Hello SciFi.

[JediMasterGynac]

Thought I'd post this thread here since I have no idea if SciFi will allow it at their site:

Why is no one at SciFi listening to honest, sincere advice and suggestions? Why are posts taking hours to be put up? Is this a legitimate place that we can discuss Battlestar Galactica or not?

I am a fan of Science Fiction of any media - books, art, movies, TV, etc. What happened to the deep concepts and in depth philosophical discussions through character developement and intersting situations? What happened to exploring interesting scientific problems or theories? Did the fans change, or is the SciFi channel only concerned with ratings? If they are concerned with ratings, maybe they should consider giving the fans what they want. Maybe they should consider airing real science fiction.

Fans expressed a desire to see Battlestar Galactica brought back in a fassion that would inspire a new generation of watchers. This miniseries has little to inspire anyone, in my opinion.

(originally attempted to post at scifi bbs)

[Darth Marley]

Your post on SciFi.com brought me here.
I probably disagree diametrically with your views on the new series.

But Scifi.com website has serious issues.

I have broadband with an older tweaked computer.It took ages to get their pages to come up.I almost sent them hate mail,but what is the point of that.

Their new moderation scheme blows dead bears.

A new situation of moderator abuse is undoubtedly happening in their forums.I did see several critical posts,but they just drive traffic elsewhere.

Their sloggish,laggy server drove me elsewhere.

Even so, I genuinely liked the remake. But then I think ST: DS9 blows doors off the original series.

::edit: Darth, it was putting a smiley in the middle of your DS9 reference, I just put a space in to keep it from doing that. -jewels--PS: welcome to CF::

[JediMasterGynac]

welcome aboard. what did you like or dislike?

[Darth Marley]

Mmmm, where could it have gone?

[Darth Marley]

I compare my liking the remake to some other upgrades of groovy shows/book.

Frank Miller saved Batman with DKR.

DS9 was IMO the pinnacle of the ST milleu.

I liked the remake because it was less cartoonish in its characters,they were human with failings. This is the most succinct way to put it.

[Darth Marley]

Hit refresh and posts I have replied to don't show reply.Then they do,then they don't.

Well, I hope I haven't been so extreme with anything to be censored like Scifi.com would undoubtedly do.

[Darth Marley]

Check my post as response to "Then and Now" by BST to see why and to whom I think the mini will be inspiring,though I don't see it there now.

[thomas7g]

The main goal of this forum it to inspire fans to enjoy themselves. Its nature is to avoid combativeness.

Right now there is alot of anger from a year of really arrogant treatment from scifi and fanatical mini fans. We really had some insane stuff around March. And it never really went away.

People here mostly love the old show. As long as you don't try to take that away from them, and prevent them from enjoying the old show, I'm happy to welcome ya.

[thomas7g]

You needn't worry about the boards. I'm sure it will work itself out in time.

[Darth Marley]

I think it is browser refresh issues mostly.

Don't get me wrong. I am sure I have the original toys in the attic from before the "choking hazard" recall.

My preference for the new mini I can defend on merit.

But I understand fandom,and enjoy the old show. Even though it is cheesy space opera.

I remember a bespectacled nerdgirl in jr high petitioning ABC to continue the show,but it was motivated by desire to see more of Dirk Benedict than any serious critical appreciation.

Hmmm...wasn't The A Team on before BSG????

I predict that if the mini goes series,many of the old school fans will come on board.

I do wonder a bit though if so many old schoolers have been living in never-never land.

[goldcenturian]

as you call us are NOT living in Never-never land! That's the kind of remark that'll get you in trouble. We just know what we want to see. A continuation of the original premise, with characters intact (including certain body parts) and a respect for what has come before is NOT too much to ask for. I don't see myself becoming a convert to the new reimagining unless they have the whole thing as a bad dream one of our real heroes wakes up from. And no the A-team was 1983. It premiered after the Superbowl that year. Get your info correct there.
Welcome, but try not to get into name calling..
From a bespeckled "nerd girl,"
Carolyn

[Darth Marley]

Duly reprimanded about A-team air date. Maybe I am thinking about Knight Rider,certainly some other show came on Thu night in the mid '70s.

Even so,I am more Murdock than Face.

But seriously,legends often NEED retelling and updating.Take a look at various comic book heroes.As a Miller fan,all the Batman films had flaws offensive to the myth,IMO.
But if the mythos had been frozen in time,we would never been given the various "alternate universe" stories.As well as the Miller tales.
Trek is another example.If TOS' tone had been maintained,then a new generation of fans would not have coalesced.
While the original BSG will hold a special place in the hearts of us old 30,40 somethings,the new generation will not become endeared to it,unless raised into the "religion" so to speak.

What about the old Galactica 1980? Should that be concidered part of the irrevokable timeline .Or differently said,do those of you in opposition to the redo have as fond feelings for THAT incarnation of the myth?

[Micheleh]

"I do wonder a bit though if so many old schoolers have been living in never-never land."

I'm going to make this very simple. If you wish to post about the new series as positively as you wish, you are welocme here. The minute you feel compelled to psychoanalyze any of the membership, point out the error of their ways, or ask other members to justify their preferences or tastes, you are not welcome.

I would rather not see any more remarks like the above, please.

I would also reccomend reading some of the many previous threads in the forum. The 'old schoolers', as you put it, do not want a return of the old series as is. We mostly all advocate an updated (furterance or) retelling. We simply had different views of how it should have been done- Tom Desanto's version, for example. The story is all there, you may find it interesting.

[LadyImmortal]

...people who assume we want EVERYTHING from the original to remain as is. This is an assumption a lot of supporters of the mini seem to have of the supporters of the original. They all assume we're stupid enough to think the original was perfect and everything (including the hair) should remain as is.

And that is putting us all in a mold that, frankly, isn't fair or warranted. If you talk to 90% of us, you'll find that, while we want a continuation and we want the mythos of the show to remain intact and we want the characters to remain basically the same, we aren't against improvements - things that would make the show better, updated but give us the things that we all knew and loved about the original show.

(oh and ps, Knight Rider was also on in the 80's, not the 70's. Emergency, Adam-12, etc were on in the 70s).

I loved and still love the Original Series. I've followed it for 25 years. I've been a member of an online fan club since 1993 - which was when I found the club on Prodigy and have been with since then. Back then, before even Richard Hatch was on the 'bring back the show' ball, all of us in the BGC lived the dream of bringing back the show and imagining the things that could be done to make it better, clear up plot holes and expand on what was brought. Characters given more depth (this from the person who took Rigel - aka the girl with the braids - and gave her a life in one of our RPGs).

I'm a huge Batman fan too. I've been a Batman fan since the early 80s (I didn't really read comics other than Richie Rich or Archie before then - I got started with the Teen Titans and expanded outward). Miller's little saga wasn't the ONLY thing that brought Batman back to life. The first movie (granted it wasn't the best movie ever made) helped. The BIGGEST change, however, was with Crisis on Infinite Earths - which changed how a lot of characters were done/perceived/looked at. Essentially a restart. But Batman is still Batman. He fights crime. He battles injustice. He takes on all comers. He's been doing that for 60+ years now. He's more intense but he's 'grown'.

That's the kind of thing I would like to see for a Continuation. I don't expect characters to be the same after 25 years. I don't think most fans of the original series who want a continuation want them to be 'exactly the same'. It wouldn't be 'realistic' for us to assume that all characters are going to be cardboard copies of the originals that existed in 1978. Heaven knows when I write Apollo in any of our RPGs in the Battlestar Galactica Club I sure don't make him 'exactly as he was in the show'. And in the ones that take place in the future he's even more different.

But he's still Apollo. Down deep inside he still has the same core beliefs, the same will to make sure that those that he cares for are taken care of, that they survive, that he does whatever has to be done to ensure that the fleet - or his little corner of the Universe - lasts another day.

I watched the remake. There were, surprisingly enough, parts of it I liked. I expected to loathe the whole thing since I'm a very very very staunch supporter of the original and any continuation that may be in the works. THAT has been my dream for 25 years. But I'm willing to admit there were parts of the remake that I liked. I didn't loathe the whole thing. Chief Tyrel was a very good character. I FINALLY started liking Apollo toward the end and I could almost (but not quite) tolerate Kara. There were some good battle sequences in the second half that were good.

But as for the rest of it - it wasn't Battlestar Galactica. It wasn't even close. I saw a few attempts at it here or there but nothing that made the original tick... none of it's heart, none of it's soul, none of it's passion. Sure, there was the 'we have to survive against overwhelming odds' but if that's all people think the original BG is about, then they obviously never really watched the original show.

My point here is this, though. Don't put fans of the original in this cardboard cookie cutout and assume we're all after an exact duplicate replica of the original because we aren't. Anyone who's been around any of the three main BG boards (here, the BGC or the Cylon Alliance) know that most of us know the original had flaws. But we loved our show in spite of those flaws. And we know what we want from any new series.

The mini, for all the parts that I liked, didn't give me what I wanted. Didn't take me back into the world of Battlestar Galactica and the wonder I feel, even now, when I watch the original. That was what I wanted - and what I actually gave the mini a chance to do.

--Rhonda
President, Battlestar Galactica Club
http://www.battlestargalacticaclub.com

[Darth Marley]

I have read your posts here and on a few other board,and respect the well.

What they say about long term loss of short term memory may be true,but this is short term loss of long term memory- on the show I was trying to remember,I think it was actually 6 Mil $ Man.

Ah, the cookie cutter streotype is indeed wrong.

Glad you can chat about Crisis in the DC world though.
The third word I ever said was "matman" from the 60's show.Man what an embarassment that is to fans such as I.
With Crisis, the owners of the property knew the old characters needed an update, and I feel the same way about BSG. Some are never going to see it that way. Others may accept an update,but hate the latest one. Fair enough.

And,as fans of cancelled shows,does anyone else miss The Lone Gunmen?

To all original series fans, I respect your views regardless of how differently I may feel. Apologies if the beer makes it sound otherwise. (Just brewed another 10 gallons).

[GreggAllinson]

I'm still amused by the people who think that the Adam West series was some sort of farce that trashed the grim Batman character until Frank Miller "saved" him. Pick up the Batman in the '50s trade paperback or some of the old Archives and you'll see that Batman was not only pretty silly and far out there in the '40s, '50s and '60s, but the Adam West show was actually probably a little more believable and less silly than the comics of the era (hey, Ace the Bat-Hound and Bat-Mite never appeared on the Adam West show!). Also, the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams Batman stories (recently reprinted in hardcover) of the early '70s started pushing Batman back into a more gritty, "realistic" direction, as did the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers material from the late 70s (reprinted in the Strange Apparitions TPB). Was the Dark Knight Returns probably the apex of the "grim, dark" Batman? Yeah- along with Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and the Tim Burton movies, it probably was. But others started returning Batman to his late '30s roots before that.

All right, now that we've got the history lesson over with...no matter *what* era Batman we're talking about, the basics are *always* there. Doesn't matter if it's Adam West or Michael Keaton...Batman is still millionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, whose parents were gunned down before his very eyes, and he donned a cape and cowl to fight injustice in Gotham City. Sure, sometimes his cape is black and sometimes it's blue, and sometimes the Joker's a goofball and other times he's a murderous psychopath, but the basics are all there, no matter what era or take on the character we're talking about.

The new Galactica? The basics *aren't* there. Adama's not only particularly religious, he also considers the Earth myth a lie. Starbuck's a woman all of a sudden (and before you bring Carrie into the argument...remember, she wasn't *meant* to be Dick Grayson as Robin, but was a replacement for him and Jason Todd). Boomer's a woman who's veering dangerously close to incompetence. The Cylons are a creation of humanity and look just like humans. The Colonial uniforms don't look like they should and- with a few exceptions- you'd be hard-pressed to notice any difference between Caprica and modern-day LA. Everyone has normal, everyday, regular Earth names instead of ones derived from literature or mythology. *Too much* of the basic mythos have been dropped. Making Tigh an alcoholic or adding new characters like Tyrol, Roslin, and Helo don't nescessarily take anything away from the original series or the characters, but changing the fundamental natures of Adama, Starbuck, Boomer, and the Cylons certainly does. That's the problem...it's like making a Batman movie or comic where Bruce Wayne is a homeless man from New Jersey, doesn't have pointy ears or a cape on his costume, and the Joker's a woman with normal skin. The mini's changes mess with the basic core of the concept too much, to the point where it's unrecognizable as Galactica.

[peter noble]

As a comic book fan of nearly 35 years (since age five) I keep hearing the "well there have been all these different versions of Superman/Batman in TV and films" defence of the mini-series. I've even read this defence from Lee Stringer, who worked on the CGi for the mini.

This is basically complete and utter felgercarb!

Sure there is a difference in tone between Adam West Batman and Michael Keaton Batman, while the Superman legend is looked at the through the eyes of Lois Lane in Lois and Clark, but the fact remains, that Batman in all these versions is Bruce Wayne, who inherited his parents' fortune when they were killed in front of his eyes as a child by a mugger and subsequently made vow that if he could prevent this happening to anyone else he would do so etc. Superman is still the last survivor of the planet Krypton, sent to Earth by his real parents and adopted by the Kents, he uses his alien abilities to make the world a better place to live in.

These adaptions of the story all carry the same theme as the comics and no one changes gender or motivation, although Pete Ross changes race in Smallville.

Like I said – felgercarb!

Peter