Coming to terms with the "retro-active continuity"

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-2003
#1

So anybody who listens to Ron Moore’s episode commentary, or the Podcast, or in general does some behind-the-scenes research is aware that unlike Babylon 5 for example, the complete outline of the story wasn’t developped in advance.

Meaning, the Final Four weren’t planned to be Cylons from the beginning. Even later the writers just figured that Ellen would have to be the final one. And then of course the conception of the 7 to close the numbering gap.

Now, first I was kind of dissapointed by this, for a longer time, because it means that there are no actual hints to the outcome much much later. It makes everything more constructed and artificial.

But now I took a different approach. It’s quite clear that if an epic story gets developped, it goes through many “drafts” and stuff gets changed around until the final product. The difference in some cases is that it doesn’t get released until all of it is finished. But does it really make that big a difference?

The author thinks to himself “I’m going to make this one a special person” even if he yet doesn’t have any idea in which way or how this plays into the story. That part comes later. So in essence he’s doing it retro actively. The important part is that it fits. And isn’t that actually a great thing about fiction and story-telling in general? In some ways it’s an even greater talent to do it that way. The other aspect is that there can always be multiple interpretations or connections and whatnot.

In short, even pre-conceptualised stories went through same changes during their development, so what’s the big deal.

just my 30 cents.

#2

I would go further to say…especially in this case, they have gone back & made sure what they do will fit in with what was done previously & even try to work in hints from the previous material. That takes some skill & keen observation.

#3

Welcome to the realities of tv-writing! :stuck_out_tongue:

#4

I guess I’ve never understood why a lot of people expect shows (which unless they’re really unusual are works-in-progress as they’re being shown) to be entirely thought out ahead of time. Part of artistic creation is editing, going back, fitting things together. It’s not like a show is created and then released on DVD like an author writes a novel and then it’s published and that’s that (though some authors keep tinkering, which is… controversial).

As long as the “ret-con” works within an artistic universe, I’m cool with it. I’m guilty of as much when writing papers and not writing the introduction until the end - I don’t know where I’m going until I’ve arrived there. :slight_smile:

#5

What makes me mad is… We all know that originaly the 12 models were going to be “Whos a cylon in the fleet this week” kinda thing.

I really liked the idea that the cylons built skin jobs , they were hunting them… go find Earth.

The whole fnal 5 thing, which clearly wasn’t what was going on in the beggining… was a severly changed premise.

I also point out that RDM said that the religion “one God” thing came from a line in the episode and the writers adopted it later.

I love the show… but I more loved the show of the first season a LOT more than the epic bigger story.

#6

That’s the other thing. I never considered that this was common practice even in the shows with over-arching stories. Of course most series don’t have that anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

#7

I was just about to say this. I’ve been thinking about how this compares on BSG and the Star Wars prequels where Lucas didn’t seem as careful to make things fit within each other better.

And then there’s the whole “shape of things to come” with Hera, which was certainly hinted at WAAAAAAY back during season 1 and now seems to be coming to fruition with cylons being slowly assimilated into the RTF.

#8

It’s not something I particularly enjoy, but seeing as how SciFi has shut down other shows without much notice (FARSCAPE), it shoudl come as no surprise that BSG just had a general outline and is developing as best it can along those lines.

Again, I would love a meticulously planned plotline, but the one provided is certainly better than most.

#9

I just don’t think that a totally planned out show is possible, particularly with how TV is produced and aired these days. Notice the dearth of serials since 2003-04 when Lost and BSG made them all the rage. Now it’s all doctors and lawyers and cops…AGAIN. It’s safe and easy to produce and if your show doesn’t find its audience RIGHT AWAY, well, it can be cancelled with nary a worry (hey, that rhymes).

#10

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Ret-conning is going in and saying “Oh this didn’t actually happen that way, it happened like this because…”

Nick not being Chief’s baby was ret-conning.

Chief being a Cylon was not ret-conning.

No, the final 5 weren’t planned from the start, but I kinda like that. It means they were never special, there were no extra-long shots of their faces as hints at random times. If a character introduced at the start of a Trek episode had more than 5 seconds of no-talky face time, he was a bad guy.

They allowed old, random, thrown in there stuff to become “wow, look at how well that fits!” stuff.

Cavil’s line about Chief not being at any of the meetings was meant to show Cavil was a Cylon, but look at how perfectly it fits in not only with Chief being a Cylon, but Cavil knowing he was a Final 5 all along!

Just smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

#11

Well said, Konrad. True retconning is more like the Ferengi relationship to telepaths in Star Trek. Troi provided advice to Picard in the first Ferengi episodes based on what she thought they were feeling, but a couple seasons later we were told that Ferengi were unreadable by telepaths and empaths. This fact became canon, and even became a plot point in a couple of episodes. They never explained how Troi could read those early Ferengi, though. So in that sense, retconning tells us that something we were once told had happened didn’t really happen and please don’t ask about it any more (handwave, handwave, oh look at that thing over there while I sweep this under the rug). More like the glowy spines than the change of Nicky’s fatherhood. I still think it’s kind of a retcon, but after your argument, it’s a much gentler form, proof that the BSG writers are clever and adaptable rather than lazy.

And very true about those Star Trek guest stars. They tried to fix that near the end of the first season of DS9, by introducing a Bajoran engineer as a sidekick to Chief O’Brien, because they had already written the story for the season finale to include an assassin on the station, and they didn’t want everyone guessing that it was the guest star who just happened to start working with O’Brien that week. Unfortunately, the first actress they cast didn’t look “assassiny” enough (:confused:), so they cast a new actress. But they only had time to write her into one episode the week before her big moment, and she was shoehorned into a scene with one or two lines and then forgotten. It was pretty obvious next week what she was up to.

#12

Thanks for he post you hit the defination of ret-con dead-on. Just because a show if improvised along the way does not mean it is being ret-con’d

Let’s see if we can list the ret-cons that have taken place in BSG.

The cylon’s spines no longer glow when fraking, I would say that is one.

any others?

#13

That’s pretty much all I got.

#14

ok, so I wasn’t reffering to actual ret-conning. But I don’t have a term for “making-it-up-as-they-go-along”.

Any suggestions?

#15

One of Wikipedia’s “see also” links on the Retcon entry is “Retrofitting.” The actual entry for that has nothing to do with fiction or stories, but I think it can apply. Fitting new things onto the story without changing the existing story.

#16

“Retrofitting.” I like it. Welcome to the boards, Tareth.

#17

Not an industry term (yet) but I like it.

#18

More like the glowy spines than the change of Nicky’s fatherhood. I still think it’s kind of a retcon, but after your argument, it’s a much gentler form, proof that the BSG writers are clever and adaptable rather than lazy.

Wait, the glowing spines aren’t retconning. We just haven’t seen any cylons get it on onscreen since season one. We’ve always seen them post-coitus. Just sayin’.

I did find the whole thing with Hot Dog being Nikky’s father a bit ret-conny. It either means that Chief took a long time to accept Cally’s marriage proposal or she was a real tramp. Either option seems a bit wrong in the context of “Lay Down Your Burdens (Part Two).” Still, as far as retcon goes, it’s a pretty mild example.

#19

What about “the writing process?”

Unless it’s making it up as you go without trying to make things fit nicely. That’s just George Lucas Prequelitis (or George Lucas disease).

#20

That might work.