Has the Blood & Chrome miniseries aired yet?

[Wereghost]

^ Nah, she just said she was a cylon - clearly and repeatedly. Specifically, she said she was Caprica Six, and she even "continued" a sexual relationship with Baltar. But then Downloaded happened and Head Six and Cap Six had always been two separate entities, which obviously makes that particular angel a damn dirty liar.

Also, Head Six in one first-season episode says to Baltar of Boomer that "her model is weak", the exact words used by a Six on Caprica when discussing the fake Sharon who has been assigned to seduce Helo. In the latter case it appears that the Six is concerned that Athena might be distracted by her emotions; in the former, Head Six associates conscience with egregious sentimentality, just as in Superman 2 where Ursa speculates that Supes protects the humans because he sees them as pets.

[bigdaddy]

Lord Garth wrote:

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I wouldn't put it passed them to just break up the pilot into little mini-webisodes.

This is the same channel that essentially aired five seasons of Battlestar Galactica for the cost of producing four. Face it, Season "4.5" aired so much later that it was really Season 5. Likewise, Caprica was aired over two seasons for the price of one.

I never understood this logic. 20 episodes cost the same money has 10 episodes and 10 episodes. So yeah we got mini seasons, live with it. Breaking Bad is doing the same thing with only 8 episodes apiece and a year between them.

[Lord Garth]

bigdaddy wrote:

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I never understood this logic. 20 episodes cost the same money has 10 episodes and 10 episodes. So yeah we got mini seasons, live with it. Breaking Bad is doing the same thing with only 8 episodes apiece and a year between them.

I "live with it" just fine. So fine, in fact, that I don't even think about it unless a thread title on TrekBBS catches my eye.

I'm just saying Sci-Fi promoted what's really two seasons as one. That's all. Nothing more. Nothing less. Pointing something out is not the same as making a big deal out of it.

10 years ago, my favorite show was Oz. That also had eight-episode seasons. So I know very well what being a fan of a show with mini-seasons is like and -- believe it or not -- I didn't mind.

I don't even care about Blood & Chrome beyond being a little curious about whether or not the pilot actually ever surfaces. Beyond that, I have zero interest in the would-be series. I would've preferred a "Season 2" of Caprica but that's water under the bridge and time has moved on.

[Mars]

Oz didn't have a wicked witch, a cowardly lion, a tin woodsman, a scarecrow, a girl, a little dog or a humbug wizard, so whats the point of a show about a Jail? Too much re-imagining done here.

[gturner]

I'm thinking Caprica and BSG actually made it harder for this new series to succeed, because the target audience would consist mostly of viewers of the other two series. At this point I'll venture that most of us don't really care how the story started anymore (some mob stuff, sports, corporate takeovers), and don't really care for how it ended up (pointlessly and 150,000 years ago), so we're very unlikely to find ourselves emotionally investing in characters and events that happened somewhere in the middle.

Our position is something like this:

<grandma voice>
"Once upon a time there was a corporate merger, and a robotics company bought a sport's franchise. The daughter of the CEO tragically died, but lived on as an avatar in a video game, while the CEO attempted a leveraged takeover of a rival semiconductor firm. The robots he built were so bored that they started going to church just to pass the time, and the viewers were so bored that they actually watched the robots sit in the pews."

....

"And then they decided that the war was pointless and stupid and their Earth turned out to be a garbage dump, so they found a new planet and just called it Earth, sent their ships into the sun, forgot everything that had happened, and went back to being hunter gatherers for the next 100,000 years. Oh, and some of the main characters were actually angels, but I forgot to explain any of that because it's not important anyway."

"Oh, and I also forgot to read you chapter 143 and 144. where the character who did all the pointless stuff first fought with the bored church-going robots."
</grandma voice>

<child's voice>
That's okay grandma, really. I should do my math homework, clean my room, and pair up my socks.
</child's voice>

I hate to be cynical, but that's about the size of it.

[Mars]

gturner wrote:

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I'm thinking Caprica and BSG actually made it harder for this new series to succeed, because the target audience would consist mostly of viewers of the other two series. At this point I'll venture that most of us don't really care how the story started anymore (some mob stuff, sports, corporate takeovers), and don't really care for how it ended up (pointlessly and 150,000 years ago), so we're very unlikely to find ourselves emotionally investing in characters and events that happened somewhere in the middle.

Our position is something like this:

<grandma voice>
"Once upon a time there was a corporate merger, and a robotics company bought a sport's franchise. The daughter of the CEO tragically died, but lived on as an avatar in a video game, while the CEO attempted a leveraged takeover of a rival semiconductor firm. The robots he built were so bored that they started going to church just to pass the time, and the viewers were so bored that they actually watched the robots sit in the pews."

....

"And then they decided that the war was pointless and stupid and their Earth turned out to be a garbage dump, so they found a new planet and just called it Earth, sent their ships into the sun, forgot everything that had happened, and went back to being hunter gatherers for the next 100,000 years. Oh, and some of the main characters were actually angels, but I forgot to explain any of that because it's not important anyway."

"Oh, and I also forgot to read you chapter 143 and 144. where the character who did all the pointless stuff first fought with the bored church-going robots."
</grandma voice>

<child's voice>
That's okay grandma, really. I should do my math homework, clean my room, and pair up my socks.
</child's voice>

I hate to be cynical, but that's about the size of it.

I like stories to be told in chronological order, and not be hemed in by a preestablished future that it has to fit into. We know how Caprica is going to end, all the episodes are just waiting to find the details of how we get there. I'd much rather watch a sequel to Battlestar Galactica set on modern day Earth or in the near future and explore the 12 colonies of Kobol with unearthed Ancient Astronaut BSG tech, that might be fun, and its open ended too.

[Lord Garth]

gturner wrote:

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I'm thinking Caprica and BSG actually made it harder for this new series to succeed, because the target audience would consist mostly of viewers of the other two series. At this point I'll venture that most of us don't really care how the story started anymore (some mob stuff, sports, corporate takeovers), and don't really care for how it ended up (pointlessly and 150,000 years ago), so we're very unlikely to find ourselves emotionally investing in characters and events that happened somewhere in the middle.

Yup. Interquals have it the worst. At least in a prequel, it's usually wide open enough that you can choose any starting point you want. And you can make it different enough from the original so that the interest can become about how the story got from Point A to Point B and the twists involved.

In an interqual, the started point is limited and it the situation can only be so different from what happened before or after, especially when we already know what happened in between. The series is completely boxed in, locked in both directions.

That's probably why ENT didn't take place between TOS and TNG. We already know what happened to the Enterprise-C, so that rules out that ship. As for the Enterprise-B: you'd be stuck with the TWOK uniforms, an Excelisor-class ship, and an Alpha Quadrant not too different from TNG. The Klingon Empire wouldn't be able to afford war, which would make them effectively neutral, the Romulans would still be up to their old tricks, and maybe you might have the Cardassians around. That's about as much room as that type of series would have to move around in. It would be a TNG set-up without the TNG/DS9 backstory and with the TOS movie look. Nothing new or fresh about it. It would've looked more at home in 1991 (though redundant) than in 2001. I didn't care for ENT but, if they wouldn't go forward, at least having the show set in the 22nd Century was a novel idea.

[gturner]

Mars wrote:

---

I like stories to be told in chronological order, and not be hemed in by a preestablished future that it has to fit into. We know how Caprica is going to end, all the episodes are just waiting to find the details of how we get there. I'd much rather watch a sequel to Battlestar Galactica set on modern day Earth or in the near future and explore the 12 colonies of Kobol with unearthed Ancient Astronaut BSG tech, that might be fun, and its open ended too.

Somewhere around season 1 or 2 of BSG I thought of a pretty good story arc that would've placed the events pretty close to our present.

Deep backstory:

The Cylons were originally built on Earth as AI helpers to the Atlanteans. A piece of genetic engineering got loose and wiped out the human Atlanteans, leaving the higher level robots (named Zeus, Apollo, etc) to carry on. Realizing how fragile humanity was, they decided they should round up humans from the mainland and spread them to other star sytems as an insurance policy. When that was done, they shut themselves down.

A couple thousand years later one of the colonials on an archeological dig stumbles across one of the old robots and eventually manages to reactivate it. It talks of Earth and the need to reconnect all of humanity, etc. He wipes its memory, reverse engineers most of it, and claims it as his "creation", filing a ton of patents. He also hacks the heck out of their thinking, which ends up making them a twisted enemy.

He and some others also use the knowledge of Earth's location to send some scout ships to see if Earth has any crops, technology, or trade goods that would be profitable. They sabotage the scout ships so they can't jump all the way back, instead ending up at preset coordinates, where they are boarded. Their crews are left stranded on nearby planets, and sometimes just airlocked, to prevent the hired crews from revealing the secret about where all the new patentable ideas are really coming from.

Then the "pirates" start working both ends, pretending to be innovative companies on both Earth and the colonies but really just swapping technology back and forth, claiming to each that the items are new inventions. Again, the crews on the ships are always left stranded along the path from the Colonies to Earth.

So along Galactica's journey they keep finding breadcrumbs, including one of the old robot gods who protects a crew stranded on a planet for many decades. They also keep finding mysterious parallels and clues, different writing systems on items they thought were their own inventions, etc.

Meanwhile, some of the Cylons make it back to Earth (Six and few others) and, with spooky music, walk into the Pentagon.

Toward the end of the series, the Galactica jumps in Earth space to meet hundreds of other Battlestars, built in a crash program started by Six and some others, and the Earth takes up the burden.

[teacake]

I'd like a series set on one of the 12 colonies, during the build up to the war, just after Caprica ended. Not Gemenon, too much Bajoran possibility. Not Tauron, I've seen quite enough of them. Sagiterrons would probably be too much like some tribe of Chakotay's. Heh, this is making me glad we got to see Caprica which was less one note than all these.

[gturner]

Well, the dramatic possibilities of having 12 seperate, sometimes warring colonies with polytheistic gods was pretty much skipped entirely. Their differences were more like Texans vs. Californians vs. New Yorkers, instead of Romans versus Egyptians versus Franks versus Persians.

[Pixel]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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Because if the reaction is bad, it will make them look like fools for ever greenlighting the pilot.

What, they're going to be embarrassed by this with some of the stuff that they already broadcast proudly and without shame?

Please, there must be someone with sense at the channel - they've invested money in it, they must have at least a passing interest in recouping that, even part of that, and they're not going to do it by leaving it sat on a shelf!

RELEASE THE CYLONS!

[Pixel]

Another oddity on this show is that the SyFy newsfeed, Blastr, never, never reviews or edits the comments, except when folk talked about the leaked Blood and Chrome trailer, and they deleted who threads. You can point out how appalling their journalism is, point out factual errors, point out grammatical mistakes, and they never take any notice, but whispering you enjoyed the Blood and Chrome trailer was strictly verboeten.

[teacake]

Pixel wrote:

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What, they're going to be embarrassed by this with some of the stuff that they already broadcast proudly and without shame?

Please, there must be someone with sense at the channel - they've invested money in it, they must have at least a passing interest in recouping that, even part of that, and they're not going to do it by leaving it sat on a shelf!

RELEASE THE CYLONS!

Heck I'd pay some unseemly sum for the dvd.

I'm wondering if we're ever going to get straight sci fi again or if we have years of gimmicky freak of the week conspiracy stuff ahead of us and nothing else.

[Pixel]

teacake wrote:

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Heck I'd pay some unseemly sum for the dvd.

So say we all!

[Temis the Vorta]

Sindatur wrote:

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The thing is, all buzz has been positive. The Trailer they showed at ComicCon was well received. The folks who saw it to for Toy development were impressed, there hasn't been any insider who had any hesitation in praising it, and what's been released was well received, and Action Packed.

I'd be wary of using ComicCon buzz as an indicator of potential success. The new Dredd movie was well received at ComicCon, and flopped hugely at the box office. SyFy has cultivated an audience that likes light sci fi with cop show elements and haunted house "reality" shows. I'm far from certain that's the same crowd as ComicCon.

And even if it does do well, then what? They've already made the decision not to go forward. There's nothing that will piss off the boss worse than being publically embarassed by having a decision proven wrong. Nobody's going to go there, not if they value their jobs.

Pixel wrote:

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What, they're going to be embarrassed by this with some of the stuff that they already broadcast proudly and without shame?

If Mansquito vs Sharktopus garners good ratings, and that kind of thing does do well for them, it can be as garbagey as they like but it will be a source of pride around the SyFy offices and the boss wll be pleased.

What they don't want to do is air something that flops, but even worse is to pass on something, and then air it anyway, and have it succeed, and make the boss look like a fool for passing on it. Heads will roll.

teacake wrote:

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I'm wondering if we're ever going to get straight sci fi again or if we have years of gimmicky freak of the week conspiracy stuff ahead of us and nothing else.

SyFy is working on a few space based shows and one with aliens (on a future Earth) called Defiance wll debut next spring but I'm a bit wary that will be yet another attempt to mimic Deadwood's tough style, something that results in a misfire more often than not.

Pixel wrote:

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Another oddity on this show is that the SyFy newsfeed, Blastr, never, never reviews or edits the comments, except when folk talked about the leaked Blood and Chrome trailer, and they deleted who threads. You can point out how appalling their journalism is, point out factual errors, point out grammatical mistakes, and they never take any notice, but whispering you enjoyed the Blood and Chrome trailer was strictly verboeten.

Heh, you pay a lot more attention to the comments than I do, that's interesting and definitely an indicator tha internal office politics at SyFy are at play. Someone issued that order to censor certain comments, they wouldn't just be doing it of their own volition.