The lost corner

The first episode was quite frankly, a deception, too short, too direct and paradoxically too indirect as well, the same applied to the second. Many of the characters are a gender reversal of the original ones, and that while that might be interesting on others is just too evident...

The third one is when things really start to happen, and I enjoyed it very much but it makes me thing if the broadcaster really wants this series to be a success or not: after all there's only going to be another episode more this year and the rest, maybe, next. I fear that the 4th will be too rushed, to unnatural in its intent to give a "hold your breath" moment in an hour intense enough to make you wait till next year... much like the rushed, crappy, unnatural finale of BSG.

Only time will tell...

I think that the very first issue is that most screen writers are not really into SciFi, don't understand the genre and its mechanics and that shows off on the storylines. If you really want to make a successful show, you've to understand that Sci Fi is not synonym of aliens, spaceships, lasers, conspiracies even though it can comprise them: it's all about the conflicts, situations, issues of all kinds posed when some scientific or technological situation is done: a series that explores the storyline of a greek empire in which blips and balloons have been discovered and become common is as much as SciFi as I,Robot from Asimov -even if there're no aliens, robots and the technologies involved seem retarded-.

Another problem is that while interpersonal conflict is an important part of SciFi, it usually has to go along with the situation, is not the main engine of the story unlike films like StarGate Universe (basically its very similar to Lost, without the weird stuff) in which the SciFi elements are just accessories to the personal conflict storyline.

Lack of originality has also to do with the fact that most screenwriters are blatantly ignorant about SciFi and only see SciFi as Space Opera, repeating the formulas on and on and on...

So screenwritters, get some decent SciFi background: Clark, Asimov, McDevitt, Verne, Zindell, Zettel, Heinlein read about a hundred books of the genre before even trying to write a single line, make sure you do understand the genre, its mechanics, etc... before writting anything. That's the way to create decent SciFi shows

And I can't, seriously... The ending is probably the worst, more incoherent possible finale possible, it's like the ending of AI -completly gratuitious, and ruins most of the good things of the series-. But I think the problem is very much like the problems you can see in Babylon 5 4th season, and it's bastarized 5th season: in the 4th everything becames too fast, without dept because they were to cancel the series 1 season in advance, and the 5th tries to pave the road for a franchise but fails because of its poor cast choices -Tracy Scoggins plainly sucks, they could have used even Paula Price which besides having a resemblance to Claudia Christian could have had better acting skills that those shown by T.S.-.

BSG has a similar problem, but it's solved even worse than in Babylon 5, the 4th season, especially its second half, has too many filler episodes, some argumental mistakes -the Daniel stuff wasn't really bad by itself, it was bad because its one of the last minute inconsistencies- and a very unlikely end.

After all what the colonials have endured, it simply does not look likely that they'll choose to willingly abandon technology and return to the land, as civilized primitives, even less possible that is an unanimous posture among them -I might accept that some will chose to live that way, but by no means, everyone-. And what about the human-cylons? and the centurions? Both are treated like they were 2nd row influences in the series, only mention in the slightest subtle way...

And what about Kara? She vanishes in thin air without further explanation...And the 'angels'? Well they gave a lot of importance to the religious part of the series, but I think everyone was expecting something more plausible than let everything in the air as a "God Plan" kind of bullshit. To me it looks like they chose this solution because they didn't know how to end the series -the "Daniel" issue- in time and tried to improvise to give it a decent ending -which they didn't- and failed miserabily.

Also they leave as futile argument lines all the hybrids, and the final 5 leaded by Helen Tight -which by the way was evident from season one that it was a cylon, remember the blood test?- remain as a monument to scriptwritters stupidity: What kind of idiot stays side by side with someone whose wife have you killed his wife a short time ago? How come they don't have a securestore with the resurrection technology on it -the h-cylons look intelligent enough for that-? How they really joined the colonial cylons? Too many loose ends, few consistent answers...

In short, a great series but with probably the worst finale possible.