But if the writer qualified every opinion with "some say" and "it could be argued that" and so on, that would be even more annoying.
Both of those phrases scream "I am reporting gossip as fact!" to me, so yes. Still, opinion reported as fact, without supporting data, is basically in the same category as gossip. And anyway, the point to me is that the article in question didn't
need
to make debatable assertions. It was a perfectly good article chronicling a difficult process of interpersonal and corporate negotiation, and very interesting, with a few unnecessary and distracting opinions thrown in.
If it bugs you because you don't think the show merits the praise
Well, that's not really it. It bugs me the way that "Madame Bovary is the first novel" bugs me -- it's not really fair to the history of the novel to make such an assertion, and if you're going to make that assertion, there are lots of novel-specialists who will really really want you to explain why you think so. (N.b. I have heard this assertion, and argued with it strenuously. It turned out she meant "the first modern novel, where 'modern' means exploring the interiority of bourgeois boredom," but it required fighting words to get to the refinement of her original thesis.)
I think there could be a lot of things to like about BSG, but there are a lot of things to unlike, and I can't get past those. For example: if you have an enemy captive, and want to know what makes him tick, and have no compunction about doing cruel things to him, why not run him through a standard battery of psych and neuro tests? Especially if there is such powerful interest in a differential test that will prove human from non-human.
(To answer my own question, the show doesn't want to expose aspects of what cylons are like yet. But, that's not a good reason for the characters not to think of it.)
(I mean, you could have a nice gruesome scene in which a cylon is stuffed into an MRI for a brainscan, and is promptly torn to pieces by its magnetic field. Talk about your traumatic research!)
When we've got Cylon on the ceiling.... (dah, dah, da-dah!)
Oh what a feeling / When we got Cylon on the ceiling
Since I don't know the song you're singing, my brain is turning it into OMWF.
They got...the Cylon...OUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT! (They got the Cyyyyylooon ouuuuuuuut!)
There needs to be a musical episode of BSG. Since they can't really blame magic for making everybody sing... maybe there can be a computer virus that infects all the Cylons and makes them sing.
I just wanna be myself
I just wanna be myself
I just wanna be myself
Be myself
Be myself
I'm all alone, so are we all
We're all clones
All are one and one are all
All are one and one are all
Send in the clones, there ought to be clones...
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together
I am the Boomer. I am the Boomer. I am the Cylon. Goo goo g'joob
Have we heard any music or popular culture on BSG, aside from knowing that they have news/talk shows similar to our own?
It was a perfectly good article chronicling a difficult process of interpersonal and corporate negotiation, and very interesting, with a few unnecessary and distracting opinions thrown in.
Do you expect that kind of complete objectivity in a Sunday Times magazine article, though? To me the context of the article, and the fact that it's an arts-section type of piece, signal that it's not going to be hard journalism. I don't usually read the Times, so I may have a poor idea what they normally run in the magazine.
How you summarize the article might highlight that we were reading for different things, though. To me the story's hook is, "There once was a bad show, which had some fans. It was remade as a good show, which made some of those fans angry." The conflict between the fandom and actual quality is what interests me. A completely objective description of events would make me think, "But why should I care? Why are you telling me about this show in particular, when every show has conflicts we don't hear about?"
if you have an enemy captive, and want to know what makes him tick
In "Flesh & Bone"? They didn't want to know what made him tick. Roslin's the only one who even wanted Leoben questioned; Adama was ready to kill him immediately. Then Leoben told them that he'd planted a nuke on one of the ships, which gave them something to chat about, and made it a very bad idea to perform any experiments that might actually kill him.
They've never demonstrated much interest in why the Cylons do what they do. Cylons kill people. Most of them figure that's all there is to know. Which is part of why Boomer's in such a spot.
