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.

[aegiscg47]

Space 1999 was way ahead of it's time, as was UFO. Anyone remember the Moonbase Interceptors? Or the Skydiver submarine? As a kid that stuff rocked! A reworked Space 1999 series would do far better than the Galactica crap that is going to be coming out.

[Captain Rhino]

Cylons look like humans??? How unimaginative - especially for an industry that prides itself in its ability to "reimagine" classics on a grander scale.

Clunky as the Cylon soldiers in the original BG were, they at least postulated a civilization that was not as completely humancentric as the remake sounds to be. Personally, I liked the fact that the Cylon academic and leader types had those translucent bubble heads with their flashing lights, sinister eyes, and oily sophisticate voices. Said just the right way, "By your command" still makes my hair (what little is left of it) stand on end. Don't tell me that all Hollywood could come up with in imagining a robot civilization was to make them look - all of them? - like humans! What is that, a robotic case of flesh envy?? Sheesh.

I hope it bags and the fan base (old and new) can get something a little truer to the original. It's possible. After all, "Enterprise" has finally drawn close (closer) to the standard set by TOS despite the long wandering of successive Star Trek series in the wastelands (ST:TNG, DS9, and ST:Voyager) BTW I did like individual shows in each of those series but not the series as a whole. (Although DS9 did come close.)

[Wolfie]

Click.

[xp38]

Here's why. Hollywood is besides being morally bankrupt is creatively so too. Remakes of old tv series and old movies and a clear example. Usually old tv shows get the big screen treatment with lots of modern moviemaking flash but remaking a tv quickie Star Wars (which of course was collage of old movie and serial ideas to start with) ripoff from the late 70s on the cheap has to be a new low. As a general rule these remakes are awful.

[discostu]

The base accent might be Australian but they're trying to mask it or something, I can understand Australians, heck I can even understand excited Australian football announcers (always the true test of your hearing), I always had a hard time understanding the Farscape people. Maybe if I hadn't heard so much hype, given how much everybody yacked about it the show was terribly underwhelming. Of course I thought the same thing about B5, but the third episode I caught was the one where they killed off an entire species, that caught me so off gaurd because it was so not Star Trek (and they built it like Star Trek, the doc found the cure and I almost turned it off right then muttering "yeah yeah, nick of time cure to save.... they're all dead?!") I got hooked right then. That came really close to being the last ep I saw, maybe I just didn't see the magic Farscape ep that put it all in perspective... OK I put the DVDs with those eps in my Netflix cue and floated them up high, of course the NHL playoffs are on so my Netflix cue hasn't moved in weeks so don't expect me to see them real soon but I'll see them.

[Kieri]

Its such a shame Johnathan Harris can't reprise his voiceover of Lucifer. He was PERFECT, and he's missed.

[Psycho_Bunny]

Space:1999? Pointless without Barbara Bain.....when I was growing up I thought the two hottest chicks ever where Linda Carter and Barbara Bain.

[Kieri]

Make sure you see the first season episode, "DNA Mad Scientist." It's a shocker. If you remember the series "Dallas," its a Bobby Ewing in the shower kind of moment. You expect the characters to be dreaming because you can't believe what you just saw!

[Wolfie]

I had a thing for Barbara Bain, too, but I won't go into details.

[Wolfie]

Remember "Galactiac 1980", the spin-off where they found earth? Hilarious stuff. All the Galactica kids were super-athletes, what with all that "being raised in space really messes with your muscle density" mumbo jumbo.

[mhking]

[Shaking my head]...

I'm a long time SF fan, but this looks like a train-wreck waiting to happen. And like the proverbial train-wreck, I won't be able to tear myself away.

And, like most others, I have to ask, "SFC cancelled 'Farscape' for THIS?"

[Psycho_Bunny]

I had a thing for Barbara Bain, too, but I won't go into details.

That's right, you won't. 

Because she was my childhood fantasy woman and I'll have to kick your @**

>:P

[RightOnline]

"Nuts, I loved Galactica . . . why not honor it with a decent remake."

So then, explain to me why they had a smarmy character named after a chain of overpriced coffee shops?

[redhead]

"I have a bad time following series after a few years. I turned on Farscape about a month ago, and Creighton had gotten to earth, now he seems gone again. And what the hell is happening on DS9 - I'm all out of synch there?"

I saw the series finale of "Farscape" a few weeks ago. Creighton and Ayerin exploded in a rowboat. ?? "DS9" was my favorite Star Trek series. I wish they would bring it back. I thought "First Wave" was very good. Did they only make one season's worth of these programs? Heck, I even liked "Max Headroom."

[BenLurkin]

No, no, no, no. It is a chain of overpriced coffe shops named after a smarmy character!

You see, reality mimics fiction (I guess)

After all: we got our own national Baltar when Clintoon slimed into power.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I didn't mean DS9 - I meant SG1. D'oh!

[jejones]

Space: 1999 was wretched; Gerry and Sylvia Anderson somehow managed to do another puppet show with live actors. (A shame, after their far superior UFO.) Computers printing out results on adding machine tape--did Moonbase Alpha ever run out of the stuff, I wonder? Aliens who referred to Moonbase Alpha ships using the same names they used on Moonbase Alpha....and the frantic attempt to fix the show in the second season with new characters and the man thought by many to have wrecked ST:TOS.

Not to say that Battlestar Galactica was in any way worthwhile, save as a source for a great line in the Mad magazine parody: when berated for not having destroyed Battlestar Galactica, a Cylon replied with words to the effect of "If you had just one eye that goes back and forth all the time, how good a shot would you be?!"

[Wolfie]

I got into "Lex" for awhile. Mostly for the chick.

[Slainte]

In the new version, Olmos said, it's impossible to tell Cylons from humans, "which poses a tremendously difficult problem that's speaking directly to cloning, which we face in this world today."

OK, so maybe I'm the one with the lack of imagination here, but if you can't tell the humans from the Cylons, then how do the Cylons tell the Cylons from the humans? Where's the point of chasing someone haf way across the galaxy if in the end you're really not sure if he's on your side or the other side?

[BenLurkin]

They had neat helmets:

Seriously though, I remember watching, and enjoying, that show. As a very young child of course!