Battlestar to get a more colorful upbeat reboot?

[Harvey]

I felt like the writers went a long way in their efforts to make Omar Little into a real human being in the third and fifth seasons. Brother Mouzone, on the other hand, is much more of "a force of nature," as David Simon puts it, which was probably why he was one of the few recurring characters not brought back for the final season.

I'm confused about the remark about Prez during season four, though. It was pretty clear at the end of season three that, regardless of the inquest's findings into the Prez's shooting of the cop, Prez himself wasn't happy being a cop anymore (it's clear he chose to path due to pressure from Valcheck).

And I'd go as far to say that The Wire didn't just control its plot to prevent anything from fundamentally changing, it was about how things don't change in the city environment. But of course lots of changes did happen. McNulty ascends from City Council Member to Mayor to Governor; Daniels ascends from a Lieutenant to Major to Deputy Ops to Police Commisioner in just seven years. But in the end, the series rather cynically concludes, the institution is more powerful than any actions by these individuals.

 

[stj]

Re Prez as teacher: If the gossip line was so good that everyone and their brother inevitably knew within days who the snitch supposedly was, how could they possibly not know that Prez was cashiered for killing a cop, or the earlier incident with the kid in the high rise? It was either swallow the premise or quit the series.

All the legal and procedural minutiae in the first season of The Wire was part of the realism. Something like BSG wouldn't dream of thinking through anything with such clarity, much less dramatizing it. So, strictly speaking, remarks on The Wire are off topic. But The Wire's awareness that there are other people, like dock workers and teachers and children and journalists is vastly removed from tripe like BSG which is about the antics of a few special fantasy figures.

The sudden emergence of the CIA support for the Greek or the school budget crisis or the way the fallout from McNulty's crazed scheme messed up Daniels' career rather bespeak plot manipulation to support the thesis that change is impossible, I think.

 

[broberfett]

I hope it is good. I didn't like the new one, so this will give us a chance to see a different take on the show without the awful 70's things that were in the first one. I enjoyed the old vipers, the cylons, the music, and the blasters. I didn't like the goofy multi-eyed dancers with the afros or perms or whatever that was.

 

[Harvey]

RE: stj

How could who not know about Prez? The teachers? The incident in the high-rise was covered up, so there's nothing that anyone would find out about in Prez's official record. As for shooting the cop, we can assume that Prez wasn't brought up on charges, since he's teaching instead of in jail come season four.

I won't get involved in an argument over Battlestar Galactica with you, though, so continue to make comments about it at your will.

As I recall, the man in the CIA that the Greek had was established early on in season two, not dropped out of nowhere to foil the cops. But I could be wrong. I'm not big on the second season, which I felt was poorly plotted (which is why the police investigation comes down to a hurried montage atypical to the series in the final episodes of season two) and unable to properly develop its new characters (which is why the Sobotka family is more of a cursory idea than an on-screen reality).

I'm not going to reveal much of my personal background here, but I will say that I've been quite involved with municipal politicans, and nothing about the school budget crisis struck me as contrived or unbelievable. Carcetti's promises to the police force were the kind of promises that were never going to be fully delivered upon.

As for McNulty's scheme...well, it was out there, no doubt about it. But Daniels survived that scandal. He was ousted from his post when he refused to deliver stats that weren't manufactured to relfect positively on the new Mayor.

 

[TemporalFlux]

I think a "re-imagined" feature film has potential if played right. A few years ago (before Dynamite grabbed the license), I made an unsolicited pitch for a Battlestar Galactica comic to Universal. The crux of the proposal was that the Moore Galactica was completely missing true merchandising opportunities with toys, lunch boxes, etc. Adults were loving the show; but how could they really share it with their younger kids? How could Universal have its cake and eat it too?

The idea was to fit it into the Moore universe, but to use it as a prequel showing how the Cylon war started in an unexpected way. Especially prior to "Saving Private Ryan", World War II has often been glorified in film, television, comics, etc.; a kind of black and white / good versus evil battle where things didn't seem quite so dramatic and serious. I was thinking this could be where the Cylon war started.

In the colonies, war had evolved to where people no longer fought each other directly. Instead, they built armies of robots that faced off in a glorified game; winner wins the war. But what would this do to those unhinged people who enjoyed the physical thrill of the fight (i.e. extreme sports types)? A group of them gets together and sabotages the system so that robots attack humans; such an out of control event would suddenly give these people an outlet for the excitement and challenge they craved. Essentially, the Cylon war would have started because some people were bored.

I thought it was a fairly unique way to split the Moore BSG universe into a kind of World War II vs. Vietnam situation. The lead character in the pitch was a war crazy female warrior codenamed Ares, and her partner was a more serious and concerned warrior codenamed Hades. One of the stories I especially liked involved an alien encounter that turned out to be self aware animatronic robots from an amusement park who were trying to escape being destroyed for sport. Another favorite involved the human infantry vs. a town where children's toys have come to life and are fighting back.

Anyway, I think that kind of approach would be a way to make Battlestar Galactica a more upbeat adventure style story for the silver screen. It's pretty hard to believably make the end of civilization into something upbeat and fun; they would do best by avoiding that in my opinion.

 

[stj]

The CIA people were no better in second season than the last. They were not very believable.

The school budget crisis per se was entirely believable. The melodramatic part was the way that Carcetti was guilty of selling out by not humiliating himself with the governor.

The supposed snitching was also covered up. How can one coverup be effective but not the other? Stuff and nonsense, is how.

By the way, the stylized Mamet-esque swearing/testosterone contests rather disappeared when supposedly middle class people more familiar to the audience (the journalists) appeared in the fifth season.

 

[Deckerd]

I don't know about that. There was some pretty eye popping sex* in the fifth season.

*for non-porn television, that is

 

[Harvey]

By the way, the stylized Mamet-esque swearing/testosterone contests rather disappeared when supposedly middle class people more familiar to the audience (the journalists) appeared in the fifth season.

I don't think David Mamet and David Simon write dialogue that can be so easily compared. Simon is much more naturalistic, while Mamet's dialogue is very much not.

But, speaking on the subject of the journalists, I didn't notice a decrease in profanity, but it wouldn't suprise me. The journalists are the weakest characters in the series, because Simon leaves no room for ambiguity. Either they're corporate sell-out scum who want to buy out journalists and make up stories, or they're noble beat reporters in search of the truth. Simon just doesn't have the needed critical distance when it comes to that world that he does with the other characters.

The supposed snitching was also covered up. How can one coverup be effective but not the other? Stuff and nonsense, is how.

You keep referring to this. Who's snitching? The kid at school who had his house burned down? I still don't see what you're getting at here. Are you talking about the teachers? The cops? The students?

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Re Prez as teacher: If the gossip line was so good that everyone and their brother inevitably knew within days who the snitch supposedly was, how could they possibly not know that Prez was cashiered for killing a cop, or the earlier incident with the kid in the high rise? It was either swallow the premise or quit the series.

All the legal and procedural minutiae in the first season of The Wire was part of the realism. Something like BSG wouldn't dream of thinking through anything with such clarity, much less dramatizing it. So, strictly speaking, remarks on The Wire are off topic. But The Wire's awareness that there are other people, like dock workers and teachers and children and journalists is vastly removed from tripe like BSG which is about the antics of a few special fantasy figures.

The sudden emergence of the CIA support for the Greek or the school budget crisis or the way the fallout from McNulty's crazed scheme messed up Daniels' career rather bespeak plot manipulation to support the thesis that change is impossible, I think.

The only consistent criticism I have for The Wire is that it too often portrayed the upper echelons of power as corrupt, selfish or just intent on making everyone else's lives as miserable as possible. Put simply, the show didn't put as much effort into making portraying these characters with a balanced complexity -- quite unlike even minor characters like Cutty, Prez, Carver, etc. But even that began to change with Daniels' ascension and Carcetti's campaigns.

In contrast to nuBSG, there's little doubt that the show went to great lengths to portray its characters with as much complexity as they could fit into the show. The problem with that is the characters (IMO) became inconsistent. And that's the biggest difference between The Wire and nuBSG: Character Consistency.

If this nuNuBSG is going to be successful, it's going to have to find that happy medium between character complexity and character consistency.

 

[stj]

Who's snitching? The kid at school who had his house burned down? I still don't see what you're getting at here. Are you talking about the teachers? The cops? The students?

Yes, I'm talking about the kid who told the cops about how he was asked to call that guy over to Stansfield's men, then was never seen again. How is it possible to simultanously think that kids in a group home can know about this but no one knows about Prez?

All that stuff in the first season about wiretap laws and documentation for warrants and so on was not some dreariness while the show was gearing up. It was what made the first season "realistic." Expanding the view of the city to the docks was not another slow burn to a season climax. It was taking a "realistic" view of the city as someplace where there were real working people.

Such things are rare in television and well worthy of high praise. But raving over the show's linguistic or character realism is missing its true strengths, I think.

Ed Burns (I think he was the excop writing partner for Simon) didn't have perfect perspective on cops, either. The show was pretty slim on racist, brutal and corrupt cops. It was still far better than most cop shows but truly "realistic?" Don't think so.

 

[Harvey]

Who's snitching? The kid at school who had his house burned down? I still don't see what you're getting at here. Are you talking about the teachers? The cops? The students?

Yes, I'm talking about the kid who told the cops about how he was asked to call that guy over to Stansfield's men, then was never seen again. How is it possible to simultanously think that kids in a group home can know about this but no one knows about Prez?

Ah, okay. Prez became a teacher four years after the incident in the towers. An incident which pulled him off the street and left him to be an office rat outside of the public eye for much of his following police duty. The kids in the group home know about Randy's involvement because Marlo spread the word around town. Randy, naive kid that he was, only helped spread the word that he was a snitch.

That a bunch of kids (in a different part of town, I think?) who were 7-9 years old when Prez brutalized a kid (while investigating a drug lord who has since been replaced) don't recognize him isn't that much of a shocker. Prez wasn't out there repeatedly brutalizing the community. And other, equally harsh cops had long supplanted him at the point of season four.

All that stuff in the first season about wiretap laws and documentation for warrants and so on was not some dreariness while the show was gearing up. It was what made the first season "realistic." Expanding the view of the city to the docks was not another slow burn to a season climax. It was taking a "realistic" view of the city as someplace where there were real working people.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with that assesment. The Wire is a police procedural that succeeds because it's true to the reality of police procedure, rather than the fantasy of it that's usually depicted on television.

Such things are rare in television and well worthy of high praise. But raving over the show's linguistic or character realism is missing its true strengths, I think.

I don't think anyone has missed the strengths you've listed. But ignoring its good character work (in a show that is not character-driven) and well-written dialogue (the epigraphs alone are extremely memorable) misses strengths of the show that are just as "true."

Ed Burns (I think he was the excop writing partner for Simon) didn't have perfect perspective on cops, either. The show was pretty slim on racist, brutal and corrupt cops. It was still far better than most cop shows but truly "realistic?" Don't think so.

I don't think so. There's a reason the Baltimore police department and the Baltimore city hall hated the series (in the end, what won them over was a combination of HBO's money and the fact that the series would still be set in Baltimore regardless of where Simon had to shoot it). There were plenty of incidinces of racism, brutality, and especially corruption on the part of the cops in the series.

Burns, it should be pointed out, was also a middle school teacher after he was a cop. Prez in season four is based upon his experiences. But in that narrative, Burns (who was responsible for the season's story instead of Simon that year) had a healthy critical distance of the school system and the people who were a part of it.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

Burns, it should be pointed out, was also a middle school teacher after he was a cop. Prez in season four is based upon his experiences. But in that narrative, Burns (who was responsible for the season's story instead of Simon that year) had a healthy critical distance of the school system and the people who were a part of it.

The middle-school elements perfectly captured the "essence" of urban middle schools, if not all the details (though, things like stealing passes, gum under the chairs, etc. are spot on). Personally, I want to know the inner-city school whose streetwise kids are as quiet as they are for a relatively charisma-deficient Prez, for such extended periods of time.

But yeah, even if The Wire misses on a few minor details, it is overwhelming one of (if not THE) most realistic shows I have ever seen. By contrast, nuBSG is almost cartoonish.

(That's a bit of hyperbole, but not by much lol).