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Where have all the good times gone?

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    Where have all the good times gone?

    http://io9.com/5208107/where-have-al...yline=true&s=x

    The more I think about it, the more one thing about last month's Battlestar Galactica finale sticks out at me: It had a happy ending. And that still seems odd, unexpected and almost unfair. Why?

    Perhaps I'm imagining it, but it seems, sometimes, as if downbeat sci-fi has somehow become accepted as more... highbrow may seem the wrong word - "realistic" definitely is - but intellectually acceptable, if that makes sense; people dismiss more positive sci-fi as fluff and popcorn viewing best done with your brain turned off, while happily gathering around for the latest SF that eagerly demonstrates just how ****ed we all are, whether by our own doing or by outside forces. Early sci-fi efforts included their share of cautionary tales of things that could, and will, go wrong, of course, but there was still a sense of wonder and positivity about this whole "technology!" thing that is almost entirely missing from today's science fiction (Even the aforementioned BSG finale had an essentially "everything's great, and we've been given another chance - but watch out for those robots!" coda attached). But how did that happen? When did we become so resigned to our dystopias and our demise that it became what we embraced?
    - Continued at above link,

    Just an article that I found that I thought people may appreciate.


    "Five Rounds Rapid"

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    #2
    Thanks for posting that. It's certainly food for thought and will hope to be back to comment on the specifics of this.
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      #3
      Interesting article, thanks for pointing it out.

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        #4
        No worries.

        It raises an interesting point imo, so what do we think?

        I'm not sure it's totally correct, but there's certainly weight to the argument. X-Files and SG1 both actually had fairly optimistic endings imo, as did SGA... but there not as optimistic as they might once have been...


        "Five Rounds Rapid"

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          #5
          I wouldn't call Battlestar's ending happy. I'd call it bittersweet.

          Look at Adama, he is absolutely ruined by the time that he reaches Earth. When he says good bye to the Galactica, and then Laura dies. I think his little speech on the top of that hill was far more sobering than it was happy.

          What of Lee? He knows he'll never see his father again, Kara disappears, Dee is dead.

          Baltar is forced to become a farmer once again, the very life that he had run from. He had Caprica though, so I guess it evened out for him.

          The finale was happy in the sense that they found Earth, but I don't think that it was an overly happy ending. I mean, even if the ending was happy (which I don't think it was) they had 4 years of constant misery which would more than equal out a happy ending. 12 planets being obliterated, their dwindling number of trained soldiers, the coup led by Adama, the arrival of Cain and the near destruction of the fleet when the two have a stand off, the tensions between Galactica and Pegasus, the ethics behind destroying the resurrection ship, the Cylon virus and the ethics behind wiping out an entire race with it, the suicide bombings on New Caprica, Baltar's innocence and the violence surrounding his trial, the gradual demise of the Galactica, Roslin's cancer, the mutiny and subsequent execution of Gaeta and Zarek, Adama's binging and heavy use of medication.

          Gah there is too much to list lol. People always griped about BSG being too negative, so I'd hardly say that the ending is a cop-out from that. I don't think that anyone expected Earth to be inhabited by pre-verbal tribes of humans, they had all hoped for a civilization much like the one that they left to welcome them when they got there. And they did find that civilization, on the real Earth. And the exact same fate had met that planet as the one that the 12 colonies met.

          So this planet that they called Earth was basically a second chance. Don't build a city, don't pester the local inhabitants, just go off and live the rest of your life in peace.

          A positive message, sure. But not a happy one.

          I agree though, the feel-good nature of a lot of sci-fi can be so annoying. Stargate would start to grate on my nerves when you could watch any episode and see them in any situation and you knew that they would be fine by the end of the day.

          Shows like BSG didn't have that luxury. I mean sure, you could be fairly certain that Kara, Lee, Laura, and Bill wouldn't die, and yet Kara dies in season 3, comes back in season 4, then disappears again in the finale. Laura dies in the finale. The Galactica itself dies.
          Last edited by Finger13; 18 April 2009, 10:17 AM.

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