Disappointed in BSG

I have been a HUGE fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series. HUGE - I recommended it to tons of people and even bought the seasons on DVD and watch them. I read the comics, have a few of the toys, am looking forward to checking out the new RPG. But, this season of the show has been mostly disappointing to me. And it must not just be me, because I know they moved it from Friday night, which I think was a better night, to Sunday night, because of ratings. Then, the first episode shown on Sunday had pretty disappointing ratings. I don't know how this week's was, but I bet they weren't great either, and next week's a lost cause with the Super Bowl being on.

I guess that making all of the space action sequences was very expensive, so to cut costs they did the episodes on New Caprica and then on the Algae Planet and not much space travel or battles at all. Now, the New Caprica wasn't horrible - although I did always think that if it was really about costs, they could have done an episode or two that focused more on Baltar's presidency there, maybe develop the whole "life on New Caprica" a little bit more. I did enjoy the Starbuck as a cylon love prisoner story though. The Algae Planet storyline had potential, but they really killed it with too much focus on the whole "is Baltar a Cylon?" story with the Lucy Lawless cylon, and too much time was wasted on trying to develop a relationship between Lee and Starbuck that everyone KNEW would never end up happening anyway. Some of the Cylon stories had potential too, but again, they became too obtuse and too focused on Baltar, but not telling us ANYTHING really about Baltar or the cylons. The episodes where they find the dead cylons and the weapon that had the disease that killed cylons started out to be something pretty interesting, and of COURSE the Galactica folks couldn't just take the information and go out ant kill the cylons right away - that's the end of the show - but truthfully they could have made it end up a lot better than they did. They don't need to have every episode have a batttle scene it it, but they DO need to work on telling better stories. It's hard enough to deal with this on LOST, where we see bits and pieces, are given questions but the story takes forever to move along and we rarely get any answers. BSG has become similar to LOST, where the Cylons are "The Others" and we get glimpses into people and stories but few answers.

A majority of this season has had this weird, "artsy" feel where half of the time nothing really makes much sense and little is done to move the story forward, or in any direction for that matter. There have been moments with potential, but for some reason the people writing/creating the show seem to have taken that potential and mixed it with a solid dose of LSD. I used to watch the show and at the end either cheer or shout in disgust that I'd have to wait a WHOLE WEEK for the next episode. Now I just seem to shake my head, wondering what the heck happened to the show I so enjoyed. There are so many good characters that they could develop better that we've barely even seen this season. Even Baltar could be an interesting character if they'd bother to actually tell us something about him. In the Sci-Fi magazine they'd said this would be a darker season than the ones previous. I'd use the word "lamer" instead, although that's probably not actually a word. Now, with ratings so low there's a chance the show won't be renewed again - and that makes me angry because I don't want it to end with such a miserable season. I hope they get at least one more season, and that they make it more like the previous two, with better character development and story plots.