Sci-Fi's Battlestar Galactica miniseries opinions - Page 4

True the new Galactica isnt like the old, but it is good. Getting mad that it isnt the same is like getting mad that Voyager isnt Star Trek. Couse now that i think about it maybe i should have gotten mad? Anyway,if i like a show i watch it, doesnt matter what name they put on it. They use name recognition to draw you in, but quality is the only thing that will keep it alive.

Please. Richard was torch bearer for YEARS via novels and "Trailer" that he put together. I give the man credit for trying. And he has now seen that the landscape has changed and had two choices, either get involved or not. He accepted a recurring role. THAT speaks volumes... Now that he has "betrayed" the cause, you try to dismiss his involvement.

Sorry, double post.

No, the boards I read, including this one, rallied that EJO was saying that it was crap, it was going to fail, and so on. It was NOT "The Moore PR Machine" that you seem to blame everything on.

I was part of the orginal series fanbase. The product appealed to me, and I (along with a lot of others) find it to be better than the orginal. So there were no "liars" on the part of the producers or management of the network. What next? A "vast conspiracy" against the orginal series that scuttled the continuation so Ron Moore could swoop in and molest the concept??? The continuation idea was in development. If it was SUCH A GOOD CONCEPT, then the team attached would not have been lured away. So the project died in "Development Hell". LOTS of projects end up that way.

You just might need the "Reality Check" you suggested for me.

"Please. Richard was torch bearer for YEARS via novels and "Trailer" that he put together."

Novels that were not particularly well-liked by BG fandom given their appalling disregard for basic continuity with the series (Richard couldn't even remember the gender of the Rigel character, and he claims he had a crush on Sarah Rush!) and the fact that after years of turning his nose at the fanbase suddenly Richard was trying to embrace Galactica again as if he was desperately looking for one last chance to be a bigshot.

Tom DeSanto though was the man who got a series greenlit and who had one in development, and who had actually gotten Dirk Benedict, Herb Jefferson, potentially Anne Lockhart and even Richard on board to appear in. He ultimately did a lot more in terms of actual progress, and unlike Ron Moore he is a person who understands the original and respects its fanbase.

"And he has now seen that the landscape has changed and had two choices, either get involved or not. He accepted a recurring role. THAT speaks volumes... Now that he has "betrayed" the cause, you try to dismiss his involvement."

I dismissed his involvement years ago when he was writing bad novels! I'm not alone in those who don't have a high opinion of Richard Hatch and for those like me, we weren't a bit surprised by what he did. OTOH, God bless Dirk Benedict who told Moore to take a flying leap when he was asked to appear.

"No, the boards I read, including this one, rallied that EJO was saying that it was crap"

You didn't see that from me, and you didn't see it on Galactica boards like Colonial Fleets, the Battlestar Galactica mailings lists I belong to, so don't lump me in with people I don't associate with. The people I associate with correctly called it for what it was, which was Olmos making liars out of the Sci-Fi brass who were trying to con the Galactica fanbase into thinking that what they were doing was true to the spirit and tradition of the original.

"So there were no "liars" on the part of the producers or management of the network."

Bonnie Hammer, David Eick, Ron Moore. That's three liars right then and there.

"If it was SUCH A GOOD CONCEPT, then the team attached would not have been lured away."

Wrong again. Tom DeSanto was not "lured away" by anything, he ran into the obstacle caused by 9/11 causing the production startup date to be postponed to a point where Bryan Singer could no longer participate because of a prior committment. DeSanto wanted to keep it going but it was the loss of Singer caused by an event no one could have foreseen that doomed the project at that time.

So I think the matter of where the Reality Check belongs is still clear.

I think what bugs me the most is that this new BG was "reinvented" so much that it should have just been called something else, and the BG franchise should have been moved along with the original cast.

And as for what was considered "bad", I just picked up the Buck Rogers series on DVD. THAT was bad. Galactica wasn't EVER NEARLY as bad as BR.

I've been a BG fan since day one. I own one of two known 35mm prints of the original 3-hour pilot (NOT the theatrical movie, the actual pilot). What people don't seem to realize is that the show never ended properly. I think that if the show ended in some way (let's say a miniseries) and THEN "revinvented", nobody would care. We'd have a series we could put on a shelf and be proud of. However, again, the show will never "end" (as many shows didn't back in those days).

That said, I've been watching the show, trying to look at it objectively and I just can't. The direction is awful, the editing is atrocious, and the plots go nowhere. If they wanted to make the show "better" somehow, they failed. It's not better. The spirit of the original show is lost somehow. It's a shame we'll never get to see a proper ending to the original show. A damn shame.

Mike

Mike....

One only has to just look at the overall ratings for the new show.

For a series that fans of the old consider horrible, it will far out live the OS in episodes.

The new version is certainly much more believable in today's environment that the OS would be.

I remember the OS fondly.... I remember the SENSEROUND theatrical release.... but.... in today's world, a continuation of the OS with the older original cast just would not hold water....


Dugger

I wasn't a big fan of the miniseries when it debuted last year, as I found it to be extremely slow and quite boring. I didn't even tune in the second night. When it was released on DVD, I decided to give it another chance and I also watched the 2 hour series premiere or the first two episodes. I'm hooked!!!

I certainly think the show is a bit depressing and hopefully that will turn in time, but we are living in a 9/11 generation and I think anything other than that weighty somber mood so soon after their entire civilization was wiped out would just be ludicrous. I don't mind Starbuck being a woman, but I think Boomer could have at least been an African American woman. I think EJO has done a tremendous job thus far and far exceeded my expectations. I love the female president and the jury is still out for me on Baltar's character, although the actor portraying him is very good. I grew up with the original and still like it, but I have made room in my heart for both versions.

The overall ratings for this show won't ever do better than one-fifth to one-tenth of the ratings for TOS on its best day.

Just something worth remembering.

A point was made earlier about the miniseries being better in terms of depicting the destruction of humanity compared to the original series, and the false point was raised that in the original people were soon "whooping it up." Actually, it was in the original that you actually saw scenes of devastation and cities being attacked and battlestars being destroyed which you never saw once in the miniseries. And the people were not "whooping it up" afterwards, they ended up at a pleasure resort that some people tried to grab as a quick and easy solution to their problem that turned out to be a false hope.

THey were whooping it up on the Rising Star With Ray Milland But I guess the point being they were all corrupt individuals. Also they did all go down and party in the intergalactic Foxwoods with the Supremes with the 3 Faces.

I agree the miniseries missed the mark by not showing the "Fleet" of Battlestars (In the Original all stock footage) being wiped out. They did make the attempt of showing the Nuking of the colonies and the after effect of that, but even that they could of shown in more detail. But other than this I thought the miniseries was pretty good. I would've liked to see that these people were a bit different from us, they original does a better job of this with the religeous aspects. You always got the feeling that the colonists were the ancient astronauts alluded to in books. The new series despenses somewhat with the mysticism, although I'm not sure that would work now.

That may be why YOU liked the show, but there were several things about the original that I didn't like that much, choosing to ignore them instead, so to enjoy the rest of the series.

I feel the same way about the new show, there is some stuff I could live without, but overall it wasn't bad. They are two different entities, but at this point I'm not going to say the old show was superior or vice versa.

If you won't say it, then I will...

The 1978 Battlestar Galactica is FAR superior!!!!



I did check out the newest episode of this new show (The title of this TV show just suddenly slipped my mind ) and it's the same doom and gloom, monotonus crud, even the main title sequence depicts fighters being shot down and fiery explosions while the "end of the world" main theme is playing quietly in the background, the one and only bright spot was the guest star Richard Hatch, that was great, other than that...


If you want doom, gloom, and so called "real life" situations, then, I guess this show is for you, but, for me, I am sticking with the real, and only, Battlestar Galactica.


Also, I just wanted to mention, the word "frack", on the original show it was used as a funny, throwaway line (as well as felgercarb) and we all know what they meant, but on this show they'll say, here's an example of what someone would say, "Open the fracking door", now to me, that's unintentionally funny and stupid to say and even childish, definitely not serious at all, now just saying "Open the door" in a forceful manner would be alot better than that silly line. That's just one other thing that bugged me.

Well...

Here's to many more BATTLESTAR GALACTICA epsiodes as the series has been cleared for another 13 episodes...

and here's hoping not to see Daggits or Boxies.

Dugger

At the risk of getting fracked over, a very well thought out comparision of the new vs old is over at DVDTalk...

http://www.dvdtalk.com/cineschlock/b...tar/index.html

the bottom line...

"Why it's standard operating procedure in Tinseltown to risk alienating a devout fanbase whilst angling to appeal to a contemporary audience. Yet, to their credit, this 25th anniversary gamble pays nearly as handsomely as John Carpenter's transcendent take on The Thing! Another of those rarified cases where the original is the original, the remake is the remake and BOTH stand as profound creative achievements. For nostalgia's sake, yours truly revisited the Battlestar Galactica box set -- specifically the "Saga of a Star World" movie pilot -- and did a little comparing and contrasting with Mr. Moore's miniseries."

Chris,
So ratings rules everything? Remember, just because a show has a longer life in its prime doesn't mean that it'll last in people's hearts after it's gone. BG had ONE season and is as beloved as Star Trek, or Space: 1999. This show has already gotten off to a rocky start, is S-L-O-W, and seriously lacks direction. Show 4 and I still don't know EXACTLY what these people are doing. Even B5 moved its story arc along in its early shows. Space: 1999's arc was very clear, as was Star Trek's. I don't know what this "reimaging" of BG is working towards. Finding Earth? I guess it's in the back, dusty corner of someone's mind.

For a show with a trumpeting name like "Battlestar Galactica", it's really not doing much for me as far as living up to its name.

EDIT: My wife fell asleep during this week's "oh, no another prisoners-take-hostages" episode.

Mike