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Battlestar Galactica Resurrection Effort Described
MistGhost writes "A background story of the effort, both by Richard Hatch, and Ron Moore to resurrect Battlestar Galactica (NYT link so remember to lie on their free registration). Now that the show has started it's second season (at least here in the States) this article appears. " I sat down with the Tivo last night and really enjoyed the premiere. I think the SG-1 retooling as real potential too- that show has been stale for a long time.
Am I the only person on the planet who remembers the original Battlestar Galactica as being a steaming pile of crap? Aside from being a rather blatant attempt by Glen Larceny (who also brought us Tron^w Automan and American Werewolf^w Manimal), the plots were the utmost juvenile tripe.
My theory is that you had to be about ten at the time to think BG was actually cool. Once you're past the nostalgia, does it really stand up? There was an awful lot of silliness involved. For example, the man who single handedly sold the humans out to the Cylons got what ammounted to kitchen duty. That'll teach him!
While I haven't seen all of the new BG, what I have seen I've liked very much.
And one thing I will say for Glen Larson: putting Erin Gray in spandex ("Buck Rogers") was, indeed, friggin' genius. Kudos for that.
Sci fi has been stale for a long time. We're looking for the next big fix to kick it off. In the past we had "flying cars and silver panties for clothes in the year 2000". Now all we have is special effects and soaps in space.
When the next big thing comes along we'll see sci fi pick up, but untill then people will keep trying and failing to make anything but Star trek Mark 12 or the latest "lets hop planets" type fodder.
I like muppets.
Let's face it folks.
The BIGGEST reason why the new version of Battlestar Galactica is so good is that one of its creators (Ronald D. Moore) has strong experience doing excellent work with a sci-fi TV series. After all, some of very best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space 9 was done with his assistance.
That's why Enterprise sorely missed Moore's presence. If Ron Moore had been Enterprise Executive Producer I guarantee that we would be waiting with baited breath for the upcoming season, that's to be sure.
In personally think years from now, the Ron Moore-created version of Battlestar Galactica will go down as one of the truly great sci-fi TV series of all time
As an avid Stargate fan (yes, that is right, I could probably retell every episode, and yes... I am probably bias) I have to defend my favorite series from the little "stale" quip by CmdrTaco.
The view of SG-1 as stale is ridiculous... I think most viewers don't find appeal with it because the show WAS not turning into the next generation MTV\OC\BS crap. I personally am a big fan of Season 5-8, unlike some others. I think the sarcastic humor and Sci-Fi mix is awsome. I am not a fan, however, of the attempted OCafication (a word, which means teeny-bopperafication) of Stargate with the perpetual appeasement of 16 year old pale boys who won't watch a show if it doesn't have some reference to sex every sixty-nine seconds.
> > the show has started it's second season
> Sigh.
An apostrophe *can* indicate possession in most cases; but note that "its [second season]" is an exception to the rule; i.e.
"The man's car"
"The boy's toy"
"The Slashdotter's pr0n collection"
"The Slashdotters' pr0n collections"
"Its second season"
Why?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
When I heard about Atlantis, I didn't understand how they could spin off so late in the game. Now it looks like an attempt to build a safety net for the franchise knowing that RDA was leaving the show.
Finding a replacement for RDA had to be the worst job ever. He was the face and personality of the show. Bringing in Ben Browder seems like a good decision based on his acting personality. His cocky, slightly confused John Chriton character always reminded me of a younger, more tormented version of Jack from SG-1. Not having the rest of the cast immediately want to follow him was perfect. He will have to prove himself worthy of trust and friendship. As long as he is given a chance to grow his character on SG-1 like he did on Farscape and the SG-1 and Farscape fans can keep the shows separate I think it could work.
Bringing in Claudia Black might break the mix. Her character is vastly different than her Farscape character (other than the leather, not that I'm complaining). She's more like a smarter version of the Chianna(sp?) character, without the ticks. She's a loner who will do anything (legal or not, uses her sex appeal) to get what she wants or needs as opposed to a outwardly stern, inwardly insecure moral soldier. It's hard to pass up excellent acting tallent when it comes along, especially for a scifi show. Making her a supporting character was a good idea. Possibly after Browder is accepted she could join the main cast to ween in the Farscape actors a little at a time. There are plenty of good actors left from Farscape so I wouldn't be suprised to see more of them pop up on Atlantis or SG-1 in the future just as they have borrowed actors from Star Trek from time to time.
I have to say that the spin off idaea worked very well. Atlantis turned out different enough to allow unique story lines while still keeping the Stargate feel. The choice of actors was done well too. All of the primary cast are convincing, interesting and work well together. The male lead in Atlantis (sorry, don't know his name) could have been a viable replacement for RDA instead of Browder.
Overall, I think that both strategies will be successful. Not an easy thing to pull off.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
Also, how many vipers can they lose from week to week before they start having a major resource issue?
This is actually taken into account by the show. If you read the blog/listen to the podcasts, they mention that there are n many ships available, and no replacements magically appear. At some point, they will have to find a way to replenish them.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
The writers are generally geeks
However that is not really the case for some of the writers for the new BSG. Several of them used to write for lawyer TV shows and that kind of thing. The writers for the season 2 premiere were previously story editors, not writers (except for the previous season). They are used for the 'military strategy' episodes. Maybe they have military experience or have done previous work with military oriented shows.
Personally I hate this whole team-of-writers, different writer for every episode style of American TV writing. I think the British style of one writer per season makes for far better television. They should at least trim things down to the three best writers. A huge team of them is just ridiculous. How can you expect consistency that way? It's not so bad for planet-of-the-week episodes, but not a good strategy for a continuous story arc.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Could it be that most (all?) pronouns don't have a plural form with an ending s, so an apostrophe is not needed to distinguish from possessive and plural like it is for most nouns.
Let's not forget the miniseries. We know that Galactica runs Baltar's programming on at least one of its computers but that it's not networked. They made a point to tell us that. We also know that Six got into the defense mainframes and presumably from there could have planted anything into all the systems Baltar had access to. It's not that the Cylons "think" in, as one poster suggested, or necessarily even hack in ... it's all there, an idle daemon, just waiting.
TV is a collaborative medium. When you tilt at windmills as an individual you usually don't get anywhere, even with a lot of fans behind you, since the insiders, the bean-counters, they decide what gets the green-light.
Richard Hatch has to put food on the table. He's done a lot of lowly things, like adult education acting workshops. He currently does these cruises which I assume are like conventions on water where the fans get to poke at you for days on end. Some years back I read an interview with him where the author said he lives in a guesthouse someplace. The guy doesn't have a lot of money.
The guy took BSG so seriously that he attempted to kind of become the spiritual father of it, above and beyond Glen Larson. He wrote BSG novels. He thought he knew better about how to take the franchise. But he didn't have the rights to the show. He couldn't claim to be the creator. So it was a loser's gamble.