Olmos transports from 'Family 'to 'Battlestar Galactica'

Pittsburgh Post Gazette ^ | April 29, 2003 | Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV Editor

[RayBob]

The first season of PBS's "American Family," in which Edward James Olmos plays the conservative patriarch of a Hispanic Los Angeles family, comes out on DVD today.

But it's his role as another patriarch that's bound to get TV viewers in their 30s and 40s talking. Olmos is filming Sci Fi Channel's miniseries remake of the late '70s TV show "Battlestar Galactica." Olmos takes over the role of Commander Adama, originally played by the late Lorne Greene.

[steve-b]

The reason I said that B5 may have run a season too long is that the arc was over by the end of the 4th season. This was a conscious decision on the author's part.

The original plan was to run the arc over five seasons; JMS compressed the critical elements from the tail end of the story into Season Four when it looked like there might not be a Season Five. Thus, Season Five ended up with the "aftermath" portion of the story spread over more episodes than had originally been intended. (IIRC, "Intersections In Real Time" was supposed to be the fourth-season cliffhanger.)

[discostu]

Check out Lurker's guide, JMS was pretty open about drawing heavily from LOTR. His defense was that LOTR is probably the ultimate good vs evil story told in the grand epic scale and he would be a fool not to take lessons from it and would be rude to not pay it the occasional homage.

[Charles Martel]

The Matrix ISN'T original because the story line is as old as sci fi.

They had Sci-Fi back in Plato's day? The Matrix borrows heavily from The Allegory of the Cave. What the heck... no royalties involved! ;-)

[steve-b]

As I described a few messages back, the whole "enemies who look like us but are really totally alien" meme might be primed to come back into fashion.

[discostu]

Actually many literary historians track the first sci-fi story of western origin to the story of Hephaestos and his metal servants (arguably robots). So while you were kidding with your question the answer is yes. Sorry, Plato's copy right has expired inspite of the best efforts of the RIAA ;)

[Question_Assumptions]

I will quote you only one of many examples:

Your examples are created by stating situations in very broad terms that automatically downplay the differences. If you want to see that level of comparison as proof of similarity, that's up to you. But playing that same game, one can find comparisons between all sorts of things, including just about any epic science fiction or fantasy epic ever written. It's the whole Texas sharpshooter situation that produces things like that list of coincidental similarities between Lincoln and Kennedy. I can't say, for example, that I ever saw Sheridan as a Gandalf figure nor was the King in LotR a time traveller but if those comparisons work for you, go for it.

Every post I ever saw by JMS on the Babylon 5 newsgroup had him denying that he was emulating this work or that and, trust me, fans claimed he was borrowing/stealing from everything. Did he borrow elements here and there? I'm sure he did, either consciously or subconsciously. But there are only so many ways to write an epic and there are bound to be comparisons between any two epics. If that weren't true, there wouldn't be "master plot" books out there with formulas for different types of stories. A big reason why I don't try to find the similarities is that it annoys the heck out of authors to constantly be told that they stole everything from some other story. It annoyed Tolkien. From what I've seen of his response, it annoys JMS, too.

[Question_Assumptions]

When I said bring back B5. I just want to see more good science fiction on TV. and Marcus ;)

Sorry. I'm used to brain dead fanboys and fangirls having a knee-jerk "bring back..." response to their favorite series without ever giving any thought to how it might work. Sorry if I took your brief comment too seriously. Try going to a science fiction convention sometime. William Shatner's parody on Saturday Night Live is funny because it it all to close tot he truth. Galaxy Quest does a good job, too, though it isn't as nasty.

[Question_Assumptions]

Every comment I've seen by JMS in public showed great annoyance at being told that he was copying anything else. If he's changed his tune, that's fine, but that wasn't what he was claiming while it was being showed.

[discostu]

Yeah he got annoyed when people started pushing everything as an homage or ripoff (depending on the person's politeness) but he was also pretty open that somethings definitely WERE homages and there were clear influences. He was more open about it early, as things wore on and he got more and more fatigued and more and more harrangued he started disassociating from that track.

[Paul C. Jesup]

I've seen Dark City, good movie, that dealt with altering and swapping memories to find the human soul. The Matrix dealt with a war on two plains of reality; the Matrix and the Real World.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Actually I do love reality TV, I especially like the ones on Fox because they so horribly torture the participants.

No wonder you rub me the wrong way, you're a sadist.

[Paul C. Jesup]

I get your point. I even asked discostu to calm down in a previous post on this thread and he threw it back in my face.

[Charles Martel]

Actually many literary historians track the first sci-fi story of western origin to the story of Hephaestos and his metal servants (arguably robots).

Hmmm. Hephaestos had metal servants? That sounds rather like the Cylon "Imperious Leader" - how appropriate in a thread discussing BSG.
< eyebrow raised, Spock-like >
Fascinating.

[discostu]

Umm no, Dark City is about aliens taking over a big chunk of the world and plugging them into a big shared VR thing where they live in a fake world until one guy figures out he has the ability to break the machine. While there's a subtextual exploration of the human soul that's not the plot that's the subtext (Matrix had a subtextual exploration of super slomo and full 360 camera views). It's even got creepy bad guys wearing hats and trenchcoats. It's the Matrix done smart instead of flashy. If you like flashy that's fine, I enjoy plenty of braindead action movies, I just found the Matrix plot to be so idiotic I couldn't stay in the movie. There was a jarring telephone pole where the characters went beyond a point I couldn't follow, but it's a good looking movie.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Oh, I think it's fantastic. B5 stands on it's own merits. LOTR never enjoyed such a grand vision or nearly as many interesting characters.

"Isn't that right Vir?"

[discostu]

I forget which myth that was in but yeah at one point metal servants get mentioned (and, in typical Greek form, it kind of hints he really enjoys their company, nudge nudge wink wink).

[discostu]

I'm not a sadist, I don't hurt people for fun. But if people are going to volunteer to do it to themselves that's completely different.

[discostu]

I'm perfectly calm, but you called me an idiot then told me not to take it personally. If you don't want people to take what you say personally don't attack them on a personal level. It's really just that simple, if you call somebody an idiot you should expect them to get POd about it.

[Charles Martel]

It's hopeless... I just cannot look at Stephen Furst without hearing the words: "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?" :-)

[JustAnAmerican]

"I think I saw that too! I watched about 15 minutes before my head exploded in laughter. I used old stock footage from BSG as its own "special effects". Probably the cheesiest movie I have ever seen, and that includes "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes"

Killer Klowns from outer space is the one I think about when cheesy comes to mind. However it was so "Weird" it was worth watching just for the laughs :)