Here ya go...
Posted on 04/10/2006 7:23:50 PM PDT by KevinDavis
The latest issue of DreamWatch features an interview with actor Richard Hatch, who played Captain Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica TV Series and now plays Tom Zarek in the Galactica remake.
Hatch talked about how he continues to feel that a continuation of the original series would have been just as successful as the Ronald D. Moore's re-imagining.
"I don't think a continuation would have been any less successful than a re-imagining," he stated firmly. "A continuation would have evolved the original show: it would have updated the Cylons, brought new characters in and gone into equally provocative areas. We could have had Eddie Olmos as the Commander, Mary as President, Jamie [Bamber] as Apollo's son, and Katee [Sackhoff] as Starbuck's Daughter. And we would have loved to have brought Ron Moore onboard too."
"A continuation would have had the best of both worlds – it would have had the values and positives of the old show but would have updated them for today. It also wouldn’t have had the problems the new show had in the beginning, when fans of the original felt upset and disappointed."
Additionally, a few years ago, Hatch created a visual proof-of-concept by executive producing, co-scripting, co-directing, and acting in Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming. This is a 4-1/2 minute, professional film trailer by Hatch which illustrated his concepts for a new Battlestar Galactica TV Series or movie continuation of the original series.
More from Hatch can be found at Sci Fi Pulse.
Militarize them with what? All they had until they found the Pegasus was one ship destined to be mothballed using museum pieces for the fighter squadron. Why not have elections, you're attempting to save/ rebuild society, their society involved elections. If you want to be the good guys, be worthy of survival, you need to worry about the treatment of prisoners, and even in a full blown military dictatorship (which is what you're proposing) you don't execute prisoners until they've been tapped of data, there's more to be learned from Cylon prisoners than their biology. In a free society people can decide their directions, with only 50,000 people what is a low value unit?
How do you capture a Cylon raider? They got the one because of a lucky shot. You don't just capture enemy hardware (and enemy personel, remember Cylon raiders are both equipment and soldiers all in one) because you decide to, there's a lot of additional risk that goes into deliberately not using lethal force, risk you can't afford when then number of pilots you have can't even get your ready room to half full.
The Cylon interface thing was silly. Moore even said so. They do have a reliable test for them, but it's slow (11 hours per test).
I think the writers are doing fine. One or two serious flubs like the plug in thing but for the most part they are doing a good job of working within their defined universe. There were certain story concepts that were the goal of the series, like how does civilian government survive a massive disaster like this and rebuild a free society. One of the keys to the new BSG is in one conversation from mini-series when Rosaline explains to Adama that they already lost the war. Your complaints all come from Adama's position that as long as he had a gun the war wasn't over yet, but Adama was wrong the war was over the important thing now was survival.
Computers - how are Cylons infiltrating the systems? Just because the comps are "networked" shouldn't be a threat if there is no external access - shouldn't be hard to control. What, do they all have wireless links just waiting for Cylons to sync up? Like most writers, they're clueless; computers, and esp. things like computer "viruses" etc. are magic.
I don't think Galactica was run by the dregs; maybe by the old guys nearing retirement. Gaeta ain't dregs by any measure. Don't think Chief or the deck crew were, either. Dunno 'bout D, but she doesn't seem like it either. (One thing, of many, I like about BSG is enlisted and support personnel get some face time!) Starbuck is a problem child, but they would have run her through some schools to fix her or kicked her butt out. Apollo is okay if you keep him busy and away from politicians.
Also, I keep forgetting - impulse control seems to be seriously lacking in the Colonial Military. Spent four years in the army and NEVER saw anybody hit someone outside of HtH training. Or throw a tantrum.
Admiral Caine was an example of "anti-military" bias. In decent militaries, "Col. Kurtz" types are pretty rare, to put it mildly. The seldom become Admirals. You don't want 'em orbiting YOUR planet with that much firepower...
Also, most Admirals know quite well that no winning army in history would ever pass inspection... Patton might be an exception. Other stuff include various riots (like the coffee 'massacre' or the guy holding a gun a Tigh's head 'cause he was upset about the massacre).
I only have a few militaries to compare to, but the US is probably the most liberal one that can be taken seriously (can you imagine basing the Colonial forces on, say, the Dutch military with long hair and unions?). Most others would be much tougher...
It's established that part of the networked computers includes the automatic landing system that guides Vipers and Raptors into the landing bay, that means there is an external access point.
Galactica was crewed by Adama's people, it's established that Adama has a soft spot for discipline cases and likes to turn people's careers around. Maybe they aren't the dregs but they also aren't a Star Trek style "god crew" (a lot of what Galactica is about is washing the taste of Star Trek out of Moore's mouth, Moore used to work on Star Trek and there was a lot of it that he hated, one of the things he has complained about is how Star Trek crews are always nothing but A+ the absolute best star fleet has to offer, no member of an Enterprise crew (of Voyager or DS9) was ever just good at their job). And Apollo hates being in the military and was planning on quitting when his current enlistment was up.
It's established shortly after we meet Caine that she has changed, she's more hard edged than Adama knew her to be. Just like how Col Kurtz wasn't always like we see him in Apocalypse Now Caine wasn't always how we see her in BSG. Different people react to extreme tragedies differently, Caine apparently snapped.
You don't worry about civilzation, culture, democracy, etc. - you're worried about the species, right now.
You put 'em under the Colonial Code of Military Justice and assign 'em ranks and duties. In return they get fed, clothed, medical care and maybe even to sleep occasionally.
You can't interrogate Cylons; they LIE - perfectly. Nothing that pulls a human's strings will affect a Cylon. You will only get what they want you to have.
Meanwhile ALL Cylons are war criminals - nothing you can do to 'em is worse than what they deserve; preventing mistreatment has more to do with preserving military discipline - that would be the only reason not to mistreate 'em.
Best thing would be to figure out an interface, download 'em into an isolated system and crack their code... There has to be interface, after all they can upload.
IIRC, they had an opportunity to capture hundreds of cylon raiders in one episode (they were disabled by Cylon computer magic via a Boomer) and went on a shooting spree instead. That could have been a windfall, if just by capturing intact Cylon power plants and mini-ftl drives.
The reliable test is in Baltar's hands and he's a Cylon sympathizer. I was thinking that someone could come up with an easier, faster test - like checking the nerve tissue. Also wondering why no-one has has done a blind test on Baltar's detector...
Rosalind's statement is another example of silliness. Cmdr. Adama should have told her that the war is over when the Cylons decide its over - and apparently they're not going to stop while a human is left alive (or uncaptured). Saying the war is over while folks are still trying to kill you is STUPID (and a good reason for a military government - they won't make that mistake).
Who knows? How does a light sabre work? What is the level of Cylon technology? We know Tempest works one way, reading the faint electromagnetic signals emanating from a network cable, so maybe they can affect those signals.
I don't think Galactica was run by the dregs; maybe by the old guys nearing retirement.
The ship was about to be put out to pasture. They didn't have their best on board. Now not being the best doesn't necessarily mean they're not technically proficient, it can also mean undesirables and those out of favor, such as those who don't have much military discipline or can't deal with politics. Would you have let Tigh on a front-line ship? I doubt it. He was put in a harmless position waiting to be put out to pasture.
Admiral Caine was an example of "anti-military" bias.
I didn't see it that way. It was about her, not the military. While it did show the dangers of a military without civilian control, some in the show didn't outright condemn her, saying she did what she needed to do in order to survive. But that did go against the theme of that show, "do we deserve to survive," which was why both commanders called off their assassination plots.
Besides, I thought the documentary episode showed the military in an excellent light.
Okay, so the automatic landing system is an issue - isolate it from the main network (might be hard if needs input from Nav, but there are ways) and look for the next issue. Or limit its ability to accept input (do something about that buffer overflow trick... who wrote these things - Microsoft?). Or turn it off during periods of Cylon contact (have to park or land manually during battles). They need those systems.
The rest I agree with. But Caine is a babe... and I'd want to be on her crew (as of Pegasus, anyway).
Ya know - "Do we deserve to survive" would never, ever occur to me. And I certainly wouldn't put up with Cylon lecturing me on it...
No you worry about civilization culture and democracy, else what's the point of the survival of the species. Remember no government has ever voluntarily given up power, if you decide you now have a 100% military society to deal with the crisis then you've decided you will have a 100% military society until there's some sort of revolutionary war that ends your current government.
Cylons are no better at lying than people. We interrogate prisoners of war because we hope to see through the lies and find useful information. Away from the resurrection ship Cylons fear death just as much as people and experience pain and are social creatures that don't seem to like isolation, those are the primary tools of interogation of people too.
They had no way to know how long the Cylons would remain disabled, they'd already seen that raiders would pretend to be disabled to gain advantage. Also by that point that had a captured raider and a captured stealth Cylon. And what happens when a raider captured because it was software disabled finds a way to reboot and you've got it INSIDE your ship?
They didn't know Baltar was a Cylon sympathizer. And really Baltar isn't a full on Cylon sympathizer, he's a tool (in the most insulting use of the word) who's wound in love with one Cylon model, most of the time Baltar is just a self serving jackass. They made a decision that it was to be Baltar's test, the logic was that if they couldn't trust Baltar they were screwed anyway. Maybe not the best logic in the world but since he was the only surviving scientist they had it makes sense, they had to trust Baltar so they decided to trust him. If they didn't trust Baltar they weren't going to get a Cylon detector, if they trust him and he doesn't deserve it they weren't going to get a Cylon detector, if they trust him and he deserves it they get the detector. They had to trust him, and hope.
No Rosalind was right. For one thing the Colonial government had surrendered, and for another they had nothing to seriously continue the fight with. Adama was looking for a suicide mission, wanted to go down fighting and feel in his last moments like he'd done everything he could. But Rosaline pointed out that path was silly, what he could do was protect the remaining civilians in the hopes that they'd find a way to re-establish and rebuild. No sacrificing the last 50,000 people in the universe on a fools fight you can't hope to win is STUPID, taking the one slim chance for survival of the species, which is what they did, is the ONLY smart move.
The picture speaks for itself (sorry, I am too inept to post the photo)
http://forum.serienjunkies.de/Upload/maxim-mar-2005-grace_park-001.jpg
There are ways, but here's the main problem: how do you find out you've shut down every way the Cylons have in? Gotta get near Cylons and hope. It's established that part of why Galactica is totally unnetworked is that Adama is kind of superstitious about it, Galactica is absolutely unnetworked because it's his ship and he said so. From what we can tell Caine managed to figure out the weaknesses in the network and turn them off so Pegasus is safe, but Galactica is Adama's ship and he refuses to allow any networking at all. Who wrote those things included at least one Cylon remember (or at least she had fairly unlimited access to the source code for finding weaknesses), so they were probably pretty heavily infiltrated. Apparently they don't need the systems too much, at least Galactica doesn't, it's kind of one of those technology crutch issues 30+ years ago people didn't "need" cellphones, now 3/4 of our society wouldn't know what to do with themselves without one, Adama refused to allow ships he commanded to be networked so he's adjusted to a nonnetworked ship, even Apollo doesn't like it. IMHO that's one of the reasons Adama didn't move his flag to Pegasus, too much network for him might as well give the ship to somebody that actually likes the things.
Caine was a babe, but she had issues.
Wow, is he still bitter about the new show? You'd think having a recurring role in it would have appeased him. It must really rankle that he couldn't get his vision through and that the new show is incredibly good.
Maybe should would take over the Laurette Spang role.
Heh! I entered this quote in IMDB. It's one of my favorites:
Act of Contrition (#1.4)
Dr. Cottle - "You are obviously an intelligent well-educated young woman. Would you mind explaining to me why you waited five years in between breast exams?"
President Roslin - "Yes, I would mind. It's none of your business. I was busy."
Dr. Cottle - "[lighting a cigarette] And now here we are."
President Roslin - "Yes, here we are. Do you mind?[Indicating her displeasure at his smoking]"
Dr. Cottle - "I do, actually. [continues smoking]"
Doc Cottle's great!
Don't take it so literally. Think of it more as paying for our sins and showing we really are a better, more moral race than the Cylons and thus deserve to rule. Everybody thought of the Cylons as the bad guys without asking whether the humans were actually the good guys (not a morally relative "well, we're better than the Cylons" but an absolute morality). Remember, this came at a time where both commanders were plotting seriously immoral "end justifies the means" actions.
I do like how this concept flipped to the Cylons, who started wondering whether they were the good guys. Unfortunately for the humans, the current president is about as amoral as it gets.
There's an idea. The humans just have to get their "boxing" technology. We know the Cylons are very afraid of that, so just put them in the box and pull them out every couple weeks until they talk. Or maybe it could be mimicked with a sensory deprivation chamber.
Once you start using HTML, you'll have to put a <p> to get new paragraphs instead of just hitting Enter twice.
He's the one who started pitching a revival and got people interested, then the execs picked someone else to do it with an entirely different vision. It was a nice concession to put him on the show in a fairly high-profile role, but he wanted a lot more.
And do all interrogation in a faraday cage, have them carry in a radio that's turned on so they can see that no transmissions can enter or leave the room.
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