Battlestar Galactica music video

[Darth Servo]

Take a shit in your toilet and film the waste as you flush it--you've just made better TV than G1980 could ever hope to be.

I'd agree except for four words: The Return of Starbuck, episode 10. The only G80 episode to reach oBSG quality.

Not really. I still yawned through it. Of course it was better than the rest of the season but that isn't saying anything and you'll notice, they completely ditched just about EVERYTHING from G-1980 in that episode.

[Darth Servo]

And why the hell did none of the other Battlestars launch fighters?

They did. Later they mention a returning fighter count. Something along the lines of "67 fighters in all sir. 25 of our own." After the destruction of the Atlantia and the Galactica high tailing it out of there to try and defend the colonies, they were just out-gunned.

[RedImperator]

Since I never saw the original Galactica besides the 1980 version, I thought Galactica-1980 was Battlestar Galactica. I'm sure there's a lot of the rest of us who haven't seen the original either, so I'm not sure you can blame someone for wanting to update a 70's-80's show and not make just another campy space pilots show.

Oh, try catching the original pilot on sci-fi. Or the Living Legend and hand of God. This are the better episodes. There's a reason why many people still like the oBSG Cain than the new one. Patton in Space!!!

My dad has the pilot movie. I tried to watch it. After the destruction of the colonies, it started to suck and I eventually turned it off halfway through. And that's one of the high points of the series. Some of the later episodes I couldn't get past the first ten minutes when I tried to watch them on TV. oBSG for me certainly doesn't work as drama and it doesn't work as cheesy space fun, either. And I'm not opposed to cheesy space fun by any stretch of the imagination; I love TOS, which beats oBSG like the proverbial red-shirted stepchild.

I look at oBSG the same way I do Voyager: excellent premise, good production values, decent acting (Lorne Green trumps Kate Mulgrew, certainly), awesome ship design (again, way cooler than Voyager and overall better than nBSG's Galactica), great villains (in Voyager's case, this would be the Borg, not the Kazons or whatever other lameass space rednecks they found), all of it wasted on terrible writing. You have a fantastic premise, a deadly enemy, an entire galaxy to play with and an enormous budget and the best you can come up with in the first season is a casino planet? Come on.

[Darth Servo]

Come on, you can get the oBSG movie on DVD at Best Buy (at least I did) for $10. Complete with the REAL fate of Baltar.

[Bounty]

Take a shit in your toilet and film the waste as you flush it--you've just made better TV than G1980 could ever hope to be.

I'd agree except for four words: The Return of Starbuck, episode 10. The only G80 episode to reach oBSG quality.

Not really. I still yawned through it. Of course it was better than the rest of the season but that isn't saying anything and you'll notice, they completely ditched just about EVERYTHING from G-1980 in that episode.

It was actually a S2 oBSG script that was reworked for G80.

The thing is that Return was a lot closer to oBSG than G80 could ever dream to be. It had an interesting premise, a great Cylon character, some mystery, a non-copout ending (well, not the framing story, obviously, but Starbuck's tale). Compared to the superpowered kids and Nazi episodes in the rest of the series it's practically Shakespeare.

[Lord Poe]

Some of the later episodes I couldn't get past the first ten minutes when I tried to watch them on TV. oBSG for me certainly doesn't work as drama and it doesn't work as cheesy space fun, either. And I'm not opposed to cheesy space fun by any stretch of the imagination; I love TOS, which beats oBSG like the proverbial red-shirted stepchild.

Right, because TOS having Spock doing a Mexican Hat dance, while Kirk goes "wheeee!" on all fours is beyond cheesy reproach. Or having space hippies have a jam session with Spock, or having Spock's brain stolen, nahh... much better cheese than oBSG.

You have a fantastic premise, a deadly enemy, an entire galaxy to play with and an enormous budget and the best you can come up with in the first season is a casino planet? Come on.

As opposed to the 'pleasure planet' the 'Nazi planet', the 'kids who never grew up' planet, the multiple parallel Earths,
all the 'one government on one continent' planets in TOS and TNG.

A Galactic Production Nightmare

Battlestar Galactica was an experiment. Nothing like it had ever been done in televison history. As with any experiment, there were bound to be numerous problems. ABC apparently never realized this as they made many critical mistakes.

Glen Larson had originally proposed to do several television movies, but ABC insisted on a single movie and then a weekly television series, convinced they would likely be able to create the number one ratings hit on television. This was a gamble that failed. The first several one-hour episodes of Galactica came in around 11th place in the ratings, and soon dropped steadily. Several television movies would have been much more feasible. There would have been plenty of time between movies to develop high quality scripts, and the budgets would be extravagant enough to do the kinds of special effects that would be needed.

Afraid that the Star Wars craze would soon fizzle, ABC rushed the show into production. Because of this, there was simply not enough time to develop quality scripts, resulting in many cliche episodes such as The Lost Warrior, Fire In Space, The Young Lords, and Murder On The Rising Star. The writers found themselves working around the clock, ultimately scripting the two worst episodes, The Magnificent Warriors and Take The Celestra.

Unfortunately, the stories were also severely hampered because there was not enough time or money to shoot new special effects shots, making it impossible to write any kind of complex battle scenes. The show was forced to reuse the same space battle footage in every episode, which quickly became tiresome and placed strict limits on what the writers could do. The lackluster writing was the main reason the ratings continued to drop, and ABC began making "suggestions" on how to change things, which only used up even more badly needed time. Every episode had to be shot in six days, which was incredibly difficult for a show like Galactica. Often the cast did not recieve the scripts until the day of shooting. Anne Lockhart has said that they sometimes would tape their scripts to the wall and directly read off them while shooting because there wasn't enough time to memorize their lines. The show also preempted more than any other show in history, which certainly contributed to the declining ratings.

There was also a constant battle between the producers and ABC, as ABC's Standards and Practices Guidelines made it difficult to have a level of violence acceptable for good drama. The Cylons quickly became a joke as the space battles were ludicrously one-sided. The ending of Fire In Space was ruined due to the meddling of the censors, and their interference only made things more difficult for the writers.

[Vympel]

They did. Later they mention a returning fighter count. Something along the lines of "67 fighters in all sir. 25 of our own." After the destruction of the Atlantia and the Galactica high tailing it out of there to try and defend the colonies, they were just out-gunned.

I'm referring to the part before where Adama asks if any of the other Battlestars have launched Vipers and the response is no, then he says "gods help us" or something.

Of course, the series of poncy Raider strafing runs that represented the destruction of mankind was pretty absurd.

[Darth Servo]

I'm referring to the part before where Adama asks if any of the other Battlestars have launched Vipers and the response is no, then he says "gods help us" or something.

Oh that. Well, it takes a few minutes to get the pilots to the vipers. If you'll recall, Adama had just run a "battle stations drill" so their fighters could launch immediately.

edit: based on the links provided by Wayne in the previous page of this thread, the scene you mention is right at the beginning of the battle, immediately after Galactica gets its fighters lanuched.

[Vympel]

A Galactic Production Nightmare

That goes a long way to explaining the problems of the show- of course, it doesn't excuse them. If BSG had been a bunch of TV-movies as opposed to a series, it probably would've been a lot better and remembered as a real classic- who knows, maybe the remake wouldn't have been re-imagined either

[RedImperator]

Some of the later episodes I couldn't get past the first ten minutes when I tried to watch them on TV. oBSG for me certainly doesn't work as drama and it doesn't work as cheesy space fun, either. And I'm not opposed to cheesy space fun by any stretch of the imagination; I love TOS, which beats oBSG like the proverbial red-shirted stepchild.

Right, because TOS having Spock doing a Mexican Hat dance, while Kirk goes "wheeee!" on all fours is beyond cheesy reproach. Or having space hippies have a jam session with Spock, or having Spock's brain stolen, nahh... much better cheese than oBSG.

Yes, it is. Because not only did TOS make up for the goofy cheesefest episodes with some of the best episodes of televised science fiction that ever hit the airwaves, but even TOS's worst episodes had something to redeem them, even if it was just Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelly making the best of a terrible situation. And just in case your reading comprehension is on the fritz today, I'll repeat: I have no objection to cheesiness. I don't dislike oBSG because it's cheesy and I never said I did. I dislike oBSG because it sucks.

You have a fantastic premise, a deadly enemy, an entire galaxy to play with and an enormous budget and the best you can come up with in the first season is a casino planet? Come on.

As opposed to the 'pleasure planet' the 'Nazi planet', the 'kids who never grew up' planet, the multiple parallel Earths,
all the 'one government on one continent' planets in TOS and TNG.

First, let's get one thing straight. TOS and TNG aren't the same thing. TNG has heaps and piles of awful, boring drek which is just as badly written as "Spock's Brain" without the benefit of being funny. That's why you may have noticed I compared oBSG to TOS and said absolutely nothing whatsoever about TNG.

Second, in your rush to defend discoriffic garbage television, you completely missed the point. I was not attacking "Allegory Planet" or "The Budget Ran Out Planet" or even "Complete Failure of Imagination Planet". Star Trek's premise is that they're flying around the galaxy exploring strange new worlds. That premise can withstand pleasure planets--in fact, I'd have no particular objection to a casino planet episode of TOS provided it was executed well. oBSG's premise, on the other hand, is that civilization has been destroyed and humanity is on the brink of extinction. That is the difference between "Starbuck raises hell on a casino planet" being merely goofy, and being farcically bad. While Starbuck was carousing around having a grand old time, there were civilians living in squalor on the brink of starvation in the fleet. That's not goofy or fun or even just a bad idea: either Starbuck is a sociopathic dickwad, or the writers are abandoning their premise in favor of pretending they're writing Star Trek: Galactica.

[Darth Servo]

Of course, the series of poncy Raider strafing runs that represented the destruction of mankind was pretty absurd.

Is this better?

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Of course, the series of poncy Raider strafing runs that represented the destruction of mankind was pretty absurd.

Is this better?

Hey, I like it tons!

Oh, and the flamewar in this thread absolutely blows worm-infested bloody monkey-diarrhea.

[Vympel]

Is this better?

Much, though I still prefer nBSG's approach- nuclear explosions all over the planet visible from space, towering mushroom clouds from ground level, together with follow-up confirming that the Colonies were now basically a radioactive wasteland to which humanity could not return.

Not to say nBSGs couldn't have been improved either, of course- more explicit, close-up scenes of destruction would've been good, as well as a hapless Battlestar or two being destroyed, but still.

[Darksider]

Not to say nBSGs couldn't have been improved either, of course- more explicit, close-up scenes of destruction would've been good, as well as a hapless Battlestar or two being destroyed, but still.

Damn straight. One of the biggest problems I had with the miniseries was that you learned about all the major details of the Cylon attack second hand. All they ever focused on was the characters reactions to the destruction, they never actually showed much of it. That was the primary reason I didn't like the mini. It was boring. The whole "virus takes the colonials by surprise" thing seemed like a really contrived plot device to avoid having to show battle scenes. I would have been much happier with the miniseries if they had:

A: showed the destruction of the colonies in more detail, and focused less on the characters reactions (and completely cut the useless "lee hates commander Adama because Zak died" plot that went nowhere.)

B: Cut the stupid virus crap that made colonial computer technicians less competent than a high school programming student. As I said earlier, It struck me as an excuse to not show battle scenes. IMHO, a better way to do it would have been for caprica six to use the access to the defense mainframe baltar gave her to plot the locations of the Colonial fleet units, and have the Cylons strike everywhere at once with overwhelming force. and then show a massive series of battle sequences where the Colonial fleet is quickly overwhelmed by massive raider swarms and missile spamming from baseships.

[Lord Poe]

And just in case your reading comprehension is on the fritz today, I'll repeat: I have no objection to cheesiness. I don't dislike oBSG because it's cheesy and I never said I did. I dislike oBSG because it sucks.

Your opinion, which you threw in bad episodes oF BSG to augment.

Second, in your rush to defend discoriffic garbage television, you completely missed the point. I was not attacking "Allegory Planet" or "The Budget Ran Out Planet" or even "Complete Failure of Imagination Planet". Star Trek's premise is that they're flying around the galaxy exploring strange new worlds.

So then, you're moving goalposts. Gotcha.

That premise can withstand pleasure planets--in fact, I'd have no particular objection to a casino planet episode of TOS provided it was executed well. oBSG's premise, on the other hand, is that civilization has been destroyed and humanity is on the brink of extinction. That is the difference between "Starbuck raises hell on a casino planet" being merely goofy, and being farcically bad. While Starbuck was carousing around having a grand old time, there were civilians living in squalor on the brink of starvation in the fleet. That's not goofy or fun or even just a bad idea: either Starbuck is a sociopathic dickwad,.

Yes, that's EXACTLY who Starbuck was. He left the woe is me shit to everyone else. So humans on on the brink of destruction. He could feel sorry for himself. or he could have a good time on his off-hours. The very existence of the "casino planet" shows that there are plenty of humans left that think like Starbuck does.

Unlike some "re-imagined" shows, everybody in oBSG doesn't have the same cookie cutter personality, and you don't need to look at their haircuts to tell them apart.

[Vympel]

Damn straight. One of the biggest problems I had with the miniseries was that you learned about all the major details of the Cylon attack second hand. All they ever focused on was the characters reactions to the destruction, they never actually showed much of it. That was the primary reason I didn't like the mini. It was boring.

Indeed- it's the critique I hear over and over, and I agree- it's so long, yet nothing much really happens. It only gets exciting near the end where there's some actual fighting.

The whole "virus takes the colonials by surprise" thing seemed like a really contrived plot device to avoid having to show battle scenes. I would have been much happier with the miniseries if they had:

A: showed the destruction of the colonies in more detail, and focused less on the characters reactions (and completely cut the useless "lee hates commander Adama because Zak died" plot that went nowhere.)

They did bring that back in Season 1 with regard to Starbuck having to train new pilots after the accident on the hangar deck (a stupid fluke tragedy that sadly has "real life" written all over it, which I quite liked) however.

B: Cut the stupid virus crap that made colonial computer technicians less competent than a high school programming student. As I said earlier, It struck me as an excuse to not show battle scenes. IMHO, a better way to do it would have been for caprica six to use the access to the defense mainframe baltar gave her to plot the locations of the Colonial fleet units, and have the Cylons strike everywhere at once with overwhelming force. and then show a massive series of battle sequences where the Colonial fleet is quickly overwhelmed by massive raider swarms and missile spamming from baseships.

While cool- the problem with that however is that it just becomes really unlikely that the entire Colonial fleet could've been destroyed in one fell-swoop- unless you reduce the size of the Colonial Fleet. The problem with that is like that of oBSG- they had a handful of Battlestars when they had at least twelve entire planets? The 120-ship fleet (not all of them battlestars, probably ...?) was more realistic for the 12 colonies.

Doesn't stop them from doing it though- it would've been nice having a lot of Viper and Raptor survivors (rather than just the three Mk VIIs we see flying with the civilian fleet before they meet Galactica, and the fact that Crashdown came from Battlestar Triton, presumably on a Raptor, since he has his flightsuit from Triton) swarming to Galactica.

[Stofsk]

Damn straight. One of the biggest problems I had with the miniseries was that you learned about all the major details of the Cylon attack second hand. All they ever focused on was the characters reactions to the destruction, they never actually showed much of it. That was the primary reason I didn't like the mini. It was boring.

Indeed- it's the critique I hear over and over, and I agree- it's so long, yet nothing much really happens. It only gets exciting near the end where there's some actual fighting.

I never found this critique to be all that compelling. I found the miniseries to be intriguing and it was primarily the thing that got me interested in the show. If I had listened to all the naysayers on this forum, I wouldn't have even bothered with either the mini or the show.

Darksider's suggestions wouldn't have improved the miniseries in my opinion.

[Vympel]

I never found this critique to be all that compelling. I found the miniseries to be intriguing and it was primarily the thing that got me interested in the show. If I had listened to all the naysayers on this forum, I wouldn't have even bothered with either the mini or the show.

Darksider's suggestions wouldn't have improved the miniseries in my opinion.

Put it this way- I enjoyed the Miniseries when I watched it, but at times, I was bored, that's all

I've seen the Miniseries twice now- I would've watched it a third time before watching the DVDs again, but my brother loaned it out.

[Ender]

Then there's neoBSG, where they took the "interpersonal conflict helps drama" motif and decided to run with it so far that they ended up flying off a cliff. Nobody trusts anybody, and nobody even seems to like anybody. Oooh, but it's so gritty and dramatic!

Which is an unrealistic depiction of life how?

Oh yeah, I forgot. In real armies, every person hates every other person and there are no decent people at all, just different flavours of asshole. Right?

Yes, actually. 99.99% of the people I work with are scum.

[ray245]

By the way, the fan edit makes me think of one question? Would you support the oBSG to be rendered, and add in space battles with CGI? Like star trek TOS or star wars DVD...

Seriously one weakness i can agree is on the reused footage, which is very obvious. And missile lacking the smoke trail like in nBSG. (the same guy who did the fan-edit on the pilot did the same with the living legend)

He has uploaded the edited version, only thing is you need the the DVD to download and view it.

[RedImperator]

And just in case your reading comprehension is on the fritz today, I'll repeat: I have no objection to cheesiness. I don't dislike oBSG because it's cheesy and I never said I did. I dislike oBSG because it sucks.

Your opinion, which you threw in bad episodes oF BSG to augment.

Yes, my opinion, based on the fact that the episodes I've seen, including the "good" ones, are boring, or stupid, or piss all over the premise, or waste time with an annoying kid and his annoying robot dog. If none of that bothers you, terrific.

As an aside, why wouldn't I mention bad episodes when explaining why I don't like it? I mean, I guess I could do it your way, and just hurf hurf about elements of the series that have little to nothing to do with the actual quality of the product on screen, but as a rule, I try to dismiss a TV series based on the stories and scripts and acting.

Second, in your rush to defend discoriffic garbage television, you completely missed the point. I was not attacking "Allegory Planet" or "The Budget Ran Out Planet" or even "Complete Failure of Imagination Planet". Star Trek's premise is that they're flying around the galaxy exploring strange new worlds.

So then, you're moving goalposts. Gotcha.

No, you misread my argument and are now trying to cover your mistake by accusing me of debating dishonestly.

That premise can withstand pleasure planets--in fact, I'd have no particular objection to a casino planet episode of TOS provided it was executed well. oBSG's premise, on the other hand, is that civilization has been destroyed and humanity is on the brink of extinction. That is the difference between "Starbuck raises hell on a casino planet" being merely goofy, and being farcically bad. While Starbuck was carousing around having a grand old time, there were civilians living in squalor on the brink of starvation in the fleet. That's not goofy or fun or even just a bad idea: either Starbuck is a sociopathic dickwad,.

Yes, that's EXACTLY who Starbuck was. He left the woe is me shit to everyone else. So humans on on the brink of destruction. He could feel sorry for himself. or he could have a good time on his off-hours.

Bzzt, wrong. Those weren't his "off hours". This was mere days after the colonies were destroyed, and he was sent down with Boomer and Starbuck to investigate the planet. The fleet is in desperate straits, the Cylons are nipping at their heels, and the first thing he does when they discover what is obviously an enormous cache of food, water, and luxury items is to run around gambling ("investigating", he tells Boomer). And the master investigator isn't even smart enough to realize that everyone is winning and something fishy might be going on.

For fuck's sake, the place is crawling with humans who have no idea their friends, families, and lives back home are dead and destroyed and the Cylons are on a mission of extermination, and it doesn't even occur to him to find management and warn them, or radio Adama for guidance. In fact, in his rush to "investigate", he blows off Boomer when he suggests that exact course of action.

The very existence of the "casino planet" shows that there are plenty of humans left that think like Starbuck does.

Again, wrong. Those humans didn't even know about what happened. And they weren't about to find out from Starbuck.

Unlike some "re-imagined" shows, everybody in oBSG doesn't have the same cookie cutter personality, and you don't need to look at their haircuts to tell them apart.

And unlike some "half-imagined" shows,

1) when characters in nBSG act like dickwads, the script generally treats them as if they're acting like dickwads, and

2) nBSG's writers actually remember what their premise is.

[Darth Wong]

Well, this thread has certainly ballooned since I last checked in. I'd have to say I'm somewhere between the two camps here. I'm not going to pretend that the original Battlestar Galactica was a better show than it was. The writing was weak (although I found it amusing that the "Noman warriors" were basically copied almost verbatim for TNG-era Klingons, including the excessive facial hair), the battles were hopelessly one-sided and therefore lacking in any tension, and the show lacked the gravity of its scenario (essentially the same problem that Voyager suffered from).

However, the new BSG just beats you over the head with its seriousness and I quite frankly don't see the entertainment value in that. In trying to avoid the pitfalls of the original series, it went too far the other way. It is so weighed down by its pretentious gravitas that it can't get off the ground.

[Lord Poe]

No, you misread my argument and are now trying to cover your mistake by accusing me of debating dishonestly.

No, fuck this ass-covering. Your original summation of oBSG was "Duh, all they could think of was a casino planet!" Own up to your bullshit. You only started "explaining" what you meant when I showed you TOS had as much cheese as oBSG.

[consequences]

Which is an unrealistic depiction of life how?

Oh yeah, I forgot. In real armies, every person hates every other person and there are no decent people at all, just different flavours of asshole. Right?

Yes, actually. 99.99% of the people I work with are scum.

From my personal experience, I think Ender may be exaggerating. By about one decimal place.

To put it in a more serious manner, my roommates for most of my year deployed, my posse, who I felt closer to after maybe two months than my frakking sister, all had an assortment of reprehensible qualities. The people that I would not willingly choose to spend my free time with were at best gutter scum. Said gutter scum tended to group together, to the point that an entire room got chaptered out of the military because of drug possession.

[Lord Poe]

Well, this thread has certainly ballooned since I last checked in. I'd have to say I'm somewhere between the two camps here. I'm not going to pretend that the original Battlestar Galactica was a better show than it was. The writing was weak (although I found it amusing that the "Noman warriors" were basically copied almost verbatim for TNG-era Klingons, including the excessive facial hair), the battles were hopelessly one-sided and therefore lacking in any tension, and the show lacked the gravity of its scenario (essentially the same problem that Voyager suffered from).

However, the new BSG just beats you over the head with its seriousness and I quite frankly don't see the entertainment value in that. In trying to avoid the pitfalls of the original series, it went too far the other way. It is so weighed down by its pretentious gravitas that it can't get off the ground.

The major beef I have with these assholes that "re-imagine" another project is bald-faced raping of the original concept in order to put their personal "stamp" on it. We saw that with the infamous Kevin Smith story about his rewrite of Superman, marred by Jon Peters who didn't want to see Superman fly, or wear that "faggy suit".

In 1990, "Dark Shadows" was remade and updated from the 1960's soap opera. I'm a huge fan of the original "Dark Shadows", and I loved the remake. They were true to the original, and streamlined and updated the original stories. A few years ago, yet another "Dark Shadows" remake was being made, but unlike the last one, this one would be pissed away by an asshole with a "new vision."

I spoke at length with Todd McIntosh, the make-up supervisor on Buffy the Vampire Slayer who was going to work on the "re-imagined" "Dark Shadows". He was a fan of the original show too, and said working on the new one was a nightmare. The "re-imaginers" did not want Barnabas to carry his signature wolf's head cane, or wear the Inverness cloak, or wear the black onyx ring. McIntosh said there was a big fight about this, but only the ring made it through the "compromises." See, they wanted to turn "Dark Shadows" into another "Buffy The Vampire Slayer".

If you're not going to respect the original, if the original is "too cheesy" for you, then why not grow some fucking balls and do something original.