A query, but mostly BSG

[vilakins]

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.

Comments

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

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.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

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.

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

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

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

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)?

[redstarrobot.livejournal.com]

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.