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New Battlestar Galactica Premieres Monday
An anonymous reader writes "In several
news articles, 'Battlestar
Galactica' returns in a new four hour mini-series on the Sci-Fi
channel this Monday. However, there has been fan furor over some
changes to the story. Aluminum Cylon enemies look more like
humans, complete with feelings, including one with rabid sexual
desires, and the quest is not for a mythical Earth, as it no
longer exists. More information at the BattlestarGalactica.com
website, and the Sci-Fi
channel."
A preview on aintitcool.com is not optimistic.
Looks sex-addled, low-action, and pretty scanty on the mythology. "Cylon Fembots" is all we need to know.
The mythology was pretty much all that made it distinctive, such as it was, in the original case.
I really miss the old shows like Dr. Who that had really alien aliens - crazy blobs, and lethal rocks, and robots without faces. Now every alien has to have a humanoid form and a face so that the actor can "act" and the audience can empathise. When did the universe become so darned human?
I watched the original series when it first aired and there was nothing else like it on TV at the time. Those were the lean years; no Star Trek except reruns of the original series, no other big budgeted SF TV shows (Space:1999 had been canned the year before BSG started), and no cable channels to fill the void. There were three networks (that's right, pre-FOX, pre-UPN) and cable was a rare thing involving bulky switch boxes... Whoa, this is turning into a "when I was your age" type rant.
In its day, BSG was fairly sophisticated and thoughtful. In its day, the SFX were the best you could see on TV (those vector graphics displays they used were, for the time, amazing). Re-making the show now with deacades of new Star Trek series and Farscape and SG1 and such to compare it to pretty much requires the details to be rebuilt from the ground up... The underlying theme of conflict and hope should hold up no matter who's gender changed.
"I'm a scientist! I don't think, I observe!" - Dr. Clayton Forrester
Its an entirely different animal, it is in fact so different that I suspect that the only reason its title is BSG is to get the built in audience ...
You hit the nail right on the head there. See, it's risky for a movie or TV studio to put up the cash for a brand new show. They don't know if anyone is going to watch it or not. Doesn't matter how good it is. It's much easier to simply co-opt an existing brand name and slap it on your product. That way, you're guaranteed that some people are going to watch the first couple of episodes of your show, regardless of whether it's any good or not.
Perhaps the most striking example of this in recent years was Hollywood's remake of Godzilla. The Japanese Godzilla that we all know and love was a real force of nature -- with a twist. It was an unpredictable and unstoppable as a hurricane but with the added sting of knowing that mankind was responsible for its creation. The Hollywood version turned the once-mighty creature into a powerless wimp who scampered away like a frightened kitten in the face of helicopter gunships. Thus, you never really felt like the world was in danger. Every time Godzilla popped up you could chase him away with helicopters or tanks. Of course you can't keep doing that forever but I think we can all agree that eventually they would have found where he was hiding and finished him off. So the writers tried to make him a threat by having him spontaneously produce offspring. So instead of having a large, scary, unstoppable force bearing down on you, this new Godzilla was little more than a glorified bacterium, reproducing rapidly. Not very scary and not at all faithful to the original. In fact, other than the fact that both monsters were created as a result of nuclear testing, there was nothing about this new monster which indicated that it was Godzilla. You could hear kids in the audience tugging on their parents sleves asking "Why is Godzilla running away?" It was clear that Devlin and Emmerich (the writer/producer/director team) had just made up their own monster and story and slapped the brand name of Godzilla on the front to move more product (be it movie tickets or associated toys).
There's a balance that needs to be struck when doing a new version of a beloved classic. You don't want a shot-by-shot remake like Point of No Return (La Femme Nikita) or Gus Van Saint's Psycho. On the other hand, it does the original a disservice to completely throw everything out the window and start from scratch. I watched the "Behind the scenes" special on BG last night and Roland Moore came right out and said that the only thing they were planning on keeping from the original was the Viper shape. Stuff like making the cylons humanoid and the womanizing, but likeable, Starbuck into a bitchy woman is going way, way too far.
Before someone flames me for calling the new Starbuck a bitch, I want to make it clear that I have nothing whatsoever against women as action heros. Quite frankly I think it's a long time in coming. But if you had seen the show last night, I think you would have to agree that this new actress is trying way, way too hard to be 'tough'. Jean-Luc Picard was tough and he didn't feel the need to mouth off to people constantly. He was respectable and everyone knew it. True strength simply radiates from people -- there's no need to constantly shout out your superiority to everyone. It just doesn't work.
GMD
watch this
You got that right. The whole "sexy baby" thing is annoying, not just when they're the bad guys. Don't get me wrong, woman are beautiful. But like you said... if you want to see some hot chicks, you know where to go. Not EVERYTHING has to be about hot babes, and I'd like to be able to enjoy some fun science fiction without having to feel like I'm watching something that's really targetting some puberty-controlled teenage boy.
There was a Battlestar Galactica marathon on SciFi about two months ago and I got to watch a few episodes. Of course, most of the commercials were for the new Galactica that they were going to release in December. One of the commercials actually was talking/showing a photoshoot from Maxim magazine where apparently one of the actresses came from (that ought to tell you something... their cast consists of models, not actors apparently).
In other words, screw promoting the series based on its storyline (apparently no longer involving earth) or characters (which apparently have had sex changes and I get the impression that they even had to put a gay character in there, you know, to be PC and all)... rather just promote the blatant sexuality of the series. After all, with a sensual sex scene with a female Cylon, showing previous photoshoots of the actress^H^H^H^H^H model, and using the "Battlestar Galactica" goodwill, profit is guaranteed.
I don't plan on watching. I hope to buy the original series DVD box set this month, maybe even by Monday, and I'll watch that instead. Sure, this new series is completely different and should be judged on its own merits. It might even be fun. But I don't want to contaminate my memory of Battlestar Galactica by even associating this new material with the name.
I will be interested to see, though, how well the series does. They've basically alienated the real fan base that's been waiting for a new Battlestar Galactica for 25 years and I'm not convinced the new generation is really dying to see a remake. Who IS their market? Maybe it IS just the pubery-driven teenage boys.