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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.'"
Best way to get people to do something is to tell them not to!
by the fact that Starbuck is played by
Katee Sackhoff.
Yummy.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
I find it amusing that this new series takes on the name of an original series to draw that initial crowd of original Battlestar fans. He just might be doing the smart thing by lowering expectations. That way, the viewers will know exactly what to expect (i.e. not much) and they won't bitch and moan as much on the Internet afterwards on how bad this new series was, in their eye. Reverse psychology as a public relations tool? :: firastudios.com ::
www.firastudios.com
They did a pretty damned good job with Dune.
I'm with you on that. As much as I enjoy seeing Sting emerge from a shower in a leather thong and a fat guy pulling plugs out of guys chests and drinking their blood, I think Sci-Fi did about as well as anyone could in trying to bring that book to any screen.
"You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine." ~Homer S
Specifically, Masters of the Universe (He-Man), and Transformers (any remake/sequel).
Both were 1980's cartoons, remade recently. Both remakes remake what it means to SUCK.
This may be a biased comment, having grown up on the original He-Man and Optimus Prime. But, like Olmos suggests, I feel hurt having seen the remakes. I'm almost offended by them.
--Doogie Howser
I'm curious...I wonder if the mythos of the show, which were basically cribbed from the Book Of Mormon and also may or may not have included some items of Mormon dogma that the LDS folks wanted to keep secret, will remain intact in the remake?
It is interesting to note that the LDS Church did not sue ABC over Battlestar Galactica. Then again, the Super Seekrit Skripturez of the Church of Scientology are very well protected under the Sonny Bono Act, where the Book of Mormon passed into the Public Domain generations ago. If someone cribbed the bizarro stuff that passes for "higher revelations" in the CoS and used them as inspiration for a SF movie/TV show, the one who had the temerity to do so would probably be legal dead meat. Not to mention OTHER possible ramifications...[shudder]
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Face it - as much as I have fond memories of the original, it was something hacked together to be a running series to have lasers becaue star wars did.
:)
Overall, it was kinda cheesy and almost a family show. (Acutally as I remember, they had a lot of stuff crammed into that one season) As I remember, a lot of time with Boxey and Daggit. They took this to the next level with Battlestar 1980.
If the sci-fi version cuts out some of the cheese and makes a darker galactica, more power to them. For a rag-tag, fugitive fleet, they seemed pretty well off.
As long as they have the original music, it can't be bad
The old Battlestar Galactica suffered in comparison to Star Wars because the television series could give no hope that the heroes would win. The heroes were therefore losers. On the other hand the constraints of network television story telling demanded that the enemy Cylons, at least the normal soldiers, be portrayed as being ridiculously inept and incompetent, to be swept away like flies in single combat when the heroes used their innate ability. Both sides were portrayed as losers.
Decades have passed and United States audiences willing to watch science fiction have been exposed to anti-heroes in the mass media, from the movies to TV shows such as the Sopranos to WWE pro wrestling. The anti-hero is almost a norm, and it is expected for the weak to be continuously humiliated.
Now is the right time to re-image the Galactica story. Instead of network television having to cater to mass tastes, the Sci Fi Channel can concentrate on a smaller niche, a niche that is quite comfortable with WWE or reality show entertainment.
When I read purported leaks of the Galactica storyline by Ron Moore, I saw that Moore had solved all of the problems posed by the constraints on the original series. What Moore has done is to understand that while the supposed heroes are required to fill up time on the screen, the real stars of the series are the Cylons. Victims in modern television are no more to be pitied than the people trampled in a Japanese monster movie. The story of Galactica has never been about the humans, it should have been, and Moore has remade it to be, about the rise and victory of the new dominant species, the new top predator.
Many will criticize the ridiculous and humiliating portrayal of humans in the new Galactica series. What they fail to see is that we should watch the story as if it were told from the Cylons' perspective. The new series will examine why humans are inferior and why Cylons are obligated to wage total war to eliminate human evil.
Root for the true good guys of Galatica--the Cylons.
Think about it. The original concept of Battlestar Gallactica was great: Refugees struggling to escape annihalation and find a new home. But there were so many bad, bad things about BG that had nothing to do with the state of the art of special effects.
Here are some examples:
1. The damn robot dog.
2. The incredibly stupid plots - even in the TV movie. Remember the insect aliens running a casino to entrap humans into becoming larva food? The first half of the TV movie was great, but it went way down-hill from there.
3. The damn robot dog.
4. The damn robot dog.
5. Cheesy 70's hair. At least Boomer didn't have an afro, but that wasn't much help.
6. The overall plot turning into something that wasn't all that different from Space 1999 - each episode was either a throw-away event where the BG either meets aliens or suffers a cylon attack, and then escapes at the end - usually after being betrayed by the aliens or fighting off another cylon attack. The episodes dealing with the plot to find Earth were mostly "Gilligan and the Castaways almost, but not quite, make it off the island again" episodes.
The things I remember about BG that were cool was the tech - the whole idea of an aircraft carrier in space, the way-cool Cylon fighters and base-ships, the cylons themselves (except for the leader-bots, which were lame). Even the thinly-veiled Mormon philosophy was OK.
There's just one thing I'm hoping for: No damn robot dog. If they have to have a robot, it had better be Crow-T-Robot, Tom Servo, or Bender. Or a damn robot dog that's very quickly taken over by the Cylons.
Oh yeah, and make Starbuck a lesbian, too.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Transformers Armada is atrocious. Half the time Armada's writers can't bother to get the characters' names right, the animation gives new meaning to the word cheap, and the writers spend so much time hinting at "epic" storylines that the series effectively goes nowhere. As far as remakes or sequels to the original Transformers go, this one is at the bottom of the barrel. Expecting another G1 or Beast Wars is probably asking for too much, but at this point I'll take Beast Machines or Robots in Disguise over the Armada cartoon.
The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is mostly based on the original Mirage comic, which is why it seems darker than the original cartoon.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
I used to pitch stories to Star Trek: The Next Generation. My agent was the same one that got Ron Moore started. She got me in the door and I would pitch stories over the phone (I'm told this is VERY rare) to Moore. Even though I did get a couple mentions (by reference, not by name) in "Hollywood Scriptwriter," I have to point out, before I make my comments, that Ron Moore is making a living writing for film and TV and I'm not (although my company will soon be producing video and digital film).
Ron likes to change things. He's the writer at ST:TNG who would frequently change things from the way they were. He wrote "Relics," the episode where Scotty is found in an old ship and says, "I'll bet Jim Kirk himself took the Enterprise out of mothballs to find me." Later he, with Brannon Braga, has Scotty see the gaping hole in "Generations" where Kirk was "killed."
Ron, as best I could tell, is a very intelligent, articulate, and friendly (if shy, it seemed) person. I would never wish him any ill will. However, he has shown that whenever he works with anyone else's material, he "loves to change things" (as Scotty once said). He seems to actually take delight in making sure he takes the original material and changes it enough to actually irritate fans of the original.
Once I saw his name attached to the project, I basically decided I was VERY unlikely to watch it. When I found out Starbuck was a woman, I was sure I wouldn't watch it. It completely destroys the "buddy" relationship that was so important to the original.
Sounds like it's going to be a disaster on the level of the American version of "Iron Chef". It's really too bad TV staff assigned to do remakes don't give a crap about the show they're remaking. They want to do their own thing, and express themselves...okay well why are they doing a freaking remake then? Because they're bankrupt on ideas! Christ the circular craptacularness confounds me.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Why is Bea Arthur the Slashdot scifi topic icon?
This new version (without seeing a single episode) is completely devoid of what real fans of the show liked. It's like finding out that Darth Vader was really really annoying kid who then later turned into a total poser. Oh wait, that really happened. Now you can see what fans are feeling.
Hey, it wasn't the best show that it could have been. The daggit should have been set on fire, roasted and shot into space. Sure, they could have used more space scenes, but you have to understand that ABC wouldn't pay the money to produce more and they were rushing the entire project. Glen Larson did the best with what he had at the time... which was the late seventies. Everyone in the thread seems to be trashing the obvious mistakes, but forget the great stuff the show had. The *robot* cylons were the shiznit. The Vipers were cooler than X-Wings and I'd take Face... er, Starbuck and Apollo over Luke and Wedge any day. The cylon bases were kick ass and Boltar was the guy you loved to hate.
Let me sum up. BG without the Mormon mythos behind it simply isn't the same show. You don't have to agree with the theology any more than you had to agree with the Catholic undertones of the X-Files to enjoy the show. Heck, when the show was in it's first one, no one really even knew it was there. It's what the show was based on and Sci-Fi is using the show in name only to attract viewers. Sci-Fi really should have let Glenn and Richard Hatch do the show *they* wanted done which would have kept the backstory intact and allowed the show to be updated and entertaining.
Here's hoping that the miniseries is a failure and the series never gets started.
I think the big thing is just in raw quality - yes, the TV series is better written. IMHO, that's where the improvement ends. I found the original film to be better acted, better directed, and fucking gorgeous. And, once again, the demented mind of H.R.Giger did not fail to deliver: the Harkonnen were really, really scary. Plus, somehow I really liked the undertone of 80's metal guitars tucked into the symphonic soundtrack. And Sting is cool.
A computer-related note: Unlike the original Star Trek bridge, the Battlestar Galactica controls and displays actually worked. Tektronix provided much of the gear. This created a problem - the actors had to be trained to run the stuff. The Trek crew could push random buttons, but the Galactica crew had to get it right. They hated that.
Most sci-fi fans don't like the head of the Sci-fi channel. They, and I agree, that she has ruined it. They play more horror than sci-fi. The there's that stupid crossing over guy and scare tactics!
Ronald Moore, of Star Trek fame(he sucked then too), wrote the script, and he based it off of the movie! The movie was the first couple of episodes with a lot cut out. He didn't even bother to watch the WHOLE series! It was just one season. I have it on 5 tapes! I think Mr. Moore needs to rent more porn flicks to vent is addiction to sex (the re-imagining has been called a soft porn flick because of all the sex scenes in it).
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Oh, sure, remakes can be terrible, though I loved Aliens, T2, and any number of other remakes and sequels.
As mentioned elsewhere, we all know that Evil Dead II was amazing.
What I want to see is a BG based on the comic, which got to be one of the best dark and weird comics from the majors in those pre-indy days.
Fraud, incompetent leaders, black markets, prostitution, homeless people stranded in the halls while Caligula-like banquets take place behind the guard of the growing private militaries. Adama flaking out and being stranded in the interrogation tank for something like six months in real time, the whole Solaris/robotic society subplot, the young Adama flashbacks to the colonies at their height. It's all good.
Add in the freaky proto-byrne baroque artwork (dig those branches on the "food planet") and it was a decade ahead of its time.
Give me a series well-based on that and a trilogy of movies based on the first three years of Micronauts, and I'ld be a happy man.
Damn, I haven't thought about BG in *years*. I LOVED that damned comic. I can see the images in front of me as I sit here. They're engraved in my brain.
Road Warrior meets Blade Runner meets the Terminator in claustrophobic, disease-ridden ships, all with space battles, oasis planets, and a search for the heavenly world of the gods made flesh.
Aw, sh*t. Now I gotta go out and buy some.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
They were. Haven't you seen the Imperious Leader?
Get off my launchpad!
AMEN!
Preach it brother!
This is a question I have had for years, why doesn't Sci_Fi channel actually run Science Fiction? Take a look at their schedule for a week and count up the hours actually running things that qualify as Sci-Fi and it comes up pretty damned short.
Freddy, Jason and Chuckie are NOT Sci-Fi.
Most of the other slasher flicks are NOT Sci-Fi either.
John Edwards is NOT Sci-Fi.
Beyond Belief is NOT Sci-Fi. (Having an actor from a Trek franchise as host does not make a show Sci-Fi.)
In Search of... is NOT SCi-Fi.
Scare Tactics is NOT Sci-Fi.
Braveheart is NOT Sci-Fi. (Yes they actually ran it.)
And I'm sorry, I want someone to explain how Dark Shadows is Sci-Fi. Being a cult classic doesn't make a show Sci-Fi. Let some other channel run it.
Democrat delenda est
If coyprights were accelerated to the 14 years duration of the Copyright Act of 1790 (USA) and the Statute of Anne (England), then the original copyrights on Battlestar Galactica would now be expired and we might have more competition in Galactica sequels (which would have their own copyrights begining when they would be made).
Of course they are bad now. Your trying to watch something as an adult that gave you pleasure when watched as a child. Tastes change as you get older. I can't imagine myself at the age of 22 watching the smurfs, He-Man etc, playing cops with my finger as a gun, racing my collection of Hot Wheels across the kitchen. Just as at the age of 8 I can't see myself enjoying much of what I do now as an adult. (especially girls. no more cooties! ;)
Will the kids who watched Teletubbies, Barney, the Power Rangers, etc still enjoy them as an adult? Doubtful. I hope not anyways.
Hows the saying go? "When I was a child I thought as a child, spoke as a child. But when I grew to be man I put away childish things."
As seen on a piece of junkmail that Homer immediately discards on an early ep of "The Simpsons."
Will be avoiding this show, not b/c it's a poor version of the original "Battlestar Galactica," but b/c it's "Battlestar Galactica." They could have directed this $$$ into any number of original concepts, or, God help us, more "Farscape," but instead they decided to run a few volts through this corpse to see if it'd sit up. To hell with that.