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Still a Slow Process...
Jan. 6th, 2004 02:29 pmArgh... didn't get anything done last night by way of updating either this journal or the site - go figure, I was so stoked to have gotten the thing up and running and to have actually received comments so quickly that I ended up just going to the bar with my site partner/couchmate/husband and blabbing over pints about the current state of morality in sci-fi. Yes, these are the kinds of discussions we have on a regular basis... now you know why I write like this.
The catalyst to this particular topic was a belated viewing of the Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica remake (taped it). Only made it through the first half as yet - it's a slow starter - but the missile-heavy battle sequences near the end of part one are pretty well worth the slog. Don't so much mind the female Starbuck - although I did have the world's biggest crush on Dirk Benedict just like most girls did back in the day - but I'm not quite so happy with the sudden bleaching of the cast. C'mon, the original Colonel Tigh was Terry Carter, who might be best known for appearing in Foxy Brown with Pam Grier, so why it's okay for the new guy to be whitey is kinda beyond me. Or are we all so PC now we're not supposed to notice? Right.
Or how about this: maybe the new TV paradigm is that women = minorities, since the formerly-black-male Boomer's also been turned into a chick? She's even a two-for-one, as she's also Asian.... which I guess would make her the eviqualent of the black-guy-in-a-wheelchair-who's-also-a-computer-whiz you always used to see in genre shows a few years back. And whoops, now I'm realizing what's really going on here - all the guys have been replaced with girls because I guess Sci-Fi Channel has decided that its target audience consists of straight males. That would also explain the Cylons now being supermodels in black pleather underwear. Huh.
On the plus side, however, I was surprised at the unflinching harshness of the thing - refugees are shot dead, and firefighters who couldn't get behind the bulkhead doors in time are expelled into space. War is hell, no kidding. This almost approaching a Japanese level of grimness - and by that I mean one of those animated sci-fi dramas you used to see in the '70s and '80s, where characters died unexpectedly nearly every week and there was lots of stirring, patriotic music, and cathartic sobbing. The harshness was there in the original Battlestar Galactica show, but the tone is different in this somehow... kinda hard to explain.
But must every sci-fi now feature interiors with eye-straining lighting? Whatever happened to that sterile-bright future aesthetic where everything was made of white plastic? Sigh....
The catalyst to this particular topic was a belated viewing of the Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica remake (taped it). Only made it through the first half as yet - it's a slow starter - but the missile-heavy battle sequences near the end of part one are pretty well worth the slog. Don't so much mind the female Starbuck - although I did have the world's biggest crush on Dirk Benedict just like most girls did back in the day - but I'm not quite so happy with the sudden bleaching of the cast. C'mon, the original Colonel Tigh was Terry Carter, who might be best known for appearing in Foxy Brown with Pam Grier, so why it's okay for the new guy to be whitey is kinda beyond me. Or are we all so PC now we're not supposed to notice? Right.
Or how about this: maybe the new TV paradigm is that women = minorities, since the formerly-black-male Boomer's also been turned into a chick? She's even a two-for-one, as she's also Asian.... which I guess would make her the eviqualent of the black-guy-in-a-wheelchair-who's-also-a-computer-whiz you always used to see in genre shows a few years back. And whoops, now I'm realizing what's really going on here - all the guys have been replaced with girls because I guess Sci-Fi Channel has decided that its target audience consists of straight males. That would also explain the Cylons now being supermodels in black pleather underwear. Huh.
On the plus side, however, I was surprised at the unflinching harshness of the thing - refugees are shot dead, and firefighters who couldn't get behind the bulkhead doors in time are expelled into space. War is hell, no kidding. This almost approaching a Japanese level of grimness - and by that I mean one of those animated sci-fi dramas you used to see in the '70s and '80s, where characters died unexpectedly nearly every week and there was lots of stirring, patriotic music, and cathartic sobbing. The harshness was there in the original Battlestar Galactica show, but the tone is different in this somehow... kinda hard to explain.
But must every sci-fi now feature interiors with eye-straining lighting? Whatever happened to that sterile-bright future aesthetic where everything was made of white plastic? Sigh....