Shut up, Spock! How Battlestar Galactica beat Trek babble No guns firing beams of light. No photon torpedoes. And, sorry, no aliens – menacing or otherwise. The "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica that concluded last year couldn't have been further from its 1970s namesake – or from what most of us think of as sci-fi. In fact, the science and technology in the award-winning show – the …
The Vipers were dual-role space/atmospheric craft so they needed some aerodynamic surfaces, even if they weren't much more than NASA put on the old X-15s. Plus, they had to look a little like the original series ships.
But what was that with the Blackbird? How many times would another one have been useful?
(Gentle Giants trilogy, Foundation Trilogy, dabbled in some Heinlein but gave up on him as someone afraid to take a story where it wants to go). Over the last few years I've pretty much given up on the genre. Where it isn't too PC the sf reads more like fantasy, and regardless of what it is, it has all gotten a bit too preachy.
Even when I was reading it, I quickly grew tired of super-hard sf described in this article. I eventually read an article that pointed out why: When was the last time someone stopped in the middle of Monty Python skit to explain the basics of how the internal combustion engine works? How about in the middle of a Micky Spillane novel? Same thing applies to sf. You may need the occasional visit from the Doctor's companion asking how the internal combustion works so the audience will get a plot point, but when you focus too much on the science behind the story. Quite honestly, I find it less believable that the military will still be using slug throwers 50 years from now than that they will be using lasers. When the power density/killing power ratio is sufficiently high, we will switch to them. They always go straight so there is a better chance of hitting your target. Rail guns, okay, that works for me if it is something getting a significant percent of c for velocity. Anti-matter rail guns is getting on toward space opera (which I also enjoy but distinguish from hard sf). I use to work with the definition that hard sf was about the improbable possible, while fantasy was about the believable impossible. But I eventually decided what really interests me is a story where the technology is an important but minor character in the tale.
BSG was barely science fiction, and that's fine. But it was very much a soap opera, and that's what caused me to lose interest. Character interaction is fine, but when it becomes contrived in an attempt to pander to the General Hospital crowd, that's when I switch off. Life is too short for mediocre TV.
The first season was great, though. Too bad they couldn't keep up the energy. And too bad they couldn't think of an ending.
ST was not about technology - was about people and situations. Technobabble was there to entertain. And anyway a lot of it was based upon something possible, although some authors were better than others.
BSG is really like a soap-opera, maybe is tech is more undertandeable, but its characters and its plots were really awful. They used the usual tricks to appeal the public, some sex, unrealistic people always over the top... good for today public that needs this kind of charcaters and can't understand more elaborate ones.
I stopped to watch it after a bunch of episodes, they all were pretty dull and boring. And I really hate then new habit to use an hand-held camera without a stabilizer, it makes me sick. Our eye stabilizes images even when we move - if it can our brain thinks something is wrong.
... how wonderful Truth, Justice and the Starfleet way was, when stuck in Gene Roddenberry's "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" universe.
At least in BSG the characters developed and changed because of their experiences, rather than pretty much every episode in every version ending with a big "reset button" being pressed that restored the status quo ante.
Someone should really try and translate an Ian M Banks book to the screen.
With our current level of special effects, I think it is now possible. Quite sometime back I would have been doubtful to be honest. In any case such an endeavour will either be highly abbreviated and hence, shite, or a possibly an epic series. I think it is worth a try.
How unbelievable is his work? Well, in his books, it would seem the computers/AI's there are powerful enough to run crysis. Maybe even in a VM. And that's saying a lot :P
With so much of the plot involving sentient ships, it would be difficult to create a credible screenplay, though I would love to see an Affronter.
Alastair Reynolds' "Revelation Space" books would make great TV. Great characters, twisted plots, and I'd really like to see Nostalgia for Infinity.
Another series of books I'd like to see as a TV series, or even movies, are Kevin J Anderson's "Saga of Seven Suns". Space opera in the grand tradition.
The original BSG was cheesy, stilted, chock-full of crappy (and repeated) special effects and an obvious attempt (along with Buck Rogers, etc) to jump on the Star Wars bandwagon
And it was bloody brilliant, for all that.
I watched the new BSG, assuming it was going to be the same sort of thing, but slicker and with better effects. Sure it *was* slicker and *did* have better effects, better sets, and better acting, but it wasn't BSG. It was a political drama set in space. If I wanted that I'd watch The West Wing, or something.
Couldn't be arsed after a couple of episodes.
I am completely mystified as to why the author of this article, and numerous commentators, are listing all the things that made BSG excellent Science Fiction as reasons that it wasn't.
Good science fiction is plausible (even when seeming far-fetched, such as Stephen Baxter's treatment of Feynman radio in "Time"), it uses the science, the different perspectives of distant or future societies, or alien races, as backdrops for exploring the impliacations of current science, current society and current issues. This is exactly what BSG did, and why I rate it as the best Science Fiction TV series I've ever seen.
... there is nothing to stop the same story lines being set in a different genre. An ethnic group running before an all-powerful merciless enemy is a story as old as time. Exodus for example. The actual plot points are based on contemporary political issues.
SF is fiction based on science: advances in science suggest alternative futures where current thinking may be challenged. Asimov was struck by the possibilities of willing of slaves with no free will and no wish rebel. Without the science of robots his robot series doesn't work and is therefore Science Fiction. You could argue that replacing science with magic would make a similar story. Magic has no boundaries except those stated by the author. It exists in world created especially for it. SF is bound by current scientific knowledge. If not it is fantasy.
"... there is nothing to stop the same story lines being set in a different genre. An ethnic group running before an all-powerful merciless enemy is a story as old as time. Exodus for example. The actual plot points are based on contemporary political issues."
ANY fiction is based on some plot which you can boil down to elementary human interaction and transpose onto any other setting. It's happen before and it will happen again, sorry but we are just humuns and only can has our humun fiction...
Science Fiction, if it's any good, uses science and technology as a plot device. Otherwise it would not be fiction but popular science or dilettante hypothesis paper whose author is afraid to submit it for proper peer review through established channels.
"SF is fiction based on science: advances in science suggest alternative futures where current thinking may be challenged. Asimov was struck by the possibilities of willing of slaves with no free will and no wish rebel. Without the science of robots his robot series doesn't work and is therefore Science Fiction. "
You just can't see a wood for the trees. He could easily replace the robots with autistic people and base the stories in, say, Victorian England. Or substitute lawyers for robots and write Law & Order episodes instead of the robot stories.
The robots have to have the power to carry out the rules to their logical conclusion. The robots are numerous enough and identical in their thought process. A few specifcally autistic individuals is not going to do it. For one thing, humans die: robots don't. The future is not cast.
Perhaps you could use genetic engineering to create a race of strong yet literal thinking humanoids to use as slaves Oh no - it's science fiction again.
There were plenty of robot stories (in fact, I believe most of them) where the whole story revolved around an individual robot who got tangled in conflicts caused by literal interpretation of the 3 laws. In the end they were all legal or detective stories set in a futuristic environment.
Also, the robots did learn to die, as we know from the Bicentennial Man. And when they did not die of natural causes there were plenty of stories were the robots' demise was expedited by external means...
So, Asimov's robot stories were SciFi, equally as is the new BSG, Q.E.D.
He was showrunner on the latter part of Deep Space Nine, and infected that with some mad spiritual guff as well (although some of it did lead to great storytelling, just as it did in BSG). Does Gavin Clarke know the genre?
DS9 under Ron Moore is almost a trial run for BSG, with many of the same themes running through - the sacrifices a democratic society has to make for war, infiltration by an undetectable enemy, living under occupation. Moore successfully undermined the main problem with Trek that everyone gets along nicely, but even so, Starfleet is made up of the best of the best, while BSG is - by necessity - whoever didn't get killed in a genocide, mugging along to survive day-to-day. DS9's also got some of the most stunning space battles made for the small screen, with fleets of ships swarming across the scene. Who cares if it's not perfectly accurate (whatever that means for an imaginary universe 300 years in the future)?
And why are bullets and nukes or instant FTL any more realistic than phasers, photon torpedoes and warp drive? They're all just stylistic choices. The only reason Moore dropped the technobabble in BSG was 'cos he got sick of writing it in Trek and he wanted to focus on the characters.
All the best Sci-Fi was done in by the authors of the '50s, so now instead if sci-fi they aimply fill the shows with soap, after all that's all their script writers are good for.
You want Sci-fi read a book, your imagination will far exceed anything a special effect budget can accomplish and you don't have to put up with their cultural propaganda..
Reckon you're right there.
If you want imagination try The Stars My Destination (= Tiger! Tiger!), The Forever War, Babel 17, Eon or Ubik.
I watched the first half-dozen episodes of the first series of BSG and it was so bloody boring I vowed never to watch another episode. I thought the characters were lacklustre, the plot contrived, the graphics good but ultimately filler, the science more-or-less non-existent, and the whole thing lacked any sense of drama - just like any episode of Star Trek.
"the idea was mostly to weave the science and technology into the fabric of daily life ..."
Ah, but daily life is just fucking tedious (unless you're Leo Houlding and he tends to grate a little on my nerves if I watch him for too long). Surely the idea is to write something which sets people's imaginations on fire, not something which just warms it up a bit?
Has to go to the BBC's "The Deep"
Even though it was in the near future, and featured known technology, the scientific bollock-dropping was loudly audible at about 10 minute intervals in every episode.
Add that to the lame plot, stupid ending and wooden acting (particularly by Minnie Driver), then you have the biggest pile of "sci-fi" shite to grace our screens since the BBC's lamentable. Invasion: Earth or the terrible remake of A for Andromeda.
I loved BSG, but this article is completely lame as is the idea that it was SO much better to remove Trek "babble". It is called SCIENCE FICTION and the Trek Babble of years past ACTUALLY inspired true advances in science. That will not be happening with BSG. It was a great show, but this article is a load of something else starting with "B".
BSG sucked even before the terrible (and unrealistic) ending and was blatant religious propaganda. I did consider watching it at one point but before I did, I heard the ending and that eliminated it for me. If I wanted religion in my fiction, I'd go read Narnia.
PS. Phasers didn't fire light and photon torpedoes were essentially antimatter missiles rather than nuclear, while quantums were similar but with a subspace field. Also, there is no case of exploding eyes/organs in ST. Maybe SW but we all know how plausible that is... </sarcasm>
Dull, tedious, plot-hole ridden and preaching... that's what we decided after giving up half way through the second season from boredom.
From moronic military "pros" who never communicated, to religious-babble and more pointless flashbacks and tedious sub-plots. Many episodes precisely bugger all happened and after a few of these and missing the odd one we just gave up watching it at all. Given how daft the later espisodes and the final season in particular got, just as well.
Of course, this view will offend those who can see no wrong but that's opinion for you. Apparently some people enjoy Eastenders.
Damn right!! thats why I gave up on it .. pity I missed the good bits, buried in the 'dynasty' stuff..
the only other reason why I guess people watched it..
- ladies loved dynasty as well as the babble about 'in your mind' tricks (sure saved on the FX budget!!!)
- guys loved looking at the 'fit' ladies on it..
- girls loved the hunky guys in it...
- teens said oh goody, spaceships and hollyoaks ...
go on do a 'google img search' , that s what you get....
Tricia Helfer - one of the many good reasons to watch BSG.
She even stripped off so that us poor image-motivated males could see that what she had been displaying, so beautifully, prevocatively and flamboyantly wrapped, was just what we had imagined. She gets my vote for the best female in SciFi. She knows what we want and she delivers!
Science-fiction inspireded masturbation is just so right for a geek.
Ooooh-oooh!
Love the bit where colonel Tigh discovers he is a Cylon. Classic!!
There have only been two decent sci-fi series in recent years: Dr Who (except David Tennant) and Firefly. American stuff drags on for so long it ends up drowned in it's own episode back catalogue. How many times have we said "Well, it started off really good...". The best ever US sci-fi was B5 series 4, and that was because they thought the show was going to be cancelled and so they stuck two series worth of material into it.
I recall one episode when the Galactica was infected with some nasty cylon virus because they'd taken a risk to network the computers (apparently a no-no because of the danger they'll take over). They solved the problem by running a wire from their friendly cylon lady character into the ship's computers so she could sort it out.
And these were cylons that were supposedly indistinguishable from people? I'd be guessing the USB port in the cylon lady's armpit should have showed up in an x-ray?
The whole machine virus thing smacked of Independence Day and other lame sci-fi.
Apart from that, it was rather good though.
There is a reason that a show like this is called a Space Opera or a Space Western because all it really is is a contemporary story in a different setting. There is not necessarily any real "sci fi" aspect to it. Trek was no less space opera than Star Wars. The same goes for BSG. It ultimately boils down to STYLE and whether or not you get bogged down in the bolonium.
Tech takes a back seat for most people, regardless of the era. It's not something to be fixated on to the exclusion of all else (like the plot).
"Wagon Train in space"
Also, fixating on minutia isn't any more realistic. It's just tedious.
you seem to miss the point about "Wagon Train in space" (cant see it, maybe deleted??)
-If they had not managed to sell it this way, by comparing it to a very successful show, it would never have got past the pilot !
- this was refused for being "too intellectual" - it shows the way thinking has changed, now most call it a bit stupid - think of that!!!
And this was in 1965, where the only computers that existed filled a room!
- even the idea of email did not start until years later....
for its time, it WAS scifi, we had not got anywhere near the moon yet!!
BSG Still had FTL, gravity generation and whatever enables raptors to get off a planet with such a small drive (obviously not chemical rockets). It was still Space Opera, but it was less wussy than Happy Trek. It also spouted a lot of mystical dualistic crap about he human mind being better than AI.
BSG was great because of the plot (well, except the ending), and the characters.
Caprica sucks because the characters are so shallow and the plot is pretty meh.
There had to be an ending, like it or not, so what ending would people have preferred? I understand that some or maybe a lot of people were unhappy but has anyone offered a better ending? I think that endings are a very difficult thing to get right and will never satisfy everybody.
1) They never find their home planet and carry on forever.
2) They join forces with the Cylons and become one with them.
3) They all die in a big battle.
4) Some Cylons wake from a dream and that was all it was.
5) They find their home world and start anew.
6) ?
7) ?
Which ever one you choose some one will complain. It's like life with your great partner - it has to end. They die. You die. You both die. You go off, they go off, you both go off? None of them are satifactory, endings very rarely are. In the case of BSG I forgive any problems over the ending due to the great entertainment it gave me over all the preceeding episodes. 8/10.
true, true..... I think ages ago there was a tv program talking in the same way about trek....
Sure, be 'realistic' all you like.... But you need to keep your audience!! there will always be 60 Yr olds, saying "its carp, they have 'sold out' ", and teens who say its great, as they have not had 30 yrs experience of the same thing being tried badly 20 times over..... :(
Problem is, without FTL, gravity generation and whatever, plot-lines become difficult and strained, to say nothing about having to build a set with those restrictions.... and the audience loses patience...
- no chance of 'calling for help' if it takes them years to get there..
- 'no gravity' acting may be nice, but is a strain on actors and budget...
- and 'problems' of food and water use and limited storage need some 'explaining away' like replicators, etc...
the better 'realistic' series was Firefly - though many, including Fox, didn't like it as it looked more 'western' than scifi...
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