Friday, January 28, 2005
Act of Contrition
I was digging around for a reasonable episode guide for the new Battlestar, and I found a reasonable one here. It possibly contains US spoilers -- basically, the page has what you would expect for TV Guide descriptions for all of the season.
Sadly, one of the things about the origins of this series is that you've got the segment of original Galactica fans that are anti-fans of the new series. One of the challenging things with any revival (or long running series generally) is that the series may take a different track than what originally drew you to the series; if you're a Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict fan, the new Galactica isn't the same sort of thing. You've got that as well when you're dealing with Star Trek -- tonight's episode of Enterprise harkened back to the original series Journey to Babel, but it's absent Kirk and Spock. Doctor Who sees it from the people that rejected the more adult content of The New Adventures; and we may see some people that have difficulty with the new series of that as well.
One of the interesting elements for me about franchise genre fiction is when, over time, you try to break down and identify what is really the most important pieces of a concept. You get the same sort of thing with music groups -- some bands are no longer the same band once you remove one member, and others can have almost the entire lineup change.
It's interesting to watch both Enterprise and Galactica on the same night. Because Enterprise is telling a prequel story in the same universe as the original series, you have all sorts of elements that start to struggle with the 1960s design. And it's not always entirely successful -- the future isn't what it used to be, after all.
Where Galactica has less of a relationship with its 1970s counterpart, while apparently the Cylons in the new series used to look like the ones of old, we're having Vipers move in the zero gravity environment of a computer simulation instead of the models of the 1970s, with battles that acknowledge inertia and the forces of gravity, enhanced graphics of the way we saw ships travel in Babylon 5.
In it's own way, this new Galactica then, isn't just a reimagining of Galactica, but follows along in almost all of the non-Trek space adventure series; as you can see the influence of Firefly in some of the space sequences as well, and the more "realistic" approach to space is very reminiscent of Space: Above and Beyond.
Television Without Pity has some recaps of the new Galactica as well. It's a site that I never quite check out as much as I should...
Sadly, one of the things about the origins of this series is that you've got the segment of original Galactica fans that are anti-fans of the new series. One of the challenging things with any revival (or long running series generally) is that the series may take a different track than what originally drew you to the series; if you're a Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict fan, the new Galactica isn't the same sort of thing. You've got that as well when you're dealing with Star Trek -- tonight's episode of Enterprise harkened back to the original series Journey to Babel, but it's absent Kirk and Spock. Doctor Who sees it from the people that rejected the more adult content of The New Adventures; and we may see some people that have difficulty with the new series of that as well.
One of the interesting elements for me about franchise genre fiction is when, over time, you try to break down and identify what is really the most important pieces of a concept. You get the same sort of thing with music groups -- some bands are no longer the same band once you remove one member, and others can have almost the entire lineup change.
It's interesting to watch both Enterprise and Galactica on the same night. Because Enterprise is telling a prequel story in the same universe as the original series, you have all sorts of elements that start to struggle with the 1960s design. And it's not always entirely successful -- the future isn't what it used to be, after all.
Where Galactica has less of a relationship with its 1970s counterpart, while apparently the Cylons in the new series used to look like the ones of old, we're having Vipers move in the zero gravity environment of a computer simulation instead of the models of the 1970s, with battles that acknowledge inertia and the forces of gravity, enhanced graphics of the way we saw ships travel in Babylon 5.
In it's own way, this new Galactica then, isn't just a reimagining of Galactica, but follows along in almost all of the non-Trek space adventure series; as you can see the influence of Firefly in some of the space sequences as well, and the more "realistic" approach to space is very reminiscent of Space: Above and Beyond.
Television Without Pity has some recaps of the new Galactica as well. It's a site that I never quite check out as much as I should...
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