… of course, now that I think about it, even Homeworld was a better Battlestar Galactica than the original Battlestar Galactica.
Wooden acting. I’m not a good judge of actors either really. I really only notice when its really, really bad. I’ll watch the second part tommorow though… gotta find out what happens to the ship of wooden sex crazed humans fleeing from the hot sex robots.
The fact they talked about all the things happening to the 12 Colonies rather than showing them robbed that of a lot of impact, and the spreading out of that over an hour and a half with pauses for dialog also made the surprise attack seem really, really slow.
Their CG space effect were bizarre. They do the Firefly-esque shaki-space-cam thing, and they take out most of the noise, but not all, so it just seems like the volume is really way down. Lame. If you’re going to take away the sound in space, do it all the way, and put in good music. Else, don’t try, because its lame.
I also think they spent half the time in the movie putting on and taking off their glasses. I’ll give em that the military feel was well executed, save for the cheezy Crimson Tide ripoff (Bilge Bay, Conn… Seal that Hatch! No, not Robert Hatch!)
So ehh. Nothing else was on, and I’ll watch most anything SciFi. I’d rather watch Farscape or Stargate though.
With the exception of the newly minted President of Whatever The Hell Hasn’t Been Nuked and the one flight deck techie, the ladies were the weakest link in terms of acting.
As for the space effects being Firefly-esque, that stems from them being done by the same visual effects team from Zoic Studios, hence the brief appearence of The Serenity (reference: http://www.buffy.nu/article.php3?id_article=2945 )
Exactly my thoughts, XPav. I just finished watching it, and my overall reaction is that, if the 2 above issues had been addressed, it would have been quite good. Since they weren’t, it was just okay. Still, that’s more than I was expecting.
I found myself really enjoying it, even though I had fun scoffing at some of the stuff. I was also giving my roommate, who is younger than me and was probably still in diapers when Galactica first aired, all about the original and comparing all the differences. And we had fun wondering whether we had accidentally turned to a porn channel for the first 20 minutes. Jeezus, everybody, including the robots, was getting it on it seemed.
Wow, they really upped the size of the Galactica, didn’t they? It’s just huge compared to the original. Those Vipers were downright tiny shooting out of the launch tubes, especially against the Galactica’s bulk. And it looks like an armadillo now. The general shape is the same, but it’s got that “ribbed for the cylon’s pleasure” look.
Can’t wait for tomorrow. But I actually found myself wanting it not to end. I hope they turn it to a series. It’s already way above SG-1 and the other crap Sci-Fi churns out.
Oh, one other criticism: why doesn’t the Galactica have any point defense? When that nuke hits the ship, nothing except Starbuck’s fighter tries to take it out. The original series showed us the big G’s defensive turrets several times per episode, so I don’t see how they could have forgotten them.
Well, I’m glad they took the antiaircraft guns out, because that’s so WW2’ish. The original Galactica bristled with 'em, but they’re worthless when you’re dealing with missiles screaming in at high mach, as those missiles appeared to be.
Why the new Galactica doesn’t have some kind of basic point defense is an interesting idea. Carriers and navy ships have the see-whize system (close-in weapon something). Basically an automated gatling gun mated wtih a radar dish and a shitload of ammo.
Of course, I always cringe a bit when people talk about space sci-fi shows getting the military stuff right, because I’m the kind of guy who tries to imagine what warfare would really be like in space. Just like Crossing the T became obsolete with the advent of airpower, the current paradigm of naval warfare will become just as obsolete in space. Thanks to Lucas, the paradigm we have in sci-fi is that of the World War II dogfight. Star Trek got a bit away from that with the empahsis solely on the capital ship, but this new Galactica just screams modern naval warfare, only in space!
Because it’s been refitted as a floating museum?
One of the two Viper launch bays had been taken over by a gift shop, after all. It’s the main reason for Adama’s insistance that they make it to that ammo dump, so they could get something to shoot with, other than the few remaining museum piece Vipers they managed to throw out.
Of course, the Galactica did manage to take a direct hit from a nuke, which is damn impressive hull armor.
As the guy making the documentary at the beginning noted, the Galactica was designed with intentionally low-tech systems, from having no in-ship networks and for-the-time antiquated computers as a means of preventing the Cylon ability to shut down sufficiently advanced hardware. They enforced this point by showing Apollo complaining about having to land his Viper manually as they had no auto-land system in place.
Basically, they get around not having all these automated systems by the explanation that any sufficiently advanced computer controlled systems makes the ship vulnerable.
I think it’s the CNN effect. The pacing of the surprise attack felt like the “shock and awe” phase of Desert Storm II as it was presented on CNN. Brief bursts of inchoate violence separated by placid lakes of rehashing the events of earlier this morning. I actually preferred this slower and more spread-out presentation over what would have been an endless parade of explosive money-shots. It made the war seem a bit more like a war.
Their CG space effect were bizarre. They do the Firefly-esque shaki-space-cam thing, and they take out most of the noise, but not all, so it just seems like the volume is really way down. Lame. If you’re going to take away the sound in space, do it all the way, and put in good music. Else, don’t try, because its lame.
Disagree again. I thought the hushed soundtrack in space was a reasonable compromise. It would have been neat had they used only the sounds that could be heard from the POV cockpit. But the sound effects they did use didn’t annoy me at all. At least it was a bit of a novel approach to the problem.
I also think they spent half the time in the movie putting on and taking off their glasses. I’ll give em that the military feel was well executed, save for the cheezy Crimson Tide ripoff (Bilge Bay, Conn… Seal that Hatch! No, not Robert Hatch!)
Err… Richard Hatch - IMDb
It probably does, but they made a point of explaining that the Galactica has no stores of ammo. It had just been decommissioned, after all.
Well, I’ll respectfully disagree with most here. The original show was not good by any stretch of the imagination, but it was meant to be fun. This mini-series was not good by any stretch of the imagination and it’s not intended to be fun. It’s left to just wallow in its own suck.
I’d have to give it an F, some of the space battles save it from being an F-. Terrible, terrible acting. Especially from the female characters. Laughable writing (please refer to the scene where the blond robot confesses her robotness to the sleazy conceited doctor). My favorite part of the first half was Olmos’ speech after the attacks on the planet. First, I could almost hear Gene Hackman giving the same speech in 8 of his last 10 movies. Second, I was particularly amused by the line “It doesn’t matter how we got here, but from this moment on, we’re at war” (or something like that). I’m glad the writers were self-aware enough to admit that it doesn’t really matter how we got to that point since the first hour had been such a mess that it needed to be forgotten.
The effects were generally good enough for tv sci fi, but for some reason when people set out to make serious sci fi, they turn off whatever part of their brain that recognizes quality.
If it was one of the networks, I would have been much more critical. For SciFi, I though it was decent and that is the most I have come to expect from made for TV movies. I have seen much worse on the networks. Maybe I have simply come to accept cliched, poor TV screenplays and when this was not atrocious (which some of you though tit was) then I gave it a pass.
The eerie silence of the battles worked for me. I thought it made the Cylon ships seem more sinister.
Since the series is, obviously, focused on the Galactica, I did not have a problem with not showing the planet’s destruction. Super Sex girl snapped that infant’s neck and that is all I needed to know about what was coming for the inhabitants. Brief glimpses of explosions kept us thinking about what was going on in space and not on the surface of a planet which will not appear again in future episodes. Plus, I imagine they had to cut some out due to time considerations.
I agree with this basically. It was okay for sci fi, but sci fi tends to produce shit. For a while I accepted the cliched and poor TV screenplays but then I decided (usually after a view of Alien or Blade Runner or some other classic) that I enjoyed sci-fi way too much to settle. So I’ve decided to start personally holding the same level of expectations for sci fi as I would anything else. I believe sci fi deserves this (maybe it will help it stop the bleeding in the genre), and in what little way I can, I’m not going to continue to reward the sci fi hacks that seem to keep finding work writing for tv.
While many people are willing to say “it was good for a sci fi tv show,” I think that does sci fi a disservice, almost like admitting defeat. What I think more people should be saying is that as a TV show, it sucked, and we deserve better.
I’ll give you that. For the same reasons, that is probably why BG is the first scifi I have watched in ages. Mine was more of a subconcious rather than active boycott of crappy sci-fi. I tried to watch Firefly and thought it blew (I know many liked it, but it did not click with me. Please do not crucify me).
With a kid, no TiVo, and limited time for TV and gaming, bad shows cannot be tolerated!!! The only new programming I have added to my viewing schedule is Poker on ESPN, the Travel Channel, and now Bravo. SOunds more boring than bowling, but oddly entertaining.
It probably does, but they made a point of explaining that the Galactica has no stores of ammo. It had just been decommissioned, after all.[/quote]
True, but it was able to outfit multiple squadrons of Vipers with ammo (the flyby squadron and the squadron launched to meet the Cylon attack), so that’s an inconsistency that doesn’t make much sense.
Other oddoties…
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What reason was there for that first cylon sexbot to board the diplomatic station just to get blown up? All she does is kiss the guy, then they whack the station.
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I’m kind of miffed by the logic at work here. If the deadly enemy you had fought to a bloody standstill 40 years ago was able to use networked systems against you, and then that deadly enemy becomes North Korea for 40 years after the truce and you have no idea what they’re working on, then I’d imagine you would have to be prepared for the worst case scenario. But no, these guys built networked systems upon networked systems, like they couldn’t imagine the cylons coming back.
I kept waiting for the first part to implode under the weight of its own non-sensical plot. Things just don’t make sense in this story. Huge holes in parts of the logic.
Woolen,
I’d imagine the thing with the first guy was a “systems test.”
As for the networks and systems, they likely had tons of security added to insure the Cylons couldn’t penetrate, jam, or disable them. That’s why the sexdroid chick had to seduce Baltar – so she could get into the system to find that information.
I just wonder why the Cylons want to exterminate humanity? That’s never indicated.
2 questions:
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What happened to the Pegasus.
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Did Rick Springfield get blown out of the sky?
Well, hell. When is Space going to show this in Toronto? :(