I watched the 2003 miniseries which I thought was decent enough. It certainly piqued my interest, so I went into the show itself with an open mind and kind of excited that I had a nice, long sci-fi series to get into.. but.. I'm now solidly underway with season 1, a lot of it falls totally flat. I just finished episode 5 and while it's not the worst show I've ever watched, it certainly isn't great either and I have to say I don't understand why this show is praised. It feels really dated.

There are some truly awful scenes where it feels like I'm being preached to, like "remember to go in for your breast cancer screening!" and "prisoners aren't slaves!" and the scene from this episode where the president appears on the Galactica just to tell the commander "ackshually 45000 people are more important than just 1!" as though it's some deep philosophy, and then he changes his mind off of that, but like, his character really isn't dumb enough to not have already considered the morality of the situation. He should have perfectly well realized that they'd expended half of their fuel reserve searching for the downed pilot, and that's more than they can afford. He is not stupid, but the writing certainly can be.

There are also a ton of cliches and cheap story beats like fake-outs, cliff-hangers, characters that could solve all their problems if they simply communicated, dundundun dunnn moments with fabricated tension, not to mention the amount of halfway meaningless filler. It's a shame because the lore and overarching plot is interesting, but when every episode has so much pointless conflict in them that always gets resolved 10 minutes later, it starts to really drag. The episodes are self-contained and I get that, but I mean most of it is to the point that it's borderline a soap opera.

And it's not even filmed or directed well or anything else to make up for it. The desaturated colours are depressing as fuck, there is no cinematography to speak of, the special effects are (understandably) very cheap, everything is truly ugly which while I understand that's the point, it just detracts even more. The lighting is also inconsistent between some scenes, and the fight choreography is honestly laughable. You also have shoddy camera work and obnoxious, never ending close-ups of every actor's face - I have seen all of their pores by now, thank you very much. And omg why are they so obsessed with wide shots of the ships and then snap zooming not once, but twice, every time!!

Also, variations of the word "frak" is just so grating but I'm nitpicking at this point lol

I apologize to any fans of the show because this turned into a bit of a rant, but goddamn.. I'm kind of grasping at straws to find things I actually like about BSG. Maybe it's because it's a network production? Perhaps I'm too young to watch and truly appreciate it/its era of American network TV? Like the only of these kinds of shows we had in my country that I watched when they were current was things like Friends, Monk, Desperate Housewives etc., so I missed out on all of these supposedly great shows back then (I was only 11 years old when BSG started airing). I really love some of the other things from the 00's that I've watched much later on though, but those were cable shows like The Wire, so it's not just because it's from the 00's.

Anyway, all of the above reasons (and more) are why I usually stay far away from network shows with 20-episode seasons, but I thought BSG was going to be different because it's my impression that it has a really good reputation? Like I said in the beginning, the miniseries was decent so I'm not sure what changed between it and season 1? I think I'm gonna demote it to a background show unless the next few episodes pick up a bit. Should I keep going? Does it get better after season 1?

Alright, a 2nd spoiler disclaimer for those who accidentally clicked it anyway.

When it became apparent to me that the alien race had sent over two 10-dimensional supercomputers folded into the size of a proton trying to halt human scientific progression in an attempt to maintain its technological advancement while making the travel towards Earth, something doesn't sit right with me.

Why oh why, if you were a 10-dimensional supercomputer being nearly all-knowing yet having only the capacity to be at one point in time and space to deny or halt scientific progression, you wouldn't just write code to A) make copies of yourself to then B) hack all the systems and possible computers in the world to halt anything and everything and basically just plunge humanity back into the dark ages if not outright spreading a deadly virus that would eliminate us from the face of the earth if we are such a big threat to them.

And over the concept of lying and then not being able to coexist with that even though you have the technological head start? And why only communicate with a human to figure out about us if you have two quantum entangled super computers capable of overseeing everything and anything all the time anywhere to gather pure 'scientific' data about us as a species.

I think I first came across "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula K LeGuin a few years ago. I read something else in conversation with it, but somehow had missed the original. Hugo Award winning and Locus award nominated, I thought folks might be interested in discussing it and its descendants.

LeGuin's original in pdf format

Omelas is a utopia in the middle of a festival. And as the narrator explains the city to you, they understand that you may not believe it is even possible.

Othe authors have written stories in conversation with this,

NK Jemisin's The Ones Who Stay And Fight is directly engaging with it.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (the 3rd Scholomance book) engages with this idea too.

So I had read all of the above works and been mulling over the topic of Omelas, and then found this story today

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole

In which people, uh, start killing the kid in the Omelas hole. Sorry, not a lot of room not to spoil that given the title. I'll let you read the story for where that goes.

Risk of spoilers for the above works from here:
I think there is a lot about our society here. LeGuin herself said the story, "has a long and happy career of being used by teachers to upset students and make them argue fiercely about morality." Because what is the right answer? Novik, via El in the Scholomance series says to burn it down. Jemisin says there is a better way. I don't believe LeGuin is arguing that the ones who walk away are "right" in that they leave having benefited from Omelas and the child still suffers.

But I thought folks who hadn't read one or more of these might enjoy them, and I find they make me think and often won't stop letting me think.

ETA: ST:SNW did an entire episode using Omelas as an inspiration. I haven't seen it so I can't speak to it but wanted to add it here for reference.

After reading The Body Snatchers and The Puppet Masters, I am almost finishing Blood Music and I am not yet done with that theme.

These are all stories about human possession or replacement with copies by other entities, extraterrestrial or otherwise. As I finish Blood Music, I find myself craving for more. It doesn't matter if it is about invasion or something else that takes over our bodies and minds. Stories that question and entice our attachment to our identities, as well as our desire to conform and dissolve into the collective.

I wish for stories that are not about just one person undergoing a transformation, but rather a group or a community (family, town, country, the world).

Ideally, they should be some kind of science fiction (even if science's role is not immediately obvious and overt), but I am open to suggestions if you believe something in other genres deserves my attention.

References:

• The Body Snatchers
• The Puppet Masters
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• Blood Music
• Body Snatchers - TV Tropes

Paradise is an exciting action sci fi with a really interesting premise. What if eternal youth, was available to anyone with money... yet it involved literally sucking the life force out of others less fortunate than yourself?



The movie focuses on Max, who after his wife is unexpectedly forced to give up 40 years of her life, he desperately searches for a way to get her youth back.

The movie is filled with the usual plot twists, cool sci fi graphics, true love and the like.



There are two truly interesting elements to this movie. The first is the cynical idea that if the rich could live forever, then they would be much more motivated to think about and solve for the long term health of the planet.

In this movie, only the rich can afford to extend their lives for as long as they choose, so we also see how that would severely impact wealth inequality. 



The second interesting element of this movie is a series of questions very similar to the trolley problem. If you could extend your life, at the cost of someone else's youth, would you, assuming they were somehow reimbursed financially?

What if your youth had been taken from you; or what if youth had been taken from someone you loved. Would you take it back? Would you take it back as ethically as possible, or ethics be damned?

Could you give up your youth to save a loved one from an extremely unkind yet uncertain end, or is it easier to risk your life to save theirs than it is to give up eternal youth once you have it?



At one point in the movie, we learn it is easier to take someones life passively through the forces of economics and medical science, than it is to actively kill someone with a gun to their head. Which is the essence of the trolley problem. But it is also the essence of wealth inequality.

We could easily flip the switch, to improve the quality of life and length of life for many people, at the cost of one rich persons riches, but those with power passively choose to not do so. The movie doesn't philosophize anywhere near as much as I am doing right now, instead focusing on fast action, true love and cool sci fi. But I think perhaps this movie is a very subtle warning to the rich. At a certain point of wealth inequality, some portion of the population will want their fair share of the wealth, ethics be damed.

https://www.netflix.com/title/81288179