Slashdot Mirror
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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