[IceFire]

Just finished watching the first episode of the new Battlestar Galactica.  I got my family to tape it on SPACE channel while I was out yesterday evening.  Very impressive first epsiode, they did that one really well I thought.  The storyline is very interwoven, complicated, but fairly easy to follow.  Visuals and acting are superb.  I'm hooked!

[Thorn]

Yep, very well done. Wait till you see the next few, they get better.

[ZylonBane]

What in the hell was up with the presidential staff wearing 100% straight-from-Earth business clothing? And that Cylon going on and on and on about God??

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
What in the hell was up with the presidential staff wearing 100% straight-from-Earth business clothing? And that Cylon going on and on and on about God??

Who said it was a Cylon?........

[Liberator]

It's part of the story.  The Cylon's are supposed to be very spiritual, but it might not necessarily be the god we are expecting.

Why should the Presidental Staff wear some kind of specially designed clothing?  They are human and despite everything else, they would evolve the same basic clothing styles.  The business suit hasn't really changed all that much for almost 120 years, why should it be super different for humans from another world?

[vyper]

There's a review of it by Alan Blair on SyFyPortal.com you may either love or hate, and should give you a good guide the upcoming episodes. It's in their archies somewhere.

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by Liberator
The business suit hasn't really changed all that much for almost 120 years, why should it be super different for humans from another world?

Because, unlike functional clothing, the design of business clothing is extremely arbitrary. To be honest I didn't have much of a problem with it until I saw the dude wearing a tie. That was just too much. That and the whiteboard w/dry erase pen.

And the shakeycam is way, way, way overdone/overused.

Other than that it seems not-half-bad.

[dan87uk]

i thought it was brilliant. ive only seen the first 5 eps cus of time and the fact tht my mom is a ***** when it comes to watchin the tv when its on cus 'her programs' are on at that time aswel....desptie them being on normal terrestrial tv where she can watch in her own room :@ grrr....aaaanyway lol the episode '33' was quite good. and the one where starbuck has to train the new pilots

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
What in the hell was up with the presidential staff wearing 100% straight-from-Earth business clothing? And that Cylon going on and on and on about God??

'Cause if they were wearing pink jumpsuits or whatever it would look silly. Seriously, they had to decide on something, and as you said, business clothing is arbitrary.
The point of the new show is realism, and it helps people identify with characters if they're wearing clothing similar to something they're familiar with.


This Friday = BSG, Stargate season 8, Stargate Atlantis = teh rock.

I'm surprised nobody thought of the 'Cylon agent' thing before Baltir though.

[Ashrak]

wait ... was this like the mini series or the first episod AFTER caprica and other colonies got wtf pwned?

[IceFire]

I'm giving a big thumbs up to the presidential staff having regular buisness clothing.  Why not?

The whiteboard?  Why not use them.  Galactica is an interesting setup, if you watched the min-series then it would probably make some more sense, but this is a culture that has some aversions to technology.  They use it as much as they need it but the previous war with the Cylons made them reconsider.  The line from Adama in the miniseries at the beginning where he said that they would only network the computers on his ship over his dead body or something to that effect was an important moment.

We also see that some of this feeling has gone by the wayside.  The way in which the Cylons were able to take out the newer Battlestars (I'd love to see one too!) and the Viper Mark VIIIs but not the Mark IIs or the older Galatica tells you something about this too.

Half of their technology is high tech to us...the other half looks antiquated.  Awesome mix.  Pick up on these things to understand the show a little more...

As for re-imagining the series over the original, I'm also giving a big thumbs up here too.  The original, even for the 70s, was maybe a little bit hokey.  I always thought that these people were doing far too well after loosing everything.  But that was then...this is now...the new grity atmosphere works...as long as they don't take it too far (like Space Above and Beyond, random dark planet number 5000 that we've seen every other week got boring).

[SadisticSid]

I love the new series. Shame there's only two more episodes to go until the end (in the UK at least). I suppose we'll have to see how well it does in ratings terms; it'd better not get cancelled after the first or second season...

[Ashrak]

th CGI is very well done!




SPOILER!!!!!



















loved the assult on the cylon refinery dropped pods literally pooof goes refinery

[an0n]

The shakey-cam gets used less and less as the series progresses. It still shakes a bit, but it's most off-center zooms by the penultimate episode.

The whole Cylon obsession with God gets kinda creepy by the end. I won't spoil it by explaining any plot, but it ends up making them seem even less human than the original toasters. C'z anyone whose watched the mini knows they're all "I'm a real boy!" now, but it kinda gets to the point where you're like "Wait. They're just stringing them along....."

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by IceFire
I'm giving a big thumbs up to the presidential staff having regular buisness clothing.  Why not?

Because it takes Willing Suspension of Disbelief and stabs a spork in its eye. Other SF shows (like B5, for example) have managed to create conservative civilian clothing that doesn't look like it came off the rack of the local department store. It's pretty obvious that they just cheaped out in this regard.

Let's face it-- ties are an extremely stupid, nonfunctional item of clothing. What are the odds that two utterly removed cultures would come up with them?

Unlike "but they speak English too!", this is something that's easy to fix.

[aldo_14]

Possibly I'm not such an accomplished nit-picker, but I never had my viewing experience spoiled by the use of suit & tie.

[Ace]

Hrmmm I have mixed feelings about the series.

I'm also watching the original one at the same time, which while cheesy has a certain charm.

In a sense, I don't think they're having enough meaningful characterization yet.

Everything is: "I'M DARK AND GRITTY!!!! FEAR ME!!!! LOOK I'M AN UPCOMING DEPRESSING MORAL DILEMMA!!!!1111"

There's not the simple stuff like just having the people play cards, doing normal things, and then life being disrupted.

Even the card game Starbuck had became some weird sexual innuendo with Baltar thing...

...heh and the Cylons went from stupid tin cans to becoming Bush buddies "God will only forgive you Baltar if you put this broom up Adama's ass... and we also need a nukuler bomb too, sweetie."

[ZylonBane]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Possibly I'm not such an accomplished nit-picker, but I never had my viewing experience spoiled by the use of suit & tie.

It's not just me. The Earthy costuming and prop work is getting mentioned rather a lot on some of the Usenet threads I've been reading. For example--

But one thing that's absolutely driving me bananas is the costuming. I
hate how modern-day-earth it is-it looks like they bought the entire
wardrobe right off the rack at Marshall Field's. It's an alien culture,
yet they don't look the slightest bit alien. They have turned-down
collars, and ties, and skirt-suits that are exactly like present-day
Earth wear. Couldn't they have tweaked them just a little to make them
look more different? Anybody just tuning in would assume they were FROM
Earth, not trying to find it. Even the hairstyles are the same (nice to
know they have perms in space). It's kind of distracting to have to keep
reminding myself that these people aren't from 2005 Earth.

In fact, the entire production design apart from the spacecraft exactly
mirrors 2005 Earth, right down to the hot tubs, outdoor wooden decks,
and the aforementioned dry-erase boards and squeaky magic markers
straight from Staples. I guess you could argue that it refelects
parallel development, but I wish they could have made it look a little
different. There's just no way they'd have everything *exactly* like us.

and...

Anybody tuning in to the
scene where Baltar's talking to Six on his wooden deck outside his house
would think they were watching a contemporary Earth-set drama. There's
absolutely no sense of an alien culture at all, except for the fact that
they have spaceships. From a design point of view, it seems cheap and
lazy. It's constantly pulling me out of the idea that these people
aren't from Earth, because they look JUST like 2005 Earth people.

The above two snippets are from the RAST newsgroup.

[aldo_14]

Well, it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

[Unknown Target]

Can't wait to see it. I'm recording the 8:00 episode on my PVR tonight