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BattleStar Galatica Review...
Saw the new BSG last night and the overall quality of the series continues to amaze me. It is better than anything I've seen on Television mainstream, genre or otherwise. If a show is the sum of all it's parts, that is BSG. There are littel to no flaws here - the lighting, the make-up, the acting, the direction, the writing, the plot - all seem almost seamless to me. Yes, it is grim, but the topic at the moment is, there are other episodes that are far less grim.
It's odd to watch the new BSG and remember the old one - feels a bit like looking at two versions of myself, since I was at one time a diehard fan of both. I was 12/13 the first round. And the first BSG was a child's show, safe, warm, nuturing. Which reminds me of comment Wales made tonight about people being upset about losing a story thread they've committed to or a tv show.
"Life is tough, we need our pacifiers, we want something comforting, nurturing." Yes, I thought, but the world is cruel, you have no control over someone taking your pacifier from you - unless of course you create your own.
Then, well, they can't take it away from you, can they? Hence the reason I started telling myself stories long ago, whether or not I choose to share them...well. But that's a tangent - going back to the topic, the first BSG was innocent. The stories easy. Good overcame evil. Adama was a kind grandfatherly type played by Lorne Green, Apollo, a dutiful son who never strayed or rarely, Col. Tighe the loyal second in command backing Adama, no argument, and Starbuck a cute guy with a snarky comeback, smoking cigars and easy on the eyes. The new BSG is adulthood - gritty, tough, gray, the bad guys not clearly defined. The heros less so. Watching the new one, feels almost like leaving high school and entering college, or leaving college and entering the working life. There are no clear answers or easily wrapped stories. Each episode doesn't end with nice pat on the back. The episodes also are grim, the clothes dirty, the people bleed, and die - they don't rise again.
It's heart-breakingly real.
When watching BSG, I am reminded of how Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere redefined the cop and medical shows. We were no longer in safe territory here.
The stories were ensembles and the characters not necessarily nice or comforting. St. Elsewhere had a main character who had raped someone. Hill Street had dirty cops. Complex though. Multi-faceted. BSG is somewhat the same and appears to be doing to Sci-Fi what those shows did for their genres.
It's ground-breaking tv.
The light scheme and set design reminds me of something out of a Ridely Scott film - such as Alien or Blade Runner. It feels like a film. Each texture exact to the scene. And we have multiple points of view with a different scene or lightening texture to display each.
Last night's episode felt at times like I was watching a thriller spliced with a mythological allegory sliced with a human drama piece about war. Yet, it was so well written you didn't notice the switches. Like watching a novel with muliple points of view, every single character explored in depth. None left out.
The characters themselves bleed from minor scrapes, they wear their wounds, don't instantly heal from them. They are dirty. We see them go to the bathroom, eat, piss, scream, curse, die, shudder, fight, and make love. They even sweat. And little things are focused on such as what music Starbuck listens to or what her apartment on Caprica, the planet they left behind might look like. Each small thing adding a layer to her character. A new dimension.
In one sequence, we follow Starbuck and Helio to her apartment on Caprica. Both are trapped there at the moment, since Sharon, a Cylon just took Starbuck (KAra Thrace's ship). Kara had come back to Caprica to find and bring back an ancient artifact. It's a fool's mission of hope for the President. Finding the artifact, Kara brings Helio to her apartment - she wants to make a pit stop to get something. As she rummages around the place, he hunts food. She stops finally and stares at an ancient CD player and flips it on, explaining that it can run due to batteries. She never had electricity in the place since couldn't pay the bills. There are stacks of amateur paintings - brightly colored, abstract - but not fantastic (unlike most shows which seem to think if a character draws or paints it has to look like a professional artist did it.) The music astonishes Helio and he comments it's not what he expected.
It's not. It's classical. Brahms or Bach. Soft, sad, lyrical. Her father's.
She finally finds what she's looking for and pulls it on, checking her scrapes as she does so, bruises and gashes on her arms and face. She looks beaten up as well she should after her fight with a human cylon to get the arrow. What she is pulling on is a bomber's jacket, leather, comforting. In the pocket, a stogie. She lights it and puffs and inhales, happily. Sprawled like a guy on the couch - she turns to Helio, who isn't smoking, and comments on how everyone else is fighting so hard to regain what they lost - while she fights because she has to, because she has nothing else, there's nothing better to do and how she misses none of this.
Then we have a scene with Col. Tighe, who has just had a rather heated run-in with his Commander's son - the son who does not agree with what his father has done or his father's views. Tigh mutters after the young man leaves, almost as an after thought, "thank the gods, I never had children."
And to cap it off? We have Six and Gaius, Six may or may not just be in Gaius head, we are never sure. They are standing in a grave-yard on the ancient paradise of Kobol. Gaius just had a nightmare about Adama killing their child which may or may not be in his head as well. Six was a cylon who died saving Gaius and now haunts him. There are many copies of Six wandering about. Gaius is the man who inadvertently gave the cylons via Six the means to destroy the human race. He asks Six, why would Adama kill their child and Six whispers look around you. He does and notes they are standing on skulls all from human sacrifice. "This can't be... this was a paradise where the gods and man lived in harmony." Was it, she askes. Humanity's baser instincts will always come out eventually. It's peace for a little while, but before long chaos, violence, bloodshed, savagery. As it was in the past, it will be again. All of this will happen again. And again.
I stare startled at the screen and think back on the London bombings, the bag checks on the subways, the wars going on in the world, and realize in a way this is true. I see her point. Humanity's baser instincts, our savagery, our love of violence will always come out and take the day. Or will it? The writer's leave the question open-ended. No neat answers here.
If you want to watch a character driven thriller with bite, that also has something on its mind and is bending the rules of sci-fi as it does it - pushing sci-fi into the zone of real, past fantastical - you'll love BSG.
It makes Star Trek with its pristine costumes, bug-eyed monsters, aliens, simplistic explanations, and hammy acting look like a kids show in comparison. BattleStar Galatica the new version is when Sci-Fi finally grew up.
It's odd to watch the new BSG and remember the old one - feels a bit like looking at two versions of myself, since I was at one time a diehard fan of both. I was 12/13 the first round. And the first BSG was a child's show, safe, warm, nuturing. Which reminds me of comment Wales made tonight about people being upset about losing a story thread they've committed to or a tv show.
"Life is tough, we need our pacifiers, we want something comforting, nurturing." Yes, I thought, but the world is cruel, you have no control over someone taking your pacifier from you - unless of course you create your own.
Then, well, they can't take it away from you, can they? Hence the reason I started telling myself stories long ago, whether or not I choose to share them...well. But that's a tangent - going back to the topic, the first BSG was innocent. The stories easy. Good overcame evil. Adama was a kind grandfatherly type played by Lorne Green, Apollo, a dutiful son who never strayed or rarely, Col. Tighe the loyal second in command backing Adama, no argument, and Starbuck a cute guy with a snarky comeback, smoking cigars and easy on the eyes. The new BSG is adulthood - gritty, tough, gray, the bad guys not clearly defined. The heros less so. Watching the new one, feels almost like leaving high school and entering college, or leaving college and entering the working life. There are no clear answers or easily wrapped stories. Each episode doesn't end with nice pat on the back. The episodes also are grim, the clothes dirty, the people bleed, and die - they don't rise again.
It's heart-breakingly real.
When watching BSG, I am reminded of how Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere redefined the cop and medical shows. We were no longer in safe territory here.
The stories were ensembles and the characters not necessarily nice or comforting. St. Elsewhere had a main character who had raped someone. Hill Street had dirty cops. Complex though. Multi-faceted. BSG is somewhat the same and appears to be doing to Sci-Fi what those shows did for their genres.
It's ground-breaking tv.
The light scheme and set design reminds me of something out of a Ridely Scott film - such as Alien or Blade Runner. It feels like a film. Each texture exact to the scene. And we have multiple points of view with a different scene or lightening texture to display each.
Last night's episode felt at times like I was watching a thriller spliced with a mythological allegory sliced with a human drama piece about war. Yet, it was so well written you didn't notice the switches. Like watching a novel with muliple points of view, every single character explored in depth. None left out.
The characters themselves bleed from minor scrapes, they wear their wounds, don't instantly heal from them. They are dirty. We see them go to the bathroom, eat, piss, scream, curse, die, shudder, fight, and make love. They even sweat. And little things are focused on such as what music Starbuck listens to or what her apartment on Caprica, the planet they left behind might look like. Each small thing adding a layer to her character. A new dimension.
In one sequence, we follow Starbuck and Helio to her apartment on Caprica. Both are trapped there at the moment, since Sharon, a Cylon just took Starbuck (KAra Thrace's ship). Kara had come back to Caprica to find and bring back an ancient artifact. It's a fool's mission of hope for the President. Finding the artifact, Kara brings Helio to her apartment - she wants to make a pit stop to get something. As she rummages around the place, he hunts food. She stops finally and stares at an ancient CD player and flips it on, explaining that it can run due to batteries. She never had electricity in the place since couldn't pay the bills. There are stacks of amateur paintings - brightly colored, abstract - but not fantastic (unlike most shows which seem to think if a character draws or paints it has to look like a professional artist did it.) The music astonishes Helio and he comments it's not what he expected.
It's not. It's classical. Brahms or Bach. Soft, sad, lyrical. Her father's.
She finally finds what she's looking for and pulls it on, checking her scrapes as she does so, bruises and gashes on her arms and face. She looks beaten up as well she should after her fight with a human cylon to get the arrow. What she is pulling on is a bomber's jacket, leather, comforting. In the pocket, a stogie. She lights it and puffs and inhales, happily. Sprawled like a guy on the couch - she turns to Helio, who isn't smoking, and comments on how everyone else is fighting so hard to regain what they lost - while she fights because she has to, because she has nothing else, there's nothing better to do and how she misses none of this.
Then we have a scene with Col. Tighe, who has just had a rather heated run-in with his Commander's son - the son who does not agree with what his father has done or his father's views. Tigh mutters after the young man leaves, almost as an after thought, "thank the gods, I never had children."
And to cap it off? We have Six and Gaius, Six may or may not just be in Gaius head, we are never sure. They are standing in a grave-yard on the ancient paradise of Kobol. Gaius just had a nightmare about Adama killing their child which may or may not be in his head as well. Six was a cylon who died saving Gaius and now haunts him. There are many copies of Six wandering about. Gaius is the man who inadvertently gave the cylons via Six the means to destroy the human race. He asks Six, why would Adama kill their child and Six whispers look around you. He does and notes they are standing on skulls all from human sacrifice. "This can't be... this was a paradise where the gods and man lived in harmony." Was it, she askes. Humanity's baser instincts will always come out eventually. It's peace for a little while, but before long chaos, violence, bloodshed, savagery. As it was in the past, it will be again. All of this will happen again. And again.
I stare startled at the screen and think back on the London bombings, the bag checks on the subways, the wars going on in the world, and realize in a way this is true. I see her point. Humanity's baser instincts, our savagery, our love of violence will always come out and take the day. Or will it? The writer's leave the question open-ended. No neat answers here.
If you want to watch a character driven thriller with bite, that also has something on its mind and is bending the rules of sci-fi as it does it - pushing sci-fi into the zone of real, past fantastical - you'll love BSG.
It makes Star Trek with its pristine costumes, bug-eyed monsters, aliens, simplistic explanations, and hammy acting look like a kids show in comparison. BattleStar Galatica the new version is when Sci-Fi finally grew up.
no subject
You are of course utterly ignoring the entirety of DS9 here, and even some of TNG, both the shows where Ron Moore, who is the headwriter and producer of the new BSG (which I adore) was one of the crucial writers and learned his trade. (He also brought three other former DS9 scribes to BSG - the first two episodes of season 2, for example, were written by two of them. End credits Ira Behr, the headwriter on DS9, as his role model.) As for "hammy acting" - well, William Shatner, sure. But there were excellent actors on all ST series, including the original one.
There are so many thematic connections between DS9 and BSG in particular that demand essays of their own. Dismissing the former as "simplistic" or "child's tv" just won't do.
no subject
Most of the stories on DS9 have been seen before. The villians kept irreedeemable, the good guys more or less heroes - oh you had a couple fluctuations here and there, and they played with making Dukat complex, but he's no Gaius.
DS9 was in my opinion unwatchable at times and so hokey, that I rolled my eyes. It also like all the Star Trek series reused themes from other ones, such as Q (who was fascinating in the first but not useful here), the mirror universe, the holo-deck games where we get to go back in time and relive certain periods in History. You don't see people go to the bathroom or really curse, when they bleed - it stops. Yes, they die, but it's so clean.
Now in the latter seasons, sure we got gritty with the whole war deal, but even then it felt unreal. And much like how many sci-fi
shows depict war including Babylon 5 and Star Wars as idealized.
The good guys here - the bad guys there. Oh sure you had a couple amazing episodes here and there, but I had to hunt for them.
And it ended much with the nifty pat on the back.
Perhaps not a kids show, but I'd say DS9 is 20 something. BSG takes the genre further by dismissing the need for alien makeup and gimmickry and making the enemy look exactly like us.
no subject
Ah, but what about Garak, who was the shades of grey character on DS9 par excellence? On the heroes side, we had Kira - and DS9 never implied that her type of freedom fighting was clean Robin Hood style freedom fighting; the word "terrorist" was used consistently, and by Kira herself, it was made clear in several episodes she killed Cardassian civilians as well as military. Sisko's fanatic streak expounded as the show continued; he poisoned a planet's atmosphere, he covered up murder. Odo killed a planet's population to keep Kira alive. The Federation itself was shown to have a secret service using the same methods as their enemies did, and their admirals (of the non-evil, non-crazy variety) approved of said dirty methods. Biological weapons were used on both sides.
Depictions of war squeaky clean? There was ...Nor the Battlefield for the Strong, in which Jake Sisko, finding himself in a gunfight for the first time, panics and runs away from the horror, instead of doing the hero thing; he even leaves a friend behind in order to save his own life. In The Siege of AR-1600 Nog loses his leg, which remains lost for the rest of the show. In both episodes, the bodycount is guesome, and shown as such. They are clear predecessors to the BSG depictions of war. Tyrol and his dying men, Tarn and Socinus? That we got on DS9, too, with O'Brien (of whom Tyrol is a clear descendant, characterisation-wise) being forced to see two of his mechanics die on him The Ship, in a painful, long-time-taking manner.
including Babylon 5 and Star Wars as idealized.
The good guys here - the bad guys there. Oh sure you had a couple amazing episodes here and there, but I had to hunt for them.
Ahem. Babylon 5 had Londo Mollari, who had the best, most fascinating fall and redemption arc of any tv character I've ever seen, and I'm including all Jossverse shows here. And Londo's arc was the heart of the show. (If you're interested, I wrote an entire essay on the subject here:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/idol_reflection/17374.html
If you mean the depiction of war on B5 as sanitized in the sense that we didn't get to see the gritty reality of it the way we do on BSG, then yes, that's true. But good guys versus bad guys? I don't think so.
no subject
Bablyon 5 did have Londo and G'Kar which were amazing characters and the best things on sci-fi, but they were surrounded by other characters that weren't quite as strong. And the show rarely focused on supporting players or players that were in minor roles.
Bablyon5 and Ds9 are examples of shows that had moments of brilliance, moments of complexity, but if a show is the sum of *all* its parts, they are B+
series. They pushed Sci-Fi further surely, but they are no BSG. Outside of a few episodes here and there?
My mouth rarely dropped in awe.
I'd agree Kira and Garak were interesting. But we also had less than interesting characters in there, some played a little woodenly in my opinion. It just wasn't as strong an ensemble, if it weren't for a few strong performances and characters - I probably wouldn't have stuck with it for three seasons and tried again in the last two intermittently.
What BSG has in my opinion that these shows don't is consistency. I've watched the series from 33 onwards and I don't see a misstep, I don't see a flaw, in performance, direction or story. Can't say the same about any other show or sci-fi show out there.
The show has yet to lose my interest, has yet to annoy or make me consider watching or doing something else and it's the only show I've seen that I can say that about.
no subject
I'm consistently amazed by how much further ahead of the curve cable TV is than the networks. I can't think of a single smart person's show on the Big Three anymore.