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BSG First 5 eps of Season 2 tonight

Sindatur

Regular
FOr anyone who has missed an episode or two of Season 2 Battlestar Galactica, SciFi channel is running all 5 episodes tonight in a marathon.
 
I only recently saw all of S1, so I'm quite excited at my chance to catch up with what's happened in S2 so far. :D
 
I only recently saw all of S1, so I'm quite excited at my chance to catch up with what's happened in S2 so far. :D

You will be surprised. I can assure you that. And when you add some great dialogue and fancy special effects with unexpected twists... Hey, it's better than S1.
 
I enjoyed S1 more, though quite frankly, that's due to being able to watch the DVDs. On DVD, the pacing and emotional intensity don't get interrupted every few minutes, letting you really get into the show and you can watch as many in a row as you want to. On TV, all that gets utterly destroyed for me and the immersion factor is almost nil. I hates it, I do. I may skip out the rest of S2 just so I don't get turned off of the show because of TV and catch up again with DVDs.
 
S2 is rather good. I agree with the comments about advertising and atmosphere - fortunately I have the advertising edited out before I watch 'em.

How many ads are there in the US?
 
i'm watching them off the 'net with ads removed, I watched three in a row last night. It really is just great. Two unexpected deaths so far, I love the direction the plot is taking and am loving Baltars' growing acceptance that he really is better off being a bad guy...
 
I haven't seen much TV the past couple of years, because I was bothered by the advertising. Now it seems there's even more of it than before. Used to be, you saw 47 minutes of your show every hour. Judging by looking at time on DVD releases, episodes are now 43 minutes.
 
That 42 to 43 minute running time (depending a bit on whether you mean useful story time or include rolling credits), has been pretty standard at least as far back as B5's run.

But, yes, there definitely was a time when that ratio was better.
 
Yea, we've been watching the Waltons and Original Star Trek and it's 50 minutes an epsiode.

JMS spoke quite frequently of run time being between 42 and 43 minutes for a 1 hour format.

Half hour Dr. Who format ran at about 25 mintues on PBS, it seems.

Funny, on the LOST boards, the alot of the youngsters often complain about how "there's too many damn commercials", and they're not old enough to know any different than 42-43 minutes.
 
Half hour Dr. Who format ran at about 25 mintues on PBS, it seems.
BBC shows aren't a fair comparison. They're like PBS original shows: intended to be shown without commercials, and taking up virtually their entire time slot.

The BBC-America cable network edits many of their shows down to make room for the commercials. Some shows they give expanded time slots; 40 minutes for a nominal half-hour comedy. Even when they do that you can notice that it doesn't flow right. The shows just aren't written with those regularly spaced conveniant stopping points.

When A&E showed MI-5 (that's "Spooks" to the UK viewers), they also edited out roughly 12 or 15 minutes per hour long episode to make room for commercials. As with some of the BBC-America mysteries, those edits sometimes remove important information ..... or much of the character development ...... or both.
 
Actually, in the case of old Dr. Who on PBS it is fair, because it falls right in there. No commercials and runs 25 minutes, that's right on the money for 1970s. It didn't take up the whole half hour, they showed Station identification and previews of other shows for the other 5 minutes.
 
What I meant was, it's not fair to compare the actual running times of shows intended for commercial TV to those intended for non-commercial TV. They are doing different things under a very different business model.

Current PBS and BBC shows (and those produced for premium cable networks; well some of those seem to be produced at roughly 45 minutes with an eye toward possible syndication later) still have that same running time; just a couple minutes or so short of the nominal time slot to allow for station ID's and the like.
 
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