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Battlestar Galactica (remake) |
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 Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 2:33 pm |
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Battlestar Galactica (Remake)
Review by: SSJKamui
Created by: Ronald D. Moore/Sci Fi Channel
Published: 2004 - 2009
Degrees of Cyberpunk Themes: Medium
Degrees of Cyberpunk Visuals: medium
Rating: 9 out of 10
Overview:
Battlestar Galactica ist the remake of the old space opera television series of the same name by Glen Larson. At first, a continuation of the first series was planned to continue the old series, but this was scrapped and a remake was planned. For the remake, a more realistic story was planned.(The writers called this approach “Naturalistic Science Fiction”.) Many actors of the original series were against the remake. (The most prominent of these critiques was from the actor Dirk Benedict, the old actor of the character Starbuck. ) Richard Hatch, the old actor of the character Apollo criticized the remake, too, but later, he got a role in the new series. (His role was the terrorist Tom Zarek. I think this was a small allusion of this criticism.) At first, a miniseries of the series was produced, which dealt with the destruction of the 12 Colonies. It was followed by 4 seasons and a TV Movie. A second TV Movie and a spin off series called Caprica are currently in production.
The series is a space opera noir series mixing space opera elements with elements of cyberpunk and military science fiction.
Plot:
52 Years after the rebellion of the robots of the 12 colonies called Cylons, the old space warship Galactica shall be turned into a museum. Nobody knows that at the same time, new models of the Cylons which are nearly indistinguishable from humans were placed into important human facilities as agents. One of them, a Cylon Model Number Six tempted the scientist Doctor Gaius Baltar to get the codes of the nuclear weapons of the 12 Colonies of mankind
They use the codes to kill nearly all humans. Meanwhile, the army of the Cylons attacks the human military.
It seems that the only surviving ships are the Galactica and a bunch of civilian ships. To restore hope within the survivors of the massacre, William Adama, the commander of the Galactica falsely claims that he knows about the current location of the lost thirteenth tribe of the tribes who founded the colonies of humanity.
So, the survivor fleet starts an exodus to this colony, earth.
Later, it’s revealed that the actions of the Cylons are done because of a mysterious plan of their “God”. This plan also involves the creation of a human/Cylon hybrid.
The Story of BSG is highly political and covers various topics from religion to workers rights and the violation of civil liberties by the government for public security. The story also contains many references to actual incidents like the “war on terror”.
Similar to the Anime Gasaraki, Battlestar Galactica has an extremely realistic feeling.
Both sides of the conflict are good characterized and there is no simple good vs evil plot like in the original series.
Near the end of the story, there are also high amount of metaphysical elements in the story. They are very interesting, but some of them are not really believable.
The characters of Battlestar Galactica are very interesting and symphatetic. Every character has faults, but also good sides. The Characters are not very clichéd, but a few aspects of some characters are clichés. Some of these clichés have a very unique explanation. For example, Gaius Baltar behaves like an absent minded professor, but this is because he sees a seemingly virtual version of the Number Six he gave the codes for the nuclear weapons.
The story has many extremely unpredictable plot twists. (For example, the end of the second season, where the humans decide to stop the search for earth and settle on a planet they found.)
The plot twist with the "final five" was interesting, but very hard to believe.
Correlation to Cyberpunk Elements:
The main premise of the story is that the robots of humanity rebel and nearly wipe out humanity with nuclear weapons. This can be seen as an expression of the “Negative Impact of technology on humanity” theme of Cyberpunk, although it’s also similar to some old pulp fiction stories.
The fact that the Cylons use humanity’s own nuclear weapons with stolen access codes to destroy humanity is connected to the hacking and covert operations theme of Cyberpunk.
Later, on the colonies, the Cylons try to create a hybrid being of Cylons and humans, a “fusion of man and machine”.
In the story, there isn’t really a “focusing on the Underground of society”. There characters are instead rather normal persons like in postcyberpunk fictions.
Both, the rulers of Cylons and the rulers of humanity act extremely suspicious. For example, the frequent breaks of civil rights by the council of the 12, the government of humanity.
In the Story, there are also many allusions to older cyberpunk works. E.g. the Cylon controllers of the Basestar battleships use the sentence “end of line” like the Master Control Program of Tron. These controllers look similar to the precogs of Minority Report and some terminology is borrowed from the movie Blade Runner.
The Visuals of Galactica feature spaceships environments, futuristic computer systems, typical cyberpunk factories and dirty streets and backyards like in many other cyberpunk works.
In one episode, a refinery ship was featured whose interiors looked extremely cyberpunk.
Nevertheless, there are also episodes with only a few cyberpunk visuals and elements.
Conclusion:
Although Battlestar Galactica is a very pessimistic series, it’s also a very amazing, fascinating series.
The “messages” of the series are a little bit more authoritarian than in most cyberpunk stories, but this is logical because the series is also military science fiction.
I am not completely sure if BSG can be considered Cyberpunk, but it's at least cyberpunk influenced and it can be considered a "medium of cyberpunk interest".
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 5:15 pm |
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Probably the best genre television has offered in years! A wonderful series, and very cyberpunk. Some very daring storylines and political commentaries, as well...
_________________
Check out my debut PUNK HORROR novel, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS....
http://WWW.DROPDEADDOLLS.COM
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 7:01 pm |
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Thanks for your comment.
Of Military Sci Fi media, Battlestar Galactica, is one of my 3 absolute favourites. The others are Starship Troopers and Gundam.
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| Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2009 10:00 pm |
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Gundam I haven't seen.
the first Starship Troopers is wildly misunderstood - it was a great parody of blind patriotism.
It was also a lot of fun. 
_________________
Check out my debut PUNK HORROR novel, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS....
http://WWW.DROPDEADDOLLS.COM
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 11:58 am |
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| HOO-HAA wrote: | | Gundam I haven't seen. |
It's a japanese military science fiction anime franchise which also has a few cyberpunk elements. (For example corporate genetic experiments, cyborgs and surveillance.)
It is in most parts extremely realistic and depicts an accurate physics. (Partly, it can be seen as a precursor to the physics depiction in the new Battlestar Galactica Series. For example, Gundam was one of the first sci fi franchises, where flying direction change in space via gas emitting recoil thrusters was explicite shown. )
Personally, I think the Gundam Manga "The Blue Destiny", which features a story about a testing of a new machine with an artificial inteligence, where strange malfunctions appear can perhaps be classified as cyberpunk and may be worth reviewing here.
| HOO-HAA wrote: |
the first Starship Troopers is wildly misunderstood - it was a great parody of blind patriotism.
It was also a lot of fun. |
Yes, this aspect was good and the fake propaganda messages of the movie were truely amazing, but compared to the power suit designs created for the Uchu no Senshi Starship Troopers Anime, I think the power suits of the movie looked rather bad. The movie is also not very accurate to the book.
Nevertheless, the movie was cool.
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:28 pm |
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Making the cylons human-looking parallels Blade Runner in perfecting robot labor to the point they rebel. Other BR references are of course, the inclusion of Ed Olmos, who played Gaff in BR... and lots of other nods such as, the alcoholic Col. Tigh uses Deckard's same whiskey glass. I liked the fact in the pilot episode, all the newer tactically advanced human ships are hacked and shut down for easy attack, but the Galactica is effectively "analog" technology that the Cylons couldn't access. With the effects team from Firefly driving the visuals, a very compelling realistic set of battles were managed to be created in space. Very smart show, although I thought the finale was fairly unsatisfying.
_________________
--END TRANSMISSION--
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 6:42 am |
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Galactica completely changed my worldview. 
Kamui: Wow, a reference to Gasaraki! It, and Galactica, do have quite a bit in common, and i hadn't thought about it.
Something you have to remember when watching Galactica is that the ship was having its decommissioning ceremony at the start of the series. All the people, all the weaponry, all the conflicts, everything, was the very bottom of humanity.
Klaw: I hadn't known Tigh used Deckard's glass! Geez. The series had swarms of references to other things - the blipvert credits were like Space 1999, Number 6 was a reference to the Prisoner, and that's not counting the 9/11 references in both the pilot and the finale. I thought they were subtle.
Once I calmed down from pure rage that the finale made me feel, I realised the latter were part of the reason it affected me so much. I almost don't want to ask why the finale annoyed you, but I consider it a flawed masterpiece.
_________________
Anything we can do to a rat we can do to a human being, and we can do damn near *anything* to rats. - Bruce Sterling
Bonded to the Traveler of the Ways
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 8:24 am |
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Thanks for your comments. The fact with the glass was unknown to me, too.
I didn't watch the finale yet, but from what I heard about it, it sounded extremely stupid.
I like the series Gasaraki very much. I've bought a video of it from the UK. It was one of the coolest mech series I've ever watched. (Sometimes, I thought the realism was funny, for example, when the americans claim that Belgistan was testing mass destruction weapons and therefore demand attacking it.)
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 8:38 am |
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An amazing series, I need to catch the last season and the subsequent prequel/sequel/whatever addons as well. I absolutely loved the storylines, how they tried to address issues that were very reverent to the world now. Good stuff.
_________________
A blinking cursor pulses in the electric darkness like a heart coursing with phosphorous light, burning beneath the derma of black-neon glass.
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 8:57 am |
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| l1zrdking wrote: | | An amazing series, I need to catch the last season and the subsequent prequel/sequel/whatever addons as well. I absolutely loved the storylines, how they tried to address issues that were very reverent to the world now. Good stuff. |
I agree.
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:52 am |
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| SSJKamui wrote: |
I didn't watch the finale yet, but from what I heard about it, it sounded extremely stupid. |
Yeah, it was very 'twee' for want of a better word. Not in keeping with the rest of the series.
| Quote: | | I like the series Gasaraki very much. I've bought a video of it from the UK. It was one of the coolest mech series I've ever watched. (Sometimes, I thought the realism was funny, for example, when the americans claim that Belgistan was testing mass destruction weapons and therefore demand attacking it |
I never heard of this series...
_________________
Check out my debut PUNK HORROR novel, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS....
http://WWW.DROPDEADDOLLS.COM
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:55 am |
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| SSJKamui wrote: |
I didn't watch the finale yet, but from what I heard about it, it sounded extremely stupid. |
Yeah, it was very 'twee' for want of a better word. Not in keeping with the rest of the series.
| Quote: | | I like the series Gasaraki very much. I've bought a video of it from the UK. It was one of the coolest mech series I've ever watched. (Sometimes, I thought the realism was funny, for example, when the americans claim that Belgistan was testing mass destruction weapons and therefore demand attacking it |
I never heard of this series...
_________________
Check out my debut PUNK HORROR novel, DROP DEAD GORGEOUS....
http://WWW.DROPDEADDOLLS.COM
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 3:41 pm |
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| HOO-HAA wrote: |
| Quote: | | I like the series Gasaraki very much. I've bought a video of it from the UK. It was one of the coolest mech series I've ever watched. (Sometimes, I thought the realism was funny, for example, when the americans claim that Belgistan was testing mass destruction weapons and therefore demand attacking it |
I never heard of this series... |
Gasaraki is a military science fiction anime which like Battlestar Galactica combines an extremely realistic plot and scientifically accurate technology portrayal with a few metaphysical elements. In Gasaraki, these elements come from the japanese Noh theatre. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noh_Theatre )
The series is about a military conflict between an arabian dictatorship called Belgistan and the UN sent multi national force of armies of the western nations. In the Background, a Megacorp lead by the so called Gowa Family is manipulating the conflict.
Partly, the series strongly reminds on conflicts about the iranian nuclear program and the Iraq War, although the series was created before 9/11.
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| Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 7:37 am |
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I really need to watch that again and obtain most of the noh references. I suspect the entire series resembles a noh play in its structure.
Watch out, the final episode potentially brings in a story device that hadn't been foreshadowed. Maybe. I'm not sure, because somehow I actually missed three episodes in the middle of the series.
I've seen swarms of people online who completely said "bugger off" to Galactica after the finale. Really, it completely destroyed the series for them. I think I've watched enough anime at this point to not have any problems with a series that becomes demented and brings in bizarre insane stuff in the final episodes.
Which is fascinating, because I thought climax after climax happened in it. Is no one else able to fanwank?
_________________
Anything we can do to a rat we can do to a human being, and we can do damn near *anything* to rats. - Bruce Sterling
Bonded to the Traveler of the Ways
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| Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 7:58 am |
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| JesterJoker wrote: | I think I've watched enough anime at this point to not have any problems with a series that becomes demented and brings in bizarre insane stuff in the final episodes.
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Yes, there are indeed some rather strange finales in some animes. For example, the last 2 Episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. 
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Goto page 1, 2 Next
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