BSG

Remember way back when in the late 70's when a cheesy Sci Fi show aired on ABC? It was called "Battlestar Galactica" and it starred Mr. Cartwright, Lorne Greene as the leader of a warship that was leading the last remnants of humanity to a planet called Earth while being chased by shiny chrome plated robots with a red light for an eye that moved back and forth (KITT was a cylon too......). Well a few years ago some Lame Ass writer named Ronald Moore decided that this show needed to be resurrected and "re-imaged" (see my previous posts about Hollywood and it's lack of original ideas). At first I was skeptical......okay this guy would update it, not make it as cheesy as it was 20 or so years ago. Then he decided to change most of the lead characters into women???? I was confused by this. Dirk Benedict (Face Man from the A-Team) played Starbuck the hotshot pilot in the original series...Boomer was a very cool male character and the constant partner and wing man of Apollo, the son of the Commander. Well in Mr. Moore's (Lame Ass) update, he decided to make Starbuck a Female and Boomer as well. He made Apollo a whiny wuss and generally ruined the whole idea of a remake for me. Apparently he said there needed to be stronger female characters. Okay, I agree, but let's just make some up!!! Since you are arrogantly "re-imaging" someone elses' intellectual property why not add some original characters. (To his benefit, Lame Ass did add recurring characters in the form of deck crew and other support staff who were just listed as "crewman #5" in the old series). When fans of the original had an issue, the parties involved, Lame Ass and the actress playing Starbuck, copped big time attitudes in interviews, etc by basically saying "Too bad...this is how it is so piss off...". Kind of insulting really. Also were gone our favorite shiny chrome plated robot bad guys. Instead of them being created by an Alien race, Lame Ass used the tired and overused plot device of Machines created by humans as servants who became self aware and turned on their creators. Wow!!!! That's never been done before....(Terminator, I Robot, The Matrix......I can go on but won't). Gone is Gais Baltar the purposeful traitor in the original series replaced by the "accidental" traitor Dr. Gais Baltar in the new series. Also added, are Cylons who look like humans (Cyborgs basically). It was a blonde hottie version that caused Baltar to be a traitor (she hacked his security codes and shut down the planetary defenses). The machine like Cylons are still around, but they look different (and not as cool) from the chrome plated predecssors. So baring all this in mind, I decided to not watch this new reimaging, neither the original pilot movie, nor the first two seasons. But after hearing so much critical praise, and hearing from my friends how good it really was, I decided to jump on board this season. Wow, what a mistake. There are several things wrong with Lame Ass' writing. Number one: You had a thriving population of 10 billion on 12 planets. You are attacked during a celebration and all that manages to survive of 10 billion humans is 40,+ thousand!!! The military is part of that. In that situation the main Military commander (Admiral Adama) would have taken over and declared a state of Martial Law. Every able bodied person would be trained to fight, and tasks and resources would be divyed up with no questions asked. I mean if we in Modern day American can put up with 2 hour security lines at the airport because of 9/11 and not complain......these folks would be kissing the Military's butt for help. Number two: when you discover a planet that is habitable but you are only 3-5 weeks jump on the machines intent on destroying you, you would not stop at any cost and decide to colonize that planet. No. You'd keep on going until you got to the destination of Earth. There would be no elections, no free press, no laborers bitching about conditions....None of that would happen. (As a further note of how out of control the show has gotten, Glen A. Larson the original creator and writer of the show has been finally brought in as a consultant). Anyway, it's still an "okay" show, we will see if it gets better when it comes back in 2008.