eye_of_a_cat (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eye_of_a_cat) wrote2005-03-10 11:35 pm
eye_of_a_cat) wrote2005-03-10 11:35 pm
Entry tags:
Battlestar Galactica
"Hi. Um, did you sleep in for your nine o'clock class? Because it's five past now, and...'
'IHAVEACLASSTODAY?"
"...oh, wait, no, that's Wednesday, isn't it? Never mind, see you at the lecture."
It took my heartbeat about three hours to return to normal, and then I fell down the stairs, which made it a pretty interesting day all round. (I'm fine apart from a weird-looking bruise on my arm and some very battered pride.) But it still counts as a very good day, because - thanks to the wonderful![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
selenak - I got new!Battlestar Galactica to watch!
I watched the original BSG when BBC2 repeated it about ten years ago. It was fun, and it was a good Star Wars replacement if you were a devoted fan who wasn't too fussy about anything that would feed the craving (I read Splinter of the Mind's Eye all the way through to the end, too), but, well, it wasn't exactly quality TV. Probably the best thing about it was that it meant Futurama could do that 'Cylon and Garfunkel' joke twenty years later. Fond of it, but not in the sense of being attached to anything that might get changed in the remake, which is probably a good position to watch it from.
They actually changed less than I was expecting, and girl!Starbuck, for all the whining Dirk Benedict and some of the hardcore fans of the original did, was Starbuck right down to the grin. The technology in the original was very, very 1978, so I was expecting that to get updated without comment, and I was really impressed that they not only explained it but made that explanation a plot point. (And they kept those beige blocky walls in people's quarters and that paper with the corners cut off, which was great for squeeing nostalgia value.)
The Cylons are a lot more interesting now. I liked the way they're virtually interchangable with humans now, which isn't a new idea in sci-fi but reminded me a lot more of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? than anything more recent. The androids in the book are almost identical to humans, but they exist in a future society where anything genuinely alive is rare (there's a black market trade even in things like spiders) and people's emotions are induced by machines, so there's no clear distinction between humans and androids anyway - their similarity is the main point of the book in that sense, rather than because it makes them difficult to spot until it's too late. I didn't like the Cylons too much to start with, mostly due to the blonde woman (er, who presumably has a name) starting off as a kind-of-boring femme fatale type of character, but she got a lot more interesting after the war began. I liked that they were monotheistic while the humans were polytheistic, too, although I'm not sure where the programme's going with that yet. (Or with much else concerning the Cylons - hopefully their motivations are supposed to be a bit murky, because otherwise I missed something.)
Also on the Cylons - Baltar seemed remarkably alive and healthy for someone who'd just survived a really big explosion, didn't he? Hm.
I'm being called away to investigate the weirdness of the boiler in my house. Possibly more later.
'IHAVEACLASSTODAY?"
"...oh, wait, no, that's Wednesday, isn't it? Never mind, see you at the lecture."
It took my heartbeat about three hours to return to normal, and then I fell down the stairs, which made it a pretty interesting day all round. (I'm fine apart from a weird-looking bruise on my arm and some very battered pride.) But it still counts as a very good day, because - thanks to the wonderful
selenak - I got new!Battlestar Galactica to watch! I watched the original BSG when BBC2 repeated it about ten years ago. It was fun, and it was a good Star Wars replacement if you were a devoted fan who wasn't too fussy about anything that would feed the craving (I read Splinter of the Mind's Eye all the way through to the end, too), but, well, it wasn't exactly quality TV. Probably the best thing about it was that it meant Futurama could do that 'Cylon and Garfunkel' joke twenty years later. Fond of it, but not in the sense of being attached to anything that might get changed in the remake, which is probably a good position to watch it from.
They actually changed less than I was expecting, and girl!Starbuck, for all the whining Dirk Benedict and some of the hardcore fans of the original did, was Starbuck right down to the grin. The technology in the original was very, very 1978, so I was expecting that to get updated without comment, and I was really impressed that they not only explained it but made that explanation a plot point. (And they kept those beige blocky walls in people's quarters and that paper with the corners cut off, which was great for squeeing nostalgia value.)
The Cylons are a lot more interesting now. I liked the way they're virtually interchangable with humans now, which isn't a new idea in sci-fi but reminded me a lot more of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? than anything more recent. The androids in the book are almost identical to humans, but they exist in a future society where anything genuinely alive is rare (there's a black market trade even in things like spiders) and people's emotions are induced by machines, so there's no clear distinction between humans and androids anyway - their similarity is the main point of the book in that sense, rather than because it makes them difficult to spot until it's too late. I didn't like the Cylons too much to start with, mostly due to the blonde woman (er, who presumably has a name) starting off as a kind-of-boring femme fatale type of character, but she got a lot more interesting after the war began. I liked that they were monotheistic while the humans were polytheistic, too, although I'm not sure where the programme's going with that yet. (Or with much else concerning the Cylons - hopefully their motivations are supposed to be a bit murky, because otherwise I missed something.)
Also on the Cylons - Baltar seemed remarkably alive and healthy for someone who'd just survived a really big explosion, didn't he? Hm.
I'm being called away to investigate the weirdness of the boiler in my house. Possibly more later.
no subject
Cylon monotheism versus human polytheism - is a red thread throughout the show. (Well, first season.) It's a fascinating choice. I mean, human polytheism is a leftover from the old show (though it only becomes explicit later on in the season that the Lords of Kobol are indeed the Graeco-Roman pantheon), but the Cylons as monotheists aren't. And their religion is very important to them; indeed it forms part of their motivations. The conviction that they're doing God's will and that he has appointed them to this task. As the new BSG is very consciously a post 9/11 show, you can read that monotheism as fundamentalism of either kind, of course - Christian or Muslim. And yes, they're also a lot like the Dick replicants. There is some backstory Moore has indicated, that they were originally used by the humans to fight each other before the colonies formed a union.
Blonde woman: is referred to as Six, due to her telling Baltar there are 12 Cylon models (meaning twelve human-looking Cylon models), and her model is No.6. The twelve Cylon models do of course correspond to the twelve colonies, the twelve Olympic deities, or the twelve tribes of Israel - however you want to see it.*g*
no subject
Do we ever (or yet, I suppose) get to find out how the Cylons ended up monotheistic anyway? Presumably getting their own religion would be linked to deciding they weren't servants any more and heading off on their own? I'm glad it's going to be an important thing (and that they've kept all the Mormon-ish ideas from the original), and definitely that the Cylon religion actually seems to have some depth rather than being the supporting excuse for a bunch of one-dimensional killers like I was dreading it would be. So far, nothing I was dreading has happened anyway - it really is as good as everyone said.
no subject
In the first season, we don't get an onscreen explanation for how the Cylons ended up monotheistic, but Ron Moore has given some hints in interviews, and it - and the first Cylon war - will be a part of the backstory revealed in the second season, so I hear. The episodes which deal most extensively with Cylon religion (though it's an undercurrent throughout) and the human religion are Flesh and Bone, Hand of the Gods and the second part of the season finale.
How far are you now?
no subject
no subject
no subject