Slashdot Mirror
Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Premiere
fanblade writes "As if slashdotters needed another reason to stay home on a Friday night, the 20-episode second season of Battlestar Galactica premieres tonight at 10/9C on the Sci Fi Channel. The series, a 're-imagining' of the original 1978 TV series by the same name, made history as the highest-rated original Sci Fi Channel program ever. The first episode of the second season, 'Scattered', won't be televised in the UK until October, but I seriously doubt that will be a problem for the show that 'killed broadcast TV'. There's also excellent coverage on Wikipedia for those eager to brush up or catch up on the first season."
My only question is, what's up with the Friday slots? Aren't those slots where shows usually die?
That only applies when your target audience is made of of people who have lives. Not dateless sci-fi nerds.
I think it depends on the demographic you are after. I don't think they are shooting for 18-24 year partiers;-)
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Now, SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis is coming on tonight, BEFORE BG... Now that's newsworthy.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I wish these London playhouses would spend enough resources to bring in some truly creative people and get some new ideas rather than just rehashing the same old stories over and over and over again. I mean, really, how many more beatings can this dead horse really take?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Atlantis is much better if you don't have to sit through all the dreadful acting. You can usually cut out half a show or more and still get the general idea of what happened.
I'm waiting till about season 3, if the crew hasn't gelled by then it will be off my list completely.
Sean
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
I generally agree your point about rehashing old shows into todays fodder, and not just scifi. Movies can't seem to come up with anything new either.
BUT (huge but)
This show is the exception. After watching this, seeing the old show would be like watching a disney version of "A Clockwork Orange". The new BSG is so much more than the old show. I'm sorry, Glen Larsen had great ideas, but the production never lived up. This is how the show should have been done from the beginning! Dramatic, epic, lots of intrigue and suspense.
And I don't think Dr. Who is a remake. More of a continuation. There have been, like, a bajillion of those guys. I think the BBC just took it out of mothballs and brushed it off. Kinda like what "Enterprise" was to "Star Trek".
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
I Won't be happy until I see the new series of Doctor Who premiered in the U.S. Canadians are lucky because they've already seen Doctor Who 2005 series 1 and they're slated for series 2 as well. We have to suffer the crap that our networks spew at us and SciFi is certainly no saviour. They program the worst SciFi (all action masquerading as science fiction) I've ever seen in my life. I mean, come on!!! Mansquito? Give me a f*cking break! Where is the thinking man's SciFi channel? I'm sick of all these macho programs that SciFI puts on claiming to be science fiction. Science fiction is not about wars, and guns and action. It's about using your mind and technology to solve problems in a world that is almost but not entirely like your own. Philip K. Dick did the best science fiction and SciFi repeatedly shits all over his stuff.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I watched the first Star Wars movie too, and maybe I caught a bad 5 minutes, but the space ships that fly like airplanes was really thick pseudoscience.
(never mind that the story doesn't depend on how the spaceships move).
Give BSG a chance. It's the best SciFi that I've seen this DECADE.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Well when your entire civilazation is decimated it tends to be dark and depressing, or maybe I could be wrong.
__________ Leave me alone I'm compiling a RPG II program on my S/36...Thanks to metamucil I'm a Regular Meta Moderator
If only Stargate had a budget like Galactica, then we would really see some great sci-fi. As it stands, we have to watch a show that must conserve their gate splash scenes to cut costs.
It still doesn't get any better than Sci-fi Friday.
NO, the plot of the episode was mainly about Sharon wrestling with the realization that she might be a Cylon, and that she might have bombed the Galactica. It's also about the Sharon #2 back on Caprica going back for Helo. Both are clearly Cylons, but the viewer is quite in the dark about why Cylons are doing altruistic things, and displaying evidence of conscience.
Oh, and by the way, they're thirsty too.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Kinda like what "Enterprise" was to "Star Trek".
Yeah, except Dr. Who doesn't suck.
One thing I really like about BSG is that the weapons are realistic and the visual effects are outstanding. The missile salvos are really really cool. Unlike Star Trek, Star Wars and SG-1, the BSG folks use guided weapons. In those other shows, in the future, the engineers have forgotten how to make guided or tracking weapons. They just shoot stuff randomly and most of the time they miss. The Stargate Atlantis finale from last season was a prime example. The marines show up with 'rail guns' that they are so fracking proud of. But then they just spray out into space with no radar tracking or anything else, hitting nothing. Jesus, a 20th century Phalanx is way better than the crap they have.
Oh, Babylon 5 was one of the few good ones also. The way they tracked the beam weapons and sliced things up was believable and cool.
That I haved turned in my Klingon language guide, am ebaying all my Trek action figures and collectible and no longer sign in on the Trek forums. It's made me forget how bad Enerprise was.
It's that good.
Galactica is what Trek should have been.
Sure, but we have the facilities to do so and we're not being hounded by a race intent on our imminent demise.
Well, you have to remember, this is a fleet of whatever ships that happened to survive, with a flagship that was about to be retired. Equipment for water processing is somewhat a limited resource - note how many of the ships relied on Galactica for water replenishment.
So, sure, water in some form is abundant in space/planets, etc. But they need water "now", and probably dont' have facilities to collect hydrogen/oxygen to make water, or to do a "moisture vaporator thing" - they had to support some 45,000 people - they had to get it fast, and worry about being caught by cylons on top of all that.
Hell... the colonel was upset that the water they found was salty - aparently they couldn't deal with even that.
So now you're on a search for potable water - and that has to be much more rare than water in any form. And it has to be in large quantities - and somewhat accessible in a quick manner.
I mean, imagine you're just 100 people, crashed in eastern Afghanistan, and you're being hunted by Taliban. Oh yeah, and you don't have enough water to get anywhere. So, sure, you could set up all kinds of ways to collect water - even in an erid environment. But, few of those will lend themselves well to being on the run and resource-poor.
It's really not that much of a stretch.
Of course it's dark and gloomy. For me, that's part of what makes it so great. It's REALISTIC in that reguard.
In the show timeline they are only something like a month out from the END OF THE WORLD as they knew it. Try and put yourselves in their shoes. How much fun are you going to be having if your entire world has been destroyed, billions of people killed, and you're running for your very life from beings bent on destroying you?
This is serious TV. I was left mentally exhausted by many eposides last season. They dealt with so many issues that have relevance to many topics in present day life.
BSG is the best thing on TV, period.
Wow. I'm not even sure how to respond to that. If the world thought as you do, there would be no literature...no television...no fables...no dreams...nothing of any real value.
There is a quote that goes something like 'the only thing new in this world is the history you don't know'...I think it's from Harry Truman.
That can be exteneded to fiction. It gives us the opportunity to think 'what if' about a number of scenarios. You get to try things out, see an example of how people might react, see how it might play out. In the case where it applies to a real world scenario, you may have already seen the effects of what not to do, and take a different path.
It's entertainment and it's educational all in one shot. How cool is that?