vilakins: (stun)
Nico ([personal profile] vilakins) wrote2005-02-28 06:13 pm
Entry tags:

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.

[identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com 2005-02-28 07:23 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com 2005-02-28 07:32 am (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] redstarrobot.livejournal.com 2005-02-28 07:35 am (UTC)(link)
That is very cool, and resonates a lot with modern technology development, actually.