New Battlestar Galactica Series Greenlighted

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New Battlestar Galactica Series Greenlighted

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday February 12, 2004 @09:31PM from the starbuck-and-apollo dept.

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.

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Vancouver! by Dumbush · 2004-02-12 21:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

I live in Vancouver
where are they shooting the movie?

side note: A lot of X-Files eps were shot in Simon Fraser University. The central university building is Academic Quadrangle, name after its quadrangular shape. Whenever the X-Files team needs a shot of the pentagon, they just "cheat" their way out by shooting a section of AQ...
Re:Good news by nimblebrain · 2004-02-12 21:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

There sure were a lot of drumbeats in the pilot episodes, although we caught strains of it during the ceremony.

I surmise that they may get their own music once the go-ahead is on. It might take a little while to get some decent music unless they prepare well in advance; Stargate hobbled along with snippets of the original movie's music in a not-quite-audio-balanced form for a while until they managed to work in new arrangements more suited to a TV series :)

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Binary geeks can count to 1,023 on their fingers :)
But it sucks by 91degrees · 2004-02-12 22:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

Lets see - Every single character is a total stereotypes. We have a tough as nails, always in trouble ace pilot, a father and son who don't talk anymore, an acerbic commander who doesn't take stick from anyone, and a cowardly scientist who refuses to take responsibility for his actions (Did they get mixed up and think it was a Lost in Space revival?).

Then they take out the few bits that were remotely imaginative from the original series. Rather than having an ancient society with their own political structure, they have a carbon copy of the US political system. All the ancient Egyptian styling has been axed, and the Galactica is simply way too new. Galactica was 500 years old in the original series. It made it seem like it was worth caring about.

Finally, we have the actual script. It's not enough just to throw in random emotive scenes. 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.
1. Re:But it sucks by blincoln · 2004-02-12 23:10 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I've got to agree.
  
  I watched the miniseries when it came out and thought it was okay, if a bit cliched.
  
  Then I bought the original series DVD set, and watched the whole thing. It does have a noticeable fromage factor in places (e.g. Muffit, reusing a lot of the space footage in *every* episode, the robots in "Greetings from Earth"), but it's obvious to me that the creators really cared about telling an interesting story of their own.
  
  There was so much about the original that had its own feel - the design of the costumes, the sets, the ships, the Cylons - and in the remake they've all been replaced by generic sci-fi designs.
  
  90% or more of the elements in the remake could have been designed for any space action film - Wing Commander in particular comes to mind. I was *especially* disappointed with the new Cylons. It's obvious that they only make an appearance for a few seconds because the CG is so poorly animated. I also thought the new Raiders with the scanning eye on the front were incredibly cheesy.
  
  That having been said, there were a few things I thought were clever - particularly one of the plot twists near the end that I will not explain to avoid spoiling anyone.
  
  I also liked that "Caprica" was actually the university in Canada that I went to (BG is higher class than The Sixth Day or The Fly II, both of which also filmed there).
  
  Basically I feel like the creators of the new series started changing things not because it was a good idea, but just for the sake of doing it, Rick Berman-style.
  
  I guess a new series could turn out well, but I get the impression that it won't. Sci-fi should have let Richard Hatch do his follow-up idea instead of "reimagining" the story.
  
  --
  "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Re:Where? It's the bandwidth! by SgtSnorkel · 2004-02-12 22:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think the real driver behind all the remakes is available bandwidth. The number of channels available on a modern direct-broadcast satellite system is astounding! The programmers (in the TV sense of the word) just can't generate enough content or come up with enough new ideas.
There's a glut of video bnadwidth, viewers get spread thin, advertising dollars per channel plummets -- thus we have remakes, re-runs, and 'reality' shows ad nauseum.
(BTW: I thought the miniseries was pretty good! Especially compared to the campy original.)
Sci-Fi Channel by Matrix2110 · 2004-02-12 22:35 · Score: 4, Interesting

Excellent!

The Sci-Fi Channel had the guts to air Lexx as well as a host of other ventures. I have caught my co-workers on many a time watching Outer Limits or Twilight Zone.

Has much less commercials than TNT. (Anybody been through the painfull IGEA pore sucker commercial?)

I wish these guys well, and I think they are on course so far.
Re:British Columbia by orthogonal · 2004-02-12 23:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

Being in the Pacific Northwest, I notice alot of the filming that goes on here. Unfortunatly they have moved to Vancover. From my understanding it's because they will let you get away with alot of shit (see Jackie Chan). I don't know this for a fact, but that's the rumor.

By filming in Canada, the production companies don't have to pay union rates to the hordes of support personal required to make the films. This out sourcing significantly brings down costs, while still providing a location with white, English-speaking extras and close proximity to the US, to accommodate "name" US actors.

The X-Files, for example, was mostly filmed in Canada, with US filming limited to some "location" shots of recognizable landmarks.

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Why are you convinced it was superior? (spoiler) by starX · 2004-02-12 23:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Remember, the Cylons won because the humans basically couldn't shoot back. Hell yeah you have superior power when you've sent in a spy to obtain access to the defense mainframe and figure out how to turn off all of your enemy's defensive/offensive capabilities.
Re:Rant: annoying sexism by sundling · 2004-02-12 23:29 · Score: 5, Interesting

There are two main ways to get a programmer's attention. Sexy blond works and the other is really awesome hardware. Hell, I'm not a dog like he was and I'd probably have fallen for the andriod, which is a whole different dimension. Then would come the difficult choice of living with the android you live or mankind... Baltar could have been a tragic romantic figure if they had tried that.

The problem with giving the programmer access to really advanced hardware is it's a bit difficult to explain, even if you say it's a prototype. Um, where did I get this 2 billion Ghz machine? Well, um....
Re:Rant: annoying sexism by shmigget · 2004-02-13 02:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well, she made a great covert operative. It's actually, in a strange way, realistic, as epsionage agencies regularly resort to sex as a means of obtaining access to sensitive data.

I'm a programmer. Can a sexy blonde android seduce me? :)