BSG Preview: “The Road Less Travelled”

This week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica has a big focus on Starbuck as she has her hands full on her misbegotten ship as an old nemesis comes on board. We got preview videos, plus 2 Q&A vids and some frakkin links, so check it out.

Airing tonight, May 2nd at 10 PM (9 Central)

“The Road Less Travelled” [Season 4 Ep. 5]
Synopsis: As the Cylons and humans consider a truce, Starbuck reaches out to an old foe.

TV Spot


(YouTube)

Sneek Peek

Watch first 10 minutes online
SciFi.com are no longer streaming full episodes in advance, but are doing 10 minute sneak peeks. They start every hour, on the hour, between 9AM and 4PM (Eastern Time). CLICK TO WATCH

Also recent episodes of BSG are available online (ad supported) at SciFi.com and Hulu.com

Battlestar news of the week:

Video Q&A With James Callis (Baltar)

Video Q&A With Rekha Sharma (Tory Foster )

Barbarella Galactica
Last week we brought you the Galactica Babes in bikinis with motorcycles. This week, we got them (via the GQ blog) lookin all 60s SciFi


(click to get even closer)

Frakkin’ Links

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love bsg.

I thought this site was about Star Trek?

^Star Trek almuni are regularly spoke about here. You do know who Ron D Moore is, right?

In the end, Lee and Kara will strand on Earth and be known as Adam and Eve ;)

The show is boring. Predictable and pointless.

#5.

I have to agree. Lost interest after season 2.

BSG learned a lot of lessons from Star Trek’s failings…

BSG doesn’t have character’s who are so bland that they are virtually unrelatable… much more relatable relationships and circumstances… doesn’t rely on techno-babble to carry the story… real change happens to the characters over the course of the show, rather than negligible events that seem to have no impact on relationships or events.

The only characters I could relate to in Star Trek were the Klingons… at least they seemed to have real emotions and actually feel.

I suppose you’d prefer a ‘good’ (tee-hee) episode of v’ger????

“BSG learned a lot of lessons from Star Trek’s failings…”

yes and then went on to make a hole lot of their own hugh mistakes. Anyway i will stick with star trek , i like sci fiction shows mainly

I’m sorry, but of all things to call BSG, predictable? Yeah, right.

Want to give some examples of that?

#7 I agree. Modern trek turned into a bland mess at the end. They forgot that scifi is a setting not a story. Trek got so caught up in the lame treknobabble it lost sight of the characters, and the story. The Galactica doesn’t have a deflector dish to solve all their problems in the last 5 minutes of an episode….lol Starbuck’s return hasn’t been explained by inverse tachyon pulses, or chroniton particles on her Viper, etc.

Too many people complain about BSG being so negative… and I think thats a complete cop-out.

Real life isn’t pretty or clean or utopian. People’s problems and issues don’t go away easily and they usally have long-term ramifications into the future. That’s not something we ever really saw in Star Trek, with the exception of DS9. Generally, Star Trek suffered from characters that were set in stone, that never changed, whose problems rarely impacted their day-to-day lives, that rarely impacted their relationships to other characters.

I’m all for Roddenberry’s idea of a utopian society but we who currently DON’T live in one, need to be able to relate to the characters…

I’ll take a soap opera in space over episodic luke-warm cream of wheat…

Technobabble became the standard Star Trek deus ex machina…

Please forgive the multiple posts…

One thing that made me care less and less for Star Trek was the fact that you could always count on the fact that no matter how dire the circumstances during the course of a single episode (or multi-part episodes), the characters were always guaranteed to be the same afterward as they were when it started. There was never a sense of real danger that the characters may not make it through to the end… we always knew they would.

When in Star Trek would they have ever jumped the story line forward one year and not make it retro-active through some time-travel gimmick (Voyager: Year of Hell)? When would Star Trek have ever had a character make a decision that so irrevocably altered his or her relationships with the other characters that it changed the dynamic of the show (without it being an alternate timeline?)(ST:TNG: All Good Things)

My point is that Star Trek needs to go back to good story-telling that happens to be set in an extra-ordinary setting. Character that sometimes make bad decisions like we all do… and deal with the results… THAT is what will make me keep coming back for more.

Okay, I have to lodge a complaint against this site…

Yes, I realize Ron Moore does the new Galactica. That does not qualify it to have a home here, to me… Afterall, Shatner does Boston Legal, but I do not see Boston Legal spoilers here…

Twice now I have come to the site and inadvertantly given away things I have worked hard to avoid learning. I started late watching the show and I am playing catch-up. I don’t read what’s posted, but just the titles blurbs or photos or first words I see before I even realize what is on the front page, spoil something for me about a completely unrelated topic that should not have been spoiled at the STAR TREK site. I don’t expect to read about Batmanspoilers or updates at an Iron Man site, simply because an artist worked on both titles (or movies or etc).

I’m not trying to be a problem and I love this site… I visit it multiple times a day! I don’t think it has a place here, but that’s fine, it’s not my site… I just request to please limit the blurb on the first page to nothing more than a title. We should be able to choose our spoilers, not be, well, spoiled.

*Sigh*. Another BSG post on an otherwise wonderful Trek site. I remember back when people were saying that the *original* BSG was so much better than Trek. This latest version is simply the SF Flavor of the Month, where whatever is new is obviously so much better than anything that ever came before it. But mark my words: in 20 years people will still be watching and talking about the various Trek shows while this version of BSG will join the other as a footnote in TV history.

BSG is the closest thing to Star Trek (without actually being Star Trek, and it certainly has better stories and characters than Voyager!!

UGH! Voyager…

That show would have been better if they had just had an empty ship and simply moved the camera around the corridors…

I hope Starbuck remembered to pack her roast fork. Leobon — it’s what’s for dinner.

I get a kick of the real “hard core” Trekkies…..Star Trek is the only good s.f. series in their world….shh….don’t talk about anything else around them. And according to the “hard core” ones…”there is no such thing as bad Trek”….in their world even Voyager was good….and they can’t wait ’til the next movie, game, figurine comes out….it is a shame that “Trek” is all that they have in their lives…..

#20: I have a sneaking suspicion that your post was aimed at mine at #16. Just so you know, there are many other good science fiction concepts, television shows, and movies that I both appreciate and hold dear in *addition to* Trek. And LOTS of good novels and shows that have nothing to do with SF but are very well done. So while I do have a special affection for Trek, I and other “hard core” Trek fans recognize that other good work exists in books, in movies, and elsewhere on the tube. Sadly, BSG just isn’t all that good as either science fiction or as drama. An opinion, to be sure – but check in on the level of interest in BSG 10 years after it is off the air and I suspect I’ll be shown to be right.

AP’s blog = AP’s rules = AP’s content decisions.

Ron Moore dug himself into a pretty deep writer’s hole with BSG as it stands.
How much shark jumping it’s going to take to get out of it remains to be seen.

I happen to love that this site has BSG news, and a place for other projects. If somehow the whole dang site morphs into general genre with lots of Trek included, I won’t be crying. I love Trek, but it’s a very big universe — especially when you can make up a few spare universes.

BSG – The best show on TV period, Still. And right now unfortunatly that’s not saying much. ( sorry all you American Idol fans) I have watched a couple of episodes AI episodes and its so true “the masses are for the asses”

Anthony has defended his position on posting about BSG long ago. There’s no point in complaining any longer. If you don’t enjoy the show, skip the post. A very, very simple solution.

The fact is, I believe the poll showed 64% of the readers of this site watch and enjoy BSG. So this ONE column certainly makes sense, and hardly destroys or contaminates the site for anyone not interested.

Also, how cute is Rekha Sharma? People always talk about those other cute girls, but she’s on top of my list right now :)

I love people and thier labels…

“I’m a Trek fan…”
“I’m a fan of ST:TNG and nothing else”
“ST:DS9 was the best ever.”

GImmie a break. There is so much available out there and to simply poo poo it because it doesn’t fit into your idea of what televised SF should be is just insane.

When Trek was the only game in town, I did indeed call myself a “TREK” fan but there is so much more now that I don’t feel the need for that little label that pigeon-holes me in a clique of obsessive compulsives.

I find that I’m much happier enjoying all things that are filmed SF. Doesn’t matter if it’s “The Fantasic Journey”, “Otherworld”, “Quark”, “Buck Rogers”, or “Babylon 5”.

Every shows has its merits and its pitfalls. There is no show that has been produced or movie that has been filmed that is perfect and there never will be.

I don’t care if Anthony covers any project involving people who had the luck of working on a Trek show or film. Its great to see what these folks are doing.

There are a ton of sites that deal only with Trek. If this isn’t your cup of tea, you always have options.

Everyone who posts here is going to have an opinion good or bad. We a humans, that’s what we do. Its time we all realized that fact and stop sticking the knife into each others backs everytime someone says something that doesn’t fit into our picture perfect view of the world.

These are programs made to be entertaining. They are not going to please us all due to differeing tastes. That might be why there is such a variety of them out there.

#15 – I thought the title to this thread was very clear…. BSG Preview: “The Road Less Travelled” The content seemed pretty clear to me. A preview is a coming attraction… they usually feature minor spoilers. Since you can’t land right on this page without clicking a link, you must have read it.

One column a week on BSG is no big deal, if it rents space in your head, don’t read it. It’s not like this one section on this one day covers that much real estate.

As stated above, you have to have hit (more…) to get this far….

I can almost understand the complaints about seeing BSG news on a Trek site because I still hate MTV for not playing music, the History Channel for doing so much non-history, and the Cartoon Network for airing so much non-cartoon stuff (especially the wretched crap late at night). Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

But it makes perfect sense to post BSG here because (1) Anthony wants to, (2)…well, forget the rest because #1 is enough. So GET OVER IT, folks! Or go back to Startrek.com where you’ll get no BSG…and nothing else, either.

As for BSG itself, I love and hate it. The miniseries was excellent, the first two seasons had some of the best SF TV ever, and season three gave us “Exodus” and “Crossroads,” four epic hours of science fiction–far better than anything from TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT combined. (Except “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” maybe the best Trek since “City on the Edge of Forever.”)

But so far this season, I hate BSG. Boring, preachy, stupid, dull, shark-jumping crap! It’s not predictable, but only because they keep doing random nonsense. If “Road Less Travelled” is as crappy, I’ll stop watching until it’s all over and I can see a recap of the finale on YouTube.

I’m hoping the “it’s all happened before” thing means that they’ll get to Earth to find out that the 13th Colony was actually the ORIGINAL Galactica’s rag-tag fleet and that the 5th/final Cylon is actually Boxie’s daggit, Muffitt II…

Unless the season continues on its current course, in which case I hope they get to Earth and get blasted away as invading aliens…or better yet, taken under the protection of the Men In Black. (Either way, Will Smith can do the job.)

I was really digging BSG but the show lost its way halfway through Season 3 with only the finale reaching the bar set by the previous two seasons.

I’m sticking out Season 4 but so far its underwhelming. Its the last season and the show is mired in micr-stories of personal conflict: retreading over old ground in many instances. Come BSG people, its the last season, they going to find earth! Let’s have some sense of urgency!

Hopeful but discouraged.

…the adventure continues…

BSG is a great show no question, its it it perfect show with out flaws?No but that isn’t the point. I think what makes the show so uncomfortable to watch is that the characters are not the perfect and of ten unrealistic characters that you often find in Trek. The characters in BSG are not nice people, they are like you meet in the real world.Some of them have problems with drugs and Alcohol and they sleep around with each other, the concept of marraige doesn’t mean any thing to some them them, They have egos, they back stab when it’s convenient, they have religious zealotry ,predjudice and like us here on earth very few of them are altruistic toward their fellow humans. Like most of us they are not think about building a better world they are just trying to survive each day. They have not got the time to think about Pie in the sky utopian ideals. Unlike Trek there are no easy and convenient answers to their self created dilemma, they cannot negotioate their way out of this like Picard would would try to do.There is no misunderstood aliens here, hell there are no aliens all. The Cylons want them dead end of discussion

#28

Wasnt Quark about an intergalactic garbage ship and they had a robot that would always tell a story about his fight with the Gorgons? “Did I ever tell you about the time I defeated 57 gorgons”, “Did I ever tell about the time I defeated 98 gorgons” etc and the amount of gorgons he defeated changed each time he told the story? I was a comedy….I dont think it lasted that long….

or am I thinking about another show? Thats going way back, the intergalactic Garbage Spaceship, maybe 77/78 or so..

#33 & 28 – Quark!?! I can’t believe y’all remember Quark!!! I loved that cheesy show as a kid. Richard Benjamin was Quark, I don’t remember the rest of them. I think there were “sexy” twin women and a robot, and I think I remember something with automatic doors bugging Quark (might be confusing that from Airplane II and Shatner).

(sigh) Intergalactic garbage collectors. We sure could’ve used HIS help during VOY, eh? hehe

Hey People, SHUT UP !!!!!!!!

Please. I enjoy both series a great deal.

Star Trek AND Battlestar Galactica !!!

Please, lets not have this bashing going on.

It goes against IDIC (Infinite Delight in Infinite Combinations), and brings this community down to a shameful level.

If you don’t like Galactica, DON’T WATCH IT !!!!!!!

If you don’t want to read about Galactica, then DON’T READ ABOUT IT !!!!

Some civility and tolerance please, people.

This is trek site yes, but trek is science fiction so whats wrong with them doing stories or or columns or threads about other scif shows or movies or whatever? Trek can’t be isolated itself from the scif universe nor should it try to do so. Most of us on this site like to have discussions all things science fiction, not just Trek.

#33 and #34 I remember Quark as well. It was kinda the Red dwarf of its day it only had about a hanfd full of episodes. Richard Benjamin and company were funny as hell. The who concept of him being aa garbadge man in spce picking up giant space hefty bags totally off the wall. I loved the Star War Spoof they did, with the Source and giant square deathstar and Poor any the cowardly robot and his lament

” This mission is no place for a coward, Please take me home”

Guys check out Red darf. on you tube they have some clips from the show
check out Red Dwarf Wilma Flintstone and the the Rimmer Munchkin song and the Trial of Arnold Rimmer those are priceless moments. this show is guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. there were 8 seasons in all.

I don’t mind a Star Trek site posting info on what a Star Trek alumni is up to. Not at all. I just don’t like hearing people berate others on how great and wonderful this show is. It’s not that good. If Star Trek ever fell into this realm filled with moral-less snobs who just want to kill, have sex, whine and argue, I’d probably give up on Trek right there.

And come on. Even a show like this that’s based on another show yet still manages to rip off a lot of other stuff is just lazy. How much material from the original BSG that was good have we not covered yet? I still want my Lucifer dang it!

Quark was awesome. Here’s some funny Quark goodness:

Part 1:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_pqLjOg0hwo&feature=related

Part 2:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=3821qMSJVjw&feature=related

Part 3:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jiyRjCjQz5o&feature=related

Notice that many of the sound effects were taken from Star Trek, and some of the opening credits were inspired by Space: 1999.

#38 sorry I don’t agree with that assessment, Galatica has won a Peabody award that in itself is no small achievement really. Much as I like trek Galactica has better writing and sorry to say better acting. The original Galatica was a very badly acted and by the low standards of the day, badly written. it had had great special effects for its day but nothing else really going for it. Its only notable contribution to science fiction was that it was the basis for a superior remake. the critic of the day thought thought the original was a joke.You wanna talk bad lets talk about seaon three of the orginal trek or most of the episodes on voyager and even the next gen had it share stinkers. Galatica is about taking risks with the scif formula a lession trek did not learn until DS9 which Ron Moore also produced.

I think I’ll be rewatching BSG many many years after it ends. Probably the finest genre show in a decade, with no Trek ‘reset’ buttons to press at the end of every episode. This is real life gritty stuff and although I’ll love Trek till I die, any comparison between a happy clappy one-big-happy-fleet and BSG seems pointless. I suspect that most of the pro-Trek but anti-BSG people on here are perhaps rather younger than myself and really haven’t been bitten badly by life yet.

So what have we learned so farrrrr in dis here thread?

Well, took me awhile ta’ realize thar wuz a thread as the Barbarella gals had me stumped fur awhile… see last week”s BSG thread for me outburst thar’… arrrrr….

anyhoos, mates, we’ve learned dat

1. Used car dealers can have Fords AND Chevy’s on thar’ lots.

2. At one point in his life, Quark didn’t have tha’ lobes and resembled the gent from tha’ film “WestWorld.”

3. If ya’ get yer peanut butter mixed in wit’ me chocolate then I’ll get right pissy, mate. Throw in some bacon, tho, and all is forgiven.

4. Sadly, Photoshop juzt can’t remove clothes from GQ pics.

5. Recent Trek had no surprises beyon’ Trip gettin’ preggers and Janeway somehow not killing all her crew.

and

6. “Flying Tigress” is a good name fur a rock band.

arrrr…

#38 I am also curious about what you think about posting things other then trek on this site? your statement needs some clarification here. Star trek science fiction therefore part of the scif universe not separate from it.

“I thought this site was about Star Trek?”

Bingo!

“^Star Trek almuni are regularly spoke about here. You do know who Ron D Moore is, right?”

And we’ll be happy to hear about Trek-related stuff that he does. The article is not about RDM “Trek Alumnus”, but BSG.

Or to quote another poster “Yes, I realize Ron Moore does the new Galactica. That does not qualify it to have a home here, to me… Afterall, Shatner does Boston Legal, but I do not see Boston Legal spoilers here…”

“Predictable and pointless.”

Not quite, I’d say the show is pointless in its unpredictability.

“BSG doesn’t have character’s who are so bland that they are virtually unrelatable… much more relatable relationships and circumstances…”

No it has characters who are so chaotic and perpetually mopey that they are unrelatable.

“doesn’t rely on techno-babble to carry the story…”

No they use mytho-babble, politico-babble, relgio-babble.

“real change happens to the characters over the course of the show, rather than negligible events that seem to have no impact on relationships or events.”

Change happens on BSG all the time. Who will randomly and inexplicably turn out to be a Cylon this week? What policy of the fleet will Lee object to? Who will Kara have an affair with? What sort of monotheistic blatherings will six offer this week?

Trek was, for the most part, episodic TV and episodic TV has it’s place.

“Starbuck’s return hasn’t been explained by inverse tachyon pulses, or chroniton particles on her Viper, etc”

There is no explanation for most of the contradictions and non-sequiturs on BSG – congrats!!

“One column a week on BSG is no big deal, if it rents space in your head, don’t read it. It’s not like this one section on this one day covers that much real estate.”

It sets a bad precedent. And if you don’t like the objections, why don’t you skip along to the next post?

“But it makes perfect sense to post BSG here because (1) Anthony wants to, (2)…well, forget the rest because #1 is enough. So GET OVER IT, folks! Or go back to Startrek.com where you’ll get no BSG…and nothing else, either.”

And we are giving Anthony feedback, because (1) we want to. It’s still his ball and his bat, but the threads are still ours to post in so long as he is playing ball.

“no Trek ‘reset’ buttons to press at the end of every episode. ”

You mean like being able to kill cylon characters because they can always respawn?

You mean like curing Roslin’s cancer being cured with Dr. Baltar’s Old-Tyme Baby Cylon juice, but then being brought back just in time to put her in jeopardy (again) as the series comes to a close?

You mean like Starbuck literally just popping back into the show? “Uh, I don’t know how I got here, but here I am.”

If you want to love BSG, that’s fine, but don’t bash Trek in light of BSG’s alleged virtues.

#44 Yarn BSG did win the peabody award which I believe they don’t give to crappy shows Themoppy chaotic character of BSG as you see to call them are far more interesting and believable then the well dressed well adjusted window dummies you find on shows like the Next Gen,Voyager. and a great many of the characters you find in trek. In trek everything has clickity freakin click boring explaination. There are no surprises the good guys alway win for the most part and the bad guys are always the aliens for the most part.no character growth reset to zero.The exception is Ds9 of course which Ron Moore manged to get out from under trek stagnatingly predictable formula.

You have to realize one thing about Trek, the parameters of the characters were set from day one and the writers for the most part could not vary anything with out the producers approval. Trek in its time was good which did have some good writing but by today’s standards it formula and old hat. As much as I criticize trek, without we would not have B5 or BSG or much else in the way of scifi. But there are people out there who still think its still cutting edge and sad to say it isn’t any more, Time renders all science fiction and even BSG obsolete eventually.

‘If Star Trek ever fell into this realm filled with moral-less snobs who just want to kill, have sex, whine and argue, I’d probably give up on Trek right there.’

Hmmm. You’ve never really watched it then? Or understand subtext? No offence, but if Trek is going to be seen as a sexless (well, same-sexless, certainly!), purer than thou antithesis then I think Roddenberry would be spinning in his grave. Or in orbit. Wherever.

I think the vast majority of you have missed the point 1701 over Gotham was trying to make.
The complaint was more about BSG SPOILERS being splashed on the front page. Not all of us have watched season 4 yet, and we’d rather not get spoiled by a blurb on the front page of a site about something completely different.

Anyone got any beefs about THAT request?

I allways liked Star Trek ( TOS and TNG) because they show a future, where things turned out better than actually happens on our world. It motivated me, it inspired me. DSN was a good show too, because they have strong characters and funny characters and stories as well (ostly with Quarck and Rom). And not to forget a great sense for idealismn, morale and character moments greater than life. VOY had nothing of that and ENT was a complete failure (until season 4).

BSG is dark and dirty. I can’t see any part of morale or idealism in the BSG characters. Traitors and Cylons are everywehre (and nearly everyone). This poor and mad people fight for survival as they would do in reality, but this is a TV-show, they don’t have to show reality. It’s a science fiction show either, it should show us a way for a better future or at least some better opportunities. If I want something different, I’ll watch the daily news or some reports from Afghanistan or Iraq.

In short: I don’t like BSG. But the girls look really nice :)

Get this Mormon sci-fi crap off my TrekMovie. Remember when a space shuttle was named for the U.S.S. Enterprise? It’s never going to happen for Battlestar Galactica.

Like the poster for TMP said, There Is No Comparison.