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Sci-Fi Channel Renews Battlestar Galactica
Chairboy writes "The Sci-Fi Channel has just announced the renewal of Battlestar Galactica for a second season. The creator of the show has announced that the second season will delve into the religious issues surrounding the Cylons in addition to opening up their society more. The latest episode had 3.2 million viewers, almost twice as many as watched the latest episode of Star Trek Enterprise." I said it before, and I'll say it again- this is the best Sci Fi program currently airing, so I'm happy to see more.
This remake of Battlestar Galactica has been constantly touted as just a drama, except set in space. While it does seem more human than most spacefaring series I've seen, I don't entirely agree with that statement; nevertheless, the tackling of said religious issues fits into the image that they're trying to portray.
Religion was a big factor in the original series as well, it just wasn't a specific plotline.
The original storyline was a retelling of a lot of Mormon teachings. For those who didn't know that, there are a ton of sites on Google that talk about it.
Catch the re-run episodes on Tuesday nights, on SciFi.
Bittorrent. Here: www.btefnet.com.
They're on the UK schedule so you can download the first 13 episodes at very high quality. (I hook it up to my 48" TV @ 640X480 and looks as good as Direct TV).
I live in Panama, so it's not like I can get it any other way.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
If you are going to rape reality in a television show, you might as well be hung for a goat as for a sheep.
No mod points, no meta-moderating/Firehose/all the other free work Slashdot wants me to do.
Nothing is neccessary, but religion is a very traditional element in SF. After all, SF is about using ideas from science to be able to write directly about questions which are hard to aproach other than metaphorically in `mainstream' art (eg the nature of time, whether Vulcan women have pubic hair). Religious questions fit right in.
Consider more or less anything by PKD or H.G Wells or Stapledon. Or all the `Force' drivel in the Star Wars films. Or just about all of Babylon 5.
More specifically, one of the reasons for the existance of robots in SF is asking the question of what it means to be a person, and a good number of possible answers to that are the religious ones. The new Battlestar Galactica is all about that question (with some fun space ship battles thrown in), so naturally religion is going to turn up.
Not to mention the mormon connection.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
It was filmed documentary-style purposefully. You might not like it (I find it effective, adding more grit and depth), but don't mistake it for amateur work.
Do NOT download the bittorrents unless you want to get notices from BayTSP. I receieved one after downloading episode number eight. It is known that the Battlestar series is being tracked through bittorrent, so if you must use it, you'd be relatively anonymous.
Um, did you watch a different Battlestar Galatica? I watched all the episodes and Im left wondering where you came up with that. To be fair for those who havent watched the show I will excuse myself from devulging on the true ending to the season.
To find out more about the connection, look at this commentary. If you want more in depth information about the Mormons, look at mormon.org, an official "info" site from the Church.
Interesting to see the basis of some of the things in the show...
The creators of Battlestar are urging people not to torrent the show, because if nobody's watching it on the actual television, it'll get cancelled even if half the world is torrenting the episodes. If you like Battlestar, do yourselves and the rest of us the favor of tuning in. It really is rather unfortunate, if you think about it, that the audience most likely to love this show matches up so well with the audience most likely to download it rather than watch it on TV.
---- I'll take you in a Hunt deathmatch any day.
Yeah...
That just went way over your head didn't it.
I find this rather amusing, because the show Science Advisor, Kevin Grazier, gets scripts with comments from Baltar with notes like [tech] that he fills in with relevant technobabble. And as for his credentials, Kevin is also the red-headed guy from the JPL who has been explaining the various space probes on TV lately. Yes, he really is a rocket scientist.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
To elaborate: this style of filming (or shooting if you're in TV) is supposed to replicate our own eye movements. If somewhere were to turn out iris into a camera, (the idea is that) it would resemble Cinema Verite.
That said, most of us spend most of our day staring at a screen, so maybe that's why we find it so unrealistic. Also funny is that most of modern TV has, on one level or another, adopted this style of filming as well. If I recall for American TV, NYPD Blue was the first, but ER quickly picked it. It's just that this is the first time geeks have seen it used on TV.
I always thought that the most inspired thing about the old series (horrid as it was) was how they invented swear words that were almost like real swear words (fraq -> fuck and they had another one for shit, I forget). This allows them to have realistic dialog (people, especially military people in combat situations, *do* swear! Shocking, that) without running afoul of the FCC or whomever.
I'm glad to see the new series carries this practice forward.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
The latest episode had 3.2 million viewers, almost twice as many as watched the latest episode of Star Trek Enterprise.
Bullcrap. The most recent Enterprise episode 'United' had 2.8 million viewers. 2.8 * 2 = 5.6, not 3.2. Enterprise generally gets around 3 million viewers - the average for this season so far is 3.08 million (source). In other words... Enterprise would thrive on Sci-Fi. Or anywhere where it actually gets ANY advertising.
The whole fleet is outside of a system in one episode and starfuries are flying back-and-forth to the low atmosphere of a particular planet which Starbuck is downed
I don't know what a "starfury" is, but you're mistaken. In that episode there's a chunk of dialogue establishing that Adama ordered the fleet to move closer to the planet to facilitate CSAR operations. Tigh reminded him that this would leave the fleet in a vulnerable position, but Adama didn't care. Remember?
My definition of mis-using is manyfold, but in this case it's entirely about using the hand-held thing so much that it no longer has any impact on the telling of the story.
It's not supposed to have any impact on telling the story. The entire series -- with a few very specific exceptions --is shot handheld. It's just how things are done. It's not used for effect; it's used all the time, and the occasional steadicam or crane shot is used for effect. (If you've seen episode 13, you know EXACTLY what I mean.)
The suit isn't designed to make such a seal
The seal doesn't need to be perfect, any more than you need your house to be perfectly airtight in order to air condition it. As long as the Raider maintained positive pressure, Kara had nothing to worry about. Well, except getting lost, getting shot down or flying into something at a thousand miles an hour.
The suit is flexible, so the pressure would just push it right through the hole into space.
Not that flexible. Have you ever felt space-suit material? It's very rigid.
The suit will do nothing for temperature
It doesn't need to. It's an oft-repeated fallacy that space is cold. In fact, space is an excellent insulator. Because you're in a vacuum, there can be no heat transport through convection or conduction; all you're left with is radiation in the infrared. As you can clearly see, the inside of the Raider is lined with musculature which would be quite opaque in the infrared. With Kara in there pumping out heat, the problem would be cooling it, not keeping it warm.
You're aware, are you not, that the inner layer in a space suit is a refrigerated layer? The suit circulates chilled water next to the astronaut's skin to keep him from overheating.
No story is ever served by a lack of believability.
Heh. The king's brother murders him with ear poison and marries the queen. The king's ghost appears to his son, the prince, and commands him to avenge his death, which the prince does through an incredibly elaborate plan involving shaming the usurper into confessing by showing him a play. Plausible? Not hardly. Yet that's the plot of the greatest story ever told in the English language.
Methinks you're looking too hard to find things to sneer at.
I think I would have enjoyed it more if I wasn't spending so much time NOT wincing at the really stupid stuff.
I wholeheartedly agree. And while "Babylon 5" was a profoundly stupid story, you'll find you enjoy "Galactica" a lot more if you quit worrying about how many pounds PSI Kara's flight suit can take and just enjoy the show.
That example of Firefly stood out because it bothered me right then....
Then you _need_ to watch those DVDs, in the commentary of which Joss apologizes for this. He did it for the drama of the story, and after it was done it looked wierd to him, too. It was of course too late to fix it.
There are 2 shows in the DVDs that were never aired. One of them (Objects In Space) is outstanding, and when you run out you can always watch 'em again. The surprises aren't there, but there's enough in them that you'll see things on the second (and third) pass which you miss on the first.
Nonetheless it still hurts - almost physically - to know that there will probably be no more. The movie cannot possibly satisfy my jones for about six more years of Firefly.
There's NO intelligent life among the network suits who choose which shows we'll get to see. Firefly's cancellation, after barely half a season, proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.