I already knew that (except the bit about him being a genius). It's the contrast between the utopian TNG universe and the dystopian BSG universe that makes my head asplode.
Dude, that's deep, and accurate.
I liked BSG a lot in the first, I don't know 4 or so seasons. I love the camera work, the special effects, the fact that you couldn't hear space battles which is accurate, and the characterization. I even liked the obvious plot device of human-looking Cylons because they used it well. The camera work especially stood out as it added a grittiness that among other things, like dirt, made it much more realistic than the antiseptic world of TNG where nothing ever got dirty, even the guys working in the guts of the machine. The only time you saw any dirt was after a battle and it was obviously set up that way. Don't get me wrong, I watched every single episode of TNG, and loved it, but the differences between that and BSG are great, and I liked BSG better at first.
Then we stopped watching BSG when they decided that they needed to up the realism quotient by ****ing with the camera. Getting in for super-tight closeups where you see half of their face filling the entire screen, and shaking the camera at the same time. Switching from person to person by what looked like chucking the camera around. Showing someones neck while they were talking instead of part of their face. NEVER holding the camera still for one second it seemed like. As if they thought only constant motion could make it "real". I can't remember what season but it was at the beginning of a new season and we watched about 5 episodes before we figured it was just the new way it was. I seem to remember an episode with boxing, where Starbuck was fighting. I remember the fight scene where the camera moved so much you had a hard time seeing what was actually going on. It went from a fist to a torso then a brief glimpse of a head, then legs and feet then back again so fast you had no idea they were actually fighting. I actually started thinking the actors were holding still and all the action was being portrayed by the camera motion. I was disappointed because the story of the episode was pretty good, but that camera work made it unwatchable.
It distracted enough from the show that we stopped watching. Plus my wife gets motion sick easily, and that was the last straw for her. The camera work before was herky-jerky enough that it kind of bothered her but the story and effects and characterization was strong enough that she dealt with it. But that new "realism" pushed her over the edge into full-blown nausea.
Someone tell me if they got away from that kind of camera work later in the series. I would be willing to get it on disc if I knew that got better.
