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Olmos Tells Fans: "Don't Watch Galactica"
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Edward James Olmos, in a meeting with a group of TV Critics, did something unbelievable: he pleaded with them to tell their readers not to watch the new Battlestar Galactica remake on the Sci-Fi Channel: 'I must say one thing and will say this very clearly, if you are a person who really has a strict belief in the original, I would not advise that you watch this program. It'll hurt them.'"
He's going to be sued for this.
Vonal Declosion
...After all, aren't remakes always worse than the originals?
It's... News for Nerds! Stuff that Matters! La-de-da-de-da-DE-da!
The original "Battlestar Galactica" was not the worst science fiction show on TV but it was not good, not good at all.
Maybe I will like this new one after all.
He's been saying this for quite some time now (Google: olmos galactica purist).
Clearly this is just PR. I wonder how many of the "purists" will actually tune out?
Suckas.
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
More "space opera" with the emphasis on opera. Lots of badly acted interpersonal drama with an occasional shoot-out. Why? Because no-name actors playing kissy face are cheaper in their first couple years than special effects.
The Star Trek folks even figured out how to deal with the now-famous actor (read $$) problem. Cancel the series and start a new one. Frequently.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Granted, these shows are cheap, but Sci-Fi got great ratings (i think) when they brought Star Trek to the network, proving that light entertainment is appreciated. So why the realism in a Battlestar Galactica show? Why the heck is Sci-Fi so dark?
Tech TV's Anime Unleashed is trying really hard and getting out the Channel for IT Nerds image.
The SciFi Channel is fast becoming 'The place bad programing goes to die'
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Really people. If the sci fi channel had the real money to pump into something, they would. *Cough* Farscape! *cough*
Complaining that the sets look cheap on a non-mainstay cable channel isn't the reality of television now. Farscape was the most expensive made for cable show ever. It really needed a lot of viewers. I was one of them, but obviously the economics don't support it. Period. So it died. I cannot help that. I was watching. But at least Sci-fi is trying to do something original. It is at least aggressive about growing its audience. That is why I watch them. They try. And they make original TV. So there. Can you say that about many other channels? Does lifetime have a budget for their made-for-tv crapfests that last seventy million hours? NO. Sci-fi is working on it. It may not be the best, but they are working on it.
Now that Galactica (a mediocre at best TV show, but one that makes us remember our past, I even had a jacket as a kid) comes back for a little cable money, you all start screaming that it is crap long before it airs. Months before it airs. Look, they just cannot afford to make the best shows with the best actors. YOU NEED TO BUY MORE ADVERTISING AND THEN THEY CAN AFFORD TO GROW THE BRAND. Sorry, as much as I am a sci-fi nut, we are a niche market. We will always get a "niche price" on things. Pray that you are not the Oxygen channel and that you have the Isaac Mizrahi show as your original programming.
Look, complaining about the Sci-Fi channel will not change the fact that they are broke and trying to change that. Giving you something to watch... even if it is a remake, is not cheap. They at least have the balls to venture on TV. They are spending money, employing light riggers, paying actors, and getting TV made when you have no room to bitch or get stuck with the same reruns you've seen since '95.
Stop bitching about anyone making new programming, because if the execs smell backlash, then we are getting NOTHING NEW, and they are putting all of their money into TRADING SPACES. Got it?
Truth is, the same fanboys that are bitching about this are the ones that were aghast that Star Trek centered a show on a space station, went apopletic when they expanded a certain female elf's part in LOTR, complained that Dune wasn't exactly like the book, and demanded that Wolverine wear yellow spandex in X-Men.
My advice is that you accept shows with an open mind if you want to see more sci-fi on TV, and go out and meet a female once in a while. Your comic books and Illustrated Guides to the Enterprise will still be next to your computer when you return. Trust me.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
As an active, temple-going Mormon, and someone whose seen the original BG movie, I had to have the connections pointed out to me, and even then it was just surface stuff like calling the council at the beginning of the movie "The Quorum of the Twelve" (or something like that, it's been a year or so and my memory is hazy). It was more along the lines of insider jokes for fellow mormons to laugh at (the writers were mormon). Either way, it was *not* some sort of "expose" of the "secret Mormon dogma". There is nothing to sue over, or worry about...
Oh, and the people that had the temerity to base a work on the CoS were Cos members themselves. And the results *were* horrific, but only to the audience. Unless you *liked* "Battlefield Earth"?!?!?
But they could not afford one last season of Farscape to end the series that loyal fans had watched for four years?
SciFi is trying it's level best to run headlong into the ground.
They do not have my sympathy.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
"Best way to get people to do something is to tell them not to!"
DON"T PIRATE MUSIC! Yup! It works.
One thing bothers me now, that didn't then, was the aircraft mix. Other than shuttles, the only tactical spacecraft was the fighters, and the only weapon they carried was a laser weapon of some kind.
No jamming craft, or EW craft, and worst of all, no tactical bombers-missile launchers.
The whole idea of having an aircraft carrier isn't just to carry airrcaft. Were that true, they could have pushed a tactical fighter off a garbage scow and lit up the engines. The whole idea of having an aircraft carrier is to project massive offensive military air power across great distances.
You mean to tell me that despite all their great technology they can't come up with a single nuclear tipped cruise missile; that the mission planners couldn't even think of a single small nuclear strike against clearly incompenent robots? They can create a robot dog for some 8 year old mouth-breather, but they can't come up with better ordnance than a laser?
Okay, I have ranted enough.
Dawn of the Dead
We need another Babylon 5! There hasn't been a sci-fi series as good for almost a decade now.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Anyhow, back to my original point. Sci-Fi has virtually no good programming. As the person way up above said, they spend a lot of time airing shows that have nothing to do with sci-fi (except for Crossing Over... of course ;p). The final straw was when they killed Farscape. In their deus ex machina ending, Aeryn and John get vaporized and left to die. The crew screams and begs for mercy. And then Sci-Fi thanked the viewers for 5 great years. Yeah - that's what did it for me. The whole "You really don't give a rip about your fans, do you?"
Then there was Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was saved by Sci-Fi after Comedy Central decided to can it, it's true. But they stipulated that MST3K stick with sci-fi and horror movies (Horror is sci-fi? Since when?). Now they run the same five episodes ad nauseum every Saturday. Ironically, Sci-Fi's filler material consists of the same movies Mike and the crew would "pay homage to."
There also was the Saturday Morning Anime a long time ago, which was an introduction for many people to the art form and probably was one of the first major showings of anime on the cable networks. Even if it wasn't the greatest anime, it was better than the Ray Bradbury Theater. But Sci-Fi in their infinite wisdom scrapped that idea as well and the station continues to be decisively animephobic.
So, for me, Sci-Fi is a waste of a television station. A good idea marred by horrible execution and ignorance. Maybe someday they'll get the clue that I don't want to watch cheesy B-movies from the 1950s, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.
So it's not a complete diatribe (too late), you might ask what I would do if I were Sci-Fi. Well, first, I'd either surround myself with a combination of older space operas and have at least two exciting new ones. If we can't have the lavish sets of Farscape, we can scale it down a bit. Have some anime movies from time to time. Ditch all of the goth and horror nonsense that isn't sci-fi. It's probably okay to keep some of the new age programming, like the UFO secrets thing or even that show where they have the homebrew sci-fi clips, but don't rely on it. And for crist sake listen to your fans. Not the rabid fanboys who know what kind of underwear Captain Kirk wore in episode 24, but your typical casual fan. Fans make sci-fi work. Without them, you have nothing.
The remake could hardly suck as bad as the original. How much cheaper could it have been done with the same fighting sequence being played over and over again?
Kill off an original top-quality show like Farscape, and instead produce drek like Tremors, Battlestar Galactica, and those awful made-for-SciFi movies of theirs.
I'm starting to think they hate science fiction, and should be relabled as the "Schlocky Horror Channel".
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This new version (without seeing a single episode) is completely devoid of what real fans of the show liked.
Really? Well, I was 6 when the real show came out. Maybe I'd just like to kick it a little bit with some new Galactica. I certainly am a fan (matter of fact I have my tiny little Galactica kids jacket framed in my home) and I would like to say no one alienated me. You just said that you and everyone else has not seen the new Galactica... yet you run it into the ground. Seems like you are obviously in on what is happening with it, which like everyone else here with an opinion means YOU HAVE NO FRIGGIN' IDEA.
Dune was fine. "Children" was actually good. They were all exceptional for low budget. So there you go.
Just because Starbuck is a chick doesn't mean it won't be good. Hell, that actually sounds like fun to me. After all, we're not talking Shakespeare here. We're talking fun. I don't think of Battlestar as a tome to the ages. I think of it as low budget fun that had spaceships that turned left all the time in space.
Screw the mythos. The only mythos I remember in Battlestar was that they all war helmets that looked like pharaohs... and that they did a kind of "wandering people" thing. More Moses to me.
So what if they change it? It was silly stuff to begin with. I doubt there will be any protests in the streets about this one.
Looks like fun... not the meaning of life.
I'm actually looking forward to this. Sound corny, but I'm curious to actually witness what they've done. Sure, I loved the 70's show, but I'm not so foolish as to think that it is a golden goose. I see potential in this interpretation, even with the less-than-folklore aspect in comparison to the original. I see strong actors, a good plot, and most of all, a far grittier template to work from.
The only thing I've read that I'm less than thrilled about is the sex. I'm sick of sex in sci-fi. I don't want to see Ripley's underwear. I don't want to see the vulcan chick get jelled-up. I don't want to see Baltar getting a hummer from a damned inflatadate!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Gee whiz, they shot the thing in some shopping mall and I think the only spaceship shot was a launch plume (could have used stock footage of a Saturn V takeoff.)
Some might call it "intelligent sci-fi" - I call it cheap and boring. Give me a rousing Space Opera any day over the visual valium of Gattaca.