Oh, I watched it in 1980. It was campy, and a bit lame without any of the other characters, but it was just about all we had on TV at the time.
RDM's Battlestar Galactica
- Thread starter TopperHenly
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Oh, I watched it in 1980. It was campy, and a bit lame without any of the other characters, but it was just about all we had on TV at the time.
This.
Indeed. The best parts about G1980 (IMO) were the addition of the new Cylon A/B Raider (it was enormous compared to a Viper), the logical two-seater Vipers, “Troy” as Boxey’s real name, and I always had a soft spot for the flying motorcycles. “Return of Starbuck” was decent enough, too, being the closest thing in relative quality to TOS.
^ Yeah, I think Dirk Benedict even said that "Return of Starbuck" was his favorite BSG episode he ever did.
Doctor Z (not cousin the Oliver one, but James "Patrick Stuart" who was in the rest of the series after the premiere) is on General Hospital as Valentin Cassadine.
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I think I had watched nuBSG about half a dozen times continuously then took a complete break from it for 3 years so here's some thoughts and hopefully memory serves me correctly.
Music. The soundtrack from nuBSG was cinematic in feel and tone. I loved the use of unusual and little used instrument and of course traditional western orchestral pieces fitted in with the series. Of course there is the famous Cylon motif that was used to amazing effect on numerous scene. There is hardly any music on ST apart from on opening titles.
Visual style. I believe nuBSG was mostly shot in digital which gave a sharp crisp look especially of the insides of the Galactica which was lit to give an almost clinical sterile feel. I also liked the zooming hand-held shooting style which gave it a naturalistic, documentary feel. Michael Rymer who directed the most number of episodes and was also a producer of the show brought a cinematic feel to the show and produced great images like Number 6 in a red dress. For most of the ST series, while the sets and SFX were amazing, the visual style never really caught me.
Acting. nuBSG has such a great ensemble of actors. The senior members Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell & Michael Hogan played well against the younger actors like Jamie Bamber, Katee Sackhoff and James Callis. I quite liked the younger members of the cast that gave the show a fresh feel in contrast to the older and experienced actors. As mentioned earlier, Rymer brought a cinematic style and feel to the show and allowed the actors to play out scenes. In contrast the ST was a very grounded in the TV medium and while there was good actors and actresses in the show, they never really got to shine apart from certain episodes like the one I had enjoyed, the Inner light in TNG.
Writing. Obviously nuBSG was focused on continuous multi-story arcs and little standalone episodes compared to most ST series. What I did like was the dialogue, full of memorable quotes and speeches which highlighted the literacy of the actors. Examples of this was the foxes swimming out to sea monologue by Adama taken from the book Sometimes a Great Notion which was also the name of the episode, the "bodies upon the gears" speech by Tyrol on New Caprica which again was based on a famous speech by an American 60's activist and the Adama monologue on the separation of the police and the military. There was no much like that on ST.
Themes. The most obvious one is how dark the themes were. The nearest to nuBSG is of course DS9. However, even with these two shows, there was a difference. With nuBSG, rage, anger, grief, violence and desperation was explored where we see for example sanctioned torture and leaders seriously contemplating 'disappearing' opponents. With DS9, it was more philosophical where ethical lines of the federation were being blurred in the face of defeat by the Dominion.
Realism. I know both are Sci-fi programmes but with nuBSG, in the mini-series and first season at least, you got a feel of the lives of the crewman aboard with members of the crew being called to duty through the tannoy, monotonous repetitions of SitReps and even events seen by us as fantastic like jumping to FTL is treated by members of the crew sitting bored chewing gum. In contrast, there is only glimpses of the day to day routine of the crew, one which I had mentioned in the Starship Captains thread in the TNG forum.
Non-Humans. In nuBSG, apart from the Cylons there was only humans and in a self contained story that worked. In ST, we have multiple non-human species and I like that as their culture and society are explored.
Misc. I love the ambiguity of the themes and individual scenes in nuBSG that were open to interpretation. An example of this is the scene in the miniseries where Caprica 6 kills the wean before the Cylon nuclear attack on Caprica. Taken literally, it is a vile and shocking scene but after the act, she is shown with anguish and distraught over her face. You could interpret it as she was fully aware of the act she had committed but had done so because she knew the child would suffer a slow painful horrible death in the oncoming attack and the fact that we find out later on that Cylons are desperate to having children of their own but unable to. Also, the ambiguity of the One True God and the Cylon religion can be used to explain the Deus Ex machina at the end, well at least to make it watchable. Again, there is very little of that in ST.
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I'm not sure you can even compare music and visual styles between 1978 and 2004. On BSG:TOS those things were both very rooted in the 1970's.
The acting and writing were, again, plainly campy in 1977. Still, a lot of people too young to have watched in 1978 might find it to silly to watch compared to the 2004 edition. I can love them both, but for very different reasons, since I watched both in their original runs.
The acting and writing were, again, plainly campy in 1977. Still, a lot of people too young to have watched in 1978 might find it to silly to watch compared to the 2004 edition. I can love them both, but for very different reasons, since I watched both in their original runs.
Not just based on, it is the exact same speech, and indeed Ron Moore even sought out permission to use it in the episode.
What doe ST mean?
NuBSG is in my top 5 TV dramas of all time, not just sci fi, but dramas in general. I have It right up there with Mad Men, Breaking Bad, etc.
I liked the religious aspect of the show, especially that the Cylons were the monotheists and the humans the polytheists. The fact that the series ended with god behind the scenes pulling the strings made perfect sense. In fact, considering the amount of time spent on discussions of god, who was favored or not, if the series had ended without mention of or indication of the existence of god, it would have been pretty strange.
I had never seen hard sci fi morph into kind of a fantasy. Sometimes not having a plan works out.
I liked the religious aspect of the show, especially that the Cylons were the monotheists and the humans the polytheists. The fact that the series ended with god behind the scenes pulling the strings made perfect sense. In fact, considering the amount of time spent on discussions of god, who was favored or not, if the series had ended without mention of or indication of the existence of god, it would have been pretty strange.
I had never seen hard sci fi morph into kind of a fantasy. Sometimes not having a plan works out.
nuBSG is one of the greatest television series of the 21st Century, period.
It started out excellent, only got more excellent over the course of its 5-year, 4-season run, and still boasts one of the most high-profile casts for a 'non-premium' TV series ever.
It started out excellent, only got more excellent over the course of its 5-year, 4-season run, and still boasts one of the most high-profile casts for a 'non-premium' TV series ever.
I didn't realise that. It was a pretty amazing speech and I could imagine it would be electrifying for people to hear that at the time it was spoken in real life by Mario Savio and get fired up by it.
Wasn't the purpose of the series of the deconstruction of a highly advanced technological civilisation to one of myth and superstition? IIRC, it was personalised by the path of Baltar from one of logic and rationality to faith and belief where he said at the end 'I could have been a farmer'?
Also, we don't know what the OTG was. It could have been literally God, a God or the One True God as believed by the Cylons and then accepted by the human. It could also have been part of a race that is so highly advanced and evolved that they would be mistaken as Gods.
I had a theory that the universe that the humans and Cylons was a simulation which was created by this highly advanced race in order to go through various scenarios so they could help both the humans and Cylons to truly break the cycle of violence that Human and Machine continually go through. That explained the Deus Ex machina at the end as well as the Hybrids being able to tell the future. BS I know but that was one of the reasons why I liked nuBSG because you there was enough ambiguity in the series to do that.
Had forgotten this.
Uniforms. While the crew of nuBSG were purely military and the crew of ST starships were a sort of military hybrid, the uniforms of nuBSG were a lot more cooler. I especially liked the Colonial Marines in the gear. The only comparison is the MACO's from Enterprise.
I'm 100% positive that the Cylon God is "Zoe-A" (see the prequel spinoff series Caprica), but the "God" who sent various Messengers to different individuals is a separate entity.
How I felt about RDM's BSG...
For me, it started great. I loved the pilot movie and the first season was flawless as far as I was concerned. I also enjoyed the second season, especially
. I didn't like every character, and I felt some were underused, but I was very invested in the storyline. I believed the voice over that the Cylons in fact had a plan.
I started faltering in Season 3. I liked the first half of Season 3 a lot, but I hated that season's finale. And that's when I stopped watching it consistently. After that I came back from time to time, though the magic was gone for me. I did watch the series finale though.
Interesting enough I actually liked all of the BSG movies: Razor, The Plan, and the webseries/movie Blood and Chrome.
As the series went on I felt there wasn't a real plan at all, and they were just making up stuff as it went along. Also felt there was a pretentiousness about BSG that I didn't care for either. I didn't like this idea that it was not a science fiction series, or a resistance to having aliens on the series. If they had made them like Stargate Universe's aliens I think they could've fit well enough. It was a well-made series, but overrated. I felt there was an inability to take enough risks down the line-the
I never cared for how some RDM BSG fans, etc. disparaged the original BSG-which is one of the first space operas I grew up looking at-from the jump, and I actually prefer old BSG more than RDM's BSG. I concede that RDM's BSG was better written, better acted, and had better special effects. However it didn't have the scope and aesthetic imagination of the original, and I also thought the old Cylons were much more dangerous. They weren't trying to shack up with the Colonials they were trying to wipe them out.
I also liked the original idea of the Cylons being a reptilian species.
For me, it started great. I loved the pilot movie and the first season was flawless as far as I was concerned. I also enjoyed the second season, especially
when Michelle Forbes came onto the series
I started faltering in Season 3. I liked the first half of Season 3 a lot, but I hated that season's finale. And that's when I stopped watching it consistently. After that I came back from time to time, though the magic was gone for me. I did watch the series finale though.
Interesting enough I actually liked all of the BSG movies: Razor, The Plan, and the webseries/movie Blood and Chrome.
As the series went on I felt there wasn't a real plan at all, and they were just making up stuff as it went along. Also felt there was a pretentiousness about BSG that I didn't care for either. I didn't like this idea that it was not a science fiction series, or a resistance to having aliens on the series. If they had made them like Stargate Universe's aliens I think they could've fit well enough. It was a well-made series, but overrated. I felt there was an inability to take enough risks down the line-the
whole Starbuck resurrection thing made no sense. And I felt other characters were kept on way past when the story needed to move on.
I never cared for how some RDM BSG fans, etc. disparaged the original BSG-which is one of the first space operas I grew up looking at-from the jump, and I actually prefer old BSG more than RDM's BSG. I concede that RDM's BSG was better written, better acted, and had better special effects. However it didn't have the scope and aesthetic imagination of the original, and I also thought the old Cylons were much more dangerous. They weren't trying to shack up with the Colonials they were trying to wipe them out.
I also liked the original idea of the Cylons being a reptilian species.
That was the best part of Peter David's old BSG vs. new BSG comic book miniseries, seeing one of the original Cylons.
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There probably are aliens in the BSG universe, but space is so vast that the probabilities of the colonials encountering aliens was infinitesimal. This is one of the things I really liked about the series because it gave BSG a sense of realism and tied in to my personal belief that while Alien life undoubtedly exists, I don't think humanity will ever encounter it.
Ultimately BSG was about people and an exploration of societal collapse. It didn't need aliens to help with that. Also, I believe that Edward James Olmos is on record as having said that if trek-like aliens had been part of the series, he would have refused to take the role of Adama.
I believe the exact quote from Olmos was something like "the minute aliens show up on this show is the minute I walk off set."
But, really, what would aliens have added to the show anyway? The Cylons already contributed everything aliens could have anyway, advanced technology, funky and weird stuff, outsider presence and enemy to fight against. There's nothing aliens could have contributed the Cylons didn't already contribute. Even aliens who would have allied with the Fleet to fight the Cylons was a story idea done with the renegade Cylons joining the Fleet in the final season.
The "head" angels could also qualify. They were almost Q-like in their omnipresence. Aliens don't need to look "alien".
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