BSG much, much smaller but it retroactively changes the narrative & the possible thematic exploration from that of humans dealing with catastrophe to that of one sentient AI manipulating other AIs and humans in the most minute ways possible via plot contrivance after plot contrivance. Rewatching seasons 1 & 2 after the reveal of the 5 final five fundamentally changes the genre nature of the show. I suspect Vera will utterly hate how BSG develops. And speaking of Vera. For all that I ultimately like how the Helo/Tumor relationship develops, I can agree with her that it's not structured ideally in season 1. They took their time getting their footing with Helo & Tumor & while the idea of Cylons being obsessed with biological reproduction and their idea that maybe love is required for it to work is something Ronald D Moore has admitted was not something they originally had as an idea, I actually feel it works well ultimately. So too, the idea that humans are polytheist & the Cylons monotheist is not something that the show creators had when the wrote the miniseries but was something that had decided on when the were writing season 1 and retroactively it does work. For all that I think BSG ultimately fails in big way as a complete serialized show--unlike Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 or the Expanse--I cannot deny how well crafted and enjoyable I find the miniseries and most of seasons 1 & 2 & how they do effectively do retroactive character & world building... at least until they don't do it effectively. This probably too long for you to read on the next podcast & it contains spoilers, but if you wanna convey something of my thoughts on air to Vera that aren't spoilers, feel free. I am deeply curious if you will end up, upon finishing your rewatching, downgrading your opinion of seasons 3 & 4.

Conrad