My personal opinion is that she is an extremely talented advertising and marketing genius. Her "I am Scifi" campaign was great. And she really knows how to produce interesting promo spots for the scifi channel. (though the current crop is a little to bizarre for me to relate to).
Her achilles heel is that she is not a writer. She does not understand how create characters that touch our hearts. Or heros that inspire and thrill us. She is a marketing genius, but not a writer.
She has given us Lexx, which some of us like, but most of us dislike it. And Crossing Over with John Edwards is HORRIBLE. The Dream Team was even worse. All those shows look good, but the minute you turn up the volume, you have to cringe.
From what I hear all the changes we hate on the new Galactica (Starbuck and Boomer's sex change, the slutty cylon 7of9 wannabe, etc) were all forced by her. They probably looked like great changes....from a marketing point of view. But from a fan or writer's perspective they were incredibly cheap. And these changes represented a marked ignorance of what it was that made the original Galactica Series so entertaining.
Hammer said once that she could not believe how even reruns of Stargate SG1 could do so well in the ratings. Well... quite frankly that's the problem. The same qualities that make Stargate a hit, are what made Galactica so memorable.
If Hammer made the same changes to Stargate that she had planned for BG, then the ratings would collapse, and there would be a similiar backlash of anger. But on the flip side, stargate shows how powerful a new Galactica can be. Since a new Galactica should appeal to the same audience.
(Provided you don't Hammer it)
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