Shit, get BSG off the ceiling!
My all-TV-all-the-time lifestyle continues - certainly all the time I don't have anything better to do, that is. Since my House post I've watched nearly all of the new series of Battlestar Galactica, two-and-a-half seasons of it. This is not something I necessarily thought I would ever find myself doing, based as BSG is on that total acid-casualty of a series from 1978 of the same name, in which space pilots wear suede jackets (in space), the units of time are ostentatiously different for no apparent reason, everyone says "by your command", like, the whole time and whenever a Cylon was on screen they had to get hold of another 750 spotlights to shine at his head so that it would have hundreds of pinpricks dancing on it at all times. Quite what sense of unease or dread this last was supposed to attach to the humourless killing machines remains unclear.
Thankfully, new series exec-prods Ronald D. Moore and David Eick were able to deduce that underneath all that foolishness was the germ of a decent story waiting to be rescued from its prison of kitsch and kite-high writers. Out went the suede jackets and laser guns; in came the rather more realistic military dress and projectile-based firearms. Out, mercifully, went a system of time-notation featuring centons, sectons and yahrens (how foolish the actors must have felt delivering these lines) - although the slightly arch faux-swearword "frak" has been retained; conjugated exactly like "fuck" (including "motherfrakker", although I've yet to hear it used as a noun), it theoretically allows dialogue to be slightly more realistic to the setting yet still get past the network censors. Unfortunately in practice it renders allegedly "realistic" dialogue lumpen, since it always intrudes on the flow of the words and reminds you that you're watching a TV show. (In Iran, apparently, until 1994 the film censor was blind. Likewise, these days Standards and Practices seem to be deaf.) Apart from a single homage instance, the vaguely fellatial phrase "by your command" is also absent; the Cylons are CG; technology's outdated even by our standards because the Cylons are all t3h l33t hAx0Rz, and Starbuck and Boomer are women (although Starbuck still contrives to have less hair in the new version).
Sundry other changes give this new BSG its greatest advantage over its predecessor: because the Cylons can now mimic human form, and have twelve humanoid models, each model having many copies, each copy having a unique consciousness, the show plays on themes of mistaken identity and psychosis for both human and Cylon. In particular Gaius Baltar, formerly the willing traitor, is in the new show tricked by the scheming (and never knowingly overdressed) Number Six, who manipulates him on the home planet Caprica to give herself access to defence computers, gives her life to save him in the ensuing nuclear holocaust and haunts him throughout the series, either as Baltar's guilty subconscious or as a result of Cylon chicanery in his head - we're never sure. Meanwhile, her consciousness downloaded into an identical new body, her fellow Cylons come to know her as Caprica Six, and she is often at odds with the other Sixes.
BSG is also ripe with allegory for these post 9/11 times - although gratifyingly, and by no means expectedly, it is not prepared simply to gloss and snark and take cheap shots. It takes pains to acknowledge that often the military is right, the the decisions it takes are hard and its task thankless, and it's never shy to show the unfortunate consequences of a populist, pacifist decision where other shows might be content with pat platitudes. Plus it has Edward James Olmos, best know to me as Judge, soon to be Justice, Roberto Mendoza from Season 1 of The West Wing. That's enough gravitas for anyone, and he brings a vital degree of sympathy to what could easily have been a distinctly fascict portrayal of Adama.
I'll catch up with the Sci-Fi Channel's transmission schedule some time this week. Next stop, Roswell. This one seems a little B-List, but we'll see.
Thankfully, new series exec-prods Ronald D. Moore and David Eick were able to deduce that underneath all that foolishness was the germ of a decent story waiting to be rescued from its prison of kitsch and kite-high writers. Out went the suede jackets and laser guns; in came the rather more realistic military dress and projectile-based firearms. Out, mercifully, went a system of time-notation featuring centons, sectons and yahrens (how foolish the actors must have felt delivering these lines) - although the slightly arch faux-swearword "frak" has been retained; conjugated exactly like "fuck" (including "motherfrakker", although I've yet to hear it used as a noun), it theoretically allows dialogue to be slightly more realistic to the setting yet still get past the network censors. Unfortunately in practice it renders allegedly "realistic" dialogue lumpen, since it always intrudes on the flow of the words and reminds you that you're watching a TV show. (In Iran, apparently, until 1994 the film censor was blind. Likewise, these days Standards and Practices seem to be deaf.) Apart from a single homage instance, the vaguely fellatial phrase "by your command" is also absent; the Cylons are CG; technology's outdated even by our standards because the Cylons are all t3h l33t hAx0Rz, and Starbuck and Boomer are women (although Starbuck still contrives to have less hair in the new version).
Sundry other changes give this new BSG its greatest advantage over its predecessor: because the Cylons can now mimic human form, and have twelve humanoid models, each model having many copies, each copy having a unique consciousness, the show plays on themes of mistaken identity and psychosis for both human and Cylon. In particular Gaius Baltar, formerly the willing traitor, is in the new show tricked by the scheming (and never knowingly overdressed) Number Six, who manipulates him on the home planet Caprica to give herself access to defence computers, gives her life to save him in the ensuing nuclear holocaust and haunts him throughout the series, either as Baltar's guilty subconscious or as a result of Cylon chicanery in his head - we're never sure. Meanwhile, her consciousness downloaded into an identical new body, her fellow Cylons come to know her as Caprica Six, and she is often at odds with the other Sixes.
BSG is also ripe with allegory for these post 9/11 times - although gratifyingly, and by no means expectedly, it is not prepared simply to gloss and snark and take cheap shots. It takes pains to acknowledge that often the military is right, the the decisions it takes are hard and its task thankless, and it's never shy to show the unfortunate consequences of a populist, pacifist decision where other shows might be content with pat platitudes. Plus it has Edward James Olmos, best know to me as Judge, soon to be Justice, Roberto Mendoza from Season 1 of The West Wing. That's enough gravitas for anyone, and he brings a vital degree of sympathy to what could easily have been a distinctly fascict portrayal of Adama.
I'll catch up with the Sci-Fi Channel's transmission schedule some time this week. Next stop, Roswell. This one seems a little B-List, but we'll see.
posted by Novus at 15:34
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home