battlestar galactica

[verbicide]

I'm not sure how she does it. But Sarah's quite possibly the only person who can coax me into watching/reading Sci-Fi. How? Why? I'm not sure. I suspect she puts something in my water.

Somehow, she's got me watching Battlestar Galactica. I watched the original series growing up, sure. But the glimpse I'd seen of the miniseries was pretty boring. But, again, she worked her witchy magic. And I spent three hours of my evening tonight watching the mini-series.

Sarah came over to watch it with me, and really, to explain the important parts that I would inevitably be too bored to pay attention to. Bored, distracted by ...ooo shiny, etc.

Having survived the pilot mini-series, I'm curious about the actual series. I liked certain parts of the pilot. Not crazy about the sound, which is picky, but I really hate heavy-handed, "you should feel this emotion, now!" type of background music. Use music for effect, but I'll take my emotional cues on the scene from the actors, thanks.

I haven't seen the original series in twenty years or so (god, that makes me feel so fucking jurassic, ick), so I don't have anything to compare it with, really (save for some dreamy memories of Dirk Benedict as Starbuck, and also "Face" from the A-Team). I vaguely remember the Battlestar Galactica part of the Universal Studio's tour. So, I don't feel as bitchy about it as some people.

I was going to blather on more with a spoiler cut, but it is fucking late. WTF. I'm not allowed to be up this late. Shit. More later. Gah.

Comments

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

Not remembering the original series well (especially the last season) is a sweet, sweet mercy.

Speaking of which, time for sleep. And hope the clown won't eat me.

I still haven't seen most of this series. I watched one episode and was sorely confused. "Boomer's a woman? What? Huh? etc.?"

[verbicide.livejournal.com]

Definitely time for sleep. And no clowns, because eek.

About Boomer and Starbuck being women: When IMDBing the original series, I noticed it was pretty chock full of testosterone. I guess they felt it was time to update the crew.

Ack, now sleep. No, really. Mustn't get distracted again...

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

I don't really have a problem with the regenderization (because what's wrong with more women?) it was just a little weird to do it to established characters (what's wrong with just adding new characters? It seems especially odd with Starbuck, which seems like an especially masculine name.

Sleeeeeep.

[archaica.livejournal.com]

I find it a little silly that when everything but the basic concept has changed (men fleeing from the Cylons), there's a generation of 30-somethings all het up because a couple characters are female. Besides, NewStarbuck and NewBoomer are better characters than the old ones ever were.

[verbicide.livejournal.com]

I thought that, too. Why not just have a new group of female characters integrate with the old?

But I think, since this is based on an old show, they wanted to give these characters some contextual weight, some pre-associated meaning.

[verbicide.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but geeks get wound up over the silliest things. I mean, not casting stones here. I'm still not over the re-characterization of Faramir in LotR. (Boo. Hiss.)

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

I'm ambivalent about this series:

I liked many things aspects of how they've rethought the original BSG--Kara, the new Starbuck, is a revelation, and while the old Boomer was pretty one-dimensional, the new one turns out to be, to say the least, deeply complicated. I also appreciated the fact that many of the other major characters are conflicted in ways that they weren't in the old show: Adama isn't just some wise, loving tribal father figure, but a hard-ass professional whose years of experience still don't mean that he can't be wrong; Tigh's a drunk with doubtful taste in intimate relationships. Lee/Apollo isn't just a perfect, loyal son, but his own person, often at odds with the old man.

Also, did you ever wonder what the hell was up with Baltar, in the original series? Why in the world would he have betrayed his entire species in order to live with a race of machines--I mean, did he have a really killer chrome fetish?!? The new, faux-human Cylons enabled the storytellers to give us a more believable rationale for how Baltar finds himself rooting for the wrong team. (And, my God, does she ever get her pretty hooks into him ...)

I also liked the introduction of politics: in the old BSG, leadership consisted simply of the military chain of command, and orders flowed down through it without much controversy. The new show has political as well as military leaders, factions, dissent, etc.--which is much more interesting than everyone just doing what Father Adama says.

On the minus side, there's a disturbing, 24-like quality to the show, a post-9/11 "us-or-them" paranoia and hardness: generally speaking, the real people live to regret every human impulse that they're made to feel toward the secretly synthetic ones. By the end of the first season, everybody's looking at everyone else wondering "How do I know you're not a Cylon?" It's gripping, it makes sense in terms of the scenario they've created, but it's a depressing reflection on real life as we're living it: "How do we know that brown guy getting on the train isn't a terrorist? Can we even afford to wait to find out?"

[verbicide.livejournal.com]

You know, I honestly don't remember much of the first series outside of a couple of actors. So, I can't compare. (Though, inspired by your comments, I just added the 10-disc original series to my Netflix queue--so can I take a raincheck on answering the Baltar question?)

And having only seen the mini-series pilot of this new season, I haven't seen the themes you're discussing really played out yet. Though, wow, that part at the end with the guy who gets left behind at the armory? And you think he's NOT a Cylon, but he is...and this is right before the big spoilerific ending! I sat up in bed and shrieked (much to Sarah's amusement).

I'm curious to see the things you've mentioned. I guess they believe it makes for better drama. But how creepy to have a people deteriorate into well, what our own society has currently deteriorated into.