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.

Comments

Rant: annoying sexism

[MagerValp]

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.

Re:Rant: annoying sexism

[AresTheImpaler]

what are you talking about? that made the plot much more real..

Re:Rant: annoying sexism

[Anonymous Coward]

The statement about superior technology is not born out. Since the colonials built the cylons in this version of the series they start out with baseline colonial tech as their starting point. Then following the storyline they move offworld to their own little planet. And then in a VERY short period of time they come back to attack. That leaves very little time to develop, test, build and deploy anything much better then what they started out with.

To many resources would be devoted to building infrastructure for their war machine, so at best you could state that they have marginally better technology (although we really did not see the "best" colonial toys). And that is not truly enough to defeat prepared defenses on a multi planetary scale.

Number 6 is a logical infiltration unit. Most people in power are Male and most males can be lead around by their gonads....

Where are the new ideas?

[MMHere]

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?

Re:Where are the new ideas?

[cubicledrone]

Where's the new, cool stuff.

From Hollywood? There is no new stuff. Studios cannot green-light something original. It simply will not happen, ever, no matter how "cool" it might be.

Same story for game companies, publishers, whatever. Original, new material is too "risky." (People who run companies like this who bitch about risk should have invested in bonds).

Unless it is already $100 million franchise (purchased for $100,000) with worldwide merchandising rights available in at least five major cross-industry categories, it gets shitcanned. It's that simple.

Anime is about the only category where there is cool new stuff. The entertainment industry of today is exactly like the auto industry of the 1970s, and the Japanese are about to buy the whole thing for about 4c on the dollar. Anime is a diamond mine of originality and creativity. There are anime series that are masterpieces of contemporary thought and literature, as well as fantastically capable demonstrations of state-of-the-art animation. Nothing else can even begin to compete.

If the anime and manga shelves at Suncoast continue to expand at their current rate, there will be no Hollywood DVDs for sale there in five years.

Re:Where are the new ideas?

[RESPAWN]

Anime is about the only category where there is cool new stuff. The entertainment industry of today is exactly like the auto industry of the 1970s, and the Japanese are about to buy the whole thing for about 4c on the dollar. Anime is a diamond mine of originality and creativity. There are anime series that are masterpieces of contemporary thought and literature, as well as fantastically capable demonstrations of state-of-the-art animation. Nothing else can even begin to compete.

If the anime and manga shelves at Suncoast continue to expand at their current rate, there will be no Hollywood DVDs for sale there in five years.

While I will conceed that there is plenty of creativity in anime and even more room for it to expand, I don't feel that it will ever become quite as popular as you are describing. We, as geeks, tend to be more open about "alternative" forms of entertainment. However, Average Joe over there has a hard time overcoming his preconceptions about animated shows -- the preconception that they are for kids.

I don't know how many times my friends, parents, etc. have asked me why, at my age, I was watching "a cartoon." The Simpsons seems to be an exception, but despite the fact that it's been around for 15 seasons (is that right?) I still know some older people who don't want to watch it because "it's a cartoon."

Anime won't really become mainstream over here until the average American is able to look at it as more than just a cartoon for kids.

Re:British Columbia

[Jetson]

Somehow I'm not surprised that such a harebrained idea as bringing back this television travesty came from BC. I can easily imagine the haze-filled board room and some junior exec taking a big toke and proclaiming how cool it would be if Battlestar Galactica came back.

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?

Re: Will there be nudity?

[Black Parrot]

> 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.

Re:But it sucks

[iamplasma]

Yes, they have to leave some people behind. Yes, it's a tragedy. But come-on; three times!?. Talk about rubbing it in. And even though we're meant to believe that it's such a disaster, people make these life or death decisions with hardly a flicker of anxiety.

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.

"New Ideas" die in boardrooms

[tekrat]

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".

Re:"New Ideas" die in boardrooms

[Illserve]

There was a day when hollywood was populated by people's who's job was to make good movies, not money. So I'll villify them all day long because they're not there to do art, they're there because they smell a fast way to a cozy lifestyle.

Re:"New Ideas" die in boardrooms

[jmoriarty]

There was a day when hollywood was populated by people's who's job was to make good movies, not money. So I'll villify them all day long because they're not there to do art, they're there because they smell a fast way to a cozy lifestyle.

Okay, I'll take the bait. When was this ever the case? Please show me the specific years and movies around which making "good movies" rather than money was the norm and not the exception?

Look at the problems that surrounded getting Citizen Kane, Casablanca, or even Star Wars made and I think you might find that good movies have always emerged from a fortunate confluence of events rather than an altrusitic streak in the studios.

But I'm not a movie historian, so prove me wrong.

Confessions of a Science Fiction Junkie

[invid]

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...

Re:They chose this over Farscape?

[NormAtHome]

Actually what is truly disgusting is that they replaced Farscape with "Treamors The Series", that is totally unfathomable.

As I've said before, Yes the fourth season was bad but in my book they really pulled it out the last six episodes which were fabulous.. my personal favorite was "We're So Screwed: LaBomba"

As so many have lamented, the people running the Sci Fi channel know nothing about science fiction.

Why is this a problem?

[HarveyBirdman]

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.