My housemate recently picked up the box-set DVD of the new Battlestar Galactica.
I must say, Sky managed to completely botch the advertising of this when it first started - both I and my mate saw the adverts at the time and decided not to watch because it looked really crap.
Oh how wrong we could be ...
Lovely, well-thought out, gritty sci-fi that does take liberties sometimes and can occasionally be cliched but doesn't shy away from making political points (without JMS in sight!) and some great performances.
Watched last night's new episode and it ACTUALLY GETS BETTER!!!
I'm a big fan of this - and was on the edge of my seat lastnight, as per usual.
The plot reveals aren't as glacial as most modern US television shows, and anyway, the action keeps things moving along apace.
Oh - if you've got the Season 1 boxed set, but haven't seen the 2-part mini-series that started it all - then you should buy that as well. Whatever you do, don't Wikipedia this as it's chock full of season 2 spoilers and I accidentally glanced at them and got two horrible spoilerific frights.
SPOILERS ++ YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED ++
The fact that the opening two shows have had one of the cornerstone characters of the series laying on a bed with tubes sticking out of him points to the strength of the supporting cast.
Plus, we've got three key locations at the moment to switch between (just like in Return of the Jedi) and too many unresolved mysteries to mention. But I'll try.
- Where will the pregnant cylon go?
- Is she a part of the collective or does she just want to be an individual?
- How on Cobol can Dr. Baltar have a baby with a woman that only exists as some kind of imprint on his mind? Or is that just a metaphor for the pregnant cylon's unborn child?
-What the frack will Hiro and Starbuck do to get off the planet and back to the fleet - given that their last known location is now occupied by a Cylon base-star and anyway they have no ship?
-What will motivate Adama to release the president and his son from the brig?
-What use is that bloody arrow, anyway?
-What will become of the Cylon assassin that took down Adama?
-Who else is a Cylon? We only know about 4 of their human models - and aren't there 9 or thereabouts?
Questiom number three is pretty easily answered- if Number Six is already pregnant by Baltar, it'll be because they were having *actual* sex (as opposed to in his mind) right before the Cylons turned up and trashed Caprica.
Aha - I was forgetting about that.
(All this human/Cylon hybrid baby stuff reminds me of V, the tele series, and that movie where the household robot takes over, kidnaps the woman, impregnates her and then delivers the baby right at the end - which looks normal but then lets out an inhuman scream of robotedness!)
As to your last question Funt, someone (you never see who) in the pilot episode left a note in Adama's room saying "There are only 12 Cylon models", and we've seen 4 definite Human-Cylons so far, and there is all that speculation about Tigh's wife being one too, so there's planty of room left.
I' have been wondering about the arrow too, how could it really be any use. But one thing Galactica has done very nicely on a few occasions is work religious themes into the stories really well, mainly through Baltar's "visions" (i.e. he guesses the target right during a mission because "God " speaks to him) so I'd say they've got a nice trick lined up here.
I just watched episode 12 of season 2 (god bless the internet & emule p2p!) and you can rest assured its even frackin' better than season 1.
It would be even better if someone would point out that substituting the word 'frak' for 'fuck' was embarrasing several episodes ago...
The internet is great, though, ain't it? 24 is stonking so far, and Sky tv can kiss my arse.
I really wish C4 would pick this up. I'm fed up of reading about how great it is :( (No offence).
The BBC have already picked it up, so at least when they get around to showing it, you won't have to sit through Vernon Kaye acting like a smug arsehole every time it starts.
On the other hand, it'll probably be shown at half eleven on a saturday night - barring snooker and darts highlights. The box set of the first series is less than twenty quid on play.com.
Vernon Kaye acting like a smug arsehole every time it starts
You mean it's not just me who has noticed the nasty, mocking attitude the C4 presenters have to both the sci-fi shows they screen and their fans? Enterprise and Stargate are pish, but the sneering and piss-taking from the presenters - at their own audience! - seems ridiculous.
There's no excuse for not picking up the DVD box set-it really is frakkin' great.Sorry, I mean fuckin' great.
"not just me"?
No offence, but there's not much room for interpretation where T4's treatment of the audience it seems to actively chase is concerned - open contempt for 'sci-fi nerds' is seemingly the only language Kaye knows.
Mind you, if I had to lay money on which channel would show open contempt for its audience, C4 would be my first choice. Nothing that schedules that much Hollyoaks has a respect for itself, never mind its audience (or humanity in general).
No offence taken - it's just that having talked with several people who just couldn't see the problem I had with the way the presenters handled the segments around the sci-fi section, it's refreshing to read that someone else recognises it!
S P O I L E R S
One of the characters used "motherfrakker" in the last episode, ya drokkin' funtwit!
Both actors then collapsed in hysterics...not sure if that was scripted.
Season One boxset is in the play.com sale for a mere ?17.99 at the moment.
Hmmm... Deposit on flat or Battlestar Galactica box set....
Unless you've seen the miniseries that preceeds the first series, I wouldn't bother, as it isn't included in the box set. It's under a tenner in Tescos, if I remember right.
I just ordered the mini series as it was only ?5.99 on Play. If I like it well enough I'll then stump up for the S1 box set.
I bought the mini-series and S1 last year, and I thought it was great. When I first heard about the changes, I was dubious - but it works really well.
It's a shame that some SF series take ages to come on to terrestrial telly, and when it does it invariably gets cut, shunted around, or sandwiched between piss-taking waste of molecule T4 presenters.
- Steve
piss-taking waste of molecule T4 presenters
But I fancy June Sarpong (sp?)
The mini-series is VERY different from S1. We thought the mini-series was a bit of a slog -- it's very downbeat at times, and quite dark. The series, though, is more balanced, with action, humour and suspense in equal measure. And as it's only ?18 in most places, it's well worth checking out.
I have to recommend the mini-series: it really sets the scene for season #1, and really it should have been included in the boxed set - they missed a trick there (unless they were foolishly thinking with their wallets instead of their artistic temperaments).
I love the serious aspects of this show - if I want light froth I can watch Futurama. Amongst all the blasting of Cylons (which is actually relatively rare) we get the pain of unrequited love, the father:son dynasty, dealing with cancer, repurcusions of one-night stands, love or duty, terrorism and politics, faith vs. science, alchoholism, do machines have a soul, the military / political power struggle in times of war...
There's a lot on offer.
The original series was Starship Troopers with the biting satire replaced by lashings of ginger beer and a large dollop of sickly syrup, this is Hill Street Blues in space with a smattering of The Sopranos and Apocalypse Now thrown in for good measure.
It'll never been shown in snowy Denmark, so I've just purchased both box sets from Play.com (the miniseries is in stock, but season one - whilst cheap, is currently out of stock). I hope it's as good as people are saying.
Anyone got negative comments about the series?
How does it compare to a) Farscape b) Firefly/Serenity c) Babylon 5?
But I fancy June Sarpong (sp?)
Then I can only conclude that you're deaf, sir.
I think it might have been Viz that described her voice as the only man-made object audible from space.
Apparently she's a very nice person, according to a friend of a friend, but I can't stand her, or most of the presenters/cuntuinity announcers on T4 and BBC Three.
It's all too hectoring and snidey for me, they remind me of those dolts who can ruin going to the cinema.
- Steve
There's plenty to be negative about, but mainly from the point of view of 'nearly, but not quite' criticisms. There's very little in it that's actually sci-fi, for example. The Cylons aren't the product of an alien race that died out before humans travelled to the stars (as they were in the original show), but instead have a sub-par Terminator backstory; the Cylons themselves look terrible, being brown CGI robots that move jerkily, causing some scripts to be rewritten to exclude them later in the series (probably not good when your expensive CGI doesn't look as convincing or as scary as a bloke in a tinfoil hat); the black characters from the original series are all absent, being replaced by tottie or white guys (and the only black member of the cast is an Uhuru-type who answers the space-telephone); the opening scene of the mini-series makes absolutely no sense whatsoever (human-Cylon shows up, sexes up a nameless human character, then the Cylons blow up the space station all this takes place on, including the Cylons that are on board, for no reason whatsoever); everyone says 'frak' too much; Starbuck is a woman, yet the change in gender is never justified beyond making her a love-interest for the main character's dead brother, then the main character himself; despite coming from twelve different planets, the cast all have American accents, except for the bad guy, who (perhaps unsurprisingly, given this is Hollywood) has an English accent; the 'God' stuff is embarrassing, not helped by Number Six's overexposure in the series; evil robot doubles are the lowest form of storytelling - basing an entire series on the premise is reminiscent of Sliders.
There's more to criticise, but it seems pointless when you consider that this is probably the best treatment that sci-fi fans will get from American tv - it's a good attempt at grown-up sci-fi, and I have to wonder how it ever came from the guy who produced Enterprise. It's little more than a tarted-up tv series set on an aircraft carrier run by the American military, true, but considering the alternative is the likes of 'Over There', or 'JAG', it's not much of a contest.
And the first series really does improve on the po-faced mini-series that preceeds it. Possibly the story in the mini was just too stretched at over three hours (when it took 45 minutes in the original show), and there's not a great deal of action in it, but what follows is much better.
::"How does it compare to a) Farscape b) Firefly/Serenity c) Babylon 5?"
Farscape: totally different kettle of fish. It's got a similar-ish need to keep watching. Farscape was so convoluted, and had such a strong arc, that newcomers were often left bewildered. It explores that similar theme of a mind-possessed. In Farscape, John had Scorpius in his head, and in this Doctor Baltar has his Cylon 'lover' in his head, with similarly hysterical outcomes - although less fantastical in nature. He doesn't sit and play chess with her in the middle of a World War I bunker, for example. There are no muppets in BG.
Firefly: The scale is totally different. Firefly's about a dispirate gang trying to survive in a cruel galaxy resembling the wild west. All the themes are inter-personal. BG is more of a Homer's Oddysey than a High Noon.
Babylon 5's a piece of shit. ;)
I'd certainly agree about No. 6 - having Baltar hallucinate that much, and acting oddly in public and still get in to a position of that much responsibility seems a bit of a stretch.
- Steve
I agree with Babylon 5 being a piece of shit.
To join in the forced negativity, sometimes it just doesn't make sense.
Baltar tested Boomer, found her positive-Cylon and then did nothing. Why? Later, he is moaning about having thousands of tests to do which will take his entire lifetime. Then No.6 mentions that the tests always come out negative. Huh? If the tests are false, then he doesn't really have to do them, so shouldn't be upset. But the first one was positive, so they are real - or are they? (Or are they?)
The Cylons are attempting to follow the same prophecy that the religious humans believe in. That involves the humans surviving to an extent. So why do they keep trying to kill them? Do the Cylons have factions? Or are we just supposed to cover any inconsistencies in the plot with "God moves in mysterious ways"?
I do think the opening scene of the mini-series seems stuck-on, and yet it does serve a purpose. The Cylons show up because that's where the humans asked them to turn up for a peace treaty or something - it's just they've ignored the offer for years. It's purely symbolic, from their point of view, that they turn up. This shows us that the Cylons are more than just a digital hive-mind. It also shows us that they don't consider their individual units (as they effectively commit suicide) to be of any great consequence.
Baltar gets away with being a bit nuts because they need him. He might be a fruit-loop, but he's a fruit-loop scientific genius, which is why he gets forgiven his madness, itself excused by the stress of the human race being mostly annihilated. It might have helped if we'd seen actual cases of post-traumatic stress disorder from other people in the fleet.
After the events of the season finale for s1, Baltar gets a bollocking for screwing up the Cylon tests, yet is never seen to do another one in the course of the show (up to episode 13 of season two, at any rate).
'Purely symbolic' sounds like a stretch to me.
I don't agree that Baltar could get away with being a fruitloop, brilliant or not. They'd force him to see a shrink, at the very least - or put him under observation. And why would any parent call their child 'Gayest' Baltar? You're just asking for him to grow up to be vaguely camp.
And the producers did do one thing right that can't be denied - scenes were shot for much of season one with the actor playing the character of 'Boxey', yet each and every one was cut from the episodes and the character written out of the series entirely. Huzzah!
We'll know it's jumped the shark when someone gets a robot dog as a pet.
I wonder if non-computer nerds have spotted the sheer idiocy of non-networked computers / networked computers business.
It makes sense that you wouldn't want the ship to be part of some vast wireless internet-stylee system - but just plugging one computer into another shouldn't allow the Cylons to suddenly be able to beam in a virus - any more than they could with a single computer. Very silly science.
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Former "Xena: Warrior Princess" star Lucy Lawless has signed on for a 10-episode story arc on Sci Fi Channel's red-hot "Battlestar Galactica."
Lawless will reprise the role she took this season as an investigative journalist who turns out to be an undercover agent for the villainous Cylon faction. Lawless' second appearance on the ensemble drama is slated for February 24. Her arc will commence with the show's third season, which begins production in April in Vancouver.
Reuters/Hollywood Reporter
Link: A law unto her own.
Crap - spoilers!
And I can't even be annoyed because I've spoilered the hell out of season #1 on this thread already.
Bah!
er, sorry having yet to watch the mini and season one (despite them arriving last week) I had NO idea that it was a spoiler.
I've changed the Thread title to contain Spoilers so that others don't have their enjoyment ruined.
Appologies again.
I like it.
The strength far outweighs its weaknesses.The "plan" of the cylons doesn?t makes sense, given their continuing efforts to blow the humans out of space.
But the characterisations are great, and the politics are for this kind of show rather nuanced and interesting, especially the conflict between the military (Adama) and the government (Roslyn). And especially that the civilians are now (we are here mid-season 2) becoming more or less following religious.
And I love the new Starbuck. This could have been lame, just switching the character to a woman because it is the sign of the times, but the character has gone from strength to strength. You just believe that she is a loose canon on the road to self-destruction.
Same goes for Balthar. He is a vile, whining coward, but sometimes you just feel sorry for him.
Considering that the original was pure trash, as a remake this is great. Along Deadwood the best tv has to offer at the moment.