He probably meant a pre-written storyline, and you probably knew that.
Battlestar Galactica getting rebooted (again) for NBS's streaming service
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The writer's strike was between the first and second half of season 4, which I am endlessly grateful to it for giving the writing team more time to stew on things and to decide that making Ellen and Saul's marital issues the linchpin of the finale wasn't the best idea.
The season 4 to 4.5 gap was a mere six months.
I watched every single episode of RDM's BSG and every webisode they did (including The Face of the Enemy which they never released). I watched every episode of Caprica and the failed spinoffs. It was one of my favorite shows at one point but watching it from the beginning to the end made it clear that they had NO planned storyline from the beginning and were just making it up as they went along. This was pretty much confirmed in the commentary on The Plan, where they admitted the Cylons never had a plan and they just thought it would be a cool hook. NuBSG had some amazing episodes but it was clear that RDM was more interested in being topical than he was at telling a story. Like Lost, I can't watch BSG anymore because it's clear there was no plan whatsoever to tell the story of that show.
You can see the lack of long-term storytelling in big things (like the Cylon's plan) to little things (Tyrol's son).
Precisely.
The series overall does have a storyline.
Whether or not it was as 100% fully mapped out as it 'ought' to have been is a different topic, but to say that the series was completely devoid of a storyline is just patently inaccurate.
I suspect that it could be argued that it was an episodic series being delivered to its viewership under the pretense of serialization. There were internally-consistent storylines germane to each individual episode's plot, but the "bigger picture/great plan" serialization that the showrunners wanted us to believe was there was either tenuously half-baked, or absent entirely.
Ron Moore himself has basically admitted as much something like a year or so ago when he said if the show were done today, the seasons would be shorter with a more focused serialized storyline.
The lack of a plan doesn't bother me one whit. The strength of nuBSG wasn't in its ability to deliver intricately conceived season-long or series-long story arcs. The show's main strength was in the compelling way it revised the composition of the standard space opera trope set.
I think that’s less true for Lost than BSG. They came up with the outline for the last three seasons between seasons three and four. And in the first three they didn’t know where they were going to end up but clearly had at least a general idea what every weird thing they introduced really was.
When I try to watch BSG again I can never get much past the New Caprica arc. Not cause it didn’t have good payoff so much as they got thematically repetitive and lost the intensity of the best arcs.
They also overkilled their secondary cast in ways that the payoff was not worth the loss, and the show suffered for it to near-24 extents. For example, the episode where they killed Cat was just a weak episode and then they lost a good character. And they made Cally from one of the most likable characters to totally unlikable and killed her in a forced way too.
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The Cylons had a plan, but it cocked up almost immediately, and they were left to improvise...
The Cylon God (Zoey Greystone.) had a plan, and it worked out gangbusters. She lead the humans to Earth II, as they interbreed with Cylons and the anthropoids of Earth 2.
RDM had a plan for the miniseries, and maybe so far as season one that Boomer was going to shoot Adama, but after that, he had nothing.
The Cylon God (Zoey Greystone.) had a plan, and it worked out gangbusters. She lead the humans to Earth II, as they interbreed with Cylons and the anthropoids of Earth 2.
RDM had a plan for the miniseries, and maybe so far as season one that Boomer was going to shoot Adama, but after that, he had nothing.
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No it shows he actually did. The writing staff and RDM himself admitted there was no plan (as if the retool attempt in Season 3 didn't make it obvious enough) and that they added the:
"And they have a plan"
Line to the opening narration because it sounded "cool".
yes the Cylon did have a plan - it was to wipe out mankind.
but as the saying going, no military plan survives first contact with the enemy.
I rewatched the pilot a few years ago and it holds up well. I'm not sure if the rest of the series does. I watched it religiously during its original run and I couldn't wait for each episode. Baltar was my favorite character and I'm glad he was redeemed at the end. I don't know if I'd get the same pleasure rewatching episodes now like I do with Star Trek.
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Episodic is perfectly fine. Serialized is perfectly fine. However, throwing a bunch of random shit into the plot to give the illusion of serialization where none exists is a bait-and-switch. Next time (if this next new iteration actually sees the light of day), they really need to pick a lane and stay in it.
I don't how not having a plan means the show wasn't serialized. It's not like you could put all the episodes on shuffle and everything would still make sense watching them straight through out of order, the way you could for TOS or TNG.
And then we're only referring to a full-series plan. The show was plotted out by the half-season to season in advance, and there are plenty of elements that were decided on early on, even if they reserved the right to change them in progress (God is real, the show is set in the distant past and not the distant future, practically all of the backstory in the series finale that was in the season one writers' bible but they'd never got around to using).
Plenty of the pre-planned shows have the degree of planning overstated, anyway. It's nearly inevitable outside of cases when large chunks are filmed simultaneously (and a plan can be a straitjacket, as well; "How I Met Your Mother" and "Game of Thrones" weren't helped by riding all the way to the end on rails that were set years in advance and weren't reconsidered based on the shows they ended up actually making). Look at the canonical example of Babylon 5, and how the five-year-plan from when the pilot was written is almost unrecognizable as the actual show that was made.
And then we're only referring to a full-series plan. The show was plotted out by the half-season to season in advance, and there are plenty of elements that were decided on early on, even if they reserved the right to change them in progress (God is real, the show is set in the distant past and not the distant future, practically all of the backstory in the series finale that was in the season one writers' bible but they'd never got around to using).
Plenty of the pre-planned shows have the degree of planning overstated, anyway. It's nearly inevitable outside of cases when large chunks are filmed simultaneously (and a plan can be a straitjacket, as well; "How I Met Your Mother" and "Game of Thrones" weren't helped by riding all the way to the end on rails that were set years in advance and weren't reconsidered based on the shows they ended up actually making). Look at the canonical example of Babylon 5, and how the five-year-plan from when the pilot was written is almost unrecognizable as the actual show that was made.
I guess I had always expected/hoped for a Glen Larson level of planning for the show that never materialized in RDM’s version, is all.
I don't think everything has to be mapped out in advance like Babylon 5. But it would be nice if writers had some kind of long-term plan in mind or a direction for where they are going. BSG never did and to me, that really hurts rewatchability.
I think BSG began to lose control of whatever narrative they had when they got 20-episode seasons.
I think BSG began to lose control of whatever narrative they had when they got 20-episode seasons.
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I don't think everything needs to be mapped out in advance, but if you're going to have prophecies of the future, you should have at least some idea what the hell they mean, and if you're going to have the enemy do stuff that doesn't make sense and hints at hidden motives, you should make sure they will make sense later when the viewer has more information.
If you're going to dangle mysteries in front of the viewer, you need to make sure the mysteries have an answer and you plan the rollout of the mystery around that answer, so when the viewer goes back and watches again after knowing the answer there's "Oooohhhhhhh I get it" moments.
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