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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?
First, let me just say that John Olmos was correct: If you are so
dedicated to the original series that you cannot bring yourself to imagine
it any other way, then do yourself a favor and skip this miniseries. You
will only be disappointed, and you will nitpick it to death.
On the other hand, if you can bring yourself, however painfully, to
open your mind to the possiblity of a "re-imagining" of the Battlestar
Galactica concept, then I think you're in for a pleasant surprise.
It's not all wonderful. Screenwriter Ron Moore wanted
to bring a more grown-up Galactica to his audience, but he's apparantly
confused grown-up with gratuitious. Sex works much better when it's done
dramatically, instead of the "hey watch us get it on!" style that Moore
forces on us. He is perhaps striving to show us the sexual energy between
the characters, but really all it does is make us wonder when the low
quality porno music is going to kick in.
Otherwise, the annoyances are minor. The cylon space fighters,
apparantly just space-borne Cylons (a neat idea, really) come off kind of
hoakey with their red sweeping eyes. I know, I know, the eyes are really
some kind of electromagnetic pulse weapons, but it's distracting just the
same.
Okay, now on to what's good. First, and foremost, the story is solid.
Whereas in the original series we just had to take for granted that the
Cylons were the embodiment of evil, now we understand why.
The characters is also solid. Again, you'll have to get over
your preconceptions of the original series characters, and at least try
to buy in to the new ones. The hardest pill for me to swallow were the
gender changes of Starbuck and Boomer. But I actually found myself liking
the new Starbuck, although the Boomer role could have been a bit stronger.
The special effects were incredible, and proved that you really can
make space realistic, and exciting. In fact, the "no sound in space"
approach actually heightened the tension, and proved that you don't have
to dumb-down physics for the masses. Also, having the space ships use
maneuvering jets created even more exciting scenes than the normal Top Gun
stuff we're used to.
Is it worth a series? I think so. With a solid backstory, believable
characters, and an approach that doesn't assume the audience are stupid,
it could quite very set the bar for future Sci Fi.
Did they have sound in space as the ships flew by? That has always been one of my major pet peeves. At least Kubrick got it right in 2001.
Trolling is a art,
I used to watch the original TV series when I was younger, and although it was a different twist to the same story, I very much enjoyed the new mini series. I think we need more good Sci-Fi shows on TV, and this one gets my vote!
1) Sounds in space. Space ships could be heard
making "thrusting" and "crashing" noises.
2) Continual stream of stars zoom past windows
to convey forward momentum (as opposed to say,
rotation or banking). Perhaps they were
trying to reproduce one of the things I hated
in the original series.
3) Lovely handheld-style (jerky) camera moves
from space. I actually liked this (think they
did it in Firefly too), but how do you get the
cameraman from "Law and Order" into a spacesuit?
That was the major question I though they did not seem to answer, or at least even touch.
I could understand a different species not liking us, and in some way, being what we might call pure evil. Hey, they're different. Species are different. Intelligence does not mean that we all get along.
But in this case, the cylons are now our computers run amok. OK, while I can deal with this change, they never then touched on why they want to kill us? Because we wanted to kill them? Why do they want to kill us now? What does it benefit them? What computational values make them _want_ to expend the resources, et al to go to war with us? They just glanced that one over, and in the end, said, hey, the cylons want to kill us, so there.
...tizzyd
...Cow. Wonderful wonderful series. Usually I roll my eyes at the "tough girl" type of lead character, but Ms. thingy managed to convince me. She threw punches like she knew what she was doing, and was sensitive enough to be believable, yet tough and uncaring enough to root for.
The tension between Father and Son was believable. The only thing I didn't like was the new "president" ordering a military ship to turn around. That was SO not believable. Had I been in charge, she would have "accidently" found the way to the nearest airlock....
It was hinted at. I think what it boils down to is that they got religion. I'm serious. 6 makes refers to her "God" early on and the other Cylon they found in the arms depot goes on to talk about what if God had stopped giving souls to humans and started giving them to other more worthy creatures. An excellent direction if you ask me, it allows all sorts of bizzare and seemingly illrational behavior for a group of robots.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
I watched the orginal as a kid, I remember thinking it was ok. I knew some of the backstory coming into the new BG, but if you had never seen the old BG, at least you wern't lost.
As with any Sci-Fi series, this one will live or die of it's writing. I got the feeling that the writers of the mini-series held no punches when it came to the brutality of the cylon attack on the colonies, and the desisions that had to be made by the humans. Two scenes that realy stood out in my mind were the drawing of numbers for the refugees to get on the scout ship, and the radio chatter when the president ordered the FTL ships to jump immediatly after the cylons discovered the civilian fleet.
Should this be a series? If you can get the same actors to commit to the series, and most importantly, some good writers, then Yes, I think you could make a series out of it.
The Mini-series set the bar pretty high. I will be interested in seeing if they do pick it up, and if they can keep the same quality as they presented in the mini series.
Starbuck while looking good, was totally unbelievable playing a "tough guy" part. I mean really who's ass is she going to kick with those stick thin arms. She looked totally out of place at the card table with that cigar. Her acting was poor at best. I can't believe they put that kid in with the bowl hair-cut. Boxie or whatever his name was, and they let the nice little girl all go to atoms. Bleh... Other than that I thought it was ok, except for all the really lame sex scenes.
In that regard, the 'Wing Commander' games and movie were better, in that the mass driver cannon were one of the most effective weapons if you could hit with them -- but they sucked energy to run. However, in Battlestar Galactica, it appeared that for small-craft weapons you pretty much had a choice between missiles and some kind of plasma-in-a-magnetic-bottle weapon. For missiles, a kinetic-kill system is kind of pointless -- even air-to-air missiles today don't rely on the missile itself actually hitting its target -- so a high-explosive or small nuke warhead is what you'd expect to see.
I expect that we're never going to get told why neither side uses kinetic-kill systems for the fighters' primary weapons, although I would guess that an energy weapon will have a point at which the 'projectile' dissipates; a kinetic-kill weapon in space would keep going, producing widely-ranging hazard zones from old battles.
I've seen a lot of what made DS9 the best Trek ever in Galactica: shades of grey. While Picard was lily-white, Sisko engaged in back-stabbing, brutality and (otherwise unknown in Star Trek) self-doubt. Anyhow, this argument has been well-hashed out here and elsewhere about Trek.
.01%, and yet we're still treated to light-hearted B.S. with Boxey and that loveable rogue (ugh) Starbuck. The new Galactica shows people how they would really be: frightened, depressed, and desperate.
What puzzles me watching the new Galactica is how I ever accepted the delivery of the premise of the old series. I mean, the premise lays out 99.99% of the human race has just been brutally slaughtered, and things don't look good for the remaining
Furthermore, as much as I loved John Colicos, the new characterization of Baltar is far more complex. Baltar seems to be a right-bastard, but one who realizes that he is and wishes (vainly) that he was not. Resigned to his nature, he's looking to cut the best deal he can.
They'll undoubtedly lose Mary McDonald before the end of the mini. This show kicks the crap out of anything else sci-fi has; I dearly hope that they chill on the pointless sex scenes, relax on the zoom-focus fx shots, and make this a damn series.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
One thing that really stood out for me were the costumes and sets. I'm so tired of sci-fi costume and set designers making all costumes out of woven mylar or whatever shiny fabric. Then they make these elaborate CGI cities with spiraling towers and wispy skyways. Honestly, who really believes the future is like that? DS9 tried to break that mold, but failed as miserably as most other sci-fi. The station was supposed to be a seedy marketplace, but instead everyone ended up wearing the same style freshly-laundered jumpsuit but in slightly different colors, maybe with a sash or a hat or something.
BG actually had believable costumes. The characters looked like they were wearing regular comfortable every-day clothes, but there were enough subtle design changes to make it clear that they weren't on Any Street USA. The buildings just looked like regular buildings. It just helped add to the overall experience and I wanted to give a nod to those designers who finally Got It Right.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
It seems to me it really didn't have anything to lure me in. It seems the basis of the story (computers gone bad that want to kill us) was stolen from Terminator. It seems the name and the roles were stolen from the real Battlestar Galatcia. The sex scenes were apparently borrowed from the Spice channel (based on a commercial I saw and seeing comments about gratuitous use of sex).
And what WAS the purpose in this new version? Was there a goal? Or is it just to survive?
I mean, in the real Battlestar Galactica we had evil Cylons trying to exterminate humans and our heroes trying to find earth. Although simple, it was a fun storyline. It had a challenge (finding earth and surviving the Cylons), it had a goal (arriving at earth), it had mystrey along the way slowly putting pieces of a puzzle together (the pyramids at Cobol), a religious touch (the city of lights and Count Ibly), and it had a cool overlap in our worldly reality (the tie-in where Apollo almost sees the Apollo landing at the end of one of the episodes was cool).
In my opinion it really had a very complete background and storyline--if anything, it got the short end of the stick since it was canned after only one season and the writers had to finish things up near the end. They could have slowly developed more and more clues as to the location of earth, further explored the development of the BSG mythology (Lords of Cobol, etc.). There's so much they could have done. Had it lasted just two or three seasons I think we would have seen BSG take its proper place among the science fiction greats.
Personally, I don't think we should call it the "Original Battlestar Galactica." If we're going ot prefix a qualifier to intentionally distinguish the two we should call the 1970's version the "Real Battlestar Galactica." I'm not sure what we should call this new thing, although I'm hopeful it will only amount to the two-night miniseries they did and will not evolve into a full-blown series and also hope this new version is soon filed right along side Galactica 1980.
Don't be a neanderthal, there's no "law" that says you can't go FTL. That's like a group of 12th century nerds guffawing at a story about a man who went around the Earth.
"Ahahaha. It's a good story, but of course he would fall off the other side! Try to be more realistic."
Quite a bit of problematic physics 'tho:
.
-Contrails do not form in hard vaccum.
-A shortwave wireless would be of no use in space,in that the point of shortwave is that it bounces off of the ionosphere back down to the ground.
-The kinematics of the fighters are still problematic, space craft don't make banking turns.
-No networking? Given that even 1970's fighters use heavy networking (F-117's can't fly without networked computers) this is rather dubious.
-The government doesn't use secure compartmentalized sercurity on their mainframes?
-The cylon fighters sould be capable of much greater acceleration than those of humans, due to the lack of the need to protect a biological body from high G's.
-The choppy handheld effects were annoying and anachronistic.
That being said the miniseries was a vast improvement over the original. Any change replacing testosterone poisoned fighter jocks and Cylons (and combinations thereof) with hot babes is a distinct improvement. The plot wasn't spectacular but wasn't bad either. The sex was rather heavy (I'd wondered how much they wanted to sex up Crusade, I wonder no more).
What I wonder is if the series is going to turn into "Voyager: The Next Generation" or "Andormeda:The Next Generation" (the good first and second season Andromeda, that is). If it is the latter it might be worth a series, given the lack of any good scifi series out there these days
Of course, it can't hold a candle to Babylon 5, Crusade, or Firefly and the money would be better spent on JMS or Joss but what can you do?
Just imagine a Joss Whedon Battlestar Galactica!
I say give it a series and give Quentin Tarantino full creative control. In the first episode Boomer meets her twin sister Go Go!
1. They already found "God", and they are simply killing the unfaithful? How else would machines validate belief?
2. If they are confused, perhaps some old leftover programming, ala V'ger, perhaps we will find the old programmer with an odd but similar spelling to Galius Boltar?
3. They are searching for "God", and the machine deduction method figures it can force "God" out into the open by killing his people. Variation of the "Hyperion" story where machines tried to get "God" out in the open.
4. More base, they just want to kick their former enslavers arses.
The big problem is, how did they evolve so much in 40 years? Something went down.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I thought it was a cool way to show WHY the the battlestar and the convoy got created.. They always said they had to "flee" for Earth, the 13th colony, but this gave life to just that brief intro that started off every one of the original episodes.
We now know that humans created the Cylons, defeated them, and then we reached a truce and left them rebuild for 40 years. They get strong and come back for revenge... That is almost a classic plot right there.
Of course, there was a LOT of religious thrown in, from the Cylons to the Priest... I guess thats part of the plot... Machines find religious virus?
The Characters were interesting... even the change from Male/Female for Starbuck.. I always thought Starbuck and Apollo were a little too chummy, now we know why... Boxy was in the original, so they had to explain how... We know he was an orphan, right? now we know HOW he became an orphan. And the President... I do seem to remember that there was a female LEADER of the colony ships that had to be consulted a few times for transports and such... but the original had a councel of 12 from the colonies, didn't see that here...
I did remember we had the cool Bro, "Boomer" in the original series, but other then a minority person of color being replaced with a minority person of asain linage, there were no cool guys like the original Boomer... I really liked that character, I was disapointed by that change.
Hmmm.. Actually, I don't think I saw any black actors except a few in the background putting out fires and such... ?????
Anyways, a nice way to "re-introduce" the original series... Would I like to see it continue, sure, but how many episodes before we start seeing recycled plot lines from Battlestar, StarTrek, etc...? It pretty much stands by itself now...
BTW... I'm not trolling, nor am I trying to throw out a racist card about the lack of black characters... I just thought it was odd, thats all... nothing else. Not looking for flames...
"SO SAY WE ALL."
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
BattleSex Galactica.
...
I found myself wondering when the next sex scene would be, and if they could go 5 minutes without one. Wondered if the two pilots were going to have sex through the bars in the brig, but apparantly they had to many personal issues
Several of the characters were so transparent that within 10 seconds of seeing them onscreen, I was able to pretty much guess what they were like.
( Starbuck.. Hmm. Tough girl, pilot, takes no shit from anyone, probably smokes.. ) ( The education minister. Extremly Far Left Liberal, hates the military ) ( The tour guide. Hmm. Actually a plant for the cylons )
They also seem to have a problem with the sound effects / BGM being way too loud verses the characters speaking.
I'm not sure what you mean by serious kinetic kill weapons
Well, there's little point in using them against fighters, but then fighters are unlikely to provide a good defense against one.
Basically if you have a decently large ship like a Battlestar, it can only accellerate so much, which limits its range of possible vectors. So you have a pretty good idea of where it's going to be in the near future, since it would take so long to make significant course changes.
Thus, you want to send something to ram into it. The weapon should be as fast and as massive as possible. It's basically just an engine, and whatever fuel it needs. It needn't explode, since the idea is to hit the target directly. It adjusts its vector somewhat so as to stay on target, and the closer it gets, the more accurately it will be able to predict the target's location. It'll break apart at the last second to cover a slightly wider area, and to avoid the possibility of blow-through.
Since relative velocities in space can easily be tremendous, by the time it gets anywhere near the target, it'll hit in moments. Fighters couldn't provide an effective defense. Instead you want to get anything you can in between it and you so that it'll hit the other thing first.
Of course, KKVs basically depend on velocity; they don't have to be all that advanced. Sand, or BBs or such can work just fine. Aiming them is the tricky part, and of course, should something match the velocity of the weapon, it's useless. But this is precisely why space debris is dangerous -- remember the Space Shuttle window that has a gouge in it caused by a fleck of paint that was only 0.2mm in diameter?
the big weapons are all nuclear
Nukes aren't really that useful in space, IIRC. There's no air, so you don't get a shockwave. It's just a release of light and radiation and neutrons. Since a spaceship is going to have decent radiation shielding anyway, I don't think it'll accomplish much unless it's so close that the flash can melt the ship's hull. Might be useful for blinding sensors, or killing the crews of insufficiently shielded ships.
Anyway, my point is that space combat is going to be very different from anything else we've done so far. Fighters will probably not be part of the picture, and are probably only there because of the romantic view people have of air combat.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The original Battlestar Galactica had landing bays in its two long "legs." This was very strategic, as the Cylons would sometimes crash into the bays in order to temporarily prevent the fighters from landing. The new Battlestar Galactica also has landing bays in its "legs", BUT they are now open on both ends. Conceivably a fighter could now land by approaching the ship from either direction.
I went in ready to hate it based on what other nerds had said, but I was hooked and I AM one of those dweebs who was really into the original series. They kept just enough continuity with the original series that it felt familiar. BG had a lot to draw from and I thought they took some of the best stuff. I did think Starbuck's characted could have been better. Maybe because the orignal guy just played it so well. The sexual tension between Starbuck and Apollo will certainly be less funny. As for the series: Make it so! (Yeah, I know)
Ok, so humanesque Cylons are "really hard to spot" and have been dealt the near-imortality card. That card itself produces the only really annoying error in the whole show.
If the humanesque Cylons can only be told from the humans by analizing the post-cremation remains, how can their bodies "upload their conciousness" when they die (from anywhwere except inside the storm)? The power requirements for that alone preclude the humanesque body thing.
How does that reconcile to the glowing spinal cord bit? (it doesn't)
It would have been better (and just as easy) to give them medical-scanner jammers. OR EVEN BETTER give them nonocites living in their spinal-cords.
"We can detect them, sure, all we have to do is saw the backbone out of the accused, section it, and look for bugs." "Uh, that wont fly after we test the first dozen or so... will it?"
Kind of the "cut the hand off to see if there is fur inside" way of checking for a werewolf.
The nanocites thing would let the conciousness be "collected" instead of "transmitted" as well. As it is, once the theoretical sleeper-Cylon wakes up, it (no spoilers 8-) would only need to kill itself and it would have "reported back" with the exact position and disposition of the fleet.
To keep the timeline interesting, the suicide == instant intellegence factor needs to be removed.
Of course, wouldn't it be lovely if the reincarnation thing weren't true at all. Sort of logan's run. Sure, we just get reloaded into a new body. I've never met anybody who it happened to, but I'm sure it happens all the time. How am I so sure? I'm programed to believe I have a soul, it keeps my survival instinct in check when I am sent out on a suicide mission.
Plus the nanocite-plus-collection theory would allow for and explain Baltars hallucinations. When the Cylon protected him from the blast she transfered herself into his body and is waiting for pickup. That is why she helped him remove the Cylon device, how she can move and effect his body, and why she is protecting him but has to ask him things like "what are you working on?" Her nanocites can only properly control the genetically engineered bodies, not a/the real, imperfect (normally variable) body she is sharing with Baltar.
(God, these people should contact me about writing the sequel... I've already got several patch-files for The Matrix, you know "delete battery/power source; replace with "neuro-transmitter farm/factory" etc. 8-)
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