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.

Comments

This is a Good Thing, IMHO

[Dagny Taggert]

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.

Best Season Ending Ever

[TAZ6416]

Being in the UK I have seen all 13 episodes, the ending of season 1 is amazing, total shocker.

Jonathan

I think BSG is going to be around for a long time

[minairia]

I think BSG is going to be around for a long time. The SciFi Channel is not aiming for a big national hit like Friends or something. They know (and their advertisers know) just about how big an audience that network has and that it won't get much bigger. BSG not only beat StarTrek, but likely scooped up the maximum audience numbers Scifi Channel ad people promised advertisers.

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.

Camera shots from space

[smooth wombat]

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.