Re: Sci-Fi channel\'s: Battlestar Galactica
Since when does Science Fiction, have to be more realistic in terms of stone age Earth Science???!!!
Never mind that, why does all modern science fiction have to be more realistic in terms of stone age Earth philosophy?
I mean, I can enjoy the Matrix and Terminator as much as the next guy, but I am getting sick and tired of the Pandora's Box metaphor. This is the one that primitive theocrats use to keep men shivering in the dark, unthinking, afraid of everything. "Don't mess with the unknown! Don't risk angering unknown and unknowable powers! Don't enquire, don't experiment, don't think!" If there is any basic theme that has no place in proper *science* fiction, this is it. It's easy to spot: just look for its usual fig leaf in movie reviews: "cautionary tale".
The Enlightenment put an end to that crap (for a time), but you wouldn't know it from the ubiquitous "look what we've done to ourselves" mantra in modern sci-fi. Machines in T3 and Matrix, genetic engineering in Hulk and Mimic and countless others -- and NOW they are using it for BSG?!?!? (if the Cylons are indeed human made) Hello Hollywood -- time to rip off something besides Maximum Overdrive!!!
The original conception of the Cylons as a reptilian/robotic, collectivistic race who did not understand and were therefore threatened by the humans' individual sense of morality, was vastly superior to this hackneyed, medieval tripe (though I think I got that from a novelization rather than the original series). Now it's something humans did
to themselves? What, again?
That was enough to turn me off the new series, even if one made allowances for it being a "re-imagining" rather than a remake... but when the evisceration of the Zodiacal colony names and the Ancient Egyptian symbolism is factored in, I'm just about ready to declare this current phase of science fiction in movies and TV to have exhausted its tiny repertoire.
I have a friend who is working on the CGI/FX for that series, and now I can understand why, after their first meeting, he ICQ'd me with "Doom, doom, doom...." (And yet Invader Zim gets cancelled?!!?)
If any of you wake up one morning and find yourself in charge of a major studio, promise me that none of the executive types who made or acquiesced with these decisions ever find work again (except perhaps in the pr0n industry, where there are no plots or storylines for them to foul up).
As for Space 1999, I too grew up with that series, it colored my view of science fiction until Star Wars changed everything.... and while it definitely took a dump in the second season IMO, some of the story concepts were quite innovative, and the overall look actually holds up quite well given the FX technology of the time. And I prefer its straightforward engineering approach to its ships (the Eagles etc.) to the weird-for-the-sake-of-looking-weird approach to ship design nowadays.
But I swear I'll plan evil vengeance on anybody in Hollywood who even thinks of touching 1999, until they promise they'll get out of the Dark Ages when looking for their theme.
