Radiation: Sci-fi high
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Nesbitt's stretch-and-squeeze performance was one of the most arresting things I've seen on TV for ages.
James Nesbitt also had a tendency to get type-cast as the adorably scruffy doofus he played in Cold Feet, and I've read that's exactly why he took this on. It is deliciously OTT, but not so far it tips over into laughable campiness.
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You guys are all well-informed and bastions of good taste. Has anyone else seen any of Charlie Jade, and does it get any less pretentious after the first couple of episodes?
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Perhaps if John Barrowman gets a pair of tights for the next series?
Speaking of, watch John Barrowman and (host) Simon Amstell Have a Gay-Off on UK TV pop-quite Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
ROTFLCOPTER etc.
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*quiz
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Oh, and while I'm here...
I'm hearing a lot of noise out of these parts to the effect that the new Battlestar Galactica is actually good|worth watching. This is disconcerting, and not a little alarming. I watched the first few eps of the season one and then gave up in disgust. In fact, I more than once used BSG as an example of *eek* Space Opera in an attempt to illustrate the differences between that, and tru-skool Sci-Fi.
So, uh.. was I wrong? Is it good?
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I would suggest that if you don't like it, Stephen, then.......you just don't like it. No shame in not liking what everybody else likes, is there? If that were the case, I would be hanging my head from dawn til dusk around here!
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So, uh.. was I wrong? Is it good?
Yeps, it gets betterer.
My Infinitely wise [and patient, and beautiful] other half near had to FORCE me to watch the mini series, which I found inoffensive but boring. She persevered and about three or four episodes in I began to warm to it. Baltars inner struggles and the tension caused by human like Cylons started adding up to quite a story.
season Two transcends season one completely, its like a maze opening up in front of you. and three against the real world backdrop of America versus the terrorists [however you frame it] is gripping.
plus the space battle scenes just get better and better.
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So, uh.. was I wrong? Is it good?
Hey, I think so -- but you know something, I actually think The Sopranos is ever so slightly over-rated, the bone people is unreadable, and Coldplay's entire career breeches international conventions against torture, so what do I know?
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Hey, I think so -- but you know something, I actually think The Sopranos is ever so slightly over-rated, the bone people is unreadable, and Coldplay's entire career breeches international conventions against torture, so what do I know?
Huh. I wouldn't disagree too hard w. ya on all three points, so... i may have to give it another crack.
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My Infinitely wise [and patient, and beautiful] other half near had to FORCE me to watch the mini series, which I found inoffensive but boring.
I must be a total wussy, but the near-total genocide of the human race is many things but "boring" not quite the term that would come to mind first. :)
Huh. I wouldn't disagree too hard w. ya on all three points, so... i may have to give it another crack.
Yeah, but snark aside I can understand why the new Battlestar Galactica (or 'GINO' - Galactica In Name Only) has attracted a passionate band of detractors, in large part fans of the original who were really aching for a continuation of the original. (Which, FWIW, I loved when I was six. At the age of thirty-one: Not so much.) Bryan Singer and his producing partner Tom DeSanto actually had a continuation ready to go with Fox, but for some reason it didn't happen.
But there's a really interesting 2005 NY Times profile of showrunner Ronald Moore here, that nails quite a lot and is worth reading.
In December 2001, David Eick, who was behind shows like ''American Gothic'' and ''Xena: Warrior Princess,'' got a call from David Kissinger, president of the media conglomerate Studios USA, which controlled the Universal library. Over the previous year or two, the idea of reviving ''Battlestar'' had been floating around Universal. Now, Kissinger said, there was some new interest at Studio USA's sister company, the Sci Fi Channel. Would Eick be interested? Eick had his misgivings about the idea. But he had some experience sending out secret, under-the-radar cultural messages through pulp entertainment (in Xena's case, a nascent lesbian chic). He saw an opportunity -- what he called ''a great potential for irony.'' As he told me, ''If you could do a show called 'Battlestar Galactica,' with that title, that would harken toward the kind of sincere, dimensional, textured, emotional drama of '2001' and 'Blade Runner' -- oh, my God. You could blow everyone's mind.''
Eick met Ron Moore a few years before, when Moore was consulting on ''Good vs. Evil'' for the Sci Fi Channel. But even though Eick didn't know ''Star Trek'' particularly well, he knew that ''Star Trek'' was exactly what he didn't want this new series to be. And he knew that ''Star Trek'' was not and would never be a subject that was close to Moore's heart. And so he called Moore and asked him if he was interested in bringing a second big spaceship show back to life. Moore knew the original ''Battlestar,'' and after talking to Eick, he watched Larson's original three-hour pilot again. It surprised him. Here was a deeply somber story about a civilization that had basically endured genocide, and for the first hour it was elegantly told and strangely affecting. ''They were trying,'' he told me. ''It took a hard left turn to insanity when they reached the casino planet, but they were really trying.''
Moore said he would do it, but he wanted to make some changes. After numerous meetings and a full script treatment, he wrote a two-page memo that laid out the basic tenets of what the new ''Battlestar Galactica'' would eventually become. ''We take as a given the idea that the traditional space opera, with its stock characters, techno-double-talk, bumpy-headed aliens, thespian histrionics and empty heroics has run its course, and a new approach is required,'' it began. ''Call it 'naturalistic science fiction.''' There would be no time travel or parallel universes or cute robot dogs. There would not be ''photon torpedoes'' but instead nuclear missiles, because nukes are real and thus are frightening.
''To this day,'' Eick says, ''I don't think either of us could have anticipated how valuable the memo would be.'' It would repair everything that had been worn down to convention in a genre Moore had once loved. But ''Battlestar'' would be more than just an opportunity to do ''Voyager'' correctly.
''When I watched the original pilot,'' Moore says, ''I knew that if you did 'Battlestar Galactica' again, the audience is going to feel a resonance with what happened on 9/11. That's going to touch a chord whether we want it to or not. And it felt like there was an obligation to that. To tell it truthfully as best we can through this prism.'' In the miniseries Moore wrote to introduce the new ''Battlestar,'' the echoes of the war on terror were unapologetic and frequently harrowing: what happens when an advanced, comfortable, secular democracy endures a devastating attack by an old enemy that it literally created (which enemy, in Moore's version, also happens to be religious fanaticism)?
For a genre often derided as escapist, science fiction has a long tradition of social commentary, no small part of which comes from ''Star Trek'' itself, which embraced race and gender equality on the bridge of the Enterprise at a time when it was still largely being rejected in real-life America. But Moore wanted a show that would move between the idealistic fantasies of ''Trek'' and the hard moral pragmatism of the military -- that would embrace both the binnacle and the bat'leth, if you will. He listed for me some of the thornier questions the show evokes: ''What does it mean to be free in a society under attack? What are the limits of that freedom? Who's right? Who's wrong? Are you rooting for the wrong side?''
And I know that's not going to be everyone's taste, and the resistance runs a little deeper than the fucking nutso 'Starbuck's a man, MooreRon' crowd who, in my opinion, live down to every stereotype of sad geeks who should move the hell out of their parent's basement, and actually learn to interact with real live women. Sometimes, they go past that and just turn into very, very scary people with pronounced misogynsitc tendencies.
But you know something, a show that kicks off with attempted (and very nearly successful) genocide s going to be a little short on laughs. If you're going to go for a more 'naturalistic' tone then, yes, people are going to fuck and fuck up; do appalling things with the very best of good intentions and vice versa; there's not always going to be a tidy message before the reset button gets pushed. And yes -- not everything is going to be solved with a laser gun and a glib one-liner just before the credits. And it really says little flattering about mainstream American television that, in my opinion, some of the most subtle and sophisticated (as well as hotly debated) explorations of politics, ethics and the uses and abuses of faith is... a show many people would dismiss out of hand as a cheesy soap opera in space.
If that's 'space opera' melodrama for some tastes, fair enough. This is life, not a university course where you're going to get marked down for failing to complete the required reading. the pleasure principle does matter; but I think BSG is worth taking the time over.
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I watched the pilot last night. I liked it a lot. Embarking on season 1 this evening.
Watched half the terminator series this week, Kubrick's Barry Lyndon & have Cool Hand Luke lined up too. You can tell a guy whose wife & family have gone visiting relatives for a few days :)
Huge New York steak for dinner too.
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Thanks for posting that article, Craig. It is an interesting read.
The anti-romantic grittiness of BSG and the way it references post Sept 11 2001 US politics in a complex way. In season 1 it seem to be taking a Bushite line with an anti-democratic militaristic authoritarian command, against the evil cylons. But in season 2 it seemed to shift to resisting some of that, by accentuating some of the human qualities in cylons, equating prejudice against them with Islamophobia, and promoting democracy within a society under threat of extinction.
And this weeks C4 ep we were sympathetically shown a human suicide bomber as a justifiably desperate measure to resist violent imperialistic oppression. Also Adama seems to have over-come his dislike of cylons so that he's treating a cylon as a confident. meanwhile many human collaborators have sided with the nastier cylons.
I suspect it's the sort of show that raises political discussions, while it could be interpreted as supporting a left or right wing philosophy (much like the production and mixed reception of the lesbian subtext in Xena).
I find the mix of music and graphics (especially in the signature sequence near the beginning of each ep), achingly beautiful - a kind of nostalgic yearning.
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I suspect it's the sort of show that raises political discussions, while it could be interpreted as supporting a left or right wing philosophy (much like the production and mixed reception of the lesbian subtext in Xena).
Yup, and the serious moral twilight is only going to get darker as we go on.
In season 1 it seem to be taking a Bushite line with an anti-democratic militaristic authoritarian command, against the evil cylons.
I'd kind of disagree with you on that. Ron Moore said from the beginning that he wanted to make the relationship between Bill Adama and Laura Roslin a little more complex than the stereotypical "kill 'em all, and let the Gods sort 'em out" military martinet vs. the wet, liberal schoolteacher/politician who can't fart without running a focus group first. I want to avoid spoilers, but there's an arc later this season where the Colonials have the means to end the Cylon threat for once and for all -- and that argument doesn't break how you'd expect.
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I find the mix of music and graphics (especially in the signature sequence near the beginning of each ep), achingly beautiful - a kind of nostalgic yearning.
I liked the Terminator series - it's smartly written & acted & seamlessly fits in (ignoring T3) with the Terminator canon. But it must be a lowish budget, because the CGI is sometimes obvious, and some of the action scenes (especially what should have been a climactic shootout in the final episode of series 1) disappointing to say the least.
I'm part way through season 1 of BSG now, and I find it is not just smartly written & acted, but the cinematography & editing are arresting. And I love the music - I nearly turned down the base on our inferior sound system, then turned it up a bit louder :)
I'm hooked.
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poo - bass
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And I love the music - I nearly turned down the base on our inferior sound system, then turned it up a bit louder :)
Bear McCreary (who does the music for both shows) has a website and blog. The blog entries are, inevitably, spoiler-ish (but clearly marked) but really interesting not only if you're a musician, but quite insightful about the nuts and bolts about scoring for television. Given the time, financial and practical constraints involved, McCreary's work is quite remarkable.
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Luckily, I'm one of those people who doesn't mind spoilers.
cheers
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But it must be a lowish budget, because the CGI is sometimes obvious, and some of the action scenes (especially what should have been a climactic shootout in the final episode of series 1) disappointing to say the least.
Sure, but that's always going to be the trade-off with television. For T2 James Cameron could buy a building and blow it up - 'cause he's James Cameron and he just rolls like that. :) There a shot in 'Downloaded' (a season two ep. that's one of my favourites) that contains a shot of a pair of centurions planting a tree. Literally a couple of seconds, but in his accessible here (but not on the R4 DVD for some reason), he says it was cut and put back in repeatedly. Simply because anything involving the centurions (which are completely CGI) is expensive and time-consuming both to shoot and in post. By that stage, the FX budget was even tighter than usual and the usual "yes, this is cool but is it really essential from a story-telling POV because if we do this we can't do that" argument got quite pointed.
I'm actually glad Moore dug his heels in, because it's one of those creepy-cool grace notes BSG excels at. But the argument often goes the other way, and understandably so.
Still, as you say this is a show where the production values are astounding -- and I'd not quality that with "for television" either. It's pretty obvious there are a lot of very talented people making sure that every penny is on the screen and not wasted on ego-wanking the talent or stocking the craft services table with drugs. :)
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