I mentioned awhile ago that my roommate and I have been working our way through Battlestar Galactica via Netflix. I loved the first season, and liked the second only a little less. Drama generally doesn’t appeal to me, but the series started with such a good story, such interesting characters, and such cool sci-fi action that I was happy to make an exception.

As I mentioned in my previous BSG post, season 2 ended on what I felt was shaky ground. Well, now I’ve watched season 3 and enough of season 4 to make a simple recommendation: if you haven’t seen Battlestar Galactica, watch the first two seasons and then stop. Season 3 had its ups and downs, with the balance leaning pretty heavily towards the latter. Season 4…

I gave the show the benefit of a doubt and watched “Razor,” the two-hour special that opens season 4. Razor is a flashback that contains a flashback within a flashback. Yes, tertiary flashbacks. No more need be said about the first disc of season four. I gave the show the benefit of another doubt – and then two episodes into the season I dropped all the remaining discs from my Netflix queue.

Think of every thing sci-fi writers could do to ruin a show, and these guys did it. There are ruthless, vengeful robots that look like humans? Obviously when the plot starts running thin half your favorite characters will be revealed to have been robots all along, while the robots who started as frightening villains devolve into emo windbags. Mysterious, supernatural forces at work? Of course it’s better to keep introducing weirder and weirder nonsense than to ever explain anything. Part of me would like to see how BSG ended, but most of me just doesn’t care.