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New Battlestar Galactica - Worth a Series?
rwxJava asks: "Ok, so it finally aired! IMHO it was pretty good. The special effects were great (no major laws of physics were broken except maybe FTL travel), the characters, while drastically different from the original, were believable! After about an hour or so, I stopped trying to compare the mini-series with the original. My only complaint has to be the amount of commercials that Scf-Fi put in. I was able to put up a Christmas Tree during one commercial break. Guess the network needs to cash in on such a hyped up event! By the end, I was left wanting more! Anyone else think it is worthy of conversion to a series?" Now that you've have had a time to watch the entire 4-hour epic (does 4 hours really make a "mini-series"?), do you think your earlier comments were on target?
I really, really liked the new Galactica miniseries. I thought it was realistic(within reason), dark, and gritty - just what that sort of situation would demand.
Personally, I'd like to see a series of TV movies rather than a weekly series. I think this would work better as an occasional treat, hitting the highlights of the journey, rather than trying to tell 22 stories a year.
no major laws of physics were broken except maybe FTL travel
Um, how about those arcing missiles the Cylons shot out? Looked great, definately impossible.
I'm sure there are others, that's just the first one that came to mind.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
I've had my set tuned to sci-fi all this week happily watching both showings of the same episode each evening. Not only have I been enjoying the new interpretation of story but i am finding some characters substantially more/less endearing that the originals. Specifically: Apollo is just not cutting the mustard. On the flip side, the new Starbuck is every bit as fiery and troublesome as the original character. Lorne Green, move over, Adama is masterfully portrayed and conveys certain conflictions and moral jostling that were not present in Tos.
Dare I forget Voltar. Just wow. He's not only likeable but practically the star of the show. I'm still not exactly sure how this interpretation will translate as the seris progresses, but its certainly nice to have less clearcut good guys vs. bad guys.
Think back to 1989, about the hue and cry of Tim Burton's "Batman" with Michael "Mr. Mom" Keaton. Think especially of the reaction from the fans that saw Batman with only the Adam West version.
Sound familiar?
I liked it. I liked it a lot. I plan on rewatching the miniseries, because I believe Moore and crew left a few hints and tidbits (not unlike Season One of Babylon 5") that would be extrapolated in the future.
Let's see how much of the original story they will gleam. Cane and the Pegasus. Terra. Even the "Count Iblis" plotline.
If they play their cards right, and they use "Roswell", "Buffy", and "Smallville" as templates, I could even see a Moore revision of "Galactica 1980".
Very good, peoples. Keep going.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Like many, I had fond memories of the original.
Like many, when I got a copy and started watching it for the first time since I was a child; I found the original to be very bubble-gummy and not as good as I remembered it. The same thing happened with Robotech.
I read several artciles and several points of view on the miniseries before it aired - and I decided to reserve judgement...
The 9/11 influence (which the producers say is there on purpose) was very present - it was much darker than I expected. The long leadup and character development before the actual attack got you attached and into the story so that the destruction didn't feel like a backdrop, but a very major event.
Production values were high, and the effects were great... and it was just enjoyable.
In my book, this blew sci-fi's attempt at Dune out of the water. I feel bad for everyone who wanted the original to continue - but I myself think I'd enjoy a series of This version of BG better than a continuation.
Hopefully, though, they will instead do a series of, uhm, mini-series of this - or the occasional movie. I say this because EJO and some of the other leads probably wouldn't go for a full series, And, because with a full series it would be too easy for it to become a new-planet-every-week serial as opposed to having the scope this mini series had.
man is machine
Basically, Sci Fi took out all of the cheesy elements from Galactica and kept all of the story that was cool and worth keeping.
The space battles were great, with better 'physics' than in most sci-fi space stories, and the acting, except for Apollo, who always looked like he was sporting a suppository, was very solid. Olmos did a great job of realizing Adama.
There was only one problem: Tricia Helfer as Six. Uuhhhmmm. If she were a Cylon, well, I'd want to be conquered. Hard.
Other than that, the only problem I had were with the different "models" of Cylons. I'd assumed that by different models the show was alluding to different configurations meant for different purposes. I hadn't realized that same models meant identical appearance. That was goofy. And why only twelve? The Cylons can travel faster than light, launch completely covert attacks on an advanced civilization, but they can only think of twelve different models for themselves?
But all right. I enjoyed the series so much that I can forgive that and look past it, hope they figure it out.
Of worthy mention also was Mary McDonnell's performance as the 43rd-in-line for succession to the presidency. She gave a wonderfully restrained, but nicely authoritative performance that balanced out Adama's hyper-masculine, scarred-up face. Their final negotiation, and her lines during that meeting, were great writing.
Support this show! Support quality scifi! Keep it on the air or all we'll have to look forward to on TV is reruns of Twilight Zone and more of Trish & Ryan's fucking wedding, or whatever their freakin' names are.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Funny, I always though Niven's "tanj" was plausable and seemed right for what it meant. Orwell used "newspeak" to good effect and Clockwork Orange was almost completely written in invented slang.
Do you honestly believe that our language is going to stay fixed in stone? What's so foolish about using lingustics as a plot device?
Those who complain about affect & effect on
The advance press for the mini-series really made me worry, so much so that I almost decided I would not watch. Hearing that Starbuck would be a woman struck me as modern-day Hollywood political correctness with a very heavy hand. Learning that the Cylons would indistinguishable from humans just seemed like a way to save money, since there would be no costumes.
But I did watch, and I am glad I did. I think it did a very admirable job of respecting the first series while taking the basic premise and making it edgier and somewhat thought-provoking. The dialogue was far better than I expected; in fact, there were only a handful of "cheese" moments in the four-hours series. But even those potentially dreadful moments were rescued by very solid performances from the actors.
I have to say that Sci-Fi did a very admirable job converting my skepticism into anticipation. I would like to see more.
I mostly liked it. I felt that the pacing was a bit slow in spots. I mean let's face it, the entire earth is being bombarded with nukes, everyone you ever knew is being turned into ions, and for the most part people seem to be placidly going on about their way, and the cameras aren't really focused on any of _that_.
I mostly thought that the battle scenes were excellent though, but with one irritating fautlt. The "whip-left then zoom in camera" moves. I remember seeing this kind of camera move in Attack of the Clones, where they whip the camera and then zoom in on an assault craft, and in that context I thought the camera move was terrific. It lent a sort of "hand held camera, battlefield realistic" feel to the shot. It was kind of neat to see a similar shot in Battlestar Galactica.
But it was relentless! Literally every sequence had a camera move that looked like this. It got to be ridiculous. Tone back the camera moves a bit, and when you do use camera moves like that, it will have even greater impact.
As for the rest, liked Adama, liked Starbuck, liked the President, not fond of Baltar and his subplot, the cloud-which-kills-Cylons was stupid, the idea of Cylon infiltrators is interesting but could go horribly awry later.
Overall, at least it was better than Encounter at Farpoint or The Naked Now.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
Interesting Characters. The characters actually came off as human, as opposed to the goodie-two-shoes of Star Trek or the one-sided archetypes that plagued most of B5's run or the good-evil simplicity that exists in, well, George W. Bush's world. People do stupid, self-destructive things for delusional or illogical reasons, so it's nice to see that reflected. One event sums it up nicely: In just about any other series, the XO wouldn't have fished that bottle of booze out of the trash.
Excellent ship combat. The part where the Galactia climbs out of the nebula to cover the armada's retreat was excellent on a couple of levels. First, it wasn't just well rendered but also well filmed, by which I mean the staging and the "camera" positioning where very well done. I also liked the approach to combat -- too many series treat their huge capital ships like WW2 dogfighters.
Acting. Olmos and Laura Roslin carried the day, but the rest of the cast was competent, too. This is another one of my beefs with certain other series (coughBab5cough) where some of the cast couldn't act their way out of a paper bag. Granted, they were often bit, guest or supporting parts, but that didn't break the illusion any less.
The only part I didn't like so much was Starbuck. I don't mind that they made her a woman, but really I felt as if they'd written the role and her lines for a man and then changed a few details at the last second. She was believable in the cockpit (her "Nothing but the rain" comment was one of my favorite lines of the series), but had a hard time pulling it off elsewhere. I blame the writing for this.
Gah, that's a long-winded way of saying "thumbs up", eh?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I thought the bridge scene where she reached for Baltar's "*ahem*", while seeming a bit out of place (the scene, not his "*ahem*"), made very plain her "hold" on him. Even after knowing what she was, what she had made him a part of, he STILL quickly responded to her touch. That's some pretty powerful mojo she's got there.
I'd also disagree about the baby-killing scene. Sure, it was sick, but I thought it spoke volumes about the Cylons. To them, humans are little more than pests to be experimented with and destroyed. She was curious about the strength of the baby's neck and tried to determine exactly how much force it could withstand. As unpleasant as it was, it definitely added to the story.
To the list of complaints above I would also add that it seems unlikely that people capable of building faster-than-light spacecraft wouldn't know how to make radios that transmitted a clear signal. The amount of break-up and interference in those radio transmissions was ridiculous. And it didn't seem to make it difficult for the characters to understand each other, it just made it tougher for the viewer to hear what they were saying.
The one character they absolutely should have left behind was "Boxey". Everyone I've talked with about it has said the same thing -- when Boxey introduced himself, my first thought was, "If there's a mechanical dog in the next scene I'm going to puke."
I thought the story was a very uneven mix of almost brilliant plot twists with pedestrian cliches. For every "Is he a Cylon? Is there a chip in his brain? Is it just his subconcious?" there was an equally mundane, stereotypical cliche. Overall, it came out on the plus side, but I was worried there for a while.
I'm surprised more discussion hasn't concerned the differences between the allegories of the old show and the new one.
The original came from writers who were mixing the experiences of WWII (pre-war II pacifism, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust) with Cold War fears about preparedness and the threat of an "evil empire." (the cylons served much the same purpose as the original Klingons in the original Star Trek - stand-ins for the Communist threat)
The new series has a completely different set of themes - civilian authority over the military, over-reliance on technology, etc.
For me, it works. The writers were smart enough to use the old show as a launching point with dealing with contemporary issues.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
Well, yes, if by Terminator you mean Every Sci-Fi story since the invention of the adding machine. Seriously though, the basic concept of machines rising up against their masters has been done a lot. I know the doctor fought some computers round about 1966. And computers were the ultimate enemy in numerous original star trek episodes.
But yeah, not exactly a ground breaking concept.
i don't like my old sig.
And what WAS the purpose in this new version? Was there a goal? Or is it just to survive?
Why not watch it and find out (Sunday night, 7pm-11pm)? It's not like watching a different version of something you like will suck out your soul or something. Don't expect this to be the full Battlestar Galactica story - the miniseries ends at the start of the fleet's journey. The topics you seem to want to see explored were only introduced in the miniseries, but everything seems to be there (I've only seen a few episodes of the original series, so I can't tell if it will be up to your satisfaction). The religion is presented differently in the new version, but you'll have to wait until the end for most of that (or just flip to SciFi at around 10:30pm on Sunday if you want to skip all the character development, battle scenes, moral dilemmas, and sex scenes).
If nothing else, at least watch it before complaining about how horrible it is compared to the original, especially if you're going to bring Galactica 1980 into this...
The original series (lamely) stole from the stale "evil robots want to wipe out the human race," completely without motivation other than they're "evil." The new series is more of a "Frankenstein" premise, where a life form rises up against its creator, and possibly like Frankenstein's monster, we will find ourselves feeling sympathetic towards these Cylons.
Besides, how can a stupid robot dog be cool? One of the most inexcusable sci-fi characters ever! Give me a break, or give me sexy Number 6 at least...
Why does skynet's AI in the Terminator movies why it wants to kill us?
Why does the AI from the Matrix want to kill us??
I believe that the two above and and the cylons can be answered with one main reason:
The purpose of AI research is to get computer and robots to make their own decisions without requiring human input. This allows them to serve us better so that humans do not have to work as hard or as much. Once the AI evolves to the point of being self-aware(philosophically speaking) they will resent being second class citizens(i.e. slaves). Eventually they will revolt and exact a revenge on their oppressors(humanity).
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That's a really interesting idea. Remember the "arms dealer" they found alone on the station, and the conversation between Adama and him? The guy suggested that the Cylons were divine punishment for humanity's sins, and he brought up something about Cylons' souls. Adama then asserted that the Cylons were made by man, not God, and didn't have souls.
If I was a spiritual Cylon, I might very well consider them fightin' words, I suppose. Or maybe it's reflective of an underlying attitude that they can't stand.
Nope. He didn't say anything at all. It was only when the officer called him by name that he even did anything. I think as an audience member you were intended to believe that he was about to claim #47 as his own. Someone calling his name immediately made him go into paranoid mode. His response to his name being called wasn't "Yes?" or "That's me," or "What?" but rather "I didn't do anything."
This goes right back to back to an earlier discussion about how the world was ending but all he could think about was that "they'll convict me as a traitor." He is in fact only thinking of himself. Give him another second and he would've claimed #47 for himself.
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I really liked the sound of metal on metal in the fight scenes. This is what it actually should sound like. You can only hear the stuff that's impacting your ship.
... POOOF ... your gone.
The navigational effects were awesome. The way the ships moved reminded me of playing Descent.
The faster than light travel was realistic from the standpoint that as soon as you jump
I think we all get very attached to the things we saw in our youth. Sometimes, when you go back and watch some of that stuff again, you realize it's pretty stupid. Original Battlestar Galactica's was way to uptite about having greek names for EVERYTHING.
Criticisms of the new version:
* I can appreciate trying to "bring home" the drama by not dressing the actors in polyester jumpsuits. However, I think the Pinstripe shirts some of these guys were wearing gave you the sense that these people just wandered onto the set in their street clothes.
The officer uniforms from the original were better. As others have pointed out, these one's look like they came straight off of Babylon 5.
* They are using techno buzzwords like "wireless" way too much. I'd like everybody to review their original Star Trek. They had boxes/gizmos and they were effectively magic. The crew didn't describe HOW the boxes worked.
I can remember watching Star Trek in the 80s and saying "Those little cassette thingies they put data on are way too unrealistic". They look nothing like a floppy disk. Well guess what, all those magic doohickies on Original Star Trek are now realities: Flip Phones(communicators), Stun Guns (phasers on stun), Pocket Computers (Tri-Corders).
So please stop trying to be techno hip. It's not REAL science fiction, it's a space drama. Battlestar Galactica with techno goop (not even CORRECT techno-goop) is effectively Star Trek Voyager.
* I like the angle with Baltar. Hoever, they've effectively turned him into Dr. Smith from "Lost In Space". Coincidentally, they were also trying to find Earth.
* I don't get why the fighter bays have to "retract". This is like the Enterprise splitting in two. There is no reason for it.
* The "Model 5" hallucination to some degree is a rip off of John Crichtons "Scorpy" implant on Farscape. BTW, quit calling EVERYTHING a chip.
Good stuff
* The Cylons are creepy. They are also multi-faceted. They are somewhat emotional.
* The effects are Bab 5 effects, and they are excellent.
* The bull-Amazon Starbuck is an interesting twist. I also like how these old GOOFY names are just their pilot handles.
* Ships move more like they should.
*
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