Battlestar Galactica remake

[burrunjor]

Anybody watch this show. 

I'm almost at the end of it and I have to say it has been for the most part utter crap. There's been the odd good episode and moment, and idea, but overall I've found it to be boring, dreary, and its characters flat, unlikable and smug. 

The worst character by far is the president. The actress is f*cking awful. She has one expression. Smugness. (I read that she based her performance on Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton which just makes her smugness all the more intolerable.) 

To be honest the acting all around is fairly lame. The guy playing Gaius and Tricia Hefer are good, as is Katee Sackhoff, as is the odd guest star, but most of the leads are terrible. Lucy Lawless meanwhile though good was criminally underused. The character she played wasn't really anything special. I honestly don't know why they'd cast someone with as big a personality as Lucy Lawless and give her a boring, nothing part. 

It's premise is too limited for a series. Only one race of villains, one story about getting to earth, and pretty much the same setting every week. It might have worked as a one off film, but not a tv series. 

[henshin]

I liked it but its lack of levity makes it fairly inhuman. Yes, it's a bleak story with some fairly dire events that triggered the series, but it's Ronald D. Moore. More than anybody, given his involvement in Deep Space Nine, there's still room for some optimism. I've only ever gone through the series once because it was absolutely a slog. It's biggest fault? Not sticking to the 13-episode format.

Had the series just been four seasons with each at that length, I would have revisited the series at least twice more since I last saw it.

But, it's an investment of time and energy.

I will revisit one day, but i'd really need to be in the mood.

[burrunjor]

Just about finished it now. Have one episode left and I think I can say that I found the entire series to be largely shit.

It wasn't even the fact that it was bleak that bothered me. Hell Blake's 7 is bleak but I love that.

For me its problems were.

1/ I hate the ship. It's dreary, boring and dull. It's not crazy and offbeat like the TARDIS and the Liberator, cosy and bright like the USS Enterprise. It's just a big dull factory. Worse the entire series basically is set on the ship too which just leads to my next problem.

2/ Far too limited a premise. Just one basic story, everyone headed to earth stretched out for 4 years, one location for the most part and one species, the Cylons. It's made even worse by the fact that the Cylons are kind of well shit. Their motives and origins are vague, they aren't an original or unique idea. and there isn't really any room for any character development with them either like there is with individual Klingons, as there's usually like 6 versions of one cylon. I've honestly lost track of which Boomer and Tricia Heffer is which now. Lucy Lawless' version is the only one that seemed to have a consistent characterisation, but they just dropped her. The robot Cylons meanwhile though having a good design are just non entities. No screen presence or menace like the Daleks or the Cybermen.

3/ The main characters are either unlikable, bland or poorly written and acted or all of the above, and there are far too many of them too.

Honestly I just don't get the fuss about this show? This has been one of the worst genre series I've seen in a long while. I honestly much prefer New Who seasons 1-7 over this as at least they are enjoyable for the most part. Give me Matt Smith and Karen Gillan, hell give me Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman over some dreary, confusing shit about 6 different versions of a Cylon character and the smug Hillary Clinton in space any day of the week.

[iank]

I think I saw the first half hour of the pilot.
Checked out pretty quick.

[Monster X]

Jun 20, 2021 22:55:42 GMT burrunjor said:

Anybody watch this show. 

I'm almost at the end of it and I have to say it has been for the most part utter crap. There's been the odd good episode and moment, and idea, but overall I've found it to be boring, dreary, and its characters flat, unlikable and smug. 

The worst character by far is the president. The actress is fokking awful. She has one expression. Smugness. (I read that she based her performance on Madeline Albright and Hillary Clinton which just makes her smugness all the more intolerable.) 

To be honest the acting all around is fairly lame. The guy playing Gaius and Tricia Hefer are good, as is Katee Sackhoff, as is the odd guest star, but most of the leads are terrible. Lucy Lawless meanwhile though good was criminally underused. The character she played wasn't really anything special. I honestly don't know why they'd cast someone with as big a personality as Lucy Lawless and give her a boring, nothing part. 

It's premise is too limited for a series. Only one race of villains, one story about getting to earth, and pretty much the same setting every week. It might have worked as a one off film, but not a tv series. 

I loved it at the time  - it was the  perfect antidote to the childish excesses of Nuwho, but  I'm not sure I would enjoy it quite so much if I were to watch it again, some 15 years later.
It was very clever and adult with great visuals, but like a lot of American SF, it was essentially a military series and as you say, very limited.

James Callis was a joy to watch as Baltar, and I had a  bit of a crush on Grace Park (Boomer) but by the end of four series, it was beginning to outstay it's welcome.

[iank]

What's the original like? It's got Faceman in it, can't be all bad.

[Deleted]

I got two episodes in and stopped. It was just terrible and I’m glade I didn’t keep watching after I found out the “great minds” behind Lost worked on it. There’s another show I gave up on and never watched again.

[burrunjor]

Jun 24, 2021 8:44:19 GMT @palaeoloxodon said:

I got two episodes in and stopped. It was just terrible and I’m glade I didn’t keep watching after I found out the “great minds” behind Lost worked on it. There’s another show I gave up on and never watched again.

Really? fokk me that explains it. 

From what I gather they were also behind Once Upon A Time. Now I like Once Upon A Time, however I think it also suffered from some of the same problems. Too many stories, many of which either went nowhere, like who the Dragon girls dad was, and others that went around in circles too. Where it was different however was that it's main actors were more charismatic and engaging. Lana Parrilla had Tom Baker levels of hammy charisma, whilst Robert Carlyle is obviously one of the best actors of his generation. Jennifer Morrison meanwhile was a much better lead than the smug Hillary Clinton stand in. 

Added to that they were adapting already existing characters like the Evil Queen, Robin Hood and Peter Pan etc and the premise at least allowed for a wider range of characters, stories and settings too from Camelot to Never Land. Also Storybrooke was a much better location than the dreary Gallactica. On their own however it seems these writers run into the same problems every time. Too many characters, too many sub plots that go nowhere, and dragging the arse out of plots that should have been finished a long time ago.