Two Sci-Fi Legends Slated To Return To TV

Two submissions hit the bin spreading news about the return of two sci-fi series to the small screen. This first announcement shouldn't be too much of a surprise for many of you. Silicon Avatar says: "Babylon 5 fans need not flounder about hoping to catch a Babylon 5 episode in syndication. The B5 powers that be have been working on a new installment in the ongoing arc. The Legend of the Rangers is a new movie-length episode in the Babylon 5 world. A trailer has been released, and you can find it at here". And this little tidbit from jcrash: "For those of us that remember what a Cylon is, Fox is resurrecting the Battlestar Galactica series. The evil Cylons with their L.E.D. eyes and 'By your command' are back to hunt down the Galactica as it searches for Earth. Now we just need Buck Rogers to return with that gorgeous sidekick he had and all the cool space series of the 70s will be renewed in the 21st century." Good news, indeed! The submissions mentioned no expected time frames for the release of either made-for-TV movie, but the indications are that both are pilots for proposed series. Legend of the Rangers will air on Sci-Fi channel while the new Galactica series will air jointly on Fox and the Sci-Fi channel.

Comments

Re:"Story Arc"

[gilroy]

Hmmm. I didn't realize that I was a foaming-at-the-mouth B5 fanbody, but I am responding, so...

The main reason that fans use "story arc" nearly exclusively is that JMS used it extensively. For those who don't know, the show's creator J. Michael Straczynski kept a very visible presence on the Net, especially in the B5 Usenet newsgroups. Especially early in the show, he engaged in a running give-and-take wherein he seemed genuinely interested in the feedback of the viewers. He also gave us a rare insight into the mechanics of producing a TV show, including the special challenges of a sci-fi show.

JMS used "arc" quite deliberately. To quote the poster,

Like a story *line* just won't cut it, nope, two dimensions are better than one

For B5, in my opinion, this is actually true: The story didn't just progress linearly. Borrowing a line from literary criticism, there was a rising action, a crest, a climax, and a falling action/denoument. Also, characters and situations evolved in multiple directions and multiple manners. G'kar, for example, started as (deliberately) cardboard villian, moved through wary ally to noble warrior and eventually, priest. Londo Mollari, in JMS' phrasing went from "funny light" to "funny dark" to "serious dark" to just plain dark, toward an eventual redemption.

These are significant character developments, and most of them seemed quite believable. This, BTW, is what helped B5 rise above "space opera" and into, dare one say it, epic. The themes were grand and sweeping, but the characters were individual and three-dimensional.

Now, that doesn't mean that one should ban all other references besides "arc". But it's a useful piece of jargon for what distinguished B5 from (nearly) all other sci-fi shows, and from the vast majority of TV shows, period. Useful jargon tends to propagate itself.

I WOULD call it science fiction

[No Such Agency]

I dunno about Battlestar Galactica (As the Space Channel ads here put it "Who knew the future would look so much like the 70's?") but Bab5 was much "harder" SF than a lot of stuff on TV. Just watching the Starfury fighters fire maneuvering thrusters to move, and doing that strafing thing where the ship is pointed at 90 degrees to the movement vector and blasting away, reminds me how "soft" Star Wars and Trek really are :-) What? Spaceships don't fly the way airplanes do? Who knew! Even "Space: Above and Beyond" didn't have that degree of "realism".

(A physics model I *ache for* in a space sim, by the way)

As long as they're bringing it back...

[chazzf]

I have some advice for the new producers of BG, based on observation of original Battlestar Galactica and Galactica 1980 .

It is not plausible that three Vipers take off at the same time every time.

It goes against the laws of physics that Cylon ships always explode the same way.

The above also applies to Colonial Vipers.

If the Cylons have been around for a thousand, hell even a hundred years, their targeting software should be BETTER. It took us six years or so to go from Doom to UT.

In real life there will not be a nearby agricultural settlement when the Cylons nuke your aggro ships.

It is not permissible to use the above storyline twice.

Deus ex machina is not allowed!

Please read above in case you missed it.

Do not create a military relying solely on aircraft carriers.

Do not make these carriers so weak that a couple of laser blasts to the bridge causes them to explode in three entirely separate places.

Microns, Centons, and Sectons are not interchangeable.

If the Cylons knew that their Centurions couldn't aim for crap they would have (logically) programmed them to charge the enemy and then self-destruct.

Laser turrets and missile turrets are not interchangeable.

Why is the sole shielding available to an advanced carrier some steel welded to the front of the ship. Cain order electromagnetic shields up, why didn't anyone else do this?

Why do so many freighters look like the Gemini freighter?

Didn't that aggro ship get killed twice?

Where do the raw materials come from to continually replace destroyed Vipers?

Why is the proportion of White to Black so horribly horribly unbalanced. Are the Capricans racist?

Any particular reason that fighters armed with lasers have "hundred-megon" loads?

How can an advanced society have absolutely no defense against an air raid? Were they using the National Missile Defense System? An episode established that the computers were tampered with? Are there no sysadmins? Stupid NT/IIS handed Caprica to the Cylons then?

Ugh, end rant.