Slashdot Mirror
New Battlestar Galactica Series Greenlighted
Trunks writes "A few days ago the Sci Fi Channel officially announced a 13 episode season for Ronald Moore's Battlestar Galactica remake. Looks like they'll be bringing back most of the cast members, including Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell. The new series will begin a few days after the miniseries that aired a few months back. Production commences next month in Vancouver, B.C." This had been speculated previously, and the rumors are indeed true.
I watched the mini series and I really liked it. But what really bugged me was the stupid plot surrounding the android Number 6. The Cylons have vastly superior technology and a huge army, but to destroy the human race they create a sexy blonde android that seduces our best programmer. Sheesh. Almost made me stop watching there and then.
READY.
#
I enjoyed Galactica as a kid (yeah, I'm old now), and am looking forward to this new series.
Where, however, is the "buzz" over cool new ideas yet unseen? Many people buzz over remakes of old ideas, but are they done any better?
Star Wars lumbers on with dialogue-ridden prequels (and yet unseen postquels), Gilligan's Island is probably in production for the silver screen by now, I-Spy has been dubiously remade.
Firefly was/is a cool idea and at least got an airing. Star Trek is still a cool franchise, but has been pretty commodotized.
Where's the new, cool stuff.
I'm not a huge Anime fan, but Cowboy Bepop seems pretty cool to me. If there aren't new ideas, why not bring this one from one format to another?
Still; Where's the cool, new stuff?
More likely, it was some senior exec in Hollyweird deciding that he didn't have to spend millions of extra dollars shooting in the USA just because Ahhhnold was now The Governator. The fact that B.C. has the best marijuana in the world and is relatively unencumbered by the lunacy of the U.S. war on drugs probably had nothing to do with it...
Besides, when Canadian producers want to mine the 80's for remake potential we end up with less grass and more Degrassi...
Are we really so out of ideas?
You're just noticing that now?
> Can Sci-Fi show nudity? I know they can in the UK, but what about the more repressive US channel?
In the USA, Congress is more worried about a glimpse of a tit than they are about ongoing wars in the Near East.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Umm... not really, heck, it was a key decision near the start of the second part of the miniseries, where the president and apollo are arguing over if they should run right away, or wait to transfer civlians off non-jump capable ships. Then you have the abandoned people pleading as the president runs, as the cylons arrive to kill them all.
Sure, it wasn't some grand soap-opera decision which took hours to make, but it was given appropriate time and attention under the circumstances.
The problem is that totally unimaginative people are holding the purse-strings. They don't want to gamble on something they haven't seen before. They want to sell something they know has already sold once before.
That's why you don't get big budget "new" movies, you get sequel after sequel of The Matrix 6, Charlies Angles 3, Scooby Doo 2, etc., and the crap just gets churned out, but they know they can market it because the auideince for that crap is pre-existing.
Lord of the Rings was such a fluke because there's no way that should have gotten done, or done as well as it was, via the Hollywood system. Because Hollywood crushes creativity, it eschews original thought, and it despises anything it can't reference as something else.
When you're committing millions of dollars before even a frame of film is shot, the boardroom people want to be comfortable about it by knowing it's really something they can already relate to. That's why Gene Roddenbury had to "sell" Star Trek as "Wagon Train to the Stars", and couch it in relation to a Western, which was the TV staple of the 60's.
Unless you can make your "new idea" seem like *exactly* something everyone has seen before, you'll never get funding for your production. You've got a better chance of winning the lottery and self-producing it.
And that, my friend, is why there's only crap on TV and Movies. Because Hollywood hates "new ideas".
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
There's a lot of congecture that the story they're telling is actually linked to mormons.
I watched the mini-series, and like many here thought it had it's pros and cons. But the fact that they're putting their money on this rather than Farscape is proof to me that the execs at SciFi just have bad taste.
from all the negative press the show got before and after airing i had some pretty low expectations, but couldn't check it out for myself until it played in canada. frankly, while i grew up at just the right age to adore the original and forgive it's shortcomings, the remake far outstripped the old one by a long mile. the combat sequences were shot in a handheld style that i loved in attack of the clones and loved just as much here. the story itself was pretty solid, but with a few, ahem, issues. i did find the religious byline a bit curious, a little unexpected in it's heavyhandedness. the show seems to have a decent cast so far, with probably a few tweaks sometime soon. if i had one suggestion for the series though is that it goes back to the planet and follows up with what's left, from a tempoary survivor view. the handheld style might enhance the impact a little and the religion could be played hard. anyway, interesting schtuff.
I'll admit it, I watched the original series back in the 80s, and I liked it. It's no excuse that I was a kid at the time, I should have known better. It was crap and I liked it. I also liked Buck Rogers, which was an even bigger load of crap. I was so starved for science fiction entertainment I religiously watched what the tv execs threw out at us.
So I watched this latest version of Battlestar Galactica, and you know what? I liked it. I really should know better...
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Lexx was one of the worst...shows...ever! This is the same network that cancelled Farscape too, which was light years better than anything else they've produced.
:)
Of course, to pubescent living-in-mom's-basement pasty faced geeks, Lexx was cool because it had a hot chick.
Go ahead and mod me off topic or whatever. I just had to respond and at least I have the gonads to not post this as an AC
There's nothing stupid about it at all. It's called a covert operation. It was done during the Cold War all the time. Someone is seduced into giving away the crown jewels. Yes, people in real life have done that.
--- Ban humanity.
Dude, I'm really sorry, but your taste is in your ass. The acting was fantastic. Mary McDonnell's performance alone was worthy of an Emmy nomination.
And, when you write things like, "It wasn't true enough to the original, I saw several technical inconstancies," we must all collectively reply, "Don't be such a freakin' geek."
I'm losing faith in the Sci-Fi Channel.
...and what about Dead Last.
They cancel Farscape and then go with the NEW Battlestar Galactica.
What a waste.
Why can't they pick up shows that other irresponsible networks have canceled, like Firefly?
Cartoon Network at least picked up the Family Guy, and the Sci-Fi channel should be doing similar.
This channel had so much potential, and has, with a very few notable exceptions (Dune) failed miserably at its mission of giving us a quality sci-fi expierience.
Other than running old Star Trek episodes, most of their rerun fare is crap. Instead of showing things like Six Million Dollar Man episodes, and continuing with Farscape, they give us complete shit like Crossing Over with John Edwards.
And now they've taken a big 'ole piss on the fans of Battlestar Galactica. Reimagining my ass. They compare what they did to Star Trek TNG, but it's not even close:
TNG built on Star Trek's legacy with new characters, not "reimagining" existing ones
TNG didn't make Captian Kirk a chick
TNG didn't taunt fans of the old series by telling them that if they didn't like it, "the popcorn is in the next aisle".
This new series isn't BSG, no matter what the logo says. Starbuck is a cigar chomping, skirt chasing MALE pilot. Apollo doesn't hate his dad, Cylons neither look human nor have glowing orgasms.
I'm sick of hollywood types tuning a blind eye to fans concerns to make a quick buck (the new Six Million Dollar Man movie will be a comedy....with Jim Carrey as Steve Austin; I just want to fuckin' murder someone over that one). These people have no respect for the mythology of the stories. Rick Berman is the worst of the bunch.
I won't be watching this piece of shit, and in fact, haven't watched the sci-fi channel in the better part of a year. The Discovery Channell or A&E is better time spent these days.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I have always had a soft spot for "Wagon Train in Space"
I like them too. Fortunately, Firefly filled that void for 13 episodes.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
I'm not so sure if I'm a big fan of Ballistic Weapons in space.
First off, there's the effectiveness issue.
If you're talking about explosive devices, you need hit-to-kill accuracy anyway, because shock-waves do not propagate in a vacuum. Although I don't discount the effectiveness of nuclear weapons in space. (Personally, I would design a nuclear warhead to take a more directed approach in nuclear detonation - using neutron reflectors and such, you don't want a 360-degree nuclear blast, you want your warhead to get close to it's target, and direct as much of the device's output in the direction of the target as possible).
Considering the velocities at which spacecraft travel, then add to that, the velocities Science Fiction spacecraft are probably travelling (in order to cover interplanetary distances in the space of a few hours instead of months or years), and the distances at which these combats could take place, (in order to gain initiative, one must attack before being detected, in order to reduce the effectivness of defensive maneuvers, etc.) . . . you can see an enemy hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, let alone light him up with radar, or whatever - you need a VERY high speed (maybe reletavistic?) projectile (and a smart guidance system, dumb ballistic weapons won't hit jack shit at those ranges). Even with a laser, you're likely to spot your enemy possibly several minutes before the light-beam he's fired at you reaches you. Very high projectile speeds mean - either a propulsion system ON the projectile which makes each projectile rather expensive, or a high muzzle velocity. Newton's 3rd law of motion becomes an issue here. Case-in-point: the A-10 warthog's (http://www.a-10.org/) gun is connected to the engines so that when it fires, it boosts thrust output, so the plane doesn't stall from the thousands of pounds of mass it's spitting out the front-end.
Which leads to another point. Moving mass in space requires mass. (that dang Newton again) The more mass your projectile has, the more energy it can transfer to it's target to do damage. That's why we use Depleted Uranium projectiles. It's denser for lead - so for the same weapon bore, more mass gets shot out per-projectile, delivering more energy to the target. As the ship fights, it's mass changes dramatically. From leaving the launch bay fully loaded, you want to have as much of the ship's mass be propellant, so you can maneuver the ship. (a ship that can't maneuver is called a sitting duck). But with ballistic weapons, you're devoting valuable total mass to projectiles instead of propellant. And the propellant you DO have, is dedicated to accelerating the mass of your projectiles as well as the airframe. With a beam weapon, assuming you're getting electrical power from a radiation source, the energy you are putting into your target is not mass-related. Or at least as limited to the F=ma equation as a ballistic projectile would be. With a nuclear powered laser, you're limited by E=mc^2. (http://www.defensereview.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=304)
Next, there's the issue of space-junk (Newton's 1st law of motion). Any space combat is going to create space-junk. But flying projectiles, if they miss their target, will be deadly forever. A hazard to any space traffic.
Finally, it's not a stretch to imagine directed-energy weapons powerful and accurate enough to be used to intercept projectiles. We're already reading about such technology being used to intercept artillery shells. The fact is, light travels buttloads faster than bullets or missiles. Over the range that a typical space combat would occur, that gives light a huge advantage in reaction time capability. Time-to-target of a few seconds, as opposed to many minutes (given sci-fi propulsion systems, etc) or hours.
All that said:
I still FAR prefer the new BSG to the old BSG. Though I'd like to see the Cylons not so irrevocably married to a single form-factor as far as fighting ships g
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.