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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.
Or the same viper shot peeling away to the left or right just by reversing the footage.
Or the uses of the Apollo command module seperating from the third stage as a missle launch
My Dad insisted there was some footage from an old disaster movie or two tossed in there
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Or the original BSG dogfights. The Cylons never once figured out that if they had seat-belts, they too could reverse thrusters and not get shot from the rear like they did every episode.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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
There was a Simpsons where they satirized reuse of cartoon backgrounds. I think it was the one where Bart and Lisa became writers for Itchy and Scratchy. They put Grandpa Simpson's name on the episodes because the producers outright dismissed ideas from children. In it, Lisa and Bart and Grandpa walk past the same doors and the same janitor over and over discussing how studios reuse things to save money.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The one thing I love about BG is that the spaceships are physically accurate. They have thrusters all over the ships in different directions to subtly change course and they conserve momentum. When an enemy is behind them they just use the thrusters to flip around and shoot backwards.
I remember cringing in Stargate when they expressed a ship's top speed in miles per hour.
After being disappointed when Babylon-5 and Farscape went away I remember wondering if there was EVER going to be another Sci-fi series like those two.
The BEST scifi (and fantasy) explores the human condition in situations that cannot or do not exist today. In this way an author is able to explore aspects of emotion and dichotomy by creating situations which bring seemingly unrelated ideas into conflict. Even in sci-fi with Aliens there will always be a "human" anthromorphic undertone or the Alien will have characteristics of Terran life (mental or physical since currently humans have no real evidence of what a REAL alien would look or think like). Ron Moore Understands this.
If you take out exploring the human condition...then you get a show with lots of cool equipment and places but is easily forgettable.
This is why I think sci-fi/fantasy is a VERY interesting genre. They are limited only by imagination...but are ALWAYS about humans (US) because they come from human imagination.
On a different track....I'm particularly impressed with SG Atlantis. Usually it takes a season or two for me to become "comfortable" with the characters (case in point...Voyager took 3 seasons)..but after just one season the characters on Atlantis have "jelled" and are interesting. This is a GOOD thing! I'm conflicted about them contacting earth so soon though it might have been more interesting if they had kept them back for a couple of seasons.
Its to be seen if the addition of the stars from Farscape will breath new life into Stargate SG-1...but I'm hopeful since both actors have shown they know their craft from Farscape. Remember that Law and Order has shown that a show can go on indefinitely if you rotate actors in over time that are good. I would not be surprised if SG-1 tries for this (or Atlantis).
Yep. There is (among other things) footage from the movie Silent Running. Watch for the colony ship with the Eco-Domes ..
it looks a lot like the Valley Forge.
And, regrettably, there is the re-re-re-reused shot of a jettisoned dome being blown up. Unfortunately, that particular shot isn't just "random spare footage" but one of the key scenes of Silent Running. It makes me cringe every time ;-(
And one thing I will say for Glen Larson: putting Erin Gray in spandex ("Buck Rogers") was, indeed, friggin' genius. Kudos for that.
I was just a wee tyke when that show was on. I remember I was a confused little boy and couldn't figure out why my wee-wee got big and swollen whenever Erin came onscreen. So I asked my dad about it and he explained what was going on. If it hadn't been for Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, my sex education probably wouldn't have happened for many years.
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).
Thus far I am enjoying the BSG series, but I wonder why they feel the need to put bright lights in the helmets of the pilots. They would not be able to see a thing and the cylons would easily destroy every viper.
John Dykstra (of the original Star Wars fame) was responsible for those Viper shots. Supposedly, he did a ton of footage of Vipers in various situations before getting burned out with the show and going on to other things. The stuff he did shoot was recycled for the duration of the series.
And yeah, I'm pretty sure some of the scenes of panicked people running for their lives were recycled from older movies, since the clothing seemed remarkably Terrestrial.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Sorry, programmer at the helm. (comma optional)
I loved Richard Dean Anderson in Star Gate. If anything, I think they are going to have to pull off some briliant writing to save the show now. I do like that they stole the Farscape cast for the sho and that is a plus, but without that Anderson humor, well, it won't be the same.
I also don't put an once of credit into anything that blowhard Richard Hatch has to say. What a dork he is.
I thought the last couple seasons of SG-1 were really good.
We know the characters. They've developed them all very well. So, they were able to concentrate on the story more instead of character development.
I've always liked how they continue to bring back the re-occuring characters. It really gives you a feeling that the show is "bigger" in a way.
But I like Ben Brower and I like Claudia Black, so I definately think they will bring new life into the show, keeping it going.
The show has definately changed though. Although it's always been a Science Fiction show, it has kept it's feet on the ground of viability. However, now there's spaceships, shields, and super space guns. It's fully engulfed in the SciFi space drama now.
It does make sense though; they've aquired technologies and made friends enough to build space ships and such.
It's a good progession of the show.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
"His car."
"The house is hers."
Etc.
IOW, as another poster pointed out, "it" is a pronoun, and pronouns don't take the possessive apostrophe. I'm not saying it makes sense, but that's the way it is.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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.