Talk of Bryan Singer's BSG project resurfaces

[Admiral Buzzkill]

137th Gebirg wrote:

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Had TOS gotten the budget it deserved and a team of writers who could actually write, it would have turned into one hell of an epic show...

To be fair, a massive infusion of cash and really good writers can pretty much make a good show out of anything. It's like saying "throw strikes and don't give 'em anything good to hit."

Ian Keldon wrote:

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Only if you consider having a more positive, hopeful view of humanity a "cheesefest".

No, not "only if" - the premise as summarized there is cheesy, period.

[stonester1]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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The difference being that In TOS it was clear that the venal, etc people were bad guys. Moore's version had them being "typical humans".

Yes, the line of demarcation was less sharp, more nuanced...more "realistic", if you will. But it was still there. One only missed it if one refused to see it...or needs those white/black hats to keep the scorecard.

[Hartzilla2007]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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Only if you consider having a more positive, hopeful view of humanity a "cheesefest". I'm sick of cynical, humanity-hating sci-fi. Give me Loorne Green as the wise patriarch with a vision over Olmos as the self-serving liar who got bailed out by fate anyday.

Yeah because the end of the majority of the human race is such a good thing to be positive about

[Ian Keldon]

My Name Is Legion wrote:

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No, not "only if" - the premise as summarized there is cheesy, period.

Only to jaded, cynical people.

[Ian Keldon]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Yeah because the end of the majority of the human race is such a good thing to be positive about

The ability to persevere and overcome even extreme setbacks and hardship while maintaining your humanity and decency is a noble ideal that needs to be promoted and nurtured.

Or is there no room for hopeful, positive thinking in science fiction any more?

[Ian Keldon]

stonester1 wrote:

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Yes, the line of demarcation was less sharp, more nuanced...more "realistic", if you will. But it was still there. One only missed it if one refused to see it...or needs those white/black hats to keep the scorecard.

The "realism" movement is nothing but rhetorical cover for cynics and others who despise seeing man viewed through the lens of a higher nature and calling and who prefer to think of man as "just another animal".

We have too much of that kind of thinking today.

[Wereghost]

I don't think that man being "just another animal" is in any way mutually exclusive with the existence of greater responsibility. We're social creatures; one of our great strengths as a species is that we can work together for our mutual benefit and also employ a theory of mind, ie see other people as people. The NuBSG humans, though, seemed to have an element of the genetic throwback about them. They had managed to forget much about their own origins, seemed to want to expedite their own demise and were quite ready to treat their non-biological descendants as being mere objects while presumably knowing otherwise. It seems to be a case of BSG-era humans having failed conspicuously to live up to their natural potential rather than them having failed to transcend their nature.

[137th Gebirg]

It seems to me the cynicism we saw from the past decade, NuBSG included, came out of the stress and uncertainty in the post-9/11 era, followed by the biggest financial tank since the Great Depression. As we move into this new decade, society seems to be wanting to move away from that darkness and into more uplifting subject matter. The populous gets tired of such mass depression after a while, says "enough" and starts trying to look towards the future - realizing that both swings of the pendulum are necessary for healthy evolution of a civilization, so long as the pendulum doesn't swing too far, either in the direction of unrealistic and flowery naivete or dark and nihilistic self-destruction. The current attitude of society as a whole can be directly reflected in modern media. New shows like "Once Upon A Time" and "Terra Nova" (regardless of opinions on quality or longevity or whatnot) have started to take a more positive view of humanity - either by revisiting a simpler time of existence or "starting over" in a new world.

Right now, I don't think NuBSG could sell as a series. The public consciousness isn't in the right state for that any more. TOS BSG, conceptually, may work better now that the pendulum is swinging more in that direction. I'm thinking B&C may exhibit more TOS-esque values, showing more traditional good-vs-evil archetypes, as opposed to ubiquitous moral relativism.

Two of my favorite shows, Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine, in my opinion, showed just the right mix of the darkness of humanity vs the greatness of the same (reflecting much of the mixed-transition attitude of the 90's which spawned them); the former overcoming the latter without being overly simplistic or contrived. B&C should take that path in order to succeed.

Just my recommendation/prediction...

[Temis the Vorta]

nuBSG could still sell as a series. A much more positive and "corny" spin on the same material could also sell as a series.

Keep in mind that TV is all niche audience now - even American Idol is watched only by a small percentage of the overall population. If you're only talking about appealing to 2% of the population, you can target some very specialized tastes.

Which is great, since the most interesting shows are the ones that almost everyone hates.

[Hartzilla2007]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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The ability to persevere and overcome even extreme setbacks and hardship while maintaining your humanity and decency is a noble ideal that needs to be promoted and nurtured.

Yeah, they persevered so well that got over it in 10 minutes.

[stonester1]

Ian Keldon wrote:

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The "realism" movement is nothing but rhetorical cover for cynics and others who despise seeing man viewed through the lens of a higher nature and calling and who prefer to think of man as "just another animal".

We have too much of that kind of thinking today.

I don't see it that way, not at all, and would agree that too much of such thinking is on the loose.

Nonetheless, it is hard to take seriously a story about post apocalypse survival when the characters are written as cartoons. Now, do I think that Singer's BSG will be written a bit more optimistically? Yes. Should it be? Again, yes, in my view.

Is that the only way to tell such a story? No, and I'm VERY much glad that RDM's BSG did. And no, I don't think even those writers had "Man as just another animal" approach to it. It is quite clear in most holy books as well as history itself, that man is quite capable of being a sunovabitch. And our fiction doesn't have to be a pollyanna view of people. When you are writing about a disaster, such writing can have a cognitive dissonance to it.

And not a good kind.

[stj]

The premise for a new movie doesn't require apocalypse nor does it require Cylons. (Fatuous fatwas about what's cheesy and what's not don't count as rational thought, much less decide anything. It is the Cylons whose dramatic function as The EVIL that is cheesy, in the sense of a cheap substitue for drama, in the sense of wretched melodramatic excess.

In the new BattleStar Galactica, we got the same damn cheese. Even worse, in the later series, the "Cylons" were exterminated despite being people, except for the few who earned the right to exist by actively engaging in the annihilation of their fellows. And the in depth exploration of the human condition found that a shockingly high percentage of main characters weren't even human. It really is hard to top that for being cheesy.

The more any new movie gets away from the 9/11 fueled bigotry of the new series, the better it might be.

[DWF]

In the end I think Larson's version of Galactica was about hope and overcoming the odds. And ultimately if Galactica isn't about hope the suvivors might as well as let the Cylons kill them all off. I would hope that Singer's version will have that same sense of hope and with Larson involved in it, I think it will.

Of course I doubt the movie will contain much in the way of storyline and it'll more than likely follow much of the original pilot with the destruction of the colonies and the battlestar fleet. And not much beyond that maybe one final to prove that the Galactica is a powerhouse of a ship.

[Ian Keldon]

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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Yeah, they persevered so well that got over it in 10 minutes.

Spare me...they faced plenty of challenges and setbacks, they just didn't spend entire episodes pissing and moaning about it, unlike NuGalactica.

People are tired of popular entertainments that are as mired in the muck as their real lives. We've just come out of a dark decade and are staring down the barrel of another one (at the rate we're going, anyways). That's grim and depressing enough without having to wallow in angst in our entertainments as well.

[stonester1]

stj wrote:

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In the new BattleStar Galactica, we got the same damn cheese. Even worse, in the later series, the "Cylons" were exterminated despite being people, except for the few who earned the right to exist by actively engaging in the annihilation of their fellows.

Or from the viewpoint of the humans who just lost their worlds and most of their military capability, then actually managed to overcome their enmity towards a race when some of the members managed to prove to them that there was a bit more to them than "DESTROY ALL HUMANS!" A viewpoint that was not unreasonable until then.

That is a weird lense you view the world through, stj. But then, you do pine for Commie dictators.