Shut up, Spock! – how Battlestar Galactica beat Trek babble

IanBruntlett

Emperor Mongoose
The Register has an interesting look at the science behind Battlestar Galactica.

See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/03/the_science_of_battlestar_galactica/

It might give you some inspiration.
 
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.
 
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.

I'll try and read that again. They used scaly concrete to level the pebbles... no you lost me again. I never was that good with technobabble.

New Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, rocked!

Simon Hibbs
 
I read it. They just wanted less sci-fi and more low tech. It takes less talented writers and is cheaper to go that route. Just round up some cowboy Western writers and, High-O Silver, Away! :lol:
 
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.


..and here I thought it was just because it was dull.
 
DFW said:
I read it. They just wanted less sci-fi and more low tech. It takes less talented writers and is cheaper to go that route. Just round up some cowboy Western writers and, High-O Silver, Away! :lol:
You can't take the sky from me.
 
DFW said:
I read it. They just wanted less sci-fi and more low tech. It takes less talented writers and is cheaper to go that route. Just round up some cowboy Western writers and, High-O Silver, Away! :lol:

So, writing a more realistic and scientifically accurate show instead of "we'll fix it with a burst of handwavium from the technobabble emitter" requires less talent? Riiiiight. How much talent did it take the Voyager writers to come up with such gems as a crack in the event horizon, or transporters that can apparently clone people or display panels that explode at the drop of the hat?

BSG may not be to your taste, but less talented? I think not.

G.
 
GJD said:
So, writing a more realistic and scientifically accurate show instead of "we'll fix it with a burst of handwavium from the technobabble emitter" requires less talent? Riiiiight..

LOL!

Writing about commonly known 5th grade info (the science level on the show was no higher) rather than creating plausible AND entertaining sci-fi is something run of the mill, mediocre writers can do.
 
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.

Did you even read the article ? Honestly, it looks like they got one of the hard sf uber alles wet blanket geeks from any SF forum and let him run rampant with reasons why fun stuff wouldn't be real.

....now, note that I'm not saying that's a bad thing, either. :wink:
 
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.

So they made science fiction that was accessible for people who aren't SF nerds. Is that such a bad thing? While I'm no fan of much of season 3 or all of season 4, I thought the rest of it was very good.

It had some very good characters, and others not so good ("cough" Lee and Kara), excellent visuals, and some very thought-provoking storylines. I far prefer its humanist bent to the handwavium pseudo-tech BS of the week so common to Star Trek. Technology was almost never front-and-centre in BSG, rather it was the characters who solved the problems.
 
Colin said:
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.

So they made science fiction that was accessible for people who aren't SF nerds. Is that such a bad thing? While I'm no fan of much of season 3 or all of season 4, I thought the rest of it was very good.

It had some very good characters, and others not so good ("cough" Lee and Kara), excellent visuals, and some very thought-provoking storylines. I far prefer its humanist bent to the handwavium pseudo-tech BS of the week so common to Star Trek. Technology was almost never front-and-centre in BSG, rather it was the characters who solved the problems.

I'd agree in post Original Star Trek, where the TekTek reached its Nadir. Older ST may have had some handwavium, and more than a few crap stories and laugable rubber suits, but at least they were stories; in which sense, I felt BSG was closer to TOS than TNG & etc.

I'm still not convinced that an arc-free anthology show is a bad idea -but the inexplicable need for continuity right now is unlikely to let it happen.
 
I really enjoyed BSG re-imagined, even if the ending fell flat for me. It was a little soapy, but still one of my favorite SF series.

I'd like more SF as well done. Too bad BSG was picked up by someone else, I'd would have bought a MGT version.
 
DFW said:
GJD said:
So, writing a more realistic and scientifically accurate show instead of "we'll fix it with a burst of handwavium from the technobabble emitter" requires less talent? Riiiiight..

LOL!

Writing about commonly known 5th grade info (the science level on the show was no higher) rather than creating plausible AND entertaining sci-fi is something run of the mill, mediocre writers can do.

Sorry, but I disagree entierly. I think the science on the show, as the acrticle indicates, was a good deal more sophisticated and plausible than 5th grade. How many 10 or 11 year old kids (assuminng that's what 5th grade is, since I'm not one of those colonial types) could discuss netonian physics in the flight models, for instance?

No, it is FAR easier to fall back on the tired tropes and useless technobabble like Star Trek did. The chap even admits in the article that it went too far in Voyager and started to spoil the stories!

G.
 
simonh said:
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.

I'll try and read that again. They used scaly concrete to level the pebbles... no you lost me again. I never was that good with technobabble.

New Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, rocked!

Simon Hibbs

Agreed - rather than worry about technobabble and such they decided to concentrate on story, characters and character evolution and making a proper drama - and IMO succeded brilliantly. Caprica on the other hand - not so good...........
 
I far prefer its humanist bent to the handwavium pseudo-tech BS of the week so common to Star Trek. Technology was almost never front-and-centre in BSG, rather it was the characters who solved the problems.

I'd agree. The best science fiction tries to incorporate accurate science but doesn't feel the need to sacrifice being emotive and well-written fiction at the same time.

It's exactly the same reason I like the early Foundation series by Isaac Asimov - yes, there's 'future science', but it's the backdrop to the story and it's only really examined in minute detail where it really becomes critical to the plot (not very often).

The comment that "because the science is so believable it gives the cylons even more impact" is also true. It's a common principle in horror movies too - when something is familiar, or understandable, it makes the unknown that much more terrifying/shocking/impressive.

The same thing works in traveller, B5 and similar SF - when a universe uses 'recognisable' technology (armour plate, reaction engines, missiles, etc) then the ones who don't stand out even more. It's part of what made the Shadows instantly seem both utterly alien and scarily advanced - no armour, just energy 'splashing' over their skin, no jump engines, no engines at all.....

We're used to shields and engines without a visible exhaust from Star Trek, yet because the Shadows break the rules of their own universe, it startles you for a moment.


and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.
That was probably more due to trying to capture the setting properly. Warship crews and dockside technicians have spoken in shorthand, acronyms and other incomprehensible subspecies of English since long before the birth of the txt msg.
 
I think they got the balance just right. I'm watching the series on DVD at the moment, and although it's pretty dark and claustrophobic - a few more visits to planets would break the monotony - I'm really enjoying it.

There's clearly a few places where they erred on the side of drama rather than realism. Why do Vipers need to 'come in hot' ? They are in space - they can adjust their relative velocity to zero if need be…

Also, the fleet seems to spend most of it's time running it's engines. Why ? They aren't actually travelling anywhere in-system, just waiting for the next jump, so why burn off fuel ?

Anyway, minor niggles in a great series.
 
GJD said:
How many 10 or 11 year old kids (assuminng that's what 5th grade is, since I'm not one of those colonial types) could discuss netonian physics in the flight models, for instance?

You consider the 3 laws of motion as "high science"? LOL Sorry, those are BASIC concepts one certainly understands by the age of 11-12. Unless, education has crashed and burned in the last 30 or so years.
 
captainjack23 said:
alex_greene said:
Ah. That explains why BSG was so eyeball-achingly unwatchable to me. They scaled the concepts to the level that plebs could understand it, and wrote the technobabble in lolcat macros for the <2000 - word vocabulary Nuspeek generation.

Did you even read the article? Honestly, it looks like they got one of the hard sf uber alles wet blanket geeks from any SF forum and let him run rampant with reasons why fun stuff wouldn't be real.

....now, note that I'm not saying that's a bad thing, either. :wink:
Oh, they could easily have gone online and lifted data wholesale from one of the many "let's have realism / no FTL / no grav plating / no breaking Newton's Three Laws / no breaking Einstein's relativity / no sound in space / dogfights in a vacuum aren't like dogfights in atmo / NO SOUND IN SPACE!" grognard sites.

But that would have made BSG unwatchable and caused it to get cancelled.

Oh. It was unwatchable and it did get cancelled, and they didn't need any help from anyone to make it so.
 
I do understand why a lot of people didn't like New BSG. The supernatural elements and the occasional excess of soapiness were unfortunate.

Personally, I was willing to let those slide. The characters and their development were outstanding. The moral dilemmas and the way the character's flaws lead them to deal with them were so far above the level you see on ST or most serious TV dramas that I just had to keep coming back for more.

Was it always pitch perfect? Far from it. I have several friends that gave up on it. That's fine, their loss. I'm basically a Humanist, but I had no problem letting the supernatural stuff slide. Just because I don't agree with the writers doesn't mean I have to be an a-h about it, live and let live IMHO. I had another friend who tuned out because they used Humvees. Realy? Cheap looking wobbly plastic future-pods would have been an improvement?

Every now and then, they blew my socks off. Razor and the whole Pegasus arc was heavy stuff. Scar was another one of my favourites. At first I thought the whole New Caprica thing was a big mistake, but how wrong I was. They payoffs on that one just kept on coming.

As for the technobabble debate. I once saw an interview with Tanith Lee. She wrote some great Dr Who and Blake's Seven scripts and said that she only started considering SF after seeing Star Trek and realising you didn;'t need to know anything at all about real science, you could just make up whatever you needed for your story and cook up some pseudo-science to cover it. Now that's fine, and I'm sure it enabled a lot of very creative people to enter the medium and use it in ways they woulnd't have otherwise. However, the point is techno-babble isn't the hard route, it's the easy route.

BSG really is hard SF because they established a very minimal ammount of magic tech (jump drive, anti-grav, that's about it) and stuck with just that. How anyone with any interest in hard SF can possibly say that's a cop-out is really beyond me. There was never any moment I can remember where they used any kind of pseudo-science hand-wave to resolve a plot element.

Going to have to stop there as the real world is calling. Just want to say, I saw stuff I could appreciate. But I fully understand why some people never got into it far enough into it to find the good stuff.

Simon Hibbs
 
Gee4orce said:
I think they got the balance just right. I'm watching the series on DVD at the moment, and although it's pretty dark and claustrophobic - a few more visits to planets would break the monotony - I'm really enjoying it.

Frankly, (and this is a taste thing, so YMMV), the words "dark", "claustrophobic", and "monotony" are exactly the words I'd use to describe the series and a major reason I didnt like it.

Sure, I understand thats probably how the characters are supposed to feel, I just dont want to join them in the monotony for an hour each week. See also: Stargate: Universe.

But I have to say that I never had any problem whatsoever with the technology elements. The supernatural elements, when described to me since I left the show long before that stage, seemed a bit silly (had I liked the show and stuck with it this would have killed it for me anyway) and far worse than technobabble for my money.
 
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