Battlestar Galactica. It's just daft.
2009-06-22
So I've been lent the box of the first 3 seasons (plus pilot miniseries) of the [not now so] new Battlestar Galactica.
Bear in mind as you read on (assuming you can be bothered) that so far it's good fun and I'm going to keep watching. I'm about 7 espisodes into season 1, and I'm quite liking. But really though...
The guy who lent it to me would read this and tell me to stop being pedantic. He'd suggest that I suspend more disbelief. And to be fair, it's not that there are innaccuracies as such; it's relatively easy to avoid those in SF. They're not even inconsistencies as such, although some of them are headed that way. The following is just a list of things I personally found jarring, unconvincing or otherwise not in-keeping with what otherwise could be high-end military SF.
What's with the ranks? I mean, really, I know your fictional space-navy can have whatever rank structure you like, but writers use the ranks of real-world militaries because they are familiar, and the more military SF the viewer has seen the more effort it will take to watch and understand yours when you've mashed them up in an odd way. And fair enough, it's not an Earth military, but if you give the ranks the same names then people are still going to make the association, and if you use them differently (or heaven forbid inconsistently) you make the reference work against you rather than for you.
I don't know whether the writers just wanted to be different or whether they didn't do the research, but misleading reuse of real-world ranks is abound.
For example: There is a Commander in charge. The CAG is a Captain. Linguistically those two words are pretty similar ('commander' is one who 'commands', while the 'captain' is the 'head' of a unit), so our frame of reference is real-world navies, where the man in charge of a ship is the captain (either as his rank or as his posting) and where Commander even exists as a rank it is the one immediately below. This just seems odd, and becomes all the more incoherent when you mix in the executive officer being a Colonel (no, he doesn't seem to be from a different branch, he's just a navy man with an army rank).
The 'Master at Arms' is called Sergeant. It's just about conceivable that she's a Master Sergeant or a Master Gunnery Sergeant, but then real-world military forces tend to have a tradition (even a regulation) that you don't leave words out of an address if it results in a lower rank. Historically, the role of Master-at-arms on a ship has only a little to do with logistics and guarding weapons lockers; he'd be (or be equivalent to) a Chief Petty Officer (addressed as 'Master', though), so perhaps the MAA on BSG is another navy person in an army rank.
On a related note, why do so many people have access to the small-arms locker? And why isn't it better logged and guarded?
Related again, in the episode about blowing up water tanks, why is everyone obsessed with the detonators? Is it not of more concern that the explosives are missing?
One person whose rank I am happy with is the 'Chief', who is a Chief Petty Officer in charge of 'ground' crew on the flight deck. Which seems fair enough, although he is expected to do everything in every landing party (a bit like a Star Trek crew member).
Although his men can't handle munitions. I was shocked when they screwed up getting supplies off the weird supply depot in a gas cloud in the miniseries: for it to happen again with a recon drone a few episodes later was crazy. These are the people who put the weapons on the fighters, for goodness' sake.
The cylons - the humanoid ones - hide in plain sight by standing on rooftops, silhouetted against the sky. In one scene the target is only a few floors lower than them, with a fair elevation to them, and faced along their vertical plane: one of the cylons would give the game away completely if he noticed and recognised her. I'm not sure who is more inept, but thankfully whichever it is the other side is keeping up, obligingly.
The list goes on, but it matters not. I should stress again that I am enjoying the show, and that it would take a lot more of this kind of daftness to change that (which is just as well, because I suspect it gets worse before it gets better).
Bear in mind as you read on (assuming you can be bothered) that so far it's good fun and I'm going to keep watching. I'm about 7 espisodes into season 1, and I'm quite liking. But really though...
The guy who lent it to me would read this and tell me to stop being pedantic. He'd suggest that I suspend more disbelief. And to be fair, it's not that there are innaccuracies as such; it's relatively easy to avoid those in SF. They're not even inconsistencies as such, although some of them are headed that way. The following is just a list of things I personally found jarring, unconvincing or otherwise not in-keeping with what otherwise could be high-end military SF.
What's with the ranks? I mean, really, I know your fictional space-navy can have whatever rank structure you like, but writers use the ranks of real-world militaries because they are familiar, and the more military SF the viewer has seen the more effort it will take to watch and understand yours when you've mashed them up in an odd way. And fair enough, it's not an Earth military, but if you give the ranks the same names then people are still going to make the association, and if you use them differently (or heaven forbid inconsistently) you make the reference work against you rather than for you.
I don't know whether the writers just wanted to be different or whether they didn't do the research, but misleading reuse of real-world ranks is abound.
For example: There is a Commander in charge. The CAG is a Captain. Linguistically those two words are pretty similar ('commander' is one who 'commands', while the 'captain' is the 'head' of a unit), so our frame of reference is real-world navies, where the man in charge of a ship is the captain (either as his rank or as his posting) and where Commander even exists as a rank it is the one immediately below. This just seems odd, and becomes all the more incoherent when you mix in the executive officer being a Colonel (no, he doesn't seem to be from a different branch, he's just a navy man with an army rank).
The 'Master at Arms' is called Sergeant. It's just about conceivable that she's a Master Sergeant or a Master Gunnery Sergeant, but then real-world military forces tend to have a tradition (even a regulation) that you don't leave words out of an address if it results in a lower rank. Historically, the role of Master-at-arms on a ship has only a little to do with logistics and guarding weapons lockers; he'd be (or be equivalent to) a Chief Petty Officer (addressed as 'Master', though), so perhaps the MAA on BSG is another navy person in an army rank.
On a related note, why do so many people have access to the small-arms locker? And why isn't it better logged and guarded?
Related again, in the episode about blowing up water tanks, why is everyone obsessed with the detonators? Is it not of more concern that the explosives are missing?
One person whose rank I am happy with is the 'Chief', who is a Chief Petty Officer in charge of 'ground' crew on the flight deck. Which seems fair enough, although he is expected to do everything in every landing party (a bit like a Star Trek crew member).
Although his men can't handle munitions. I was shocked when they screwed up getting supplies off the weird supply depot in a gas cloud in the miniseries: for it to happen again with a recon drone a few episodes later was crazy. These are the people who put the weapons on the fighters, for goodness' sake.
The cylons - the humanoid ones - hide in plain sight by standing on rooftops, silhouetted against the sky. In one scene the target is only a few floors lower than them, with a fair elevation to them, and faced along their vertical plane: one of the cylons would give the game away completely if he noticed and recognised her. I'm not sure who is more inept, but thankfully whichever it is the other side is keeping up, obligingly.
The list goes on, but it matters not. I should stress again that I am enjoying the show, and that it would take a lot more of this kind of daftness to change that (which is just as well, because I suspect it gets worse before it gets better).
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