Battlestar Galactica: The mini

[meganbmoore]

I was planning to save Battlestar Galactica to take with me to the parents this weekend(where I'll be for about 2 weeks) but I ended up deciding to start it last night, and I finished it just now.

To start with, I'm not really a big sci-fi person.  Grew up on Star Wars and occassionally watching Star Trek on TV, but I've always tended to lean more towards fantasy(both high and urban) mystery, romance and historical fiction.  When I do like scifi, it's usually of the near future, mostly earthbound variety.  The only scifi novel series I've ever really gotten into are Simon R. Green's Deathstalker novels and Christopher Stasheff's Warlock/Wizard series(that said, I have a fondness for space comics)  The only Scifi TV series of the deep space variety I've ever really gotten into is Firefly, which, I admit, may have caused me to set my standards too high.  I really liked the first season of Stargate SG-1 when I watched it a couple months ago, but the biggest appeal to me was the historical and mythological takes on the societies of the various worlds.  That said, I really want to watch Andromeda and Farscape, should I ever find them at good prices.

Which brings us to BSG.

I liked the mini a fair bit...though it went from "ok enough" in the first hour to "liking it" by the end.  While I'm not completely convinced yet that that it's my thing, it's definately good enough for me to stick with it, at least through the rest of season 1.  I did,. however, have 1 quasi problem and 2 big problems with it.

The quasi problem is the big cast and the names.  Granted, this was a 3 hour show that had a huge cast and a lot of story to tell, but I know exactly 4 names-Adama, Apollo, Starbuck and Baltar, and I knew the names going in and had the faces figured out after a scene or two.  But I have no idea who anyone else is, really.  The 3 characters I liked the best-the female pilot who had to leave her partner behinmd and is apparently a cylon agent but may or may not know, her partner and her boyfriend-I have no idea what their names are, though I THINK I heard Boomer and Helo or Halo tossed around in relation to them.  I also rather like Apollo, but I don't know how much of that is my liking him, and how much is that my reaction to Jamie Bamber is like my reaction to Ioan Gruffud and Paul MacGann:  I loved them in Horatio Hornblower, so unless the character sucks or annoys me, my instinct is to like hem in something else I see them in.

Problem 1:  Lack of subtlety:  this show is really caught up in it's drama and what it perceives as it's intellect and cleverness.  And while it is very complex and smart enough, the result is that it has all the subtlety of a ton of bricks.  And then after dumping the bricks on my head, the show picked up a brick then started whacking me with it so I wouldn't forget.

Problem 2: Starbuck.  I know this makes me a philistine to many on my flist, but I don't like her.  That brick it kept whacking me on the head with was "Look! Starbuck is a strong female character!"  Now, I like my strong female characters, but I like them to be strong because their women.  Starbuck, at least in the mini, is very much of the "Strong woman equals a man with breasts" variety...everything that was supposed to indicate to us that she was strong were qualities typically associated with men, as in "look, she's as strong as a man" not "look, she's a strong woman."  She rubbed me the wrong way in her first scene, and it never got any better(worse actually)  Like I said, I like my strong female characters to be strong because they're women, not because the main thing that makes them different from the men around is their equipment.  I much preferred the other female pilot and the president.  That said, this is the mini and they were trying to cram a ton of stuff in, so I may like her more once I get to the series.

Hmm...this post actually makes my opinion sound much more negative than it actually is. My overall opinion is pretty positive, there were just a few things that kept drawing me out of it.

Comments

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

"my reaction to Ioan Gruffud and Paul MacGann: I loved them in Horatio Hornblower, so unless the character sucks or annoys me, my instinct is to like them in something else I see them in."

In that case you might enjoy the 1996 "Doctor Who" TV movie...

(and to answer the question you are about to ask: no, I don't ever give up...)

[bzoppa.livejournal.com]

Hee, are you trying to get her to watch Doctor Who?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

he is among several

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

It's all right. The longer she puts off watching any, the harder she's going to fall when she finally does... (eeeeevil grin)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

but I'm told it's bad...

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

It's fairly resoundingly average. It's got its good bits (Grace, Paul McGann as the Doctor, bits which might be spoilers about the Master) and its not so good bits (Eric Roberts as the Master, others are fairly major spoilers) but overall it's better than some of the original TV series (which could be awesomely good and awesomely bad within the space of a year - there was less than a year between "The Talons of Weng-Chiang" and "Underworld", for example).

And some of the bits that grated on me might not worry you so much as you're not as familiar with the original TV series. So if you're that big a fan of Paul McGann it's worth a look-see. (And a lot of people who don't even like the film still think McGann was one of the good things about it.)

[bzoppa.livejournal.com]

Ah, BSG, how I feel about thee, I don't even know.

Mom sent me the miniseries on DVD and I near-hated it. I was bored stiff.

First season, meh.

First couple episodes of season 2: such meh I stopped watching completely. My friend iheartschnickle picked up the show and started telling me about it, and I finally gave in and started watching again. Season 2 certainly had its moments.

However... I stopped after 3.9 (which was pretty good, I don't know what I stopped watching completely) and I haven't been able to pick it back up since. I started 3.10 a couple of weekends ago and stopped after 2 minutes. It's like my quitting Babylon 5 and Xena: I just didn't care anymore. Not even enough to finish them off, no matter how many years they've been over and how much I loved the early seasons.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

well, I'm giving it the entire first season, as I got the mini and series set for $20, so we'll see.

[alexandral.livejournal.com]

I started watching BSG from the middle of the first season and when I got to watch mini-series I loved it but at this point I was already in love with the show. I am having big problems with Starbuck as the character too, but they started much later, I remember I liked her in the season 1 very much. I like Boomer (the girl who left her partner) theoretically but the actress has a very low range of facial expressions for me..

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I suspect that the bulk of my problems will get better in the series, as I can attribute a lot of it to cramming a lot into a relatively short period, but it's going to take a major change for me to like Starbuck.

Ah, Boomer. Well, if she's a cylon, she has a good excuse for limited facial range...