Lt. Starbuck … Lost In Castration.

Big Hollywood ^ | January 19, 2009 | Dirk Benedict

[EveningStar]

Once upon a time, in what used to be a far away land called Hollywood (but is now a state of mind and everywhere), a young actor was handed a script and asked to bring to life a character called Starbuck. I am that actor. The script was called “Battlestar Galactica.”

Fortunately, I was young, my imagination fertile and adrenal glands strong, because bringing Starbuck to life was over the dead imaginations of a lot of Network Executives...

Witness the “re-imagined” “Battlestar Galactica,” bleak, miserable, despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it reflects in microcosm the complete change in the politics and morality of today’s world, as opposed to the world of yesterday. The world of Lorne Greene (Adama), Fred Astaire (Starbuck’s Poppa) and Dirk Benedict (Starbuck). I would guess Lorne is glad he’s in that Big Bonanza in the sky and well out of it. Starbuck, alas, has not been so lucky. He’s not been left to pass quietly into that trivial world of cancelled TV characters...

[gogogodzilla]

Actually, I think that any of the Golgafrinchian telephone sanitizers, third class, could write a better script than what’s found on most television shows nowadays...

:-P

[dilvish]

It’s not because her family is unhappy, it’s because they’re DEAD and the only reason she’s alive is the source of her argument with them.

[MoreGovLess]

Have we been watching the same show? You’re weird, dude.

[Mr Rogers]

No man wants to talk or think about a ‘rebound relationship’. That marks it as a feminazi show.

[allmendream]

How about “ex-sex”? That was what I thought was going to happen with Dee and Lee, they had a good time, they were smiling at each other.... time for a good round of ex-sex. Instead she blows her brains out. DAMN IT!!! Sex with the ex is almost always better than a high velocity shell to the cranium.

[fr_freak]

If we committed genocide we arguably wouldn’t. That’s the problem with your logic. You’re saying they should have genocided the Cylons because they tried to do it to them.

First off, the Cylons are not some other culture or race; they are machines, built by humans, who then tried to kill their builders. That was the fun of the original Battlestar Galactica, nobody had to think twice about killing a machine, and the machines were evil for having tried to kill all of the humans. The new BSG started with the same premise, but couldn't stand to have that moral clarity.

Second, the decision whether to wipe out the Cylons or not wasn't some arbitrary consideration of one race toward another. The Cylons, having killed billions of humans already, were seeking to eliminate the remaining 40-something thousand. The remaining humans were in a desperate struggle just to survive. The virus would have ensured that survival, and otherwise they were looking at eventual extinction. Only a self-loathing, lefty freak would argue that people under such conditions should ponder the question as to whether they have the right to do this. That is a fundamental difference between a leftist brain and a conservative brain. A conservative brain understands that all things always have the right to defend themselves, to try to survive. Whether they can or not is a different question, but that they have the right to try is assumed.

[dilvish]

That marks it as a show that understands there’s a large percentage of the population out there that aren’t traditional SF fans that comprehend feelings and stuff. The core nerd crowd is easy to get, a few decent space explosions and some hot babes and don’t horribly violate the laws of physics too often and they’re yours. But they aren’t that much of the population, nothing wrong with appealing to non-nerdy men and women, they’ve got money too.

[dilvish]

First off your “first off” is wrong on all counts. They aren’t just machines, they can breed with humans, they clearly are another culture (they have a religion that none of the humans have) and possibly race.

The virus probably wouldn’t have insured their survival. There was one big gaping hole in the concept of the virus, it all ran under the assumption that the resurrection ships were all within resurrection range of some other resurrection ship all the way back to the Cylon home world. Any R-ship that wasn’t close enough wouldn’t have gotten the virus. It would have wiped out the pod that was currently harassing the fleet, but really it’s unlikely to have taken out the whole race.

You should always ponder something like genocide. Remember, that’s a large part of why we dropped the bomb, because we figured that was about the only way we could win the Pacific front without committing genocide.

Nobody is saying they don’t have the right to defend themselves. But is genocide ever really self defense? That’s the question.

Moral clarity can make for boring drama. Interesting drama asks hard questions of the viewer. IMHO I think they should have released the virus, for all the reasons you point out only without the needless venom, even if it didn’t wipe out the Cylons it was a good counter attack. But I don’t think it’s an easy decision, the Cylons AREN’T just machines and even a probably unlikely attempt at genocide would kill many millions of them. Killing many millions of anything sentient is a thing worth considering deeply. Truman didn’t just say “heck yeah drop the bombs” he thought about it long and hard, and those bombings didn’t even kill a 1/4 million.

There’s drama in the thinking. Maybe not a kind of drama you enjoy, but there is drama there, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying it.

[Mr Rogers]

So they’re after the Oprah audience...

A man breaks up with a gal because she’s a jerk and he’s glad to be rid of her. If she initiates the breakup, she’s a jerk and he’s glad to be rid of her.

You just described a chick flick TV series.

Remember - gays have money too! That’s why the second Star Trek series was popular...

[dilvish]

They’re after any audience they can get. Just like any other intelligently run TV show.

See you’re just thrashing around wanting to insult people. I already said the first boyfriend DIED, that’s what she was rebounding from.

It’s not a chick flick TV series because it hasn’t come close to having a happy ending and isn’t staging for one. Chick flicks have happy endings.

The second Trek series was popular because it brought Trek back. The juggernaut by that point was well established. Of course the first Trek did some things to try to get the female (and I guess gay) audience too, they followed the old Wild Wild West rule: if the plot is thin have Bill (or Bob depending on which show) take his shirt off. They didn’t really have a good shirt removing plot substitute in Next Gen.

[SunkenCiv]

I’d heard they’d hired a show fixer, never knew why.

[KevinDavis]

Just a case of Sour Grapes....



A big thanks goes to Visualops for the Banner!!

[EveningStar]

Fans of the new BSG will like this:

The original Starbuck tells the new show to frak off

[tarheelswamprat]

Just a case of Sour Grapes....

Nonsense. The article is extremely insightful and well-written, and in my opinion, dead-on accurate in its conclusions. You, and others, of course, are free to have a different opinion. That, at least, is still permissible in America, for the moment...

[Surtur]

I can see your point, but one has to give the writers credit for knowing their audience. Traditionally, viewers of sci-fi are male, and males react more strongly to the death of female characters, and they can identify more strongly with males who (over)indulge by drowning their sorrows in drink. In fact, men drowning thier sorrows is the basis for a lot of blues and country music.

[fr_freak]

Nobody is saying they don’t have the right to defend themselves. But is genocide ever really self defense? That’s the question.

Within the context of the show, the "genocide" would have been a perfectly reasonable act, given that the alternative was literally extinction of the human race. There may be a lot of drama in milking the question for lefties who love to watch moral ambiguity and self-loathing on TV, but for any sane human being, the choice was clear.

The analogy to Truman was false. He wasn't contemplating genocide on the Japanese. He was only planning to nuke two cities, and conventional bombing of cities, such as Dresden, was just as bad if not worse than the then-nukes. Also, the alternative to nuking Japan was not total extinction of Americans. If it had been, Truman would have dropped the bombs without the slightest moral qualms, as would 99.9% of America at that time. It took a good 60-70 years for us to reach a point in this country where kicking your enemies' asses in war is seen as a morally questionable thing to do. That kind of hippie thinking is rampant in Hollywood, and is blatant in BSG.

[mountn man]

Whats that, the *accusation* of the sex club?

Lets get something straight. What happened in their marriage, and the reasons for the divorce are the matters between the Ryans. It takes a real moron to equate the divorce *accusations* of one party, as the reason or responsibility, as to why the other "lost" a senate seat.

Their divorce happened years before Jack ran for senate. Jeri had nothing to do with it.

Maybe, just maybe, the accusation is true. In that case Jack Ryan has no one to blame but himself.

If Jeri was the one who gave the media the court records, then she could be blamed, as the one slinging mud to damage an ex. But that is not the case.

Basically what you are saying is "Jeri is the one who made the *accusation*." "So she is the one guilty of torpedoing Jacks senate run."

[chaosagent]

Still have to disagree on the cheesy part.

TOBSG’s effects were done by John Dkystra, Richard Edlund(who both worked on Star Wars) and John Goss(who later worked on V). They won a Emmy for the effects.

The effects compared very well on a shot for shot basis.(what there were of them, but that was just a budget problem)

I think the real reason people think the effects of TOBSG weren’t as good as SW is that they saw them on different size screens. Seeing SW on a 50ft screen and then seeing TOBSG on a 25” screen makes all the difference in the world.

I saw TOBSG on TV and then later went to the theatre to see the theatrical release. TOBSG did not hold up very well on the big screen. Even my wife noticed the difference, and she wasn’t in the business.

Then a few weeks later I got a hold of a pristine copy of Star Wars on 3 3/4” UMatic cassettes.

Strange as it may seem, SW did not look as good on the small screen as TOBSG. I think it is because they were each composited for different mediums.

RE: M&M replacing TOBSG. All I can say is that Wikipedia mentions it(Yeah, I know), Glen Larson said the same thing in a film interview, and it was mentioned in an anniversary article in Starlog magazine a while back. Argue with them, not me.

And M&M DID move into TOBSG’S time slot.

[Question_Assumptions]

Nobody is saying they don’t have the right to defend themselves. But is genocide ever really self defense? That’s the question.

When the threat to your survival is sufficiently large (as it is when there are only 50,000 humans left), yes. Pondering the morality of war is a luxury that people not facing extinction have. It's one of the reasons why the behavior of the characters in the show often rings hallow. They frequently act like the don't really care if humans make it or not and that's a pretty standard leftist world-view, that it doesn't matter which side wins.

As Patton observed (in 1930), "War is not a contest with gloves. It is resorted to only when laws (which are rules) have failed:" I highly recommend this essay.

[Hyzenthlay]

Stargate Atlantis- woman in charge and metrosexual with good hair is #2

Oh, come on, Sheppard is NOT that metrosexual! He watches football enough, and heck, he even does the 'get laid by the alien chick' Captain Kirk routine at least once... he's got good hair, sure, but the closest any of the men on the show came to metrosexual was McKay being needy and whiny. I've also got to disagree with your assessment of The Matrix, as I thought Trinity was basically the obligatory female sidekick/love interest that, in an unusual move, actually happens to be useful in some manner.

Oh, and the original Star Trek had more than its fair share of political correctness. Let's see, there was a woman, there were a couple racial minorities, there was a Russian (who, as far as I can tell, were just about as popular then as Arabs are today), they even had television's first interracial kiss! And the half-black, half-white aliens episode had the most thinly veiled message about racial discrimination I've seen in a long time... sorry, but I think the original Star Trek was just as chock-full of political correctness as any other show with a racially diverse cast and the writers' social views coming into the scripts does today.