"Battlestar Galactica" Returns!

[nobody]

Tonight is the long awaited return of "Battlestar Galactica"- but I'm sure I didn't have to tell anyone that. :) I'm anxiously awaiting episode one of the second season.

"Scattered", Episode #201.
With Adama wounded and Laura Roslin in the brig, Tigh faces his first test of leadership.

[Fearless Freep]

Sorry...I tried to watch a bit more of it a few weeks ago, but when I saw space-based 3-d tactical planning being done on a 2-d board with big plastic models and the 'press corp' wearing 20th century Earth suits and ties, I *really* decided 'this is stupid'



Post Edited (07-15-05 22:55)

[nobody]

I can't speak for the "press corp", but I enjoy watching the crew on Galactica use unconventional technology- like 2-d battle boards, or sheets of PAPER... it's a refreshing change of pace, in my opinion.

[trekgeezer]

The use of low tech is the only reason the Galactica survived. From lessons learned in the previous war with the Cylons, Adama would not allow any type of networked computers on board. That's why they have to manually calculate when they do an FTL jump.

Anybody who watched the pilot mini-series knows that the Cylons easily defeated the modern fighters by shutting down their computers.

I kind of like it the old looking tech, it adds a dilfferent twist to the series. They're not from Earth anyway, so who could tell what kind of weird mixture of technology they would have. As far as the civilian clothing, Ron Moore said he didn't want people distracted by weird costumes as such. You will probably never see any kind of alien either.

[Fearless Freep]

The use of low tech is the only reason the Galactica survived.

That's just an example.  That and the clothing, *some* of the clothing looks futuristic/sci-fi and *some* of it looks like 20th century business attire, and the use of anachronistic phrases  like "welcome to the big leagues" and things like rows of dusty books in cabin rooms and people wearing glasses.  Star Trek could get away with it because they were supposed to be doing "human/Earth culture moved forward a few hundred years" so they could carry cultural artifacts forward.  Star Wars could not because they were supposed to be a completely different culture (and Lucas was criticized for throwing  idiomatic phrases into Ep I & II for that reason).

I saw a slasher movie once where the characters are in a medium/large boarding house.  In one scene some characters duck into a bathroom.  The interior scene was obviously done in a public restroom with the concrete block walls and rows of commodes and such.  It was a funny moment when you could see what they had done and it really broke consistancy and kinda jarred the viewer out of the moment.  I had t he same feeling a day or two ago when someone has been thrown in prison and it looked like the jail scenes were filmed in some local county jail.  Big wrought-iron bars and such.  A lot of the scenery looks like that to me "well at best this makes no sense on a spaceship and at worst just looks like the did some location shooting"

A lot of the computer graphics look about on par with a U.F.O productions offering.

It just looks like a low-budget sci-fi TV series with delusions of grandeur in the dialog writing and directing, a camera crew prone to seizures, and a production design team that thinks they are doing  a cop drama or a WWII navel epic.  It just looks like the production team went to a seminar on "NYPD Blue TV Production" and copied a few bullet points (shaky cam, check, actors delivering every line like their on their death bed, check, sets that look like the cleaning lady has been fired, check) and that substitutes for quality writing and production.

I turn it on every now and then to chuckle at it but my wife usually wont put up with it for more than a few minutes.

[Alan Smithee]

I'm just disappointed that they made this version of Battlestar Galactica politically correct.

[LH-C]

I refuse to watch the new BSG for a number of reasons. And I can forgive Jamie Bamber (Lee 'Apollo' - who is a really cool guy) for being on the show because I realize he and his wife Kerry need the money for their three little kids (two of whom are twins). Plus, even though the show sucks, he seems to be having a lot of fun.

[Fearless Freep]

I also remember something that Liz brought up in her review of "Outland" that ne thing they did really wrong , from a practical standpoint, was the lights on the faces in the helmets.  It made it good for seeing the actors faces, but the problem is that something like doesn't work because you couldn't really see out of them because of the light in your face.  

I think about that and chuckle every time I see a pilot with a face-lit helmet

[ulthar]

Fearless Freep wrote:

>
>  it really broke consistancy and kinda
> jarred the viewer out of the moment.  I had t he same feeling a
> day or two ago when someone has been thrown in prison and it
> looked like the jail scenes were filmed in some local county
> jail.  Big wrought-iron bars and such.  

I had the exact same reaction to that jail scene.  I've only seen a few episodes, and did like the show (though a big fan of the original BG as a kid, I dig the dark tone if this one), but I found that scene distracting.

[Archivist]

Okay, is it just me, or are there other people out there who find the new BSG to be totally offputting?

I was a fan of the original series, and I had high hopes for this.  The pilot was bad.  Incredibly bad.  There are often movies and TV shows that my brother and I make fun of as we are watching them, but in the case of BSG, it was so bad that we couldn't even make fun of it.  I found it utterly boring, trite, slow and weak.  I had no sympathy for any of the characters and I didn't care if 'we've got men in that section!  We can't vent the bulkheads!'.

Plagh.

Apologies to anyone who likes the series.  I never got past the first two episodes before my brain shunned it completely.  Maybe it got better in later episodes?  Does anyone else dislike the new BSG?

~Archivist~

[odinn7]

I'm with you on this one Archivist. I tried to watch it, I wanted to like it but it just didn't work for me. Sure, the original was very cartoony and I didn't expect this one to be the same but to me, it's just way too different.