Slashdot Mirror
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."
let's not forget that Edward James Olmos has warned fans of the original series to not watch.
Mike
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.
Battle Star Galactica got its genesis from some TV execs who wanted to emulate the success of Star Wars on the small screen. I'm not overly familiar with the back story, but BSG has always struck me as a hodge podge of space opera concepts, strung together long enough to maintain a TV series. Where shows like Dr Who and Star Trek at least had a conceptual basis and tried to do something original, BSG was an attempt to fill a 1 hour timeslot once per week. I don't think BSG deserves to be considered alongside other shows in the great SF series pantheon, even though the Cylons looked cool.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
How did they reanimate the corpse of Lorne Greene for this new series?
:o)
Simple - when they started filming, he rolled over in his grave - they then just dug him up and put him in costume.
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 could understand if we were talking about Shazam, or Land of the Lost or some other really important show from that era. ;-)
But Battlestar Galactica?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I agree completely. Same thing with Enterprise. The show is so lackluster and not "Star Trek" that Paramount was finally forced to prepend "Star Trek:" to the title to boost ratings. Had DS9 and Voyager not had Star Trek in the title, it's likely they would have died unlamented deaths for the same reasons.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
From there, things get different. Starbuck, the hotshot fighter pilot played by Dirk Benedict in the original, is now a woman played by Katee Sackhoff
They can't just make Starbuck a woman :cry:
The show appears to be darker, sexier and a lot less escapist than the original.
Oh, that's ok then, as long as we get to see tits being squashed together in crappy lycra suits!
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
They flat out stated that they were taking a different approach to this BSG. In the earlier one, the Cylons were just mad at humans. That's all we knew. Why? Nobody knew. What was their history? Nobody knew. At least they're attempting some sort of story / history on the Cylons, and not just an Independence Day scenario of aliens attacking because they feel in a pissy mood that day.
I am glad the SciFi channel at least does *something*, but I'm still not happy they discontinued Farscape.
I enjoyed their Dune remakes (bought the DVD's even). I'm a sick pup, but those 3- and 4- star (out of IMDB's 10 star rating) are some of my faves. :D
Cheers,
Ian
Is it just me, or is Sci-Fi really letting this slip under the radar. I've been watching the Sci-Fi channel, and really haven't noticed any promotion of this at all. Maybe they should try some flashy campaign with lots of explosions, cg graphics, hot chicks, and some ridiculous lines repeated over and over. But I don't know, I just don't see this thing panning out with this little promotion. Who knows, it could be a sleeper hit.
Victoria's Secret model Tricia Helfer was born in Donalda, Alberta, Canada. The 1992 Ford Supermodel of the World winner and former Elite model has graced the covers of such magazines as Elle,Amica Italia and Cosmopolitan UK, and has walked the runways for Christian Dior, Givenchy, Claude Montana, Emanuel Ungaro and other top fashion designers.
Clearly the producers have spared no expense in landing top thespians. According to IMDB, her previous acting gigs include:
A part in an episode of CSI, where she played a model who ends up dead.
A small part in the 16 minute short "Eventual Wife"
A judge at the 2003 Miss Teen USA
The role of Farrah Fawcett in "Behind the Camera: The Unauthorized Story of 'Charlie's Angels'"
IMDB also reports her measurements are 34-24-34
or MELROSE SPACE
Wired has an article on it as well.
Personally, I'll give it a chance. When I was a kid, there was an early 2-hour episode and I pestered my parents to leave the pizza place so I could make it back in time. We returned to find the rug burning in front of our fireplace. Our parents ran into the kitchen to fill pots and pour it on the fire. Us kids ran into the t.v. room to huddle under the smoke and watch our show.
I now refer to the tale as the time Battlestar Galactica saved our house.
Scene: Community cable access TV show. Portly 30-something, probably single, hosts:
"That's all for this week on KISS Forum. Stay tuned for Battlestar Galactica Forum."
Quickly puts on Cylon helmet
"WELCOME TO BATTLESTAR GALACTICA FORUM."
J
In short his site is indicative of eight-year-old design sensibilities.
Schnapple
The original BSG was composed of a mixing of Space Opera Science Fiction and the Mormon religion story.
The whole thing with the 12 colonies of man and the 'lost' 13th colony is exactly like the Mormon belief of 12 tribes of man with a lost 13th tribe and how reuniting with that 13th tribe would be their salvation or something along those lines.
There was a great deal of other Mormon influences behind a great deal of the back-story to BSG. The actual TV series stories followed the basic 'hodge-podge' that often plagues the first season of a number of television series, although there was some really interesting storylines built around the Mormon mythology, like the thing with the beings of light that went through a handful of the episodes.
If it had stayed on the air, it would have developed into a very significant series of stories instead of just the barely exposing the surface that was shown back in the 70's.
The whole draw to the series was and still is the way the characters were, how they interacted and the relationships they held with eachother. These days the producers and storywriters claim that having 'damaged' characters and conflict amongst the heroes is the way that things are supposed to be. That's not the BSG that I remember and it's not the BSG that I would like to see.
I will probably watch this show, just to give it a chance, but in the end I will likely still give more weight to the original with it's compelling back-history and lofty ideals. (Even though it is based heavily on a somewhat 'odd' religious group's history.)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
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
Looks sex-addled, low-action, and pretty scanty on the mythology. "Cylon Fembots" is all we need to know.
I was a bit surprised when I saw how much sex stuff was going to be in this new show. I know that Star Trek has gone this way (7 of 9, T'Pol) but the guy doing BG is Roland Moore and between him and Braga (the other ST:TNG writer) I always figured that Moore was the one who didn't feel the need to use sex as a way to sell an inferior product. I guess I was wrong. Of course then they try to head off the criticism that the new show is sexist by making Starbuck and Boomer women. Yet the people on the 'making of' show last night clearly indicated that Starbuck and Boomer were going to be in sexual situations as well (sexual tension but no action in Starbuck's case).
The mythology was pretty much all that made it distinctive, such as it was, in the original case.
You're probably already aware of this but just in case not: the story of the original is based very heavily on the story of the Mormons trying to find a place to settle. Obviously, most Hollywood types are Mormons so they were completely unaware of this. For them, and the vast majority of the American public, the story was a brand new idea. In reality, the backbone story was already done. All the writers had to do was take an obscure, yet interesting, story and flesh it out a bit and transfer it to the stars.
GMD
watch this
The 10 Tribes were not "lost" in the sense of being missing. The short story is that the Hebrews organized themselves into 12 tribes, presumably founded by the sons of the patriarch Jacob who had 11 sons but the tribes descended from Joseph traced their roots to his two sons. Each of these tribes occupied a different area of
When the Babylonians returned the tribes to Israel and Jerusalem, which was located in the lands of the tribe of Judah, was reconstructed, some of the other tribes began traditions that were an amalgamation of ancient Hebrew and Babylonian culture. The tribe of Benjamin sided with Judah in returning to a more strictly Jewish lifestyle. So that's how the other 10 tribes were "lost", a more accurate description would be they, left the faith, or were, lost to God, depending on whose point of view you wich to honor.
At any rate, we know exactly where those 10 tribes went. The lands they occupied became known as Samaria or the home of the Samaritans, hence the story of the good Samaritan.
The idea of a 13th tribe is peculiar to the Mormons though, although I think other Judeo-Christian sects claim to be yet another unknown tribe of Hebrews. I believe according to Mormons the 13th tribe were the ancestors of Native Americans.
Incidentally the Biblical use of the word tribe is more closely related to the modern idea of a clan: a people group related by blood. A tribe is a people group related by language and custom, usually made up of multiple clans. The clan system helps prevent inbreeding since your close relatives are easily identified.