Okay, so occasionally the remake is better than the original show.
One of the TV shows I used to watch when I was a kid was the scifi show Battlestar Galactica, which started up around the same time I went off to university, staggered along for a couple of years, then fell over dead after one horrible (BS 1980) death spasm. I don't remember much of it, aside from the Cylons (I still use "by your command" as a snarky reply in various servers I write, even though it never made it into postoffice) and bits of a scene where a different goodguy space cruiser went out in a blaze of really big missiles, but I was disappointed when it finally died the death of a million ratings.
Well, eventually a network decided to bring the silly thing back to life, and it returned to the teeny screen to what appeared to be favorable reviews. I don't watch TV any more, and I've been burned by bad remakes of old shows before, so I didn't pay it much attention and just passed by the occasional post about it in the lefty/scifi weblogs I read.
Until just today, when the weblog Lawyers, Guns and Money, which I read occasionally for their Sunday Battleship Blogging™ series, posted a Sunday Battlestar Blogging article right above the Battlemate of the week (HMAS Australia, if you're interested) and I read it, was mildly intrigued, and followed up by reading the comments, which were filled with *wow*, *ohmygod*, and other expressions of shock and awe, because apparently the writers decided to deorbit the Galactica (the eponymous spaceship of the series) onto some planet where the refugee humans had set up a new colony which was now being attacked by the Cylons.
Now, the Galactica is a spaceship that's drawn like the Star Wars imperial Star Destroyer -- it has the aerodynamic profile of a brick and the thermal resistance of a kerosene-soaked strawbale, so it should never ever be put anywhere near a place where you'd have to plough through large masses of pesky gasses at any sort of speed, so when one of the commentators mentioned that they'd gootubed a video of the deorbiting, I had to watch it:
Guess what? Youtube has been borged by g**gl*, so the copyright lawyers have moved in and started purging videos. You might think that having trailers online would be a 100% win, but, no, apparently a low-resolution screen grab TAKES REVENUE AWAY from the studios, despite the teeny detail of it selling copies of the show.
Now, you don't drop spaceships into an atmosphere unless they're designed for it. And if you do, you certainly don't launch skirmish craft from the spaceship while it's fireballing its way down towards the planet. And a long-abiding cliche of superluminal drives in science fiction is that you never jump into warp when you're close to a planet.
Excuse me, but I have to pick my jaw up off the floor now. I don't know if the rest of the show lives up to this clip, but it compares favorably to the opening scene in Star Wars. I think I might have to go DVD shopping now.
Comments
Likewise not a fan of the original but have ordered the DVDs on the strength of this clip and your recommendation. See you in about a week or so…
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Normally, I don’t shill for teevee show. This is an exception.
Believe me, as a very disappointed (of late) and picky sci-fi nut, this show is far more an intense drama than a typical sci-fi show.
There’s been genocide, nuclear holocausts, grief, suspicion, betrayals, double agents, paranoia, mysticism, xenophobia, arguments over monotheism and polytheism, religious fanaticism, freedom fighters/terrorists, suicide bombings, nearly-stolen elections, nasty black markets… need I go on?
This show is the only reason I might ever consider getting cable.
Get the DVDs for seasons one and two. They are definitely worth it.