Battlestar Galactica

First, the Ramen noodles were awesome (see previous post).



Second... OMG. I got on the BSG wagon a few years late but holy crap. Drama! Politics! Space battles! The human race is going to destroy itself... no, maybe it's not... oh wait, yes it is! Ahh!

I finished all 4 (new) seasons within a few weeks and it was one hell of an emotional roller coaster. I gotta give kudos to those writers for the way they manipulated those characters. There had to be a psychiatrist on that writing team having a psycho-gasm with all the bad shit people did to each other in that show. Baltar was a freakin' head trip, and although my friend thinks he should have been thrown out an airlock early on, he was actually one of my favorite characters. It was amusing seeing the desperation on his face at certain points, especially when number six would randomly appear to mess with him even more. And then I always wanted him to do the right thing, but half the fun was waiting to see what he would do wrong...

Now, I didn't see the original Battlestar Galactica. I've only seen the new one. One of my fellow geeky coworkers was all up in arms about the changes they made from the old one. It took my good review to get him to get past the first episode. His biggest beef?

Starbuck? Originally a guy.
(But she still smokes and sleeps around.)



My coworker likens Starbuck's gender change to rewriting Star Wars so that Han Solo is a girl (while that's actually an amusing thought, I get his point). Since I haven't seen the original I can't comment. He keeps bitching about Starbuck every time I ask him where he's at in the series, but he's still watching, so clearly it doesn't bother him as much as he says it does. So what else changed?

Boomer? Black dude.
(Not even close.)



Cylons?
(From Toaster to Titillating.)

Centurion gets a face lift...


And then we have skinjobs!


There are a lot of other changes from what I hear, but the writers gave themselves a valid reason from deviating so far from the original. I call it the Star Trek plotline escape.

Seen the new Star Trek? That whole oops Spock created / went through a wormhole and messed up the space-time continuum so that everything changed but the same players are still there thing? Yeah. It's kind of like that in the new BSG. There's a line repeated through most of the series (although a lot more often in the later half): "This has all happened before, and it will all happen again." Yes, yes, we get it, history repeats itself. But wait! There's more. At the very end, in the last episode, there is a conversation going on in which this statement is given (I won't spoil anything for you by saying who said it etc etc... it's non spoilery on its own):

"Let a complex system repeat itself long enough, eventually something surprising might occur."

(Fair warning, the following assessment is slightly spoilery in concept.)

Put those two quotes together and BAM! There's your reason for the changes. This is NOT the same Battlestar Galactica. It wasn't meant to be. This is history repeating itself. The old BSG happened, yes. Starbuck was a dude, the cylons were toasters, etc. But now it's happening again. It's the same, but different. Starbuck is a girl. The cylons look like hot chicks. Why all the changes? Because the complex system is creating surprises on its most recent repeat. Oooo. Some of you may think this is a cheap way to bring back the awesome show to end all awesomeness, but you lore sticklers gotta admit it's a good way (or at least an acceptable way) for the new writers to justify their adaptations.

And someone said they didn't like the ending to the new one, but I actually thought it was good. It resolved the storyline in a satisfying way. Plus it was a much happier ending than I expected compared to all the pessimistic build up (maybe that's why people didn't like it?).

My recommendation? If you haven't watched it, go seek it out. Netflix, your local rental place, a friend that has the DVDs, maybe even a library, whatever. Get your hands on that series and go watch.

I'll even see if I can find the original BSG and watch it while you watch the new one.



~Sass~