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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".
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, BSG is better, far better, than the best Trek I've ever seen, and consistently better too. I haven't seen any Enterprise, but nobody has ever made the claim that it's better than any of the other Trek series. They deserve those ratings.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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.
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.