Battlecloud Galactica
LlamaButchers hates the new Battlestar Galactica series. I posted this comment:

Sorry, I've got to agree with Bill. The new miniseries was different in tone than the old series, and to some extent it works. The viper pilots being idiots [or at least overconfident] led to their complete destruction, which seems different than overconfident political leaders being destroyed in the original. Balthazar seems more possible, more human, and in spite of what #6 says seems to care about people at least sometimes. Ok, so they don't have a cute robot dog. I'm still going to watch the series.

I have to wonder if the times are more serious, leading to a more serious show. A little girl gets blown to bits [all we see is a white screen indicating a nuke]. There's a strong military leader vs political leader tension which was present in the first but was quickly won by the military. There's a "dangers of technology" theme which could have been helped by showing ordinary people benefiting from high tech. The crowd of civilians around the vipers in the first show immediately after the bombing which ended in a hopeful everyone crowding into every ship they could find was changed to a violent confrontation ending in a lottery in which the few winners got to live and the losers presumably died. The President and the XO both had to make choices involving the sacrifice of some to avoid risking the many. And the President chose correctly - if she had waited longer everyone would have died. I like the more serious mood. The first show always bugged me, when they found humans on other planets why didn't they immediately evacuate them? On the other hand SciFi was showing some reruns this afternoon. What the heck was Galactica 1980 and how were vipers involved in WW2? Update: oops, the name is Baltar.
- posted by owlish @ 1/13/2005 08:40:00 PM