After viewing this first three hours of BSG I must report... I still hate it. In fact, I think I might even hate it more now after watching the old ones and developing an affinity for them. I don't know if my feelings will change. Maybe I'll be able to put a lot of this out of my mind and accept the show for what it is. But at present I dislike the kind of show that it is. Now let's break it down.
I was all set to look at this objectively, but then the first thing on screen was the caption "Cylons were created by man," and I flinched. No they weren't. Once you change that, you change the entire dynamic of the conflict. Now we're back to that "artificial intelligence will rise and kill its makers" thing that we've seen a million times. While that was an element of the story that we got in "Saga of a Star World", where the Cylon robots overthrew their reptilian makers, it was never the point of the conflict with humanity. And that story point as it is was a concession after the cyborg element was dropped. I'd have much rather they did the show proper with a cyborg enemy, though maybe Ron didn't want to rehash the Borg. Anyway, humans and Cylons were meant to be separate warring races; making humans their creators is aggravating, and leads to the themes of the movie that I patently disagree with. More on those later.
Several elements of the original series are paid homage to. The Battlestar has a similar design, the Vipers are similar, if a little less Star Wars. The original Cylon Centurion design is present, apparently that's what they looked like during the war. There's an old suit on display in the Galactica museum. I like that the new Centurions are of similar design, with the blinking red eye and the mouth vent, though developed differently. I do think they are a little too top-heavy though, making them somewhat impractical.
I mentioned in my Galactica 1980 posts that I like the idea of human-looking Cylons. To me, it makes perfect sense tactically. It also allows them to be a little closer to the idea of cyborg Cylons. If the robots look human, do you still feel great watching them blow to smithereens? The credit should go to Larson though, who used the idea first. I think the premise was milked a little too much here as well to riff on Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Thing. But then, in science fiction, there is nothing new under the sun.
In this version of the story, the humans and Cylons have been at peace... at least that's what Moore says on the commentary. He's wrong. I know he wrote the thing, but he's wrong. There was no peace; there was a sort of stale-mate. There was no diplomacy between humans and Cylons for forty years; when they finally show up, they start killing. That doesn't strike me as a peace accord. It strikes me as a ploy to buy more time and catch the enemy with their pants down. It's like the Korean War; there was no resolution, and no peace. It ended in a cease-fire. But that didn't stop the belligerent North Koreans from building their war machine.
There are other places where I completely disagree with Moore's commentary. I used to like him, but now he's coming off worse and worse to me. He takes a number of unfounded digs at Star Trek, biting the hand that fed him. And it proves that he's a writer who tries to make everything the exact opposite of convention. The result? A mess.
Anyway, so with the humans at "peace", the Galactica is the last Battlestar of its kind. It is being decommissioned. It is now a museum. For me, there is something very absent about this scenario. I much preferred that the Galactica was the last survivor of a surprise attack to this story. There was a suddenness and urgency about the original Galactica's approach that I respond to. So much of that is lacking here. I know I took shots at the original's attacks and such, and I stand by those, but the ideas differ from execution and this story is kind of dulled to me. Plus, for all Moore's whining about Star Trek, doesn't this feel like the same "haul the old ship out of moth balls to save the day" story that most of the Trek films followed?
I HATE Starbuck. HATE her. I hated the idea of her, and I hate the execution. Firstly, there is no reason to make her female. I'm not averse to female pilots as it is, but the original had that! Why is there no Athena in this version? Watching the original, I realized I would be open to a female Boomer. And we have one, and for me it works (though she turns out to be a Cylon, so frack that). But I don't like BOTH Starbuck and Boomer as women. I also don't think the elements of Starbuck's character work when transported into this woman. On a side note, everyone's old-school names are used as "call sign" nicknames here. While it does temper some of the silliness (thank God there's no Greenbean), it lessens something for me. And that name is put on the Viper, so does each pilot have his own ship? Getting back to the point, Starbuck's name is Kara Thrace. That just doesn't roll off the tongue, does it? And I wonder if they chose Kara as a nod to the original Supergirl. All the other characters I can see and appreciate as characters. I may not like how they've been changed (Col. Tigh really bothers me), but I feel a sense that these people are real. I get none of that from Starbuck. She always seems like a poser to me, like this is some odd act and it grows stale for me quickly. The best analogy would be Sofia Coppola in Godfather III; there's actually nothing too bad about her performance in itself, but it doesn't gel with the rest of the piece. She sticks out like a sore thumb because she's on a different level. That's how I feel about Kara. She brings the whole thing down. Oh, and her seeming crush on Apollo is unnecessary. Save it for your slash fiction. The only woman nicknamed Starbuck that I like is Dana Scully.
It's getting late, and I have to go to work soon, so I'll have to continue this in another post. There is MUCH more to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment