The Goblins Fan Forum

RocketScientist wrote:

Glemp wrote: it has religion [...] and it's grounded in hard science

Mutually exclusive. Also, personal opinion:

Definitely going to pass on the original series. No wonder I never watched it as a kid.

It's realistic that humanity won't have given up on religion even thousands of years in the- um. Anyway, the show having accurate physics in space isn't the same as accurately predicting that humanity would give up- didn't have- never had- suddenly made up after arriv- help me out here? Point is, it's about accuracy not being scientific in every single aspect.

I get what you're saying, Glemp, and I agree: the show itself had a good grounding in hard science, and the fictional human society had their own fictional religion, which really helped flesh out the BSG universe.

I'm perfectly ok with them protraying a fictional religion, and the characters adhering to it (I do like Star Wars, after all), but I don't like the "higher power" being an intelligence which "has a plan".

Basically, once your deus is ex machina, it renders every character's actions and motivations largely pointless-- in my opinion, at least.

Star Wars religion is quantifiable. It actually does things, so it doesn't bore me. Although on DS9, the Bajoran gods manifest, and they still bore me, so maybe that's not the entire issue. No worries if people like other things than I do. I don't like Babylon 5, either. And people get mad about that. lol. Again, politics. Boring to me. OTOH, when I say boring, I mean compared to other sci-fi/fantasy/horror shows. Compared to Sideshow Spectacle "reality" TV, or to lawyer shows, even the most boring (to me) sci-fi is pure genius.

I'm Force Agnostic: the Jedi claim their religion is quantifiable, but the Sith use the same all-powerful Force to work evil and take power. The Jedi religion is just their way of explaining something unexplainable.

It's like the first Foundation novel: a small population knows the actual scientific theory behind their advanced technology, and convinces everyone else that there's a machine spirit which must be appeased in order for their ships and nuclear plants to function. To everyone outside the small population of true scientists, their religion has a quantifiable effect, but it's still not true.

So after a long break, I'm watching Buffy again. And something leapt out at me as soon as I saw it - there's this scene in F03 After Life, when Spike's punched the wall in his crypt after seeing Buffy back, and Buffy meets him having hurt her hand breaking out of her coffin. And something struck me right away - I've seen this before...

Yeah, I actually liked Spike's arc through the shows.

I read the thread, gotta say I think some of the problem was that the writers had to figure out how to flesh out a character that was supposed to die into a multidimensional person with flaws and motivations. When you look back on Spike's history you can see his vampire behavior as a release of all the inhibitions he felt as that weak little human and trying to go to the polar opposite end of the spectrum. So you like that Spike's a badass, but had he not been such a pathetic pansy as a human that aspect never would have developed. (My interpretation of his story anyway.)

I'll always be for Buffy/Riley. Riley and that organization were doing the same thing as Buffy and her group, fighting creatures. They're on the same side in the war, so they're a better fit. Also, Buffy and Riley seemed really happy together (from what I saw.)