Opinion of a casual fan

[oldwardaggit]

I don’t know how much value anyone here would give it, but this is my opinion of the recent Battlestar: Galactica mini-series as a non-fan – or, maybe more correctly, a casual fan. As an introduction, let me first say that I watched the series when it first ran in 1978, and then occasionally as reruns for the next couple of years, until it pretty much disappeared from TV. I haven’t really thought much about it since then until I heard about the “re-imagining”.

My feelings about the original show can possibly be described by misquoting Charles Dickens: “It was the best of shows; it was the worst of shows.” The big thing I liked about the show was that it had characters I could relate to, and who obviously cared about each other. There was (at least, in my opinion) a tremendous chemistry between the characters that made them believable and made you care about what happened to them. This was, in my opinion, the biggest thing the show had going for it. A lot of shows never achieve this chemistry – to me, this seemed like something that BSG seemed to be able to do almost from the start. There were also several strong episodes that showed the potential that the show had if it had gone past that first year.

On the other hand, the show seemed to at times be cursed with some of the worst script writing this side of “Spock’s Brain” (I was an ardent Star Trek fan – that has cooled over the years as I’ve gotten older). Some of the plots were – again, in my opinion - just plain bad. And some of the dialogue was painful to hear – a line from Adama in one episode still sticks out to me today, when, in the search of fuel or something, he said they should go back to “that planet we passed not too long ago in that quadrant not too far out of the way.” I could go on about this, but those of you who know the show better than I would surely see what I’m talking about here, and have to agree that some of the writing was – let’s face it – bad.

(As an aside, lest anyone think I am being too harsh, I think BSG showed considerable promise. And I have to add that it was certainly no worse than Voyager or Enterprise their first season – actually, I would even say it was in some ways better. Even Next Generation didn’t really hit stride until season three. I actually think the characters on BSG meshed together better than any of the shows above if you only compare the first 24 episodes of each. I can’t say this enough – there was just a great chemistry among them.)

There are many among you who know more about the history of the show than I do, and can perhaps shed some light on this to me, but to me, it almost had the appearance of something that was a great idea, and rushed into production without enough preparation time. I always thought it would have been a better show if they had made the pilot, then waited a year (or even just a half season) before making the show to give them more time to develop it, and get some better scripts written.

Anyway, the point to all of the above is that I saw both good and bad in the old show, which I think shows that I am reasonably objective in my observations. I have also not been involved in any disputes as to which is better – the original or this re-imagining. I first heard around two years ago about a possible revival, and saw the occasional blurb. I was very disappointed to find out a few months ago that it was going to be a “re-imagining” of the original, instead of a continuation, or even a remake with as much of the original cast as they could. Although certainly not a die-hard BSG fan, I liked the show, and remembered it well enough to have an initial bias against the new one. I recognized this from the start, and so I really tried to be as objective as I could as I watched this mini-series. In fact, I was actually hoping that I would be wrong. I wanted to like the mini-series.

So, what did I think?

In a word – terrible. I mean, this wasn’t just bad – it was really bad. It reminded me of a promo ad that the local talk radio station I listen to runs for an album rock station they own on the FM side. You hear this really sappy ballad (Celine Dion?), and then you hear this guy, in what is obviously total anguish, half-screaming “Please, make it ssstttoooopppppp!!!!” That about sums it up for my viewing experience of the mini-series. I could go into details (a lot of details), and I started to, but so many others have already made all of the same points I was going to bring up, so there doesn’t seem to be much point to that. I will say, though, that I actually began fixing dinner during the middle of the show the first night because it just wasn’t all that interesting.

I’ve read some reviews of the mini, and when I read some of the ones that were very positive, it really made me wonder whether or not these people had seen the same show I did. I mean, this wasn’t just a bad science fiction – folks, this was just plain bad television. This range in opinions, though, got me to thinking.

This is only my opinion, and I would be the first to acknowledge that I am not an expert on how studios make decisions on what they’re going to produce, and how they’re going to do it. I also apologize in advance if I step on anyone’s toes – that is NOT my intent. It seems to me, though, that this show was not geared to BSG fans, or even science fiction fans, but to the under-30 crowd in general, and they sacrificed plot for special effects and cheap gimmicks (for example, all of the sexual things) because they were going for this younger (and again, just my opinion, but also a less-discerning) audience. This opinion may be seen as me stereotyping people younger than me (I’m 44), but I do know from considerable personal experience that many (certainly not all, but many) people growing up today are not taught critical thinking skills the way they once were. Obviously, this isn’t true for everyone (some younger people will be more discerning, some older ones less so), but I do think it’d be interesting if there were a way to see if there is a statistical correlation between what someone thinks of the mini and their age.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, it reminded me of when the movie “Pearl Harbor” came out. I had been looking forward to this movie for over a year, and went to see it with a group from my singles group at church. I was expecting to see a movie set around the events of the attack, where the primary focus would be on a fictional story, but within historically accurate events. Instead, I got an absolute disaster – a story so bad as to be laughable, with a rewritten history with almost no connection to what actually happened.

When we were leaving, everyone in my group (all of us in our late 30’s or early 40’s) hated it. But I could hear other people around us talking who liked it. I then noticed that the people who liked this movie were all young – early 20’s at the oldest. While my friends and I were aghast at the horrible story and the liberties taken with history (for example, it was embarrassingly bad to see the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers and Perry-class frigates in a World War II battle scene), these younger people were all talking about the cool battle scenes and effects, and the romance between the characters.

The point (yes, I’m coming to one) to this is that I think that for many, if not most people today, visual effects and such are more important than a good plot line. As long as there’s a lot of action, sex, explosions, etc., a good plot just isn’t all that important. I just don’t think audiences today are as critical as they once were in regards to things like plot and character development. They are primarily focused on excitement, and that’s the reason I think you get something like this re-imagined BSG. The producers of a show like this obviously want to make money, and to do so, they’re going to make the show appeal to the least common denominator. To them, it’s better to make something mediocre that they’re pretty sure 10 million people will like rather than go for higher quality that maybe only 5 million will like.

I do think this thing will be made into a series – or at least a series of “Sci Fi Special movies” or something like it. I think they just have too much money invested in sets and such to call it done after just the mini, and it seems that for a cable network it did get respectable ratings. If it does become a series, maybe it will be better if they get the chance to develop the characters, and actually become something worth watching. But based on what I saw in the mini, unless it runs on a Friday night, and I don’t have a date that night, and my friends are all busy, and there’s nothing better on TV, and my DVD and VCR players are broken, I won’t waste my time finding out.

Welcome to Colonial Fleets. Wish I could comment on your review, but I didn't watch the mini, nor do I have any intentions to. I'm just not interested in at all. Not even morbidly.

[Gemini1999]

Bob -

Welcome to Fleets! I must say that was a very well worded and honest review. It isn't important to me if you like TOS or the mini (or which one you like better), but it is important that you stated it very intelligently. It's one thing to say that you don't like something, but it is another to say that you don't like it - and why. I agree with some points and I disagree with others, but even so...

You did a very good job - I hope that we will be hearing more from you in the future. Don't be a stranger around here!

Best regards,
Bryan
________
Fix Ps3

[Muffit]

Welcome to Colonial Fleets, BobSalt! And thank you for your thoughts.
Lots of great people here, please feel free to visit often.


P.S. You mentioned the original BSG seemed rushed into production and should've waited a year to really get ready - my understanding is that's what Mr. Larson wanted to do, wait a year and truly be ready, but the studio wanted it right away. Good estimation on your part!

Welcome to Colonial Fleets!

I see a lot of people believe the story changes are a result in a change in the American generations. I don't really think this is true. The original Galactica was targeted at a family audience. They hoped parents would sit down on Sunday night and watch the show with their kids. They would make money on the commercials, but also hoped and did sell a lot of lunch pails and models. This audience is still there but the mini and SCIFI targeted this version to attract a non-family/child audience. Many have talked about not letting their kids watch this show. People really haven't changed that much. This mini was simply designed to attract a different demographic. As mentioned in other threads (See "In Harm's Way" for example) the mini is based in a large part on other dark and sexually charged movies going back to the 1960's. I am sure parents in the mid 1960's didn't take their kids to the theatre to see "In Harm's Way" with them. The mini is not the "Battlestar Galactica" of 1978. You have to like it or not like it for what it is. I never really liked Alien for it's dark and violent themes. I sure wouldn't let my kids watch it but it is a commercial success. I think it's hard to like the mini if you want to see the original. Maybe if they called it by another name and got rid of the Galactica mythos many more at this site would have enjoyed the show but let's face it, by putting the Galactica name on it many more people gave it a chance.

[amberstar]

Bob thank you for your post and welcome to CF!

What you posted was well thought out and is what many of us feel.

Amber

[SAR Pilot]

Antelope,

While I agree with you to a certain degree, I have to say that it isn't just the BSG mini which has been targeted at more mature audiences. I really cannot think of any sci fi series or movies which have been made in the past three years which are free of adult themes; violence, language, sexuality. Unfortunately, you really have to record the programs and view them before you can let your kids watch them with you. . . gone are the days of sitting down with the kids with a bowl of popcorn to watch the new show at its first airing. I think that TV in general is full of these themes, and it is into that fray with which BSG2003 was thrust.

I can't think of a time that science fiction wasn't centered around violence. I watched the original "Time Machine" the other night made in the 1960's. It was all about violence. You are hard pressed to find any SCIFI show that isn't based on war or to the death conflicts between humans or humans against aliens.

The amount of sex is definitely increasing but Captain Kirk in the original Star Treks was doing pretty well in that area also. What you are allowed to put on TV by the government is changing but the demand by people for sex and violence seems to be the same. With the advent of massive cable channels we now move childrens shows to specific channels so the rest have a free run to put on what people wanted to see all along---gratuitous violence and sex.

If "Saga of a Star World" and TOS was remade today we would have the same exact dialouge but warriors would bleed and Athena and Cassiopia would be naked from the back (just like the Cylon 6 women) in the scenes on the Rising Sun or during the launch bay steam bath.

The skirt chasing warrior is the mainstay of mostl popular SCIFI. If anything the current SCIFI man has been toned down since in current times he is expected to "care" about the female character of the week he is chasing.

[Sci-Fi]

Believe this is like comparing apples to oranges. Over-the-air broadcasts are a lot more strict than cable programming and we are talking about different eras and the changing or liberalization of standards over that period of time. The generation gap exists even today. Just look at your comments. Parents of the 60's wished programming was like the 40's and 50's with their "sweater girls" and leaving what happened to them in the bedroom or the back seat to one's imagination. People were shot and killed but there was no blood shown. But times have changed and kids tend to want to go to movies with a PG-13 or "R" rating because their friends talk about those movies at school and who wants to be left out?

Cable offers the public a more on-the-edge programming and stories. Many cable programs would be heavily edited before they could be broadcast over-the-air. Many PG-13 rated movies of the 70's and 80's are now considered PG or even G rated today.

I, for one, miss the tightly, witty written dialog and story telling style of the classic movies. However times have changed and a panoramic and technological spectacles are the norm. Stll entertaining though.