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Loved the original Battlestar but not so much for it's awkward and sometimes embarrassingly bad pilot story Saga of a Star World. While the rest of the series is variable, and suffers from the curse of overused stock footage, it does eventually shake off it's shameful cash-in of Star Wars and become it's own Space Opera.

The remake has the same core concept; intergalactic refugees fleeing a ruthless enemy, in search of Earth...with space battles. But otherwise they're two completely different shows where one is a Star Wars-esque family show, while the other is strictly adults only with very nasty situations.

Personally I wouldn't rate one over the other, but I would recommend Babylon 5 instead as a comfortable middle ground. If there is a future for Battlestar Galactica then a continuation of the 2004 series should definitely go ahead, but there is also a good opportunity to make an animated show remake of the original much like Clone Wars.

It definitely retains its charm, even if it is pretty dated in acting and sets. And yeah, the reliance on stock footage does wear thin. But that’s a budgetary constraint I’m happy to accept. At least it’s good stock footage.

The remake is excellent though. Loses it a bit toward the end, but whilst we’re taking account of eras and unusual challenges? A chunk of that is on the writer’s strike and its inevitable impact.

What I really like is how it shows the unavoidable stress of the Colonial Fleet’s situation. Also, Baltar is a fascinating character. He screwed up, big time. But he crucifies himself too much. A horrific error in judgement, but an innocent one. Nobody else new about Skinjobs after all, so how could he have foreseen the outcome?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Battlestar Galactica]

The original series.

As a TV show, for its era, this is pretty cool. The effects and even the dialogue aren’t up to Star Wars standards, but they’re still well above par for its time, and shockingly well invested in for a Made For TV Cash In.

Plot wise my main bugbear is whilst in one another’s presence, the other Battlestar’s just do nowt whilst Galactica is clearly having a good old punch up.

Gonna do the whole of this, then ideally the (vastly superior) remake.

The original BSG is underrated, many of the episodes contained over 40% new content vs reused footage from the pilot.

Its that shot of boomer looking like a right player in his cockpit...cracks me up everytime. Family Guy material right there!

One thing I did enjoy about the 00s show was...the coffee crisis. Hands down the highlight of the whole show!

Something bugging me about the original BSG.

Feels like every week, they find another human world, riddled with ‘orrid smelly hoomans. And at the end of the episode, just sort of leave them there.

Maybe it’s a cunning plan to slow the Cylon pursuit down by giving them endless targets of opportunity?

 LordofHats wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Finished "The Batman" and it's pretty good. It suffers from being made right after the Batman TAS, Superman TAS, Justice League Unlimited trifecta and got overlooked. It has has similar quality but it's its own thing. OK it could be written off as BATMAN EXTREME!

Everyone is leveled up, everyone knows kung fu and jumped like ninjas, even the Penguin. The Jeff Matsuda designs (a protege of Rob Liefeld) really add to that.

Season 3 brings in Batgirl, who is a lot of fun.
Season 4 has Robin who is even more so.

Season 5 suffers from the introduction of their version of the Justice League, so suddenly instead of The Batman, we get episodes about Green Lantern, Green Arrow and Hawkman, just the people I want to see when I watch a show called The Batman. It's OK but again it invites the TAS comparisons.

It's on US Netflix until the 21st so I finished it just under the wire.

Yeah. Aside from a bit of an odd interpretation of Joker visually, I think The Batman is a really good show that just has the misfortune of following the DCAU of old.

I actually though Kung Fu Penguin was a good twist for the character.

Honestly, even the Joker is good in hindsight. We just, at that point, hadn't gotten many alternate takes and reimagings of the character outside of the comics. We had iconic interpritations by Jack Nicholson and Mark Hamil and had not quite seen the character in other forms. Honestly, in retrospect, I wish the straight jacket had stuck around longer.

As I delve ever deeper into the original BSG, I’m surprised at just how much of its plots/ideas, in one way or another, were adopted, refined and improved by the remake.

I have seen all this before, as it aired on BBC2 at teatime when I was a smelly teen. But it was sufficiently long ago I’ve no detailed memories.

And I must tip my hat to it for being an early example of Season Arc type storytelling.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I have seen all this before,

Thats because : All of this has happened before. All of this will happen again.

That what I was going for

But yeah, the original I think still stands as a surprisingly mature bit of telly. Albeit one done in by its budget.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
That what I was going for

But yeah, the original I think still stands as a surprisingly mature bit of telly. Albeit one done in by its budget.

Only thing I remember of the original was that I tapped out when the show got to Earth. Think my parents enjoyed them, but I had discovered Star Wars and to a lesser extent Star Trek by then and they gave me the sci-fi fix that my pre-teen brain could handle at the time.

The 2004 series was so stellar (to me) that I personally have no interest in going back to the OG series. I actually tried in between seasons of the remake, but I wasn't feeling it.

Oh Galactica 80 is apparently Bloody Awful.

I’ve not seen it, so can’t really say.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would say give the OG a whirl. To see the nucleus of so many remake plot points and that is something I’m finding very interesting. As is a first, if somewhat faltering, foray into televised sci-fi saga story telling, rather than entirely episodic.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh Galactica 80 is apparently Bloody Awful.

I’ve not seen it, so can’t really say.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I would say give the OG a whirl. To see the nucleus of so many remake plot points and that is something I’m finding very interesting. As is a first, if somewhat faltering, foray into televised sci-fi saga story telling, rather than entirely episodic.

Galactica 1980 is important as it's spinoff is amazing...

Knight Rider.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As I delve ever deeper into the original BSG, I’m surprised at just how much of its plots/ideas, in one way or another, were adopted, refined and improved by the remake.

I have seen all this before, as it aired on BBC2 at teatime when I was a smelly teen. But it was sufficiently long ago I’ve no detailed memories.

And I must tip my hat to it for being an early example of Season Arc type storytelling.

I still watch the odd episode of the newer BSG but there was too few of them that I genuinely enjoyed. The Cylon starfighter stalking the asteroid field was a good thriller, and the liberation of New Caprica was exciting. The show's ending was at least interesting. But most of the time it was torture, sex, wife beating, 9/11, selling children, guantanamo bay, the white house, swat teams. Sigh...CGI Cylons if they could afford more than that party dress.

I'm just glad they didn't get their hands on Little House On The Prairie!

There's talk of a new version of BSG but I honestly think both incarnations could co-exist if the 78 show was revived in the Clone Wars style, while they do the expected live action continuation of the 00s show.

I was a big fan of the new BSG for the first two seasons. After the New Caprica arc and the reset making it clear there was no actual plan, the series got worse and worse and unforgivably worse for me. I didn’t think much of the ending, either. I can’t go back and watch any episodes because the whole thing just a one big story, one continuous mystery box used to keep the audience invested in self-indulgent misery porn.


I’ll still watch the OG series opening two parter every now and then for the cheese.

Took me two tries and a span of years to get into the new BSG, because I didn't enjoy the pilot at all the first time around. Second try a decade later I got hooked, and enjoyed it right up until the last season, where it completely missed the landing.

Meanwhile, we have one episode to go on Wheel of Time season 3, and it's been a fun ride so far.

And the battle of Two Rivers managed to actually surprise me on a couple of fronts...

Minor things, but it's nice to have something not turn out as expected after such a steady stream of predictable tropes.

MobLand

It’s a right royal cockney barrel of monkies, as two Laaaaaahndaaaaaaahn crime families go to war. Because someone’s grandson is a jumped up little gimp with no sense of responsibility.

Tom Hardy, Paddy Considine, Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan are our big names. So I’ve reasonable expectations that this will be good.

Grandson can’t go squish fast enough though. Think ‘Skins’ for the sort of obnoxious yoof we’re dealing with here.

One for MDG. Comic Strip is coming to Netflix this weekend.

Ooooooh! I’ll look forward to that.

Doctor Who

Oh dear. We’re heading to another confused mess and universe reset finale, aren’t we?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Doctor Who

Oh dear. We’re heading to another confused mess and universe reset finale, aren’t we?

That's not a glowing review. Any chance the series recovers, or is it too far gone into wacky-land?

It’s mostly been alright. No shockers like Space Babies.

I just fear we’re in for another trademark confused and convoluted finale.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s mostly been alright. No shockers like Space Babies.

I just fear we’re in for another trademark confused and convoluted finale.

Convoluted is the tag line for the last few Series finales.

But is the series fun to watch? I usually just binge Dr. Who after it's all come out.

Yeah, I’d say so. Some fun ideas in there for certain.

I wish I had left Doctor Who at Jodie's era, as curiosity killed the cat with the return of Davis. Shame, as I hear he's brought back two classic villians since.

 insaniak wrote:
Took me two tries and a span of years to get into the new BSG, because I didn't enjoy the pilot at all the first time around. Second try a decade later I got hooked, and enjoyed it right up until the last season, where it completely missed the landing.

Meanwhile, we have one episode to go on Wheel of Time season 3, and it's been a fun ride so far.

And the battle of Two Rivers managed to actually surprise me on a couple of fronts...

Spoiler:

Perrin and Dain don't have a moment where they save each other's life, or wind up fighting back-to-back, ideally with a moment where they link arms and spin around to kill each others' current opponent...

And when Dain comes back for Perrin the next morning, he actually does take him into custody, instead of saying ''Well, right, you've proven to be honorable, so just, I dunno, don't kill my dad again..."

Minor things, but it's nice to have something not turn out as expected after such a steady stream of predictable tropes.

Did you hear? They canceled Wheel of Time. [Insert Lame Time Puns Here]

Yeah, we had actually held off getting into the series in the first place on the assumption that they would never finish it (which would be ironic, since it was the same reason I never got around to reading the books...) but then when it got to season three and seemed to be doing well, we thought 'Hey, why not give it a go?' ... and then they immediately cancelled it.

Here's hoping someone else picks it up.

Making a start on Last of Us S2.

Enjoying the show, shame about Now TV’s obnoxious ads.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Episode 2 is really good! Lovely to see a township well prepared, with effective defences, something The Walking Dead never quite cracked in my opinion.

I am still somewhat baffled at how such an infection could run so badly out of control. I mean, Cordyceps takes time to mature, and the initial mutation must’ve been fairly well isolated. But I guess if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have much of a show!

Turns out it had infested cereal crops in South America. Which only partially makes sense, but I’ll allow it.

The Avengers:- Earths Mightiest Heroes

An animated Marvel series from a time before everything had to be connected.

I haven't watched this in a few years, and it still holds up very well.
It's not perfect, its biggest flaw is being overly ambitious with all the plot threads it tries to juggle, this becomes very noticeable towards the end where they're running out of episodes and start speed-running through the rest of the story.

(I also hate that they replace the exceptionally cheesy pop-rock opening theme for a weird Nick Fury monologue at the start of season 2).

But, overall, I think it's the best bit of Marvel animation they've done to date.

Legion:- Season 3

Marginally better than season 2, it manages to recapture some of the earlier whimsy the show had, and has some standout moments (Like Oliver fighting the personification of humanity's darker elements in a rap battle), but by doubling down on the weird direction the plot took at the end of last season and ending rather anticlimactically, it ultimately feels like I should never have bothered watching past the first season.

At least I streamed it instead of tracking down the rather rare DVD sets like I originally planned!

Murderbot Diaries

So far we’ve seen the first two episodes, and they’ve both done a good job capturing the spirit of the book series.