02
Jun
09
Leave a Reply Cancel reply
Archives
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
Recent Posts
- Space Command Is Live On Kickstarter!
- Thanks Steve!
- Like Us On Facebook!
- SPACE COMMAND – Early Rumblings!
- Walter Koenig To Receive Star On The Hollywood Walk Of Fame!
- SOTL: Active Duty! The Collection!
- How Sweet It Is- And Where I’ve Been
- Doug Returns To Trek Radio This Weekend!
- Drex Visits Trek Roots In “Cowboy Creed”
- Drex Speaks On startrek.com – Part 2
Recent Comments
- Matt Boardman on Space Command Is Live On Kickstarter!
- evil_genius_180 on Space Command Is Live On Kickstarter!
- Robert Medina on Space Command Is Live On Kickstarter!
- nathaniel on Alien Biplane – Jet Powered
- Dave on Thanks Steve!
- Bernd Schneider on SPACE COMMAND – Early Rumblings!
- DeanneM on SPACE COMMAND – Early Rumblings!
- jdcombs on SPACE COMMAND – Early Rumblings!
- Eric Nyquist on Thanks Steve!
- Brian Cebula on Thanks Steve!
- Scott D on SPACE COMMAND – Early Rumblings!
- DeanneM on Thanks Steve!
- Robert Medina on Like Us On Facebook!
- Carwyn on Like Us On Facebook!
- John Armbruster on Thanks Steve!
Categories
Abramsverse Aviation BSG Caprica Dan Curry Dick Tracy Drexler DS9 Eaves ENT Enterprise J Ent Tech Eye Candy General Sci-Fi General Trek Hollywood Hutzel Makeup NASA/Science Nostalgia NY World's Fair Okuda Panel Art Pierre Drolet Pocket Books Probert Retro Design Shenanigans Site News SOTL Closeup Sternbach Steve Canyon TMP TNG TOS Treknology Uncategorized Virtuality VOY Wardrobe
So say we all
Nice! I know the last BSG fueled UN activity went over really well.
http://www.space.com/entertainment/090318-battlestar-un.html
Indeed, it was really interesting how they tied in fiction with the real world. I just loved it when Olmos got into character and got everyone doing, “So say we all!”
I’ll tell you, Ron Moore really is a genius… to create something not only to enjoy, but to make us think as well.
Changing the world, (into) one sci-fi geek at a time.
Wow.
LLP,
deg
The broadsheets here in the UK called BSG the best paradigm for the war on terror. Science Fiction has long been a vehicle that allows humanity to take a hard, long look at itself.
When I read that BSG was very relevant and somewhat “preachy”, I feared the worst. But save for one or two episodes, I was never overcome by any “beat you over the head” parallels like I feared. Made it all the more better.
I really do love BSG, I loved how, like TOS and TNG it used current day issues as riving points behind some stories, my girlfirned also studies political science, so this show was a great way to get her into Sci-fi
See, now this is where I can relate to those who grew up watching the TOS…I grew up watching the original BSG and i thought and still do think) it is awesome…now I have to catch the shows on RTN. i watched some sporadic episodes of the new BSG and it was cool, but nothing to blow up the skirt. I guess I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that cylons were NOT the shiny metal bucketheads of the 80s (lol).
So for this assembly, what was the purpose? i guess I am totally missing the point, sorry.
Jim! You haven’t seen our shiny Killer robots?!
Honestly though, when I came on board BSG, I rewatched the entire original series… wow, they do not hold up, save for a couple.
You actually have a good point there Doug. i watched the original BSG, like many others, when I was growing up. I find that when I try to watch it now, after seeing the new BSG is just doesn’t hold up for me, where as shows like the Original Star Trek still hold up even after all these years.
Suricata, I agree. It’s amazing how well the majority of TOS episodes hold up.
I loved old BSG, but you’re right it doesn’t hold up. There wasn’t really a struggle, it was more like a luxary trip in space to a new location. But TOS still has relevance, even decades later, because it talks about the human condition and how humans interact.
But it really until Babylon 5 where SciFi evolved from the episodic content into an overall storyline, which I personally love. You get more involved. Like in DS9 it was like “what’s going to happen tomarrow?” With Voyager it was like “Will we make it home?”, and Enterprise it was “What’s over the horizon.”
“Sometimes, you gotta role the hard six.”
Perhaps the best sci-fi series of all time and I’m including all versions of Trek in that statement.
My meager tuppence -
I watched the original BSG as a kid and enjoyed it, but I was six years old and I didn’t know quality from a hole in the wall. As an adult, I get the nostalgia, and I think the original production design is borderline brilliant, but as a show, there isn’t much to it. The new BSG was, more often than not, one of the best things on TV in the 21st century and a rarity in a genre series in that it did not completely crap out at the end. BSG said something important and of the day, and it finished strong. The new BSG was a cold mirror in the face of an unpleasant and very contentious period in history. Hence it gets all A’s in “relevency” and deservedly so. What I’m not sure about is how well BSG will age. Is it so a child of the post-9/11 zeitgeist that in 20 or 30 years, it will seem as dated as other “relevent” shows of the past, like “All in the Family” or “M*A*S*H*”? I really don’t know. “Timeless” may be harder to achieve than “timely”.
Still, it was a helluva show. So say we all.
Jay sez – What I’m not sure about is how well BSG will age. Is it so a child of the post-9/11 zeitgeist that in 20 or 30 years, it will seem as dated as other “relevent” shows of the past, like “All in the Family” or “M*A*S*H*”? I really don’t know. “Timeless” may be harder to achieve than “timely”.
I don’t think so because the characters are so strong. You care about them. My god there is some amazing acting going on. Some of the best I’ve ever seen in filmed science fiction… some of the best I’ve seen. Besides Jay, those two other shows you mention are still incredibl;y entertaining for just that reason.
We can take this up again, Doug, on the June 2, 2029 edition of the Drex Files.
I’m marking my calendar. Be there *and* be square!
Deal!
Jay: I’d say it’d be a crime if BSG was still relevant in 20-30 years time as it would imply Humans still haven’t learned anything from what got us into this mess to start with.
Hopefully it’ll be remembered as an accurate representation of the early 21st century, but not of 21st century Humanity.
Putting it that way, Barrie. I can say without a doubt that BSG will remain timely.
I’ve always been a firm believer that the stories that last through the ages are the ones that you can take out of the genre it is written in and change a few elements of it and then plug it into a new genre and the story works. Star Trek is one of those stories, which is why it has been around for 43 years. This version of BSG was so well written that I have no doubt that it will survive through the ages much like Trek has. I mean, this was some really, really good writing. It was like the sun, the earth, and the moon all lined up with one another because you had top notch writing, acting, music, and VFX that combined to make a series that was some of the best television that has been around.
Yeah, sure, it’s significant for our times in light of 9/11, but then again, so were the other shows that we consider timeless. They meant something to the people then because they could relate to the events they depicted, and when the memory of those events faded and was relegated to the halls of history and history books, the stories were still good stories that people still enjoy to tell. I have no dobut that this version of BSG will fall into that category.
Yikes…do I get points for killing the conversation?
You didn’t kill it for me, Matt – I just didn’t have anything else to say
As Mr. Spock might say, it would be interesting to return to Battlestar Galactica in a hundred years, to learn what crop has sprung from the seed Ron Moore planted in the Sci-Fi Channel … in would indeed, Mr. Boardman … it would indeed …
(CUE MUSIC, FADE OUT)
Agreed, the new BSG is timely, and nuanced in it’s portrayl of current events and the US foriegn policy world-view in a post 9-11 climate.
It’s great drama for a mature audience, but I feel it would be fairly hard going for a younger audience, especially it’s fairly constant portrayal of the flaws in all the characters and in humanity in general. I would love to see a new and original sci-fi series that has the standard of writing, acting and production of BSG, but with some more measured optimism like in much of the sci-fi we all grew up with….we owe that to the next generation of sci-fi fans.
Mark
Jay — hopefully (unlike the episode you referenced) that seed doesn’t turn out to be a maniacal genetically enhanced Ricardo Montalban
But in all seriousness, BSG did do a great job with the post-9/11 zeitgeist.
Edward James Olmos versus Ricardo Montalban
That sounds like the makings of some mighty good TV – or as Master Thespian would say, ACTING! GENIUS! THANK YOU!
I agree that BSG was a show that made you think, but for me, it made me think that it didn’t have much that was very interesting, deep, or pursuasive to say. I watched the show its entire run, and reasonably enjoyed it, but I really was not taken with it the way lots of viewers were. Those tribute episodes they did every once in awhile were really groan inducing for me. And that UN thing…. I never did like Adama’s “angry speeches” followed by his agree-with-me-dictate of “So Say We All”. When I heard that Olmos actually did that with a straight face in public and people actually joined in….! Yikes. Not my crowd, in other words. Heh, I’d probably be like Khrushchev with the shoe if I were there (and prone to cause scenes).
BSG relevant? Well, I guess if you like being bashed over the head with a sledgehammer labelled “current issues”.
I’d have preferred a little subtlety in BSG’s handling of anaolgy to current events, like Star Trek was able to do. BSG was about as subtle as a charging rhinoceros. Just this man’s opinion of course.
dougdrexler
Yeah, M*A*S*H friggin’ amazes me like no other show each time I happen to catch it while channel-surfin’. That show is indeed timeless, IMO, despite the era it is set in. It’s sO friggin’ funny too! THe writing and performances! And while sure, it’s set in a war-zone, and in a different era, it actually is, IMO, about the one constant; the human experience, and how it is dealt with from the character’s POV.
I think BSG will hold up as drama. I don’t think it will ever be as timeless as M*A*S*H, just for that show’s humor factor, but it’ll hold up as great TV drama, eh. IMO anywho. Great stuff.
LLP,
deg
Simon Matthew Coles:
Three words off the top o’ me head, Simon: Private Little War.
Trek had its share of current issue sledge-hammers as well, IMO. Good hammers though, too.
LLP,
deg
“BSG relevant? Well, I guess if you like being bashed over the head with a sledgehammer labelled “current issues”.
Yeah I do. That’s why I love the show. It was in your face and didn’t shy away from difficult questions. It made me think, it made me question and it made me see the other side of things.
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer the themes of space operas to be good vs. evil, not two kinds of evil competing. In BSG the humans were evil. The cylons were evil. There’s no contrast. I don’t call that entertainment, I call that nihilism.
The humans were nihilistic facists and the cylons were religious fanatics. I guess that was making some “point” about the war on terror etc, but seriously, its not like there was any thought required when it was all so painfully obvious and in your face as you put it. Let *us* decide, RDM, don’t force your worldview on us!
the strength of the original Galactica Series is that the heroes were good and full of valor and courage. We could get behind them, we wanted them to triumph over adversity. That’s the entire point of space opera. In the new show everyone was so equally nasty and twisted you just wished everyone was dead. IMO of course. Tuning in every week to a thinly veiled and obvious 9/11 analogy and the heavy-handed commentary on Bush Administration foreign policy is just depressing. Isn’t that was CNN was for?!
Just my 2 cents.
Simon Matthew Coles: What you need ,IMHO, is to bare in mind that nowadays people are more and more focusing on their own lives; paying bills, worrying about the economy etc. As a result, they rarely, if at all, think outside that box and as a consequence, the subtleties of science fiction often pass them by.
In this day and age, people need strong examples to shake them out of their apathy and fear. Demagogues like Tony Blair and Dubya, create atmospheres of fear and worry so that people get so wound up they don’t pay attention to what their governments are doing and fall into a kind of behaviour by rote. I remember interviews done with some of Barak Obama’s door to door campaigners who reported be told by voters “I’m not going to vote for that nigger.” “He’s a Muslim; I won’t vote for him.”
Attitudes like that, and the lies of the politicians who create the social environment for those attitudes, need stong challenges. They need the sledgehammer of “current events”. Art reflects the socio-political environment of the day and these days politicians are using simplistic, unsubtle phaseology and creating an atmosphere in which people are so worried they surrender their lives unto the political classes so they can focus on their own worries. A kind of volunary tyranny in which politicians can do as they please as long as people have low bills and jobs and working public services etc. It’s the same trick Hitler used. Get people to focus on something or someone outside and they’ll let us get away with anything. If people had been paying attention, the Patriot Act and similar legislation here in the UK would NEVER have been passed.
Mr. Moore’s “sledgehammer” is the counterbalance to such a public surrender of thought.
Also, I think it too simplistic to call anyone evil. In BSG, the Humans and Cylons alike were never evil, they were afraid. The Humans had just been nuked and were convinced that the Cylons were coming to finish the job and the Cylons believed, after Adama had violated the armistice line on the Valkyrie, that Humans wanted to enslave them again. Into this stepped people like Brother Cavil and Tom Zarek, always willing to exploit the fear for their own ends. They’re not evil either, just so convinced of the righteousness of their cause, they cannot, will not consider peace and co-existence. They are, in the end just as bad as each other.
Star Trek tackled such issues in a very subtle way because in the sixties censorship would not have allowed such open critisism and debate. They wouldn’t even let Gene Roddenberry have a female XO for God’s sake! The subtlety you speak off, Simon, was necessary to get past the censors. Nowadays it isn’t necessary. You can tell tales of religious fanatasism and the dangers of simply dismissing others beliefs (Sisko’s speech to Jake in DS9′s “In the Hands of the Prophets” as well as his speech to Vedek Winn).
Science Fiction has never been about tales of good vs evil. It’s always been about the Humans of the day. There is a time and a place for the subtlety of Star Trek and a time and a place for the sledgehammer of BSG.
Now, when politicians are openly dismissive of other faiths and cultures, to the point where right wingers go around saying that President Obama is Muslim as if that were a bad thing, I believe that the artistic community needs to shout, scream and sledgehammer their work and the reflection(s) of humanity those works represent into the public consiousness.
This is no time for subtlety. There’s too much at stake.
I don’t know, maybe I just recognize political “issues” for what they are: banal and boring.
Funny though, how George Lucas explored similar issues of power, freedom, free will and responsibility in the Star Wars Prequels, and those efforts were decried. Ron Moore does the same thing in BSG and is praised. Though I guess the difference is BSG is “edgy” and “dark” but those are just buzzwords – is there much behind them?
Political “issues” may be banal and boring, but that doesn’t stop them from being important.
As for the Star Wars prequels, it may be that George Lucas isn’t telling a story that hasn’t been told before, with, frankly much better writing. Ron Moore is praised for his story telling skills and the fact that his stories deal with the issues of today. The words “edgy” and “dark” are used to reflect the fact that as a general rule Humans aren’t inward looking; self appraisal and self analysis aren’t a Human forte. We usually have to be forced by either, real world events, or art into taking a long, hard look at ourselves.
I don’t really want a space opera to make me take a hard look at myself – duh, Moore, we *know* torture is bad, we know imperialism is bad, we know out creations end up destroying us…we know all about the Frankenstein myth…. None of this is new. Don’t need BSG to presume to teach me “lessons”. I need it to entertain me. The original did. The remake did not.
You’re in luck. There is plenty of lobotomized entertainment to go around.
@ Barrie, I agree with alot of your analysis in post 32, and while I agree with Simon in there being a need for “entertainment for the sake of entertainment” I think there is already enough of that on the tube and BSG has been a welcome chance to present some topical political discourse, especially since The West Wing finished, of which I like even more than BSG and most incarnations of Star Trek…sorry folks.
I think BSG set its political tone early own, so the majority who stuck with it must have appreciated this.
Barry, 9/11 just gave much of the political class in Western democracies an opportunity to use fear-mongering as a means to stiffle debate for reasons of political expediency. It happened/s here in Australia. In Nov 2001 we had a conservative federal government re-elected, based on some disgraceful fear-mongering, when before Sept 2001 the same party were very low in opinion polls. As a long-time environmental activist, I see the bigger tragedy of 9/11 in that alot of progressive political discourse, especially about the environment, which was gaining ground was shifted to the background in favour of simplistic diatribes about terrorism, the real causes of which have been with us (and known about to those interested) for decades. Islamic, or for that matter any religious, fanaticism has been around a long time.
It has only been in the past 12 months in my country have we started to move towards more progressive and representative discourse, as well as addressing environmental concerns…so after a delay of 7 years. I think BSG does a good job of presenting the realities (and at times nastiness) of political opportunism.
Often when I see a sound-bite of a democratically elected politician espousing the need to further curtail our civil liberties for an unending War on Terrorism, I am reminded of how Hamlet described Claudius “A man can smile and smile and still be a villian”.
I hope things are shifting a bit away from the stiffling cloud of fear over our collective consciousness, i believe they are, and I know i am doing my bit towards this.
Sorry Doug for turning this thread into a bit of a soap-box, to anyone who read thanks for taking the time.
Mark
Mark A-C: I couldn’t agree more.
Not saying the new Galactica is terrible, far from it, I actually thought during the first season that it had the potential to become a lasting icon of science fiction and one of the best TV series ever made. I personally do not think it delivered on its potential. I think the analogy to real world issues became too on the nose for me. It stopped being a fun and interesting show to watch… for me. I still think however, that it wasn’t near as smart as it thought it was, and Moore isn’t a messiah of screenwriting. He’s very, very good, he contributed immeasurably to the success of Star Trek TNG and DS9, but I personally, and this is only my little opinion, think Galactica’s “message” and “relevance” is being blown a little bit out of proportion in certain circles. I enjoy intelligent, smart and uncompromising shows and films, I appreciate a great many forms and genres – but Galactica for me was neither terribly intelligent, nor did it tell me anything I don’t already know, not did it challenge me to re-evaluate anything. So it fails as an “issues” show for me, so what else could I hope to get out of it? Entertainment maybe, but no, I didn’t get much of that out of it either after season 2. IMO.
Those that disagree with it, those who got more out of it than I did, all power to you, perhaps you saw things that I missed.
I don’t think BSG had any lessons to teach. I Don’t think it clearly stated who was good or evil either. It let us decide that for ourselves. It never gave clear answers of right or wrong because the world isn’ that Black and white.
I think some people are confusing whether something deals with an issue with whether it deals with an issue in an interesting or compelling way. For a lot of people, BSG did that for them, for me, not so much. Internet forums are full of people arguing about “relevant” issues, but not really doing something too worthwhile with it. To use an extreme example, Stone’s JFK was very relevant to all sorts of hot button issues. It was also full of crap. BSG is not that bad, but it’s not that good either. It’s all a kind of “meh” for me on these issues, and I think it’s rather overpraised in this regard, to say the least.