Galactica Tackles Issues Relevant To Today

SyFy Portal ^ | 10-17-2004 | Michael Hinman

[mowowie]

The Farscape movie is on tonight. that's a pretty good show.

[TomGuy]

I always wonder why filmmakers take classics (tv and movie) and think they can re-do them. It seldom works. Most remakes are very costly and few make significant profits.

Why can't they find and develop new scripts? Classics are classics for a reason.

[xp38]

Battlestar Gallactica? I haven't seen that in yahrens.

[Kieri]

I've been waiting for it for a LONG time now! I hope it garners enough support for a second life :-)

[Anti-Bubba182]

"..Moore said there will be an episode of "Galactica" where a Cylon is tortured and humiliated..."

In the pilot they already did that, but this was before Abu Garib. For those who did not see the show. The Cylons in this show look like people and the purpose of the mistreatment was to determine if the prisoner was a Cylon and to extract information.

I don't mind oblique references to the events of today, but if they get too heavy handed it will get old quick. They will need to do this with a deft hand. I don't see a big danger in this Clintonian epoch. They can't spin Sci-Fi worse than the DNC spins the real world.

Just like the Old Twilight Zone, the viewer is free to be moved or not, influenced or not by what they see.

[Lord Basil]

I tuned into the first part of the new pilot. After a while, I swiched to MNF. The announcers' swooning chatter about McNair/McNabb (I can't remember which) was more tolerable.

BTW, I saw the original when I was a kid.

[namvetcav]

While you cite several important reasons folks like sci-fi, Dr. Who 2, some of us just like the concept of a gentleman who can live about 900 years, have about 8 different personae, own a time machine and travel around the universe with a selection of cute and spunky British teenage girls who generally need a little discipline and training in life's complexities. Scientific speculation is interesting, but I think it will always be the fictional "hook" in the story, the dream or the nightmare, - that's the thing that creates a fan.

[Sam the Sham]

As for Babylon 5, which was one of the finest series ever created, the producer J Michael Straczynski had a guiding principle.

No cute robots. No cute kids.

Sound advice. Galactica always posited Adama vs human peacenik appeasers. That is not the way people are. Didn't anyone want revenge ?

[Fee]

From youth to now, I took my scifi as entertainment. I like the mini skirt uniforms in Star Trek, the Sec Officer Yar in Next Gen (she can detain and beat me anytime), I like Seven of Nine in Voyager (she can assimilate me anytime), and the Vulcan in Enterprise can fix my back problem and insommia anytime. Yeah, Star Trek is definitely better. God bless Gene Rodenberry.

[dr_who_2]

Doctor Who was often "light entertainment" as well as television sci fi. A lot of it was just well-loved character actors running to and fro in cramped sets and spouting entertaining dialogue. Some of the better episodes featured clever funky aliens and mind boggling mysteries and what not, like some of the better Twilight Zone episodes, and that's about as much as you can expect from television science fiction. But real science fiction would likely bore most people to death and doesn't have well-endowed women in tight clothing in every scene.

[Kirkwood]

You're both wrong. It was Egyptian. Lots of references to pyramids, sphinxes, hieroglyphics and the like. Even the helmets looks like Egyptian pharaoh headdress. As the series evolved it became very clear that earlier colonists (not the wandering colonists escaping the Cylons) were involved in helping to advance the people here on Earth by teaching us advanced science and mathematics and building various things, such as the Egyptian pyramids. This was the time when ancient astronauts was a big fad.

[mowowie]

Yea, I remember the council of twelve or whatever foolishly wanted the Galactica to lay down her arms and appease the Cylons on a promise from them to leave the Humans alone. This right after a similar agreement nearly wiped out our race. Those idiot libs never learn. Of course the strong leader Adama, Like Bush, Held firm and saved those fruits butts once again.

[demnomo]

I have to admit--Dirk Benedict was the original Breck Girl. He puts Edwards mane to shame. ;)

[Galactic Overlord-In-Chief]

Glen Larson's two sf shows of the time, Galactica and Buck Rogers, both warned against the dangers of laying down your arms to make peace with your enemy, though in Buck Rogers they managed to expose the truth and avoid disaster. Galactica was unabashedly pro-military and a harsh critic of appeasement (witness the times when the Council of Twelve wanted to end the war and stop the fighting, but then something would happen and Adama would be proven right). Galactica had a lot of good things to say about human freedom, values and faith. This new show just strikes me as cynical. I actually like Ronald Moore's work on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but he's mismatched with Battlestar Galactica.

[dr_who_2]

Yeah, I suppose his career foundered when his hairstyle went out of style. The seventies was a wierd decade. The pop culture was an amalgamation of the worst of the early 60's and the worst of the late 60's. It featured the sort of television that both grandma and her ex-hippie children might watch--the least common denominator.

Speaking of hair, did you ever notice how the young male protagonists were either all studs with great shaggy hair or old balding farts with disheveled hair who looked like they hadn't had a bath in a day or two?

[Chewbacca]

Nope. It was mormonism. I was at Trekcon in Tulsa in June of this year and the actor who played Bojay was asked about it and said the show had a basis in momonism.

[RandallFlagg]

< dons asbestos suit>

I loved the new BG. It hinted strongly at 9-11 and the dangers of appeasement toward an adversary who's only goal of existence is their enemy's complete annihilation.
However, I sure hope that the lefties don't try their usual ruining of it by injecting their politics into it.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

ping....

[Politicalmom]

That hairy thing is disgusting!!

And I am NOT talking about Muffit!!

[ChicagoHebrew]

Actually the religious imagery in the original BG was Mormon, and not Jewish -- so much so that some people called it jokingly "Mormons in Space." Glen Larson is a bigtime Mormon.

It's easy to confuse them though, since Mormons took a lot from Judaism (i.e. the twelve tribes, the Council of 70, etc.).

I've downloaded the new BG eps from the UK. I'm pleasently shocked: it's fantastic. It might literally be the best sci-fi show ever. Just shows that like JMS, Moore is a liberal who can still write well and treat conservatives with respect.