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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."
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The new Stargate SG1 and Atlantis series are also premiered tonight on SciFi.
Best TV series out there peiriod.
Lately there has a been a resurgence of classic sci-fi shows, such as this and Dr Who. While it is great to see younger audiences exposed to such fantastic television programming, I have to wonder what effect this will have on new sci-fi shows. Will we just keep rehashing the old (but classig and very good) series, or will new ideas and new series be able to develop? Will enough resources be spent by the networks and studios to promote the creation of new series, rather than just cloning the previous ones?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Seriously, though, I've been thinking about BSG ever since the conclusion of last season. Why so compulsive, you ask? Because the phrase "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again" reminds me waaay too much of my workday...
PS: I think the Cylon meant Apollo.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I got through watching most of the series in High Definition on the Universal HD channel. (Never saw it on SCIFI.) So I'm very used to watching the series in high definition. But now, I see the new season is on SCIFI, which is standard definition.
How long will it be until the new season hits Universal HD? I'm trying to judge if it is worth waiting or if I should take the plunge and watch it without all the detail to see it early.
"Starbuck is supposed to be a womanizing man, not a womanizing woman!
The soundtracks for the miniseries and season 1 are both available if (like me) you really enjoyed the angry drums.
[o]_O
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!"
Also, don't forget the Podcast of commentary that is available for the episode.
One of my fondest early dates I had when dating my now wife was sticking around on Friday nights to watch "Farscape". She was a HUGE fan of that show. She actually signed up for digital cable just to get the SciFi channel to watch it. (When Farscape went, so did her cable!)
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
It's almost like they want us to download the torrent instead of tuning it to watch.
this site really is news for nerds!
Season 1 was so dark and depressing that I could only make it through the first 3 episodes. Thankfully I found dr who to fill my sci-fi fix. Also the 'verite' style camera work didn't work for me.
music lover since 1969
I thought BSG was going to NBC?
Intelligent Life on Earth
I can't wait for the "reimagining" of Galactica 1980...oh wait, yes I can.
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
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
Safe to say that the target audience will be home on a Friday night. ;-)
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
That night in 1978 that Battlestar Glactica premired, they were showing the movie King Kong on another network. It was a very big night for tv when I was kid. But then disaster struck:
They interrupted both shows because Isreal and Egypt were signing a peace agreement. And my mom sent me to bed.
Egypt and Isreal had been fighting for hundreds of years... couldn't they have waited one more day? Think of the children.
Oh man... two great shows start up at the same time, at the same time, ON THE SAME DAY!
Monk, and now Battlestar Galactica, are on at 10/9c on Friday. On top of that, they are the ONLY two shows I'm watching right now...
How did that happen?
Dude, that's like complaining about The Daily Show and The Oreilly Factor being in the same time slot.
The unofficial
Maybe people who have lives, but these are geeks and nerds we are talking about.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
Ouch, that hit kinda close to home.
Of course, with TiVoToGo, "watching TV" is just another label for me sitting in front of my laptop. *sigh*
But seriously (?), the new show is excellent -- give it a try if you can find the spare hour here or there.
My frickin' MythTV box isn't up and running yet!!! I've still got to recompile the kernel three times, reinstall lirc drivers twice, and then wipe the drive and reinstall Gentoo all over again before I can successfully record BG for my Saturday morning viewing pleasure!!
Without having seen the first season (yet)?
I've heard nothing but good things about this show and I want to start watching it!
Execute? [Y/N] _
is also available... This is a full length commentary you can download to your mp3 player and listen to while you watch the episode. pretty cool, this is the kind of stuff usually reserved for DVD boxsets
Maybe we should try locking any wikipedia pages before actually releasing the news post into the /. wild?
--Excyl
Good thing I ordered ComCast DVR!
The obvious solution to this problem is to purchase a Tivo. Of course, there is a potential downside to Tivo/DVR's. That would be the six episodes of The Sopranos from the spring of 2004 that I STILL haven't watched.
To see if they explain how the humans killed "the Gods", and who the gods were anyway.
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
I believe this is the best show on tv period. The budget for it must be huge, hopefully it will continue to pull in the viewers and SCI-FI won't need to cut production value. Beats the hell out of watching like 4 different versions of CSI and law and order.
However, there is still hope. I'm going to dust off the old VHS and fire up the record timer. It's been years since I've done this. I hope I can remember how. Any suggestions? ;)
Damn how did a person like me ever get an account on slashdot.
A lot of factors go to the social makeup of who watches TV throughout the week. I think however the factor that sci-fi tapped into that's not sociological is the fact that all the other networks put crap on friday anyway.
On the other days there might be good shows a geek wants to watch. Don't make me pick between galactica and CSI, that would kill me to have to chose only one or the other. CSI wins out over stargate in my mind too, so why pick a fight you can't win?
So given a choice between crap and a fine sci-fi show, I'll pick sci-fi thank you. It makes the choice as to what to watch a lot easier for sci-fi fans who actually like more than just sci-fi.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
OK, the question I need to ask myself is: do I download the hi definition torrents in a couple of hours, or do I wait a year or two until they show up here in standard definition.
Yeah, it's a tough one, I know...
READY.
#
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Quality sci-fi does quite well on Friday nights thank you very much.
Speaking of that, Firefly re-runs start on SciFi next week at 7pm EDT adding to the already stellar lineup.
?
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.
now that's gonna be an interesting kid Boomer's having.
oh, yeah, I'm watching. I may not have DVR, but I've got a digital cable reminder and it doesn't matter what any other channel programs.
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Another season I can only see half of.
Come on, finish the DVD set already will ya! Its the only way I will end up seeing all of it.
Friday nights are just not a slot I can reliably have in front of the TV. Miss one episode and I am screwed for the season.
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Tivo? Bah. You don't need any sort of video quality for Monk, just pull out the VCR. These are my two favorites as well. Monk re-runs Saturday morning as well.
...or the 27 episodes from the twilight zone marathon from the 4th of july I haven't finished getting through. Luckily B&W video compresses well. Only takes up about 3 hours of color video.
moox. for a new generation.
But on the otherhand. We are a tech community. We all have DVR, Freevo and MythTV boxes to record these shows.
My sister in law will marry tomorrow, and I will be stuck at a loud, dull, family party tonight. The cool thin is I plan on using SG-1 as my reason for going home. I told my wife about this plan and she said she would prefer to watch SG-1 as well. Yeay! I can ditch the party at 9:00!
We are the Borg...
Anyone know if (when?) season 2 airs in Canada?
Real geeks have PVRs (Tivo, MythTv, etc)
Agile Artisans
All we needed was one on Battlestar Gallactica... thanks Slashdot!!!
Mozilla stole tabs from NetCaptor. So what? Right?
Starbuck is hot!
...
Actually, Boomer is hotter
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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.
that finds life so dark and depressing that they have trouble getting through the entire day? thankfully i found prozac to fill my 'good outlook' fix. also the living charicatures in charge of the usa don't work for me.
sum.zero
Are they going to have the same mentally retarded camera angles, shots and movements? Are they going to continue to annoy the hell out of me?
I _was_ watching, until one night I just got sick of all the camera bullshit, and turned it off. Episode 5 I think.
Unless this changes in series 2, I see no reason to watch.
Of course, as one other poster mentioned, the mentally retarded H20 episode was beyond understanding. When will sci-fi TV writers understand that sci-fi is not "soap opera, but in space"?
Whenever I see this sort of bullocks, I just turn the channel. It is one of the primary reasons I could not stand Enterprise.
"He's my FATHER-ER-ER!!!", followed by intense look
"I won't let you KILL HER, she's carrying MY CHILD!!! !!! !!!", followed by intense look
Is it going to be up for a Daytime Emmy (tm) even though it's running during prime-time? Granted, most of the SciFi that we see today is purely Space Opera so I'm not surprised, it was just so striking to see the commercial of BSG.
Ah well, off to finish reading The Algebraist ;)
I don't get why you dorks think BSG is so great. It's LAME. The first few episodes were like a drug-induced stupor. Then the show did actually get a bit more coherent. But it was still lame. It's like watching a shitty documentary that never explains anything. And the show is so stoic. And the doctor and cylon (ghost) is so goddamn annoying - how the fuck did that come about? And what the fuck is a cylon? Human? Machine? Next episode's drama - is [insert character or the week] a cylon or not??!!
The show fucking sucks.
Of course, as one other poster mentioned, the mentally retarded H20 episode was beyond understanding. When will sci-fi TV writers understand that sci-fi is not "soap opera, but in space"?
That was one of my favorite episodes, in that it explained things from Boomer's point of view. But, hey, noone's forcing you to watch.
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Get a duel tuner DirevTivo, that'll solve all^H^H^Hmost of your problems.
I actually prefer it this way.
I've watched some Stargate Atlantis, but could never stick with it. There's no moral ambiguity in the show; the main character, the Colonel, responds to everything with a clear-cut moral choice. Everything has to be done based on principle - no compromise with reality, and it always seems to work out in their favor.
Battlestar Galactica portrays things in a much more "gray" way, forcing characters to make terrible choices where there's no morally superior answer (i.e. in "33" when they blow up the Olympic Carrier). This, mixed in with the Cylons looking like humans, feeling like humans, makes the entire of the show even more amigious, which is what sets it apart from most of the other shows on TV. There's no clear cut enemy - no clear "us" and "them," and thus, much more realistic. Even with the advanced technology/sci-fi nature of the show, it manages to portray human behavior/moral dilemmas much more realistically than the mainstream shows set in the present time on Earth.
I'll paraphrase a quote I heard from somewhere, "I'd rather watch plausible human behavior in an implausible setting than watch implausible human behavior in a plausible setting."
A dual one would help too. Oops.
http://battlestarwiki.joebeaudoin.net/index.php?ti tle=Main_Page/
Pretty good Battlestar Galactica wiki. Very thorough.
(whispering): Adama is a Cylon! ...
PS: I think the Cylon meant Apollo.
---
I think the Cylon meant either Zack (Apollo's brother) or Bill Adama's wife (Apollo's mother). I would expect that either would screw with a few heads.
I'm pretty sure it's Apollo's mother. They seem to like to replace women a lot. Probably something about space aliens taking our Women.
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For some reason it's not too well publicized, but the Season 1 DVD should be available in about 2 weeks from Best Buy. Link to Best Buy
NOT!
James Callis has such an uncanny resemblance in both look and accent to DS9's Alexander Siddig, had me fooled into believing someone other then Patrick Stewart and Walter Koenig escaped with a real acting career intact. (sorry, voice work isn't acting). And before you start flaming Star Trek 'movies' are not an escape.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It will be premieredm at 8pm in hall 6CDEF.
Much hotter.
Real geeks have PVRs (Tivo, MythTv, etc)
:-)
yes, but they will still be home friday night.
They're not tiny hentai lesbians...
It's actually funny / informative, being a direct quote from the show. Jack says it several times, usually when someone threatens him with courtmarshall.
If your audience is mostly sci-fi nerds, and you want to put on a program targetted at them, and you want to make sure that as many of them as possible are going to be home to watch it, Friday night is definitely a good time for the show. The only time that might be better would be Saturday night. Or New Year's Eve.
paintball
Step 1) Figure out how to get clock to stop blinking 12AM
TODO: Insert witty sig
It wouldn't be the first time. I saw Star Trek Voyager on sale on VHS before I'd even heard of it, and over a year before it hit the TV over here.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Much hotter.
...
totally. Boomer is sizzling.
mind you, wouldn't kick any of them out of my rack for eating crackers
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I watched the first part of the series. The Psylons look just like humans--and they're terrorizing humanity. Get it? It's so unoriginal and disappointing it makes me want to puke. Terrorists are everywhere--even in the future. You don't know when they'll strike and you can never see them coming. If you enjoy this sort of crap, then break out the plastic sheets and duct tape, sit back, and enjoy.
The terrorists are gonna getcha!
In order to save Adama after being shot by the perky cylon girly,
his head is removed and kept in a jar like the cast of Star Trek in Futurama.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
but sadly they can't show their faces without everybody thinking they are seeing a Trek knockoff. Michael Dorn has done a few things, but he's mostly working voice for Cartoon Network and narrator stuff. Same for almost all of the main actors in ST-NG. They were all unknowns before Trek, unlike Stewart, Jeffrey Combs, and a few other veterans. After Trek they vanished back into obscurity. The Trek Universe is a one way ticket to oblivion.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Also a bit of a in-joke. Jack at one point says one-L O'Neil has no sense of humor. In the original movie, James Spader was credited as playing Jack O'Neil
#include <signature.h>
Okay, then.
-1, No Context
Ya know, for the longest time I had serious issues with the thought of Starbuck as a female (of course, like many females back then, had a crush on the original Starbuck, which of course moved to "Face" on the A-Team).
:)
But Katee Sackhoff has done an awesome job pulling it off, and now I don't miss a show.
SCI FI Friday's have the ONLY shows on TV that I watch anymore. (Unless you count football...)
I also really like what they did with Dr. Gaius Baltar, and how Number6 Silon has jumped into his conscious mind.. (I loved the episode where everyone else saw her too...)
Anyway, I know what *I* am doing tonight!!!
Remember when Windows were washed, mice were trapped and UNIX guarded the harem?
that's easy:
unplug it... oh, wait...
"It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to be destroyed" --William S. Bourroughs
In my opinion, this is the best scifi series to come out in a very long time. The characters are rough, flawed, and real. The acting isn't terrible, and neither is the dialogue, though, I could do without hearing "frak" or whatever every other word.
;)
I've gotta say, though, that I don't like this timeslot at all. I can't speak for everyone, but I am not usually sitting around at home on Friday nights. I don't have any sort of recording device, so if it stays in this time slot, I won't be watching it very often.
I guess there's always bit torrent. I'll just buy the DVD set when it comes out. Yeah, that's it.
I like the Riga Veda UK opening theme better anyway.
Maybe because it's not in NTSC yet?
I think it's fairly clear where this is going and what the Cylon plan is: merge their design genome with the human one and voila - here comes the cyman.
I think Firefly is an excellent example of recent original sci-fi. Unfortunately, it is also a text book example of TV executive cluelessness.
Let's all pray that the upcoming Star Wars series will be well done. It has the power to blast through TV exec cluelessness. And maybe enough power to keep TV execs from messing with it too much.
- Jasen.
Oooh, that is a bad image to get stuck with... sorry.
Yeah, I think I can see Grumpy bashing in her head with a big statue of a penis. Dopey is wearing a jockstrap... Now they are all dancing to a bit of Ludwig Van.
Oh the horror! The unmitigated horror!
Sig
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars
No kidding, but there used to be a porn version of snowwhite and the seven dwarfs with disney like cartoon characters. It is still sold sometimes over here in Europe.
And by James Spader, you mean Kurt Russell.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I don't need a reason to stay home on Friday nights. I need a reason to go out on Friday nights, and there just aren't any.
Besides, I'm this>close to getting my Tauren Druid up to level 34!
It's the land of the brave, and the home of the free
Where the less you know, the better off you'll be.
I know sci-fi shows the same block twice in a row. IDK if USA does the same think/
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Terrorists are everywhere--even in the future. You don't know when they'll strike and you can never see them coming. If you enjoy this sort of crap, then break out the plastic sheets and duct tape, sit back, and enjoy.
The terrorists are gonna getcha!
You're REALLY going to HATE the movie Stealth then.
Don't watch it. Close your windows. Don't think of the Gorilla in the room. Let him eat your cookies.
Or even better, be like the head monkey we employ and attack the baby Orangutan instead of the Gorilla.
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The acting isn't terrible, and neither is the dialogue, though, I could do without hearing "frak" or whatever every other word.
Actually, one thing that puzzles is me, is - when is Starbuck going to just explode and go Frak Frak Frak double stuffed Frak and so on for half a minute?
She's WAY too much in control. Way too much.
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The scientists that created them in the first place. I can see humanity being pretty pissed off at the cylons creators. Much like what happened to the Borgs creators on Star Trek (i think voyager got to that), or the Replicators on SG1.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Would that be a horrorshow horror show?
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
Step 1) Figure out how to get clock to stop blinking 12AM
Step 2) ???
Step 3) Profit!
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
The original series was campy -- and well, downright stupid at times. But at least Lorne Greene, Dirk Benedict, and company had a sense of humor.
I just watched the entire first season of the "new" Galactica, and probably won't watch the premeire tonight. *Everyone* in the series is carrying more angst than a yearful of soap operas. They're all dying, or question themselves, or fighting with friends and family, or trying to figure out if they're human... heck, the only happy person is the slutty Cylon! Not that there's anything wrong with hot Cylon babes or cute Korean chicks... ;)
Now, I don't expect sweetness and light; heck, my favorite science fiction series are Farscape, Firefly, and Babylon 5, all of which had plenty of angst and drama and "bad things." But those series had hope and humor. Battlestar Galactica seems to be one big depression fest, and that just doesn't interest me.
Your mileage may vary, of course.
All about me
Same here, Monk and BSG are the only shows I currently watch on TV. So what if they are difference are we now only allowed to chose one type of show to watch?
Watch BSG at 10, watch Monk at 12. Good thing they repeate ohterwise I might have to take my VCR out of Mothballs. Or wait, I could just download them. I wonder if they considered that they are just driving people to download when they put two good shows on at the same time.
Tinfoil hat? Naa, I long since replaced it with a reinforced titanium alloy.
Battlestar Galactica PodCast
As well as David Eick's Video Blog:
David Eick's Video Blog
I'll listen to them later so I don't ruin the seaswon opener tonight!
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?
Agile Artisans
it is sort of funny,
:-)
the people, like us, that have tivo's or mythtv's are probably the ones that don't really need them because we will be home anyway!
i haven't set up mythtv, but i do record shows on my computer also
Before you jump to conclusions about something like this, you should check your assumptions. Your biggest assumption is about how BGs hyperspace jumping works. You are assuming that they can jump in anywhere they want at any vector they choose. There is no reason to believe that is the case. There may very well be restrictions on where they can jump into a solar system and their direction/speed when they get there. Maybe it's a tradeoff where they could jump wherever they want, but it would cost a huge amount of fuel, whereas it might be easier to jump in near a massive object like a planet. Or who knows how the rules would work.
I think you're also assuming that their ships sensor equipment is better than it may be. I'm sure it's more advanced than what we have now, but it looks like they still rely on plain old optical and radio telescope style equipment. They don't seem to have star trek style sensor equipment that can see things happening _now_ light-years away, for example. So, figuring out what you're going to actually be near when you drop into another system seems like it would be pretty hard. Locating a single comet in our own star system is hard enough. Finding one orbiting a nearby star and figuring out what its current orbit will be in a matter of a few days is a feat well beyond us today. Even with much more advanced equipment, it would still be tremendously difficult to spot a comet in a short time frame. Especially when you consider the fact that, at the start of all this they were about to turn the Galactica into a museum, I'm guessing that the military probably had a lot of excellent astronomers and the like, but probably lost most of them to the private sector. So a lot of the surveying is probably being done by people who learned the details as part of their training, but haven't exactly been doing it on a day to day basis.
So, I'm thinking that their choices are pretty much limited to dropping in near large planetary bodies, and searching for what they can in narrow, directed ways, not with some supreme omnidirectional scan like in star trek. Like others have pointed out, they would probably have to pass over various water sources as being too hard to refine for whatever reason, such as being in too deep a gravity well, or being too contaminated. I do remember them talking about how good their water reclamation system was in that same episode, however, but I'm sure it has its limits. They don't call comets "dirty snowballs" for nothing. So, overall, it's not that hard to believe it could be a challenge to find enough water in short order.
Many of the more thoughtful notes that come under the heading of 'I hate BSG because...' seem to revolve around issues of not understanding certain basic concepts that were laid out in the mini-series. THE MINI-SERIES IS REQUIRED VIEWING! If you're willing to give it another shot, check out the mini-series on DVD first. It explains a lot of things. Also know that this is really complex TV. Some episodes leave me mentally exhasting when I think of the things they are talking about and how they relate to today's world. If you are looking to be spoon-fed, you might want to go elsewhere.
When I watched Battlestar Galactica when it was first aired I immediately recognized all the test equipment they had set up as ship controls and monitoring stations. Now if THAT is not geek enough I don't know what is.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
"I also love the realism of the attack ships (raptors) as they fly. So many shows make ships in space behave as if they're flying through an atmosphere."
/SARCASM
Yah, which is why we never see banking turns in BSG. (Or B5.)
While I've been impressed by the fact that they sometimes follow Newton's Laws of Motion in B5 and BSG, they also love to make things "look cool", so you get the banking turns and such.
Real spaceflight is radically different then in-air flight or on-ground driving. The biggest deal is that if you accelerate continuously with a big main engine, then half-way there, you have to flip around and decelerate with the same big main engine. So you always approach your destination backwards. But that looks "weird" to all us flatlanders, so you never see it on TV or in movies.
BTW: The fighers are "Vipers". "Raptors" are the larger, multi-person utility ships.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
You know what the great thing is about always having your karma maxed out? You can piss off the moderators who slam you into oblivion because you happen to be on their 'foes' list and they just got some mod points. By reposting this:
"He had his opinion, and then I expressed mine. So what precisely is your problem here?"
Which I originally left at '1' (now modded at 0) at '2'. After they've run out of those points.
Just to drive them crazy.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
At least once you have kids (I have two) you have an excuse to be at home! ;)
Agile Artisans
oh i see how it is, i am home all alone on a friday night, and you are having a party at your place! i think we will need to revoke your geek card!
:-)
well, i guess me, tarkin, and harvey (my computers) will just have to entertain ourselves
option b) bittorrent
option c) pay reasonable price to download episode
since option a sucks (i need sleep *sometimes*), and option c doesn't seem to exist...
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
You'd expect slashdotters to be better informed on matters of science than this!
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Podcast != MP3
Podcast == Audio(mp3 or aac or ogg) + XML (RSS)
The difference being that the podcast was automatically downloaded and synced to my iPod when I put it in the cradle last night.
So, sure, water in some form is abundant in space/planets, etc.
Yes, ice, for one. LOTS of it. See Rei's post later on the specifics for our system.
Remember, in the episode, they found the water they were looking for on the surface of a planet/moon with virtually no atmosphere -- and that means ice. And, from the look of it, it's just a little patch in an isolated spot on the surface. Whereas, in our own system, virtually all of the moons of the large, outer planets are covered with layers of ice tens of miles thick at least.
But they need water "now"
They had time to search multiple star systems, all of which had planets. Their odds of not finding more water than they could ever mine would be astronomically low.
So now you're on a search for potable water...
Now this would make sense, except that, if I remember correctly, there are multiple occasions where characters describe the planets as "dry". i.e. they make it pretty clear that they're going to be able to make use of whatever water they can find, and their problem is that there is no water at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
So yeah, it would have made a lot more sense if the characters went into how they needed to find very pure water; say, if the Galactica's purifiers were not designed to process that much all at once. And then at the end, when the "find" was made, if the graphic showed something like "purity levels at 98 percent blah blah...". I don't think that would have complicated the plot any.
But the writers apprently didn't think of that. Too bad.
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
It's not: it's science fantasy. The script is awash with mystical references that make me wanna puke. They might as well have reanimated C.S. Lewis and put him to work in a darkened back room writing script for it, and I don't care for the result any more than I did Lewis' books when I was a kid.
Network TV will probably never have anything resembling SF ever again, but if this is the flagship that the Sci Fi Channel has to offer, I'll do without television altogether, thank-you-very-much.
http://www.mininova.org/get/73719/Battlestar.Galac tica.S02E01.WS.DSR.XviD-LOKi.%5Beztv%5D.torrent
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I hate the angry drums! hate them! damn you.
"B5 starfuries never did banked turns."
:-)
I'm afraid they did. They often did show them working as a true reaction drive would, flipping over and counter-thrusting to reverse course, and I was suitibly impressed by the authenticity when I first saw that. But they also did the whole "swooping" thing to make it look cool on occasion. Usually when flying "around" the station. I can dig out my DVD's and give you an episode and time reference if you like.
I don't ding them for this; it's TV, after all, and looking impressive counts for a lot. But I also don't hold any illusions that it's a scientific model, either.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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