The battle for Westeros has barely had one episode of Game of Thrones to unfold, but already series creator George R.R. Martin is attempting to lauch a full-scale sci-fi war right here in the real world!
A few weeks ago Martin offered up his disdain on the LOST finale during an interview with The New Yorker, which started a mock-Twitter battle with showrunner Damon Lindelof, who read the news and joked it off.
But ol' George wasn't content to stop there, as his latest interview with TVSquad sees the Song of Ice and Fire writer clarifying his LOST comments, and launching new feuds with both Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5!
Elaborating on his LOST stance that started it all, Martin said:
"By the time we reached the finale, I was still hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. I still think 'Lost' told a terrific story... a terrific story with a terrible ending.
If the payoff had been equal to the set-up, I'd rank LOST among the very best series in the history of television. It didn't, so I can't. If LOST had delivered an ending that tied everything together in some brilliant and unexpected but satisfying fashion, I would have been first in line to buy the boxed set of DVDs so I could go back and watch it again episode by episode, exclaiming with pleasure, "Aha, so that's what that meant," and, "Oho, now I see, I thought that meant X, but it really meant Y."
Instead, I fear, watching the series over again would give me more frustration than pleasure, and I'd find myself muttering, "Well, that was never explained," and "Oho, that was a great puzzle that led nowhere," and "Hmmm, that was kind of arbitrary." Maybe if I did I would see that I was wrong, that the eventual end was actually being hinted at and foreshadowed in the first season, that all the puzzles are explained if only I looked a little deeper. Maybe. I have my doubts, though. Unlike Locke, I am not a man of faith. I am a man of skepticism."
John Locke was really more into games of backgammon than thrones, anyway.
But it doesn't end there! Martin went on to trash the finale of Battlestar Galactica, comparing it with both Babylon 5 and the original 1978 Battlestar:
"At the risk of starting another "feud," let me say that I was a huge fan of Ron Moore's revival of Battlestar Galactica (though not of the original, which most of us in the SF community still call 'Battlestar Ponderosa'), but I hated the ending of that series even more than I hated the ending of LOST. Daniel, meanwhile, prefers Babylon 5. He argues that B5 delivered on all the promises it made the viewer, that it paid off in the end with a strong finale and a resolution in keeping with all that went before. Whereas Battlestar Galactica started very strong, then seemed to lose its way.
But I still think Battlestar Galactica (the new one) was a superior achievement. Yes, the ending was terrible (though, as a caveat, I am not sure that there is ANY way to resolve that premise in a way that I'd like, and god knows the way the new show ended was infinitely preferable to what happened with the original 'Battlestar Ponderosa')... but those great early episodes don't become any less great because later episodes sucked. The best episodes of BSG are much stronger than any episodes of B5, I would argue. I don't know that Daniel would disagree with that. But he still feels that, if you judge the two series as a whole, not episode by episode, B5 rates higher."
What will the legendary fantasy writer say next? Fire up your own thoughts on the finales in the comments section below, and be sure to watch Game of Thrones, now airing Sunday nights on HBO! Need a list of reasons why?
