Notice over the years most of the Letters to The Scifi Weekly are pro continuation? Even 'moore' so since the Ronald D. Moore’s script was reviewed on filmjerk.com and posted online, the vast majority of letters are critical of The Scifi Channel’s “re-imagined” remake version?
http://www.scifiweekly.com/issue330/letters.html
BG Trailer a Galactic Letdown
I recently saw the extended trailers for the so-called Battlestar Galactica mini-series during the Tremors season finale. Speaking as someone who is one of the original BG fans, I was totally disappointed. "Re-visioning" BG is not what I wanted to see when I heard this seminal show was going to be re-presented to the eagerly awaiting fans. What I expected was a continuation of the tried and true storyline and characters that made the show an icon. Instead these producers have just thrown that to the wind and done the typical Hollywood blunder: old show meets Beverly Hills 90210.
Was this some marketing strategy trying to build a younger demographic? If so, it's ridiculous. Wouldn't it be better to make direct links to the original so that new inductees to the saga would actually want to refer to/watch the old show? Wouldn't that make an increase in audience to the re-runs? Now this new envisioning has to stand on its own and, from what I've seen, it's just another second-rate, SCI FI Pictures B-movie.
Totally disappointed,
Kevin Harris
heavykev2001@yahoo.com
BSG Should've Created Own Exodus
I finally realized I was seeing an ad for the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. Edward Olmos was right: It bears little in common with the original—to the point of ludicrousness: names and only part of the original goal, the end. They didn't even buy elbow room and make it a new generation.
Themes such as "exodus" in Battlestar Galactica are repeated in all forms of literature, so why did the people involved in the project feel it necessary to invoke the old series? Why didn't they just create their own universe with their own people in exodus—such as Earth 2? Then they could do whatever they wanted.
But perhaps then the SCI FI Channel might have only wanted a Saturday-night original movie and not a mini-series. All the complaining from the original, diehard fan base is great publicity and generates interest in people who only watched the series "back when" and are curious to see how the new one differs. And ironically, these people, not the diehard fanbase, were the majority of the viewers. These viewers are not so invested emotionally in preserving the original in every way; hence more open to a new interpretation.
Tying a project to an already existing name is built-in rating points from "comparison curiosity." And even most diehards will check it out, if for no other reason than to intelligently gripe with other invested fans.
But, on the other side of the ledger, one doesn't have to be a diehard to have the jarring experience of having assumptions about a universe violated. The less invested viewing public retains varying subsets of knowledge of what's transpired in a series. And it is really frustrating when something you know about a series—take as part of the basic fabric of that universe—is violated. I had to be reminded that Star Trek's Zephram Cochran wasn't originally from Earth, but I was irked at a late '80s Johnny Quest cartoon-movie where Hadji was with the Quests in the story when Dr. Zin kills Johnny's mother. Since the original airings in the early '60s, I remember the episode where Johnny and Hadji met—and Johnny's mother was already dead. For someone else, it's reversed.
I think the producers, et al., forget that those who can feel violated go beyond the diehards. You can more easily woo the less invested fan of a franchise, but woo at your own risk.
I suspect the more a franchise keeps a consistent universe, the happier all fans are—but the less free/extra publicity for the producers. By that standard, the new Battlestar Galactica seems to have made a bad deal.
Barbara Goldstein
psifidoll@comcast.net
Letters to The Scifi Channel...............
