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 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Westerns were a dominant genre in TV, movies, novels, radio, pulps and plays for 100 years. Transplanting those tropes to In Space worked well and I can see it working again.

**cough**Mandalorian**cough**

 bbb wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Westerns were a dominant genre in TV, movies, novels, radio, pulps and plays for 100 years. Transplanting those tropes to In Space worked well and I can see it working again.

**cough**Mandalorian**cough**

Because as we all know, when something works really well once Hollywood never tries to find some other existing property that allows them to release the same thing altered slightly to appeal to the same consumers.

 Vulcan wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

 Vulcan wrote:

 Flinty wrote:
Or it is in fact amazingy well written such that the viewers can empathise with both sides and it shows how many shades of grey can occur even in a situation where good and bad should be black and white.

The original Galactica was charmingly 70s. The updated one was a totally different type of show.

How does one empathize genocidal villains, and heroes that manage to out-villain them? I can't think of any groups in history that attempted or committed genocide that are worthy of my empathy, why are these different?

Really, the reboot BSG was not BSG. It used the same names, but really was a completely different show and should have been done WITHOUT any reference to BSG. Call it 'Complete Jerks Being Killed By Genocidal Robots' or some such.

More than anything else, the BSG reboot reminded me of the 1995 movie First Knight. They took names from Arthurian legend, tossed all the staples of the legends, stories, and previous movies, and created an AWFUL movie. Lancelot, the perfect knight... as a rogue and thief? Say what?

Just as awful as Commander Tigh going from a total professional to a drunken incompetent, or Lieutenant Starbuck going from a charming scoundrel to an insubordinate jerk (and worse). Base slander on the original characters.

If you're going to completely re-write the story, the characters, and even the basic concept to that extent, go the extra step and make up your own names. Don't try to sell it using an existing franchise if you're not going to do honor the pre-existing material.

Oh, stop the "X wasn't X" talk. The title screen said BSG, so that's what it was. Doesn't matter that YOU didn't like it -- BSG is what everyone involved in the show worked hard to create. The majority of fans and critics would probably argue that it's one of the best executed reboots ever. Because like the best cover songs (very interesting that Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower' is considered to be that), it's familiar yet genuinely offers something new. Creators have the right to re-interpret older material. Some of the best storytelling comes that way.

If you don't like the newer BSG, that's fine and you can go re-watch the originals any time you want. But let's be real about the 'existing franchise'. It was a single season back in the '70s that even a lot of Gen Xers never saw. How much of a 'franchise' was there?

The point remains that if you change the names involved, even the people who HAD seen the previous entry would never have connected the two together. It wasn't a re-imagining at all; it was something completely different and only linked to the original by those names.

The captain of an aircraft carrier in space leads a ragtag fleet of civilian ships on a quest to find the lost planet Earth after their colonies are destroyed by a peacetime sneak attack by their robot adversaries. That's completely recognizable.

Some characters being different in their execution doesn't make the show 'unrecognizable'. Even Starbuck is *recognizable* as the cards-playing, cigar-chomping, somewhat promiscuous hotshot top pilot in the fleet and best friend to Apollo. Kara Thrace is certainly more troubled than the Dirk Benedict version, but it's also a much more interesting character. Old Starbuck was a cartoon character that probably had more character development in one episode of Galactica 1980 than in the entire single season of BSG.

You're obviously completely entitled to like whichever version you want. I just don't know how you can argue that 'it's not BSG'. It is...it's just not the version you prefer.

A series is more than just a summary, title and names. It's themes, its tone, its which emotional strings does it pull.

As someone who initially skipped the first season of NuBSG in annoyance, I still ended up enjoying most of it but think it would have been better if they had expanded the property instead of cannibalizing it. Why not follow the Pegasus or heaven forbid expand to a different Battle Star. Could have dropped all sorts of easter eggs hinting that the cylons were dividing they're attention elsewhere, would have been neat.

Thats an interesting idea, but with most shows, themes and tone vary (sometimes even wildly) from episode to episode. Most can't manage a consistency that stays the same over the course of series.

Jerram wrote:
A series is more than just a summary, title and names. It's themes, its tone, its which emotional strings does it pull.

As someone who initially skipped the first season of NuBSG in annoyance, I still ended up enjoying most of it but think it would have been better if they had expanded the property instead of cannibalizing it. Why not follow the Pegasus or heaven forbid expand to a different Battle Star. Could have dropped all sorts of easter eggs hinting that the cylons were dividing they're attention elsewhere, would have been neat.

I don't know that the themes between the two series are completely different. The reboot is more intense about them, I think. But that would have happened *to some degree* even if Richard Hatch had gotten his continuation project off the ground. TV changed a lot in the 25-30 years between series.

Regarding a continuation series, creators will always want more freedom, not less, and ditching perceived baggage will help grant that. The cold, hard math is that the original property was never valuable enough to keep as-is. Like I said, even a lot of Gen Xers never saw this one-season show of mixed quality that basically completely faded from non-geek public consciousness (and even many geeks weren't *truly* familiar with it beyond the basic concept). That's an easy full reboot...we're not talking about a sprawling IP with deep roots like SW/ST, etc.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:


Then the movie happens and you are like "They NEVER killed characters in the show, so they will be fine." Then they aren't, so you kind of understand why they were showing how dangerous the life they live is.

I actually figured the movie would go with a Blake's 7 ending.

Spoiler:

Everyone dies

Blake's 7, now there's a show that needs a reboot.

There was a sequel book; Avon and Villa managed to survive, but I don't remember the details of how.

Well almost finished with my rewatch., minus 2 episodes. Somehow one of the DVDs will only show one episode, have to try it on my computer tonight.

's a good show. Deserves its place in the canon, and yeah, deserved a lot more seasons.

The movie Serenity is interesting, if we assume that it's a summarized version of season 2 than some of my concerns would have been answered. Inara and Book left the boat (their rationales for being there were always a bit weak) but reoccur as characters, Wash dies (so does Book), we get answers about River etc.

Simon Tam seems to know a lot more about River in Serenity, presumably he'd have learned that stuff in S1 and 2 but in the film he just knows and never mentioned it.

Thinking about it the sheer number of survivable gun wounds (almost literally one per episode) can be hand waved as superior medical tech. Maybe they could have included a line about it somewhere...

Apparently word of God is the series happened in one solar system with no FTL which I think is a mistake. There's a great line about no matter how far the alliance spreads we'll just move out a little farther, which only works if there's an endless frontier. Plus it makes the idea of the missing planet Miranda kind of... not doable. I prefer the idea they did have some limited FTL, that big flash of light from the Firefly's tail being a jump. But whatever. I do like how they avoided technobabble.

But then again if the Verse is just one solar system it raises other interesting questions like how did humanity get there? Generation ships or is there FTL tech locked away somewhere? And are there other colonized solar systems out there, that maybe took another development path?

So yeah, I can see how fans get lost down the Firefly rabbit hole. There is more here than 'Buffy in the Old West in Space'.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Apparently word of God is the series happened in one solar system with no FTL which I think is a mistake. There's a great line about no matter how far the alliance spreads we'll just move out a little farther, which only works if there's an endless frontier. Plus it makes the idea of the missing planet Miranda kind of... not doable. I prefer the idea they did have some limited FTL, that big flash of light from the Firefly's tail being a jump. But whatever. I do like how they avoided technobabble.

But then again if the Verse is just one solar system it raises other interesting questions like how did humanity get there? Generation ships or is there FTL tech locked away somewhere? And are there other colonized solar systems out there, that maybe took another development path?

So yeah, I can see how fans get lost down the Firefly rabbit hole. There is more here than 'Buffy in the Old West in Space'.

Having glanced at the maps in the RPG for Serenity apparently it's a trinary star system - a binary pair of stars in the center with a red dwarf (that has it's own separate set of planets) orbiting at the edge.

And it all fits in 30 AU, which is ridiculously small.

I think a reboot that's going anywhere will have to rewrite the cosmology. Limited FTL and make the whole thing maybe 3,000 AU - a cluster of 3 stars grouped together in a bigger empty area.

On the FTL side of things, I think they avoided it to give space for the episodes that have them drifting about away from the normal trade routes. Of course there would be ways to make that fit with FTL as well, probably along the lines of 40ks system of having to jump to the outskirts of a system and sublight in.

Then again, at the sublight velocities required to wander about reasonably in a space of 30AUs, it seems unlikely that achieving an interception velocity mid-journey would be worth the fuel.required to achieve the required delta-v.

I think they handled it well, keeping it vague about core worlds and outer worlds and never getting into the mechanics.

Frankly there's no reason they can't keep that up and just ignore any RPG or comics or other auxiliary materials.

I mean, for story telling purposes; you just need to know there ARE Core Worlds and there ARE frontier worlds.

For the story, not much else matters.

Its been confirmed its going to follow Zo and Wash's kid who captains the serenity now. A lot is going to depend on the writing and new cast. But itll allow for cameos.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Its been confirmed its going to follow Zo and Wash's kid who captains the serenity now. A lot is going to depend on the writing and new cast. But itll allow for cameos.

Well that's at least a minor ray of hope that they are sticking with some continuity of the original series whilst giving breathing room to change everything

Just imagine how much more run down the Serenity is by then. Eek!

 Hulksmash wrote:
Its been confirmed its going to follow Zo and Wash's kid who captains the serenity now. A lot is going to depend on the writing and new cast. But itll allow for cameos.

Can we get a source for this?

Sorry to be a negative Norris, but I’m always suspicious of single website reports. It’s not a reflection on you of course, you’re just passing it on.

 Easy E wrote:
I mean, for story telling purposes; you just need to know there ARE Core Worlds and there ARE frontier worlds.

For the story, not much else matters.

Unfortunately, today's sci-fi geeks need to know everything, every detail. Everything must be analyzed and catalogued to ensure that each new episode does not violate the established canon.

Yes, exhausting isn't it?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I mean, for story telling purposes; you just need to know there ARE Core Worlds and there ARE frontier worlds.

For the story, not much else matters.

Unfortunately, today's sci-fi geeks need to know everything, every detail. Everything must be analyzed and catalogued to ensure that each new episode does not violate the established canon.

I remember when a youtuber said in his defense of Dark Souls 2, where the story is fractured and doesn't make sense "it's a geeks worst nightmare, a game where everything can't be put into a wiki"

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I mean, for story telling purposes; you just need to know there ARE Core Worlds and there ARE frontier worlds.

For the story, not much else matters.

Unfortunately, today's sci-fi geeks need to know everything, every detail. Everything must be analyzed and catalogued to ensure that each new episode does not violate the established canon.

Mostly thats just SW geeks. People are perfectly happy to not have every single detail of every characters lives explained ad naseum in the MCU or other geek properties. But at this point SW is more content explaining minutia in detail then anything else.

Oh god it’s not just me!

Are we a supplier group now?

 Lance845 wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I mean, for story telling purposes; you just need to know there ARE Core Worlds and there ARE frontier worlds.

For the story, not much else matters.

Unfortunately, today's sci-fi geeks need to know everything, every detail. Everything must be analyzed and catalogued to ensure that each new episode does not violate the established canon.

Mostly thats just SW geeks. People are perfectly happy to not have every single detail of every characters lives explained ad naseum in the MCU or other geek properties. But at this point SW is more content explaining minutia in detail then anything else.

I'm not sure the MCU is really the best example - there's literally thousands of pages of comics for the people who care what Spiderman's favorite sandwich is or whatever. The minutia is simply in a different medium than the main property.

Also sci-fi geeks have been talking about the intricacies of their favorite setting/series forever. Star Trek fans in the 60s may not have had the internet but they were just as particular about every aspect of their preferred sci-fi series as any SW fan is today.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I mean, for story telling purposes; you just need to know there ARE Core Worlds and there ARE frontier worlds.

For the story, not much else matters.

Unfortunately, today's sci-fi geeks need to know everything, every detail. Everything must be analyzed and catalogued to ensure that each new episode does not violate the established canon.

I remember when a youtuber said in his defense of Dark Souls 2, where the story is fractured and doesn't make sense "it's a geeks worst nightmare, a game where everything can't be put into a wiki"

That explains why Dark Souls 2 is my favorite entry in that series.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Yes, exhausting isn't it?

I refer you to Homers rebuttal of the Itchy and Scratchy ribcage xylophone conundrum

Although keeping my list of gak klaxons Youtubers in need of a good belt sanding to the face fully up to date is kind of tiring

 Hulksmash wrote:
Its been confirmed its going to follow Zo and Wash's kid who captains the serenity now. A lot is going to depend on the writing and new cast. But itll allow for cameos.

This idea is a new comic series launching next March, not connected to any TV show at all AFAICS.

Damn it when we will they finally tell us what State Springfield is in! I'm tired of all the clues and teases!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Damn it when we will they finally tell us what State Springfield is in! I'm tired of all the clues and teases!

I saw an interview back in 97 where Matt Groenig and a couple of the other writers were laughing about that very question, but it turned out one of them had an answer. In an early episode, we see a brief glimpse of Homer’s license with the letters NT under state. One of the writers admitted it was his joke, standing for “North Tacoma”.

I missed this thread earlier, and all I can say is 'meh'.

They can't recapture the original - the group chemistry made the show, and I doubt they can replicate that.

But they can't ruin it either. It was brief and glorious and it died before it had a chance to run out of ideas or be meddled with by executives. It wasn't ruined by resolving the romantic tensions or by any great character reformations (just a bit of nudges in directions), and Serenity pretty much wrapped up the show in a satisfactory manner.