GALACTICA

I saw the movie, and although the special effects were fabulous, the three and a half hour movie seemed long to me. This is strange, because I have always been the biggest fan of The Lord of the Rings, and everyone else says how great the new movie is.

Did you know that the plot of the movie Star Wars was stolen from The Lord of the Rings? Yes, think about it. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker is an orphan living with his uncle. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins is an orphan living with his uncle Bilbo Baggins. Luke Skywalker comes upon the secret plans that are the only way to destroy the Death Star. Frodo was given the One Ring which is the only way to destroy the power of Sauron. The Death Star was destroyed by dropping a photo torpedo into a vent in the Death Star while Sauron was destroyed by dropping the Ring into the Pits of Doom. But both quests involve impossible odds, and a diversionary battle to distract the enemy.

Imperial Stormtroopers come looking for Luke Skywalker, while the Nazgul come looking for Frodo. Frodo is aided by the wizard Gandalf. Luke Skywalker is aided by the wizard-like Ben "Obi Wan" Kenobi. In both cases they flee to a bar where they meet up with Han Solo/Strider. And then there is the scene where Ben Kenobi dies fighting Darth Vader buying time for the rest of the party to escape, which is identical to the chapter from The Lord of the Rings where Gandalf dies fighting the Balrog buying time for the rest of the party to escape from the Orcs.

In both cases, Gandalf and Ben Kenobi come back from the dead. (Ben's voice helps Luke at the end when he's piloting the fighter and finally launches the missile that destroys the Death Star.)

You are wondering, by this point, does this have anything to do with Battlestar Galactica? Not a whole lot, but (1) I figure I can throw in some other science fiction themes in here from time to time; and (2) I think it's incredibly hypocritical that George Lucas sued ABC because he claimed that Battlestar Galactical copies his ideas, while he so obviously copied J.R.R. Tolkien's ideas.

I guess I have a responsibility to give a complete review of the new Battlestar Galactica. So here goes…

The three things I like most about the old Battlestar Galactia are the music, the cool looking Cylons, and the interaction between the characters. The new Battlestar Galactica has none of these things. I’ve already commented about the lack of orchestral accompaniment. I guess the Sci-Fi channel can’t afford the same production qualities as a major network like ABC (even ABC in 1978).

The only Cylons in the new Battlestar Galactica that get much airtime are the ones that look just like humans. We only see the Cylon robots for a few seconds, and although they have a new look that is sort of more outwardly menacing, somehow the old classic Cylons from the 1978 series had an inner menacing quality that the new Cylons lack.

Maybe the new robot Raider spacecraft make more sense, but it was so visually appealing seeing the three Cylons sitting in the cockpit, talking to each other in that raspy Cylon voice. It’s one of the things I love about the original series.

Finally, there is the complete lack of any enjoyable character interaction. The only character I find appealing in the new Battlestar Galactica is Baltar. He’s supposed to be evil, but he’s not really any worse than anyone else in the show, and therein lies the show’s problem. The people who created the new Battlestar Galactica are patting themselves on the back for creating a show with what they think are more realistic characters. Well my word for them, if they are reading this, is that in the real world there are people who are good people, who get along with their parents and their children, who have friends that they care for, and who have a sense of honor. These are the people that the old Battlestar Galactica focused on, while the new Battlestar Galatica chooses to show us as unflattering a portrayal of humanity as possible. The character interaction is the heart of the old Battlestar Galactica, and it has been ripped out in the new re-imagining.

What I hate most about the old Battlestar Galactica is the way the show completely mangles physics and science. The new Battlestar Galactica at least fixes the space physics problems. So far there is nothing that seems to outrageously violate the three dimensionality of space. Faster than light travel is explained in a way that makes more sense. (Perhaps faster than light travel isn’t possible in the real world, but without it you can’t have a story about spaceships traveling between the stars.)

After the creators of the new Battlestar Galactica did such a great job of fixing the weak science from the old series, and even explain why the fleet has a prison barge (something I’ve been wondering about for decades), they had to go and introduce a completely new absurdity. And that is the plot device that makes the Cylons look just like humans, and furthermore completely undetectable. This seems scientifically impossible to me. The human looking Cylon was affected by the part of space they were in (I forgot exactly what the explanation was). If the physiology of the biological Cylon is different enough so that it’s sensitive to certain areas of space, then it has to be different enough for the advanced technologies aboard the Galactica to detect. Right?

The new Battlestar Galactica doesn’t live up to its name. I wish they had named it something else, then it would have been a fine science fiction show that didn’t disgrace the Battlestar Galactica name. But obviously, stealing the name and some elements of the original storyline is about cashing in. The name recognition attracted the viewers, it was the best rated show on the Sci-Fi channel all of this year. And it’s easier to rewrite old stories than to make up new original stories.

We will probably see more of this new Battlestar Galactica because of its ratings. And I’m sure they will copy more storylines from the old Battlestar Galactica as well. I’ll probably watch them too.

What's missing from the new Battlestar Galactica is the music. Who turned off the music?

What's in the new Battlestar Galactica is a coed bathroom scene, which they stole from Starship Troopers. I had no idea that would be in there when I wrote about that scene just two days ago.

The female Starbuck is cute.

Overall, the series is just plain boring so far. The characters don't have the chemistry together like they did in the original series.

No, this post is not about what would happen if the Battlestar Galactica crew met up with the Starship Troopers gang and had to fight it out. (Although I may as well point out that the Galactica would kick butt in a space battle against the spaceships from Starship Troopers. But the Colonial Warriors would be totally killed in a ground battle against the Mobile Infantry. The M.I. had super advanced fighting suits that turned the soldier into a killing machine. All the Colonials had were those black leather outfits they wore when they raided Gamoray.)

I just finished rereading Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, and naturally I couldn’t help but think about the comparisons with Battlestar Galactica. Some RAH fans might be aghast that I’m comparing the two against each other. RAH is, after all, the Dean of science fiction. But when you compare Starship Troopers, the movie, against Battlestar Galactica, then BG wins that contest easily. The one thing I couldn’t help but notice in Starship Troopers, the movie, is that in the future everyone is incredibly good looking. Even Doogie Howser looks pretty good in the future.

With the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries set to premiere on the Scifi channel in just a few hours, one notices the similarities between how they messed up both the Starship Troopers movie and the new miniseries. In Starship Troopers, the book, the Mobile Infantry was one hundred percent men. In the movie, the M.I was inexplicably co-ed. They even took showers together. Similarly, in the new miniseries, Starbuck and Boomer inexplicable became women. Somehow, when Hollywood makes a new movie or miniseries out of an old story, they have to add more women. It doesn’t make any sense.

The girl in the Starship Troopers movie had some nice muscles. If she had a fight with Dirk Benedict, she’d kick his ass! (Dirk was pretty skinny. I predict that all the male warriors in the new BG miniseries are going to be all buffed out like they walked out of a body building contest.)

Robert Heinlein truly put the science into science fiction. Even though the book was written more than forty years ago, I can’t see anything in it that doesn’t make any sense. It's the complete opposite with Battlestar Galactica where none of the science makes any sense.

The most important similarity between BG and Starship Troopers is that they both have a political message. In many ways, it's the same message. In Starship Troopers, the government is run by people who have served in the military. The theory is that only veterans have the virtue to run a government. In BG, there’s a civilian government, but we wish that the military was running things because the civilian government always make the dumbest decisions. In their hunger for peace, the civilian Council brings down the complete destruction of humanity. And then they keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

An important difference between the messages is that BG had a very religious theme to it. Heinlein, on the other hand, was an atheist, and all the sensible characters in his books don’t make religion an important part of their lives.