When does Battlestar Galactica get bad?
 

I just got into Battlestar Galactica. I watched the pilot miniseries, and I thought it was brilliant. I bought the first two seasons on DVD.

However, I've heard a lot of people say that the show has dropped in quality recently.

When does it get bad. And how bad? Is it "last seasons of Buffy and X-Files" level of bad?

When would be a good time to stop watching? I planned to get season 3 when it comes out.

When they find Earth.

Who said it was bad? Last season was solid despite a slow start. Looking forward to the final season

Well, even though this was the worst season, the first 4 episodes were some of the most amazing, action packed, hellish episodes in Sci-Fi history...

Colnl Tigh is un-freaking believable, issuing one of the most chilling lines I ever heard and S3E4 has the most unbelievable action sequence to date...so really, dont stop watching

In my opinion, the third season got BAD, and not just "not as good as the first two seasons" but "wow, this writing is retarded and the acting is terrible" bad after the boxing episode "Unfinished Business" which was the 9th episode of season 3.

However, I don't think you should stop watching after that. Season 4 will be the last and I would suggest sticking it out through the rest of season 3 in hopes that they have a tight final season.

Keep watching and judge for yourself when you don't want to watch anymore.

Personally, I thought the second half of season two was so awful that I couldn't make myself watch season three.

This has never been "Bad." Sure there are some not so great episodes but every series has those.
Keep watching.

The stand alone episodes in season three sucked for the most, the start of the season and the end I thought were good.

Yep.... flying motorcycles

The opening credits of the first episode.

Bad: never (at least, not yet). Boring: several episodes in season 3.

I still enjoy it and look forward to the fourth season and how they wrap it all up.

BSG never gets bad. Some people may have complained about certain episodes in Season 3, but they are being stupid.

I think the point was should he buy season 3 on DVD or just stop after S2. :rolleyes:

Never

Well the original started sucking when the started running out of finances.

The remake has never gotten bad! BRING ON SEASON 4.

Well, it never gets bad and STAYS bad. But definitely the middle of season 2 and the middle of season 3 are strong let-downs. You certainly get the idea that there are several "filler" episodes between the storylines that really mean a lot to the writers and actors.

So don't give up on it. Just realize that if you hit a few bad shows in a row, it will get better again. In fact, it will get GREAT again. :)

S3 will play better on DVD than on TV for those of us that had to wait a week for the next episode after the "boring" stand-alones.

It has never been bad and with an end date in sight, one hopes that S4 will be balls-out action and story progression. If I'd invested any time in the series, especially 50% of it, I certainly wouldn't entertain the idea of quitting now.

"Battlestar Galactica" and "bad" are not words I would use in the same sentence. Obviously some episodes are better than others, but I would never use the word "bad" to discribe an episode of BSG.

I tend to agree with that. It's a peaks and valleys kind of show, with a steady average decline. Most of Season 1 is very good with a few average eps. Season 2 is back and forth, with some great and some below average. Much of Season 3 is terrible with a few good eps to mix it up.

If you like the show, you may as well just stick with it to the end. It's almost over anyway. Of course, this assumes Season 4 won't suck and won't make the overall journey worthless, which is probably foolish on my part. Just have laundry ready to do during Season 3, because you'll want to get the basic plot points without wasting an hour.

das

A simple answer to the original question -

immediately after the "New Caprica" rescue in season 3.

Count me in with the "never" crowd. Still excited as hell to see the final season.

...I haven't seen it in any thread here yet, but TV Guide claims [casting spoiler]

Yeah, the episodes vary.
It goes like this:

If an episode has Cylons, it's good.
If there are no Cylons, it's not so good.
And if it focuses on some love triangle, it flat-out sucks.

Slow start?? Last season started with a bang and then it went down hill from there. I thought there were a few good episodes as we got towards the end but nothing beat those first 3 episodes.

I don't think it really gets "bad"; certainly not at the level of the last seasons of Buffy. I've always found the show to be overall fairly consistent. I say stick with it to the end.

If you see flying motorcycles, run. Run for your life.

Season three went downhill mainly because it could never maintain the momentum of the first four episodes. The stand alone episodes are seen as low points not so much because they suck, but because they are so pedestrian. The Woman King stands out as the worst episode for me, mainly because the story is so predictable, having been done many times before. Ultimately, even if Helo had been wrong, the story would still have been predictable too, because they would have simply taken a cliched storyline and turned the ending on its head.

But none of that means that the show reaches a point where one should simply stop watching altogether. There isn't a series out there that doesn't have off episodes or storylines (or even characters) that are a complete waste of time. Even though I fear the ending will be an incomprehensible mess (along the lines of Neon Genesis Evangelion), it's still worth watching.

It's still the best Sci-fi on tv and while it dropped a bit in S3 (mainly the stand alone eps) it's still worth buying.

Nice fucking spoiler for the OP who has only seen a few episodes.

I mean, fucking really!!!!



Anyhow

I DARE you to watch the S2 finale and not buy S3

I don't see how you can get mad at him for not spoilering that.

Well, my point is that there's no clear consensus on when he should stop so I say he should decide for himself.

Arpeggi, threadcrapping is against forum rules. If you don't have anything constructive to add, then don't post in the thread.

:clap:

If you enter a discussion thread and spoil a 6 month old episode its cool...but when the thread is specifically started by someone asking if he should watch an episode, dont spoil the episode

I agree with the 'never' crowd. I count one horrible episode (Black Market) and a couple mediocre ones in the first two years. Season Three had 2-3 mediocre episodes but the rest was some of the best stuff in the series (particularly the first five and last five episodes, which are all balls-to-the-wall awesome).

Anybody complaining about the quality of BSG really doesn't watch much TV!

Hmm ...

das

I think it hit a wall in S3. The entire tone of the show changed too radically and they took on a decidedly left-wing political slant (interjecting all the obvious jabs at Iraq/the War on Terror/Bush Administration policies, etc.). All that aside, I don't think I was ready for such a major plot shift. I would have liked it better if they had played out the on-the-run, cat & mouse plotline for another season or so - the jump to the new plotline of S3 just felt way too abrupt and left too many things unresolved. Too many characters were suddenly made radically different, and that hurt their individual character developments. For me the slide really began after the Adama/Cain standoff, which got wrapped-up way too quickly and wound up being very anti-climactic. It went downhill from there, culminating in the radical plot shift that was S3. I still like the show, but they really need to do something awesome with the final season to redeem the whole thing.

I don't see how you can say that when he simply answered the question posted in the thread title. Don't shoot the messenger.

Season 3 may not be up to par with Season 1 or 2, but its still damn good stuff. I love the Baltar stuff near the end.