vilakins | A query, but mostly BSG

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A query, but mostly BSG

After a long draught, I'm inundated with good TV. I have several new programs to watch each week, including a miniseries I've never heard of which we recorded. It's called '44 Hundred' I think, and it's about alien abductees being returned to Earth. Does anyone know anything about it? Is it worth watching?

I'm enjoying the new series, the latest of which is Battlestar Galactica (House starts this week). So far I've seen the miniseries and the first ep of BSG. I'm very impressed and I like most of the characters a lot, but I have some reservations about the basic idea.

Thoughts on BSG

I never saw the original series so I have no idea what the male Starbuck was like. However the new one totally rocks. I really think she's my favourite character followed by Boomer. And is that round-faced tech girl really called Cally? The twists at the end of the miniseries were stunners too. I had assumed that the ghastly Gaius had simply fingered the suspected Cylon with a fake test to take the heat off himself, but he really was.

And so is Boomer. Ouch!

Not that she knows. So far she's a warm-hearted person whose sympathies and loyalties are strongly with humans and her friends. I'll be interested to see how she reacts. Will she be able to overcome any programming that cuts in when she 'awakens'?

So far so excellent. Now for the bad.

I knew the basic premise of the original series and I kept hoping right up to the end of the miniseries that as they changed so many other things, they might have set it in the future rather than the past. Because it just doesn't make sense! If these people were our descendents, it would be reasonable that they dress, act, and look exactly like us--hey, it could be retro fashion, or a very static society--but it's absolutely ridiculous if they're our ancestors. I mean look, they have clocks exactly like ours (Really, Caprica has exactly the same rotation and year?), speak English--and write it in Roman letters, what's more--and eat chicken and noodles. They even have contemporary names, and English ones at that--William, Lee, Sharon, Paul, and Laura. How logical is that?

Are we supposed to believe that Adama becomes Adam, the Greeks remember his son as Apollo, and that the country Thrace is named after Starbuck (and that's the English name for it at that)? If so, then all disbelief aside, it will not end well. They won't find their colony and when they do get to Earth, their culture and technology will degenerate and disappear.

Such a pity it's not a future history with them searching for their ancient homeworld or just safety on a new one; it would work so much better. As it is, my suspension of disbelief is constantly assailed by blows much greater than those silly 555 phone numbers which so annoy me. Greg tells me the original Adama wore a toga and the others wore futuristic clothes. An effort to make these people more exotic would have been nice. Or even better, they could've just set the whole thing in the future.

I love it despite all that, but all these things are a constant blight on my complete enjoyment and belief in the universe.

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I was actually just saying to Astro, that I wonder if the portrayal isn't the equivalent of aliens (or Russians) speaking English among themselves; that it's not literal, but they're trying to encode it as being as mundane and work-a-day as possible, and to make it minimally exotic, because they want the focus to be on realistic people in realistic situations without the audience being overly distracted by the aesthetics. In fact, trying to avoid being exotic was the exact terminology I used. :) If they made the culture more exotic, they'd instead have fans obsessing over all these little details like clothing and food and nomenclature, and they'd end up with their gritty SF show falling into Trek-style adoration of the futuristic lifestyle and romaticization of the exotic, or with, god forbid, BSG cookbooks of "intergalactic" food, instead of an audience getting the message that it's not glamorous, it's not special shiny technology to these people, but their boring, hard everyday lives.

As an example, the original had a robot dog, called a daggit. In one scene, there was a ship full of people starving to death, in which was a little kid and his giant pet daggit. What do you think sank in with the audience, the horror and deprivation, or the giant plush robot dog? It was the damn daggit. The bleak conditions were totally, and repeatedly, overshadowed by a kid and his furby. The exotic really gets in the way of some stories, because you'll always have a sizeable part of the audience going "whoa, that's cool, I wish I had that!" instead of recognizing that it's a terrible situation. They're refugees in a doomed war, that's a pretty rough situation. I think making it less familiar and more exotic would undermine the story they're telling.

(The original Adama wore a purple cape, not a toga, IIRC, but the high-class prostitute (for one episode, before she turned into something more acceptable) wore a toga. Capes were big in '70s BSG. And the 555 numbers may seem silly, but they do prevent the harassment of whoever has the number, which is the purpose...) :)

I don't see that exotic or at least different from our culture precludes gritty and realistic. Why should it? Star Wars may not be the best example, but they did pretty well with their beaten-up used-looking spaceships. You could have people in jumpsuits or overalls or even Greek-style kilts and still have them look sweaty, grubby, and exhausted. Yes, they speak English so we can understand them, but they have it written all over the place too. Even Andromeda, which jumped several sharks, used a alien script when they had to show writing or tactical displays. I like the look and style of BSG--for a near-future show, not one set millennia in the past. And if you're assuming everything has been translated to our culture, then it's hardly 'realistic'.

As for the 555 numbers, yes, I know why they're used, but why use them at all unless the actual number is integral to the plot (e.g. part of a code)? People can hand their numbers to others on bits of paper. They don't have to say or show them. As soon as they do, it's like saying, 'Hey, have a virtual bucket of cold water, people. This is all make-believe." Half the fun is pretending to believe in the universe for 20-40 minutes.

It's just a preference; you like the literalism of alien writing, others may like the mundanity of being able to look at the inscriptions as standard military labels rather than cool exotic writing. Star Wars, I think personally, isn't the best example, because no matter how sweaty or beaten up they are, it's so cool you want to aspire to it. The exotic lends a chic to it. You're looking for literal realism, I'm talking about allegorical realism. That's just down to preference, I suppose.

I think they don't pass around numbers on bits of unseen paper because that's really stilted. In real life, people say their numbers to people or repeat them as they're writing, or ask the operator for information on the number and can't write it down. I suppose that's another literalism versus allegory thing; the convention is just that, a non-literal convention to enable more realism in character behavior, rather than allowing for strict, number-perfect detail accuracy.

Yeah, but every time it happens, it throws me right out of the story. Maybe Amaericans are more used to it.

Where did you get the idea that this is supposed to be set in the past? I can't remember anything like that being said in the series. As far as I saw, they seem to have some significant similarities to our world (notably the worship of the Greek pantheon), and a whole lot of similarities that are there because the makers had limited time and budget, and they chose to spend it on decent scripts instead of exotic clothes.

You can see it as a psychological feint, if you wish. It's much easier to see somebody as an average person like yourself if they're dressed pretty much as you are than if they're dressed in silver spandex. And if you believe that they're people like you, their fate becomes much more engaging. Speaking for myself, I think this series would've been much less interesting if they'd spent the effort to make up clothes, uniforms, furniture, tech, control structures and everything else that now is pretty much like ours.

I always thought all the BSGs were set in the future, myself, but then, I haven't seen the new pilot, just some of the old show and a few later episodes of the new one.

I've never seen the old one, and the more I hear about it the less I want to. I really liked the new one, though. It's hard not to like a series that has a scene that's even more fucked up than anything in Blake's 7.

The old one's campy. And the old Starbuck is awful; he's the standard greasy used car salesman that Dirk Benedict always plays. I'd like to say it had some good points, but I think that's my love of Lorne Greene speaking.

The old Starbuck's actor is awful, a complete bastard. I'm glad I never saw his character.

He's really pretty messed up in the head. He was playing sort of a more romanticized and laddish version of Face from the A-Team. Really, he was playing himself, or, more accurately, as Paul Darrow was in S4, the Mary Sue he had of himself in his head. I swear his rant about the new Starbuck reads like a guy offended that his Mary Sue wasn't loved.

It's hard not to like a series that has a scene that's even more fucked up than anything in Blake's 7.

Oh? When is that? Have I seen it already?

It's in the first half of the season-ender, so probably not. It involves two people and a gun in a room...

Oh, wow, yes, loved it. Love the new BSG all-round, me.

Where did you get the idea that this is supposed to be set in the past?

From Adama's speech about searching for the lost 13th colony on Earth and from what I heard of the original series. If it is near-future, then their culture has paralleled ours right down to language and script, rather than being the basis of ours which was what I thought was the premise of the original. Maybe the name Adama was part of it.

Hmm. If the Earth colony was set up thousands of years ago, that makes it slightly more believable, but they shouldn't really be copies of us. OK, I'll go with is being future, but a lot of my arguments still apply.

Adama is lying in that speech. It's just propaganda to boost morale. He admits as much when he talks to the President right after it. So, yes, the BSG people have a myth about a place they call "Earth". How, or if, that myth corresponds to anything in the real world is (as of the end of the first season) yet to be revealed.

So, really, I think you're blaming this series for a lot of crap the old one seems to have done.

I never saw the old one, and maybe what I heard was wrong (about them being the future first people on Earth).

Yes, I know Adama was lying, but he used an existing myth. I like that he lied, actually.

Yeah, somehow lying leaders make it all seem sort of familiar and homey, don't they? Ah, B7 fans... :)

And there's even a Cally! Gaius is no Avon though and I'd rather have Harvey than Number ~~Sex~~ Six. They should space the sod.

Given the last ep I've seen, Gaius is more sort of psycho Bashir, the Cally isn't worthy of the name, and the trailer says Six does something interesting in the next ep (which I missed). :)

Well, on the original, when they finally get to Earth, the year is 1980 (which I'm pretty sure what the year the TV movie or whatever it was was made). So, in the original, at least, they're neither our anscestors nor our descendents, they're our contemporaries, who split off from us a long time ago.

I think I've got that now. :-) I now realise I got the idea of it being the past from the Greek gods' names the original characters used, perhaps confused in with that ST:TOS ep with the gods.

However most of my points still stand. How would a culture branching off millennia ago develop the same English names, clothes, script, and time system as us?

Hee. The Lords of Kobol crack me up each time; they should be Six's god.

In that case, no, it's set in the future - their culture wasn't intended to be the basis of ours, but the parallel of ours, from a common root.

(It stems a bit from all those widespread wacky '70s ideas about aliens bringing life to the planet and leaving their cultural ideas around to get woven into our myths. It's a bit more pronounced in the original, where all their pilots' flightsuit helmets look like King Tut-style headresses and things, just a new-age hodge-podge of bits of myth, presumably from their having incorporated it all a bit differently.)

I think Adama was named that in the original because he was a much more pronounced father figure, and the only significant leader in the whole series, so he became sort of a father figure to the entire surviving human race on the fleet. (Heck, he was played by an actor who was famous entirely for playing another big father figure.) They named his kids (literally, not nicknames) Apollo and Athena, not very subtle "we're the big cheese's kids" names, so he was absolutely defined by being a father figure. They've changed Adama's role a lot for the new one, and given a lot more depth to the situation, from what I can tell.

I like Adama and Roslin a lot, and the more I hear about it, the more pleased I am that I never saw the original. I gather there wasn't a Roslin in it?

I really liked that the BSG itself was meant to be deliberately low-tech so the Cylons couldn't hack into it. Nice touch, that, and a good way to bring it to our level.

No, there was no Roslin. There was a President, but he was fairly emasculated, power-wise, from what I could tell. The whole Senate and President thing seemed to be sort of a political sop; they came across as whiny, uninformed, selfish, and generally wrong.

That's cool about the BSG; I hadn't heard that.

Yeah, that was a really clever bit of exposition. Some factions however believed that the Cylon war was over (they hadn't been heard from for decades) and were developing networked computers (Gaius being a prime mover). Adama refused to have networks in the BSG which was about to be decommissioned and turned into a museum when the Cylons attacked via Gaius's networks which his girlfriend had hacked into. I thought that was a really excellent touch.

That is very cool, and resonates a lot with modern technology development, actually.

Okay, I double-checked what I remembered of the old BSG. Earth is neither the homeworld nor the product of Galactica's colonization. The twelve colonies named for Zodiac signs and Earth are all colonies of one original destroyed homeworld. The thirteen colonies revert (intentionally or not, I'm not sure) to an agricultural state and build themselves back up technologically. The twelve colonies are destroyed, and the survivors look for the mythical missing thirteenth colony, Earth. No statement on whether it's past or future, but it's presumed to be future, with parallel development based on a common cultural ancestry on the destroyed homeworld.

Can't say how that corresponds to the new one; I heard there were a couple of minor changes.

it's presumed to be future, with parallel development based on a common cultural ancestry on the destroyed homeworld.

It's a stretch but I suppose it's better than those ST:TOS eps where they discovered worlds with Roman Empires and alternate communist Americas [stab]. Odd so many of the BSG characters have English names though.

All right, I'll stop picking nits. I'll go away now.

Could be worse. The originals were actually named Apollo, Athena, Casseopeia, Starbuck... subtlety it wasn't. :)

Ah-hah! See, I probably got the idea that they were going to become our legends from that. I do vaguely remember those names from people's talk.

Yeah, having them as call signs is heaps better. Karl Whatsisname has Helo. What's that--the sun (Helios)?

Yeah, the call signs thing works, and I can see why they decided to give people not only two names, but a normal first name. They had a lot of baggage to escape of glitzy, showy, new-agey mythology references.

I haven't seen much of Helo, so I don't know a lot of his story. It could be.

We watched The 4400 and really enjoyed it. I would have liked a bit more 'character stuff', but maybe they'll get to that in the full-length series, which we're getting later in the year. It was reminiscent of The X-Files, and featured the same creative talent as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which I count as positive things :)

I'm looking forward to House, too. Also CSI: New York which starts this week, I think.

I'm not into cop shows--or hospital ones for that matter, but House looks entertainingly snarky.

I didn't realise 4400 was a series. The X-Files, huh? I never watched that; too depressing for me. But hey, I'll watch the mini and see. Thanks for that.

Yeah, it was the snark that attracted us :) We like the other CSIs (Original Flavour more than Miami) and Gary Sinise is a draw.

I suspect 4400 was made as a miniseries to run it as a sort of pilot. There was an announcement over the closing credits of the last episode that more eps are being made. Perhaps they're trying to avoid premature cancellation by only asking the networks to commit to a little bit at first.

Let me know what you think when you've seen it - I'm always nervous recommending things to people, in case they hate it, but I seem to be on a roll at the moment :)

I have just discovered that Greg failed to record the second ep of 4400 so he deleted the frist one. :-( Eh. Maybe they'll show the miniseries again before the series proper; they did with BSG which we missed the first time around.

Bummer :( Was that anything to do with it clashing with Lost one of those nights?

Anyway, we still have the off-air video copy of 4400 that we made. The picture quality is pretty crap (dirty heads), but I can pop it in the post to you if you like.

That's very kind, but that's OK. We've got far too much to watch already. They'll probably show it again before the series; they reran the BSG miniseries. And he just forgot to record it.

Okeydoke!

4400 was a fantastic programme that I couldn't wait for the next episode each time.
I couldn't bring myself to watch the new BSG. I adored the original, _especially_ the old Starbuck. I just couldn't see the point in remaking a programme but changing it so radically. Why not just write something totally new?

I dunno. I love the new Starbuck, and the old one was played by such an arsehole I'm glad I never saw him.

Sadly I've just discovered that Greg deleted the recordings we had of 4400. Maybe they'll show the miniseries again before the series proper; they did with BSG.

I kind of wondered that, too, although it couldn't honestly be said I enjoyed the old BSG. (In fact, I have a hard time watching this one, because I can't take that one seriously. This is partly the fault of a good part of my exposure being the Frank Sinatra guest ep.) But I suspect one of the reasons was that they thought it was, fundamentally, a good story, and one that'd resonate these days, but thought the original was really bound up in the Mormon subtext.

Um, I think you mean Fred Astaire. :D

D'oh! So I do. Damn, that just makes it worse. :)

There was Mormon subtext???

Oh yeah! It was very nearly "Mormons in Space", apparently.

[shudder] Why, was it really sexist and full of polygamy and magic underwear?

Well, everything in the '70s was sexist, pretty much, but it wasn't excessively so. No, it rapidly became based on some very Mormon "quest for the missing tribe of Israel/westward trek for a homeland free of persecution" and "battle of good and evil" stuff. I think they just (I've heard) lifted loads of the Mormon cosmology and translated it into space. You know, apparently the devil and his agents show up midway through the series, or something.

Spare me!

Please, please, don't do that to us, new BSG people.

Besides, everyone knows the 13th tribe of Israel is the British ('Brit Ish' being Hebrew for 'Covenant Man'). ;-P

I'm sure they won't. They've already made some changes to the whole Cylon threat that really change the tone and moral of the show, it sounds like.

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A query, but mostly BSG

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4400

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