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New Battlestar Galactica Spin-off Series Announced
An anonymous reader writes "The Sci-Fi Channel's hit series Battlestar Galactica may soon be joined by a 50-year-prior prequel series, called Caprica. To be co-exec produced by Ron Moore and David Eick, the new series will follow the tale of the creation of the Cylons."
You know adama wont die but thats about it.
Also regarding the prequel issue, lots of movies come about
world war II and are quite good despite people knowing
how world war II turned out they still seem to have good plots.
So, after finally getting around to watching "Tooth and Claw" (Doctor Who 28x2), I am reminded of Gregg Easterbrook's discussion of (someone's, I forget whose) theory of the sci-fi "idiot plot," a plot which can only carry on forward motion if everyone involved is an idiot. BSG has been full of them, especially of late, with fantastic "should we ask him if he still has that bomb we know was ours yet is the only one unaccounted for? Naaaaaah."-related activities.
Why do I mention Doctor Who? Because it, quite simply, is not that. Star Trek (at least TNG) likewise rarely ran into this problem, so it's not just an american thing. But why do we buy into these plots? They're ridiculous on their face, yet we keep watching more sci-fi full of them. Are we that impressed by apocalyptic stories and high technology that we ignore the whole reason we're watching the show?
I just don't get it.
What is it with Hollywood's fascination with prequels anyway?
First there was Star Wars with Eps I-III, then there was Star Trek with Enterprise and the new proposed movie on when Kirk/Spock were in the Academy. And, now this.
I feel doing prequels is a bad idea and will never produce great entertainment.
There are three main reasons:
(1) Future is Known: Since the audience already knows what will happen to the characters in the future based on earlier movies, there is never that subconscious element of suprise. For example, no matter how much the main characters are in jeopardy, we know they will survive to justify their existence later in history. Writers basically paint themselves in a corner since they are bounded by the events that are supposed to come later.
(2) Risk to Established Canon: Sometimes the writers try to inject novelty by doing things that meses up the canon. They introduce things that no longer justifies what was established in the earlier movies. This leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouth because it invalidates everything they have come to believe. For example, the appearance of Borg on Star Trek Enterprise before the time of Kirk.
(3) Anachronistic Special Effects: Since prequels get made with special-effects technology that has evolved much beyond when the earlier movies were made, we end up seeing special effects and the general look of the movie not being in line with what we would expect how things would look in the past. For example, some of the consoles and user interface screens used by the cast in Star Trek Enterprise looked more advanced than the ones on Star Trek : DS9. This anachronistic anomaly again leaves a bad taste in the audience's mouths.
I feel Hollywood should abandon this fad of making prequels and just start making more novel sequels where what they can do is only limited by a good writer's imagination.
I'm most excited about meeting the first Cylon. In the series, the Cylons a sophisticated belief structure and a strange confidence in those beliefs (although we know they sometimes change their minds). We get to see a little of how Cylon society is structured in the second season, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. How did an artificial intelligence creat a monotheistic belief system? How did it come to believe anything at all? Why do Cylons believe they're God's chosen species?
In the director's commentary for the first-season episode "You Can't Go Home Again," Moore and Eick say that they think the key to a great BG episode is to give away secrets. There's a lot of secrets left.
I actually read something in a magazine a few months ago, and basically the reason Sci-Fi does the monster of the week movies is because they're so low budget but still bring in advertising. They cost under a million dollars a piece to make, and they run them a few times and probably break even pretty fast. I guess that's basically the bread and butter of Sci-Fi, it's version of "reality TV".
It'd be interesting if they did kill off all the Adama line in the prequel. It'd certainly add fuel to the speculation that Adama's a cylon...
Thinking back to the miniseries, the schematic the guy in the space station had for the cylons were the centurions we knew from the 1978 series.
Does this mean the new series will have to go back to men in suits to maintain that canon? Or will there be new CGI-tastic cylons that are supposedly created for more mundane tasks that humans origonally used them for?
i.e. this show will be set before the cylons split off and created the centurions?
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
ST:TNG has a pegasus, and an episode named after it
SG1/Atlantis has an entire pegasus galaxy
Therefore BSG had to have a pegasus!
Uh, hello? The original BSG had a Battlestar Pegasus, and its Admiral Kane was played by Lloyd Bridges (thus providing karmic balance: Katee Sackoff > Dirk Benedict, but Lloyd Bridges >> a PMSed Ensign Ro). Therefore, TNG and Stargate ripped off BSG. This is something that only a slight amount of research could have informed you of.
Those who don't research their history are doomed to end up looking like a fool on /..
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~mlindsey/asimov/question. htm (the story)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question (about the story)
Vuja De: That sinking feeling that this is going to happen again. Often occurs in meetings with Product Managers.