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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.
It reminded me of when I was a little kid watching stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, all the old Sci-Fi stuff like MST/Lost in Space.
Just a good solid Sci-Fi series in my opinion, nothing over the top, knows what it is and doesn't try to jump ahead of itself.
Two thumbs up here.
All your base are belong to Google.
BG is dirty, gritty and believable. The religion question concerning the Cylons is interesting because in the original mini-series there were some references to God by the cylon woman which left me scratching my head.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
Yeah, I'm rooting for them, actually.
How long before we have a BG Technical Guide like the one for Classic ST?
Being in the UK I have seen all 13 episodes, the ending of season 1 is amazing, total shocker.
Jonathan
Religious issues in science fiction are the most interesting things you can look at. Warp core this, wormhole that, but the concept of the Jedis worshipping a dead religion is what made Star Wars (at first, anyway) so sticky for so many fans.
I can't wait to see how they go into this topic on the show... the tension between tech and faith is all the more interesting when the faith can be made up to suit.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Picard: We need those engines Now!
Geordi: I'm sorry captain, but I'm having trouble with (tech department, please insert words here -Ed.)
In all fairness Sci Fi Channel has promoted the dickens out of BG whereas UPN has done little to promote Enterprise. This is why I believe Enterprise has such low turnout. I say let Sci Fi channel promote Enterprise like they did BG and see what happens.
the concept of the Jedis worshipping a dead religion is what made Star Wars (at first, anyway) so sticky for so many fans.
Really? I liked Star Wars for the special effects. The story sucked. The stories of all these "Big", Special Effects-filled movies suck. Or at least the stories of such Hollywood movies. I watch them for the SFX.
UPN has dreams of becoming the next FOX or ABC or something. They're a long way from it, but their goal/hope is to compete with and dominate the other networks. Advertisers will judge a UPN show on how much of UPN's potential audience it gets. StarTrek failed on both counts for them. If the SciFi Channel comes up with a hit as big as the Sopranos or something, they'll be happy, of course, but no-one over there is seriously expecting that to happen, while at UPN, the suits will want to know why it isn't happening ...
The immediate future of television SciFi is niche channels. The staple of good SciFi is great special effects. Every year, it gets cheaper and cheaper to make effects that are better and better. The original BSG took the budget of a major network to put out. Now, a smallish cable channel can do a better job cheaper.
When creating StarWars level special effects becomes as cheap as putting together the set for Seinfeld or Friends, I predict SciFi will return to the major networks. On shows like this, the cost of some old furniture, some cereal boxes, etc. was hardly anything and most of the money went to the actors.
Some folks further up the thread list had commented about the camera shots. I think the ones from space are what make the series so believable.
For example, in the opening show of the season, when they went to Ragnarok Anchorage to get supplies, when the shot showed Galactica appearing in the cloud after their FTL jump, all you saw was a little speck until the camera zoomed in.
If you think about it, that's exactly what it would look like if one were in space looking at the cloud and a ship did appear suddenly. Just a speck on the interstellar cloud.
The same can be said when the Cylon raiders appear. Yes, you see the flash but the ships are still shown as being specks until the camera comes in.
Keep an eye out for these kind of camera shots. They add to overall feeling that space is a vast emptiness (but you already knew that) with distances we don't normally comprehend here on Earth.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
What ever happen to the real story line? Back in the old days, the Cylons were actually a product of an alien race, not a creation of the human race.
actually, if you read the book, the cylons were an alien race (not a product of).
Starbuck was a cigar smoking, hard drinkin', womanizing warrior...
Well, so far, the new Starbuck still is a cigar smoking, hard drinkin' warrior. To make the show interesting, the new Starbuck could still be a womanizer.
Boomer was an African-American guy.
So Boomer is an Asian chic now. Big Deal! I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is she is a cylon. I can deal with changing the gender and/or race. But making one of the original characters into the enemy?... that is a little hard for me to swallow.
the yo-yo... has decided to produce a whipped, whacked-off at the knees, politically correct version of the story.
Actually, I believe that they just updated it to today's world. Politically correct?... if you count changing the gender of Starbuck, they you may be right. Then again, changing the gender of Starbuck allows for more interesting plot lines (remember the womanizing comment above).
Also, how is it politically correct that someone has a drinking problem, someone has cancer and several characters have yet to let go of the death of a bother/son/friend? the yoyo may have made the characters on the show more like you and me... complete with flaws.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Blake's 7?
It gets my vote as the best Sci-Fi series of all time. Real characters, unstereotyped. You don't know who's "good" and who's "bad". Special effects show their age, but a lot less than other programs.
While special effects costs coming down will make it easier to fund new series, we really need to get over the obsession with "realistic" effects and pay more attention to the realism of the story.
That sounds plausible... Christian religions kind of say that all the other life on our planet was made to support humans, so maybe the cylons believe they're our successors?
An over simplification.... Just as an example of descenting views in christianity quite a few Catholic theologens interruption is that humans are stewards of the natural world, not that humans have true dominion over it.
Only if you're a religionist. For a rational person, I don't see the appeal? Science trumps religion. BSG examining religious issues is like if Star Trek examined issues surrounding the Pasteurization of milk. It's anachronistic.
The most interesting thing about religion is how it manages to survive in one form or another throughout so much change. One would think that humans getting such a handle on the science of life and physics would have obliterated religion, but it keeps on truckin' all the same.
The thing that makes religion so interesting in sci-fi is that you can explore the continuing tensions between technology and faith as technology evolves... seeing how the faithful adapt is very interesting fiction.
Society hasn't really changed for several thousand years, it's just learned to re-adjust itself in the face of technological progress. That's what's fun to project into the future... how do we (or aliens for that matter) cope with the things we've created?
The world's only surviving livewriter.
Actually Battlestar Galactica, originally created by Glen Larson (who is a devout Mormon) is heavily based on the mythos of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. http://www.proaxis.com/~sherlockfam/art5.html
The most interesting thing about religion is how it manages to survive in one form or another throughout so much change. One would think that humans getting such a handle on the science of life and physics would have obliterated religion, but it keeps on truckin' all the same.
... we'll believe anything, anything at all, simply to avoid facing up to that one unpleasant fact: we are mortal and one day will no longer exist. Worse, it won't take much time and change for the very memory of our existence to vanish.
... simply because those selling the belief in him offer the promise that "even if you burn in hell, at least you won't someday be not".
I don't find it terribly interesting.
Human beings are expert at living in denial. We are intelligent, self-ware, sentient creatures encased in a biological chassis that has a very short, finite lifespan, embedded in a universe of increasing entropy in which the most fundamental laws of physics insure that all life, no matter how sophisticated or "immortal" will one day perish.
There aren't too many people who can face that reality head on
Faith isn't evolving. People's rational for denying the obvious, but unpleasant, truth of our own mortality is simply doing ever more creative acrobatics to avoid getting pinned down by cold hard fact.
Frankly, I see science as the interesting facet of science fiction, whether it is social science (what kind of a society will we have in the year 10,000?), physics, biology, astronomy, or what have you.
What really isn't interesting at all is what kind of rationalization will people have come up with to deny their own mortality when the very universe is tearing itself to pieces and life anywhere, in any form, is becoming untenable. Doubtless it will involve some kind of apacalyptic vision, followed by the return of a jealous, angry, vengful god.
That last is kind of interesting. The Judeo-Christian/Mormon/Islamic god is vengful, jelous, angry, and demanding. Yet people prostrate themselves to him willingly. Most of us wouldn't spend ten seconds in the company of a human being with those personality traits, yet billions of us flock to the idea of such a person having limitless power
Which really shows just how truly desperate we are to deny the truth of our own mortality.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yes, but those movies weren't very popular.
How many of the blockbuster movies of the 90s will be remembered a decade from now the way we still watch Blade Runner or 2001 now? I don't think Armageddon will be held with the same reverence as Raiders of the Lost Ark currently is.
I agree that blind nostalgia for the days of yesteryear is usually replaced, but I have to admit that the blockbusters of the 90s were simply not very good. Their fundamental natures were changed by the Jerry Bruckheimers, the Michael Bays, the Roland Emmerichs. Despite this, I think that the situation has gotten better in the last several years.. now many blockbuster movies are true gems.. The LOTR movies, the Harry Potter movies, Finding Nemo, and so forth. We may be seeing a return to the days where high budget and high profile films have a degree of excellence to them, though we'll still have a number of bombs.. Emmerich and Bay still have jobs after all.
I agree with you in princple but I would add that there are a couple "legitimate" aspects of science fiction..
One is the exploration of ourselves. Placing an unconventional perspective on something for the sake of exploring social issues. Star Trek:TNG, in it's better episodes did this. You can even see this in how X-Men draws parallels between their percecution and the HIV epidemic of the 80s.
Another aspect of what I might consider "hardcore" science fiction is found in the definition of "speculative fiction", the ernist attempt to speculate on our future and what possible paths, we could take. We write these things as a form of warning to ourselves when we achieve the capacity of doing something. Asimov speculates on AI and robotics and the risks we take. Orwell speculates on the political/social damage we could cause ourselves.
The Science is drawing back to what we know and building from it. Most of what we call Science Fiction to day, really is Science Fantasy.
I think the potential of this shows is absolutely going to waste. Putting aside my ENORMOUS gripes about much of the show's premises (Oh no, humans built intelligent machines, so now they have to destroy all humans. We beat the Cylons 40 years ago, if we just leave them alone they'll leave us alone, oh wait, they just blew us up, etc. etc. etc.), this show just has far too many problems to be anything more than occasionally tolerable in its current state. My chief complaints concern some (though not all) cinematography elements, most of the characters, and the completely unbelievable scenarios and human interaction(yes, I know it's science fiction, a genre of the completely unbelievable, but I'm talking human decisions here, not creative fictional elements). First off, there are minor issues with the camera work in this show. I understand the shaky camera view trying to emulate a documentary style, but there's really no reason for this. Gorgeous scenes are ruined by gratuitous zooming in/out and the accompanying fuzzy focus shifts. There's also the previous discussed hopping between faces with little/no transitions in order to try and heighten drama. It's just a little tough to buy into why the show pushes this camera style. You never see any people walking around with cameras (aside from from the press in relevant scenes), so why waste our time on attempts at simulating a more dramatic scene than the writing supports? I think this documentary style is perticularly well suited to scenes involving cockpit views during space combat or even a couple of the ground chase scenes. In the end, the camera style is just a poor coverup for many of BSG's shortcomings. Then there are the largely awful characters. The cancer-ridden president who got the job because everyone else died. The alcoholic second-in-command. The largely forgettable fleet commander. The hotshot (moronic) pilot with something to prove (and of course it's a woman! Who's ever heard of a hotshot pilot with something to prove and wasn't a woman?). Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's reasonable to expect every character ever made to be completely unique and unlike anyone else. Formulaic characters aren't even necessarily bad when used properly. However, the characters of BSG are all so predefined it's laughable. In almost any given scene, it's hard not to know what character such-and-such is going to say to so-and-so about today's ridiculous situation. You always know when someone is about to be heroic or make some cutting remark or yet again point out who the real authority of the fleet is. I was a big fan of ST:TNG (until I saw B5) and an even bigger fan of ST:DS9 (until the finale ended in some pseudo-religious garbage instead of a spectacular fight). Each series had a number of characters that were largely formulaic but were actually extremely unique characters. Virtually every character in BSG sports the exact resentments and tensions you'd expect out of them. It's all very tiresome and dissapointing. Finally, there's the issue of the ludicrous scenarios and silly, unbelievable, and yet predictable human interactions. CPO Galen protects Boomer when she admits to taking detonators regardless of the fact that whatever her story is, she's putting the lives of fifty thousand humans at risk, including Galen's. Regardless of whatever sexual gratification he gets out of the relationship, it hard to accept that he would just completely cover for Boomer. Apparently nobody ever pays attention to Baltar, either, unless he happens to be speaking to that person at that exact moment. Sure, only the viewers know he's got some sort of wierd Cylon issue, but when a civilian scientist is on the bridge of a combat ship and is showing every outward sign of sexual activity, it's just not possible that someone wouldn't think it a little unusual and be suspicious. Every time Baltar speaks with a major character, his dialogue may appropriately match the conversation because of "creative" writers, but his ton