Moore Charts Galactica's Future

[Doug Burke]

Couldn't Ronald D moore have "re-imagined" a new title and some more names ! It has just put allot of people off. I was very sceptical myself first: I got over it, I am sure others will, but it still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth

I get really annoyed with this continual Holywood 're-invention' Why can't they just think up something new. The Quality of the stories and the writing and the character interaction all would STILL work had it not been called by the same name. While I have never ready any Mormon books, I suspect the names 'Galactica', 'Starbuck', 'Tigh', 'Adamma' and 'Appollo' do not feature

The real reason of course is they are using the old brand to put it on the map, putting a familiar veneer on it makes the big-wigs feel more comfortable shelling out the big bucks for such a costly show, because they all seem to assume the american public have Attention Defecit Dissorder

..and I'm not getting sucked into an Enterprise debate

Not necessarily. Look at adaptations and updating done for centuries of Shakespeare's plays. Do these in any way reduce the validity of those that came before? No. They're just a new interpretation of the same work. If anything, the fact that they are trying to reinterpret a beloved work shows (to me, at least) a great respect for the original. Especially if they take it seriously and do it well.

Many of the comic book movies over the past few years fall in the same field, to me. Sam Raimi and crew are showing how much they love the character and hiostory of Spider-Man by making enjoyable movies that, while different in some ways to the comics and any preceding attempts to bring it to the screen (big or small), are true to the spirt of the original.

My question is, why do we want all our entertainment locked into its original interpretation? Why do we prefer cheesy effects and costumes to the possibilities available today? Why do we refuse to accept anyone different playing a character from a televised or filmed medium, but have no problem with everyone and their dog starring in "Death of a Salesman" or "Hamlet"? Why should modern media stagnate in such a manner?

[black campbellq]

My question is, why do we want all our entertainment locked into its original interpretation? Why do we prefer cheesy effects and costumes to the possibilities available today? Why do we refuse to accept anyone different playing a character from a televised or filmed medium, but have no problem with everyone and their dog starring in "Death of a Salesman" or "Hamlet"? Why should modern media stagnate in such a manner?

Just so, DB.

[REG]

I have never watched any of the new series and simply never will( but have gathered enough from what others have said after seeing it), but like Tobian I thought making this show essentially west wing/US in space did the original a huge injustice.

"West Wing in Space"? Now, that is something I'd watch for Star Trek, but with a little bit more excitement.

After all, Star Trek covered many starships and a deep space station. So why not the Federation government?

[AslanC]

Why do we prefer cheesy effects and costumes

Hey now... I am a fan of both shows and the old costumes were not cheesy! The Buck Rogers costumes were cheesy, but the BSG ones had style man

I agree with everything you said, except in the case of Starbuck. Dirk made that character his own, and no one will be able to match his playboy bravado which he accomplished without seeming like a clown or a joke.

Also, the Shakespeare part doens't hold water, as 99.9% of Shakespeare plays follow the text in the Folio, and those that don't are usually lambasted by the purists, like say the Old Vic in London

Otheriwise I agree

P.S. X-Files, Strange Luck, Stargate SG1, BSG, Outer Limits, etc... Is it just me or does Vancouver produce the best Sci-Fi?

[Poolshark]

Just for the record, I wanna sayn that I could not get on with BSG at all. I watched the mini series, and that was okay. I figured it a little slow, and HATED the part where the Cylon agent is revealed. That spoiled things for me. I know we had to show Boomer in two places at once, to run the planetside story, but revealing a major character to be a baddie or at least a possible baddie seems like a bad thing to me. That kind of ace-in-the-hole coulda been used to much better effect. I'm not sure that the story planetside is that interesting, aside from showing that Cylons have feelings too.....if she is a Cylon. After a while, I couldn't care. As for the whole story, well, it was ok, but just from my POV it didn't hit the button. Dont ask me why. It looked good, had great actors (I love James Olmos' work), and seemed to have all the right ingredients. But, for some reason, it just could not keep me interested, and unfortunately, I did not really care about the remnants of humankind surviving. I tried valiantly to watch it, but in the end, it just didn't do the trick.

Ho hum, just goes to show that I am not going to like ALL SciFi.

Cheers

Tas

(Just my opinion and random mutterings on BSG)

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

Mainstream Shakespeare I like. Things like that abomination of Romeo & Juliet with Dicaprio in it was and is very disagreeable to put it as mildly and politely as possible.

If BG was named anything else, using other names for everything but what they are, I'd probably enjoy it more. I object to the fact that they are merely using the names and the original show's reputation to ride off its coattails to get themselves launched.

I actually came to realize that tonight while watching the second episode, I don't mind the episodes at all and would find them entertaining if they were not so blatantly ripping the original just to make the package a little more palatable for the execs to buy the series. They are selling a different product then what they are advertising by calling it BSG.

At least Enterprise like the other spinoffs used the universe and created a new crew and ship upon which to tell somewhat new tales.

Regards,
CKV.

[Grimace]

My question is, why do we want all our entertainment locked into its original interpretation? Why do we prefer cheesy effects and costumes to the possibilities available today? Why do we refuse to accept anyone different playing a character from a televised or filmed medium, but have no problem with everyone and their dog starring in "Death of a Salesman" or "Hamlet"? Why should modern media stagnate in such a manner?

Why?

Because we're tired of seeing the revisionist mentality applied to everything that we knew. Some things are better left as they were. Move on with different things, don't always try to repackage an old item in new wrapping.

I have just as much problem when I hear a remake of an old song by a new artist. It's not the same, even though the words are. Sometimes the new artist makes it interestingly different, but only rarely is it better than the "original" that I first heard. (even if it wasn't the original).

As others have said, if they had billed it as being "in the galaxy of Battlestar Galactica", it may have been more palatable. No, they decided to keep the bones of the original and upgrade the wrapping. From my perspective, they did a poor job.

So give me the "cheesy effects and costumes" any day over the rehashed, lame attempt to revitalize the show.

Some things just need to be left alone to be cherished in our memories as they once were.

[Dan Stack]

The one thing that does rub me up the wrong way is the similarity between everything in Galactica to.. America. The original made great efforts to change things, little words, like having cubits for currency, or those eponymous six sided cards.. they were human but you could imagine them being a branch from an ancient people.. it just feels a little too dumbed down. Every time I hear Roselyn say "Articles of colonisation" you can almost hear her say "Declaration of independance".

Just as a quick historical note. The Declaration of Independence is not a document with any laws or definition of government in it - it was a declaration of and justification for the severing of the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain. The actual governments were established by the short-lived Articles of Confederation and longer lived Constitution.

Interestingly, the Articles of Confederation made for a much less centralized government - the chief executive had almost no power and the individual states were almost totally sovereign. Somewhat similar to glimbes of the Federation as seen in TOS. Wonder if that was deliberate on Moore's part.

[Sea Tyger]

I don't mind "re-imaginings," as long as they're done well:

Seal's "Fly Like an Eagle" for Space Jam was excellent. No Doubt's "It's My Life" is much better than the 80's original.

I love the new takes on The Saint, and The Avengers. I love Brannagh's adaptations of Shakespeare. Does anyone doubt that Kiss Me Kate is one of the all-time classics?

Modern technology is allowing fantastic literary works to be produced as true to the original feel for the setting as can be. I'm looking forward to the upcoming live-action version of The Last Unicorn.

Of course, not everything works; I know that (Kyle MacLachlan's Dune, anyone? Or most of Tiffany's cover songs in the 80's?).

BSG is not different. Overall, I like what Moore did; I certainly didn't want it to be an exact copy of the original. If I wanted that, I would've pushed harder to support Richard Hatch's continuation idea. Now, if I can only get enough time to sit through an entire episode of the new show...

[REG]

If BG was named anything else, using other names for everything but what they are, I'd probably enjoy it more.

I don't think so. One look at that famous ship, however altered it was from an original, and you'd scream "ripoff!"

At least Enterprise like the other spinoffs used the universe and created a new crew and ship upon which to tell somewhat new tales.

Hah! Bad example. The first 3 seasons, I considered the storyline and the Akiraprize to be from an alternate universe. It's better to believe that than to drink a whole bottle of Pepto before the episode start.

Only this fourth season we are finally on-track. This season IS the premiere of ENTERPRISE.

[Doug Burke]

Hey now... I am a fan of both shows and the old costumes were not cheesy! The Buck Rogers costumes were cheesy, but the BSG ones had style man

True, but they were still velour...

Also, the Shakespeare part doens't hold water, as 99.9% of Shakespeare plays follow the text in the Folio, and those that don't are usually lambasted by the purists, like say the Old Vic in London

Yes, but the costumes change, different actors play the parts, emphasis may differ, and any number of variations may occur while using the same words...

[Doug Burke]

I don't mind "re-imaginings," as long as they're done well

YES! This is exactly my point. I'll give any "reimagining" or reinterpretation a fair go. Just lambasting it sight unseen (or only seen once or twice) seems somehow...petty.

[Owen E Oulton]

Well, the episode Water just played up here in the Frozen Northern Wastes ^tm and I'm not really impressed with the writing - at all at all at all. Far as I can see, these Cylons should be no problem at all, because they're STUPID! Hell, Baltar's saner than whoever programmed the Cylons, and we know how tightly wrapped he is...

[Ezri's Toy]

Also, the Shakespeare part doens't hold water, as 99.9% of Shakespeare plays follow the text in the Folio, and those that don't are usually lambasted by the purists, like say the Old Vic in London

"West Side Story" is a re-telling of "Romeo and Juliet" that's now considered a classic musical. It didn't use the original Shakespeare text.

The film version of "Romeo and Juliet" with Leonardo DiCaprio was set in modern New York with the Montagues and Capulets as warring gangs / drug cartels. The film did use the original text but was lambasted by the critics and bombed at the box office.

The Shakespeare analogy stands quite well. "Original text" has nothing to do with it.

[Tobian]

There are many many many films plays TV episodes stories and novels based on in and around 'the classics' (which is perhaps a little grandeous to appelate BSG! ) but basing your work off something, and changing it to something new *IS* the definition of human creativity.. we do it for everything, art, architecture, history Religion, everything that defines invention is only ever as good as the sum of it's original parts.. yet we still make more and better than we did before.. However just copying something is just copying.. thinly changing something is just plagarism, to do something new means you've got to change more than a couple of details, and i just don't buy this whole 're-imaging' crap.. I happen to really like Joan Rivers, but dear god, her face has been re-imaged into a living sculpture and it won't be long before she starts to look like Jeremy Beadle Skin will only stretch so far!

if you're going to use Shakespeare as an example there are only two types of shakespeare that work.. Classics - aka performed as they were originally intended or simply using the plot and reworking it and retooling it into a new story with a classic theme, because Shakespeare did NOT invent all of his own plots, he just did them damn well! There are only so many ways you can split a 3 way love triangle, a revenge, a comical misunderstanding.. how you use them can be endlessly recombined but always you're going to start to see a shakespeare plot because he wove so many works in yis years, and he took so many classic themes. That isn't to say he isn't a creative genius, because again, he didn't make the mistake of just renaming the characters of another play and claiming it as his own work. that's just plagarism! (and yes there are rumours etc etc, but i just mean from an ideal principle!)

Using the example of Art and architecture (as I'm a good deal more familiar here ) It's like taking a modern planform building, with your garage, ultra huge kitchen, your breeze block and studded plywood construction and your ultra naff culdesack layout.. and slappng on a rooster shaped weather vane, stick on MDF wood effect half timbering on it and simulation concrete bricks and then pretend it's 'Tudor' - It's SO not! All the walls will be thermally efficient and more environmentally sound than using traditional brick, and the tinder thin roof trusses are perfectly sound (till the day a resistant strain of weevils evolves!), It's a FAR more comfortable place to live (just not aesthetically!) but it's an architectural lie, and you actually make the product worse BUT, and this is the point, can sell it for more by doing it! You're just making a mockery of heritage for a quck buck, and plenty of people are happy to settle because it's comfortable.

Ok Personally I have enjoyed the series so far, it's intreaguing, well written (IMHO) and has kept me on the edge of my seat, but the theme could have easilly survived a re-imaging to be something original, and not just a slapped on veneer, to make people more comfortable with it. If it had been good it would have survived because it was good, not because it had a Tudor-beathan frontage slapped on the front! and just like with modern buildings, they render it nothing like the original, getting it so terribly, horribly wrong that people can't help but point out the differences.. if the building was an uber-modern or even just true to form style, then people couldn't point out the differences, even if they lament it's just not as quaint!

The show is strong enough to have stood being sans - Tudorbeathan frontage. Perhaps there would have been comparisons between it and the old show, but then what show isn't compared with what show these days, I'm sure everything connects to everything else if you try hard enough.. but then the point is if you'd ditched the half timber and the rooster you can se the house for what it is, and the comparrisons are much harder.. Perhaps I wouldn't just see it as America in space if I wasn't looking at the original and comparing the two! When you're sitting on the inside, looking out, you're sitting in an all new interior, it's comfortable, there's a TV, your sterio, you're computer, your microwave, your fitted kitchen.. but every now and again you go outside and GAH, there's the stick on rooster, reminding you of the imitation stuck on the outside. That's what watching galactica is like for me, i forget ,I sit, I watchI get engrossed in the story line, I get built up with the tension then GAH I look and I am reminded of what's bad, it just spoils the show, when it could be much better, when I'm reminded that it plagarised chunks of the old show.

You can take a pile of bricks and a pile of lumber, and you can build anything.. Sometimes you're limited that all you have to work with is bricks and lumber but you'd be surprised how many different houses there are out there

We're not gonna get anywhere if we start using Enterprise as an example, as it's a poor one, drop that please, lets not re-image this discussion into Enterprise bashing / Enterprise Vs Battlestar - apples and oranges are different fruit! Despite the horrendouns continuity errors it is all still one story BSG is not, they went down another road.