Re:Battlestar Galactica Miniseries
For those who were curious about how the proposed Tom DeSanto Galactica would’ve been, at http://www.colonialfleets.com/ there’s a short video presentation, very cool (scroll down News page to the Foundation Galactica Demo online article which has links to download it – requires divx codec or player) — love the score.
For some background information … quoted from [url=http://www.battlestarpegasus.com/gallery/desanto_singer_2001/index.html]battlestarpegasus.com[/url] (a set of slides from DeSanto’s version can also be found at the battlestar pegasus link):
[quote=”battlestarpegasus.com”]During 2001, Tom DeSanto and Bryan Singer (X-Men) announced their intent to bring Battlestar Galactica to the small screen, starting with a television pilot and ongoing series for the FOX Network (U.S.). While details were not broadly shared with the public, the production was planned as a continuation of the original 1978-79 series, set 20+ years since the last episode (“The Hand of God”) and ignoring the ill-fated spinoff, Galactica 1980 (save for the events of one episode, “The Return of Starbuck”).
Information about the series plans were kept to a minimum, due to network negotiations, production development and the wishes of the producers to unveil the production with minimum spoilage. Unfortunately, due to the events of September 11, 2001 (as conveyed by Mr. DeSanto at Galacticon 2003), the production took significant, critical development delays. By December 2001, Mr. Singer was fully committed to directing X2: X-Men United and the production was shut down. Mr. DeSanto strove to keep the production alive, although the SCI-FI Channel took the reins and “re-imagined” it with it’s December 2003 mini-series effort…[/quote]
By the way, I saw some of the new Galactica miniseries. Unfortunately, I was out for most of the time as it aired on Space the Imagination Station… was pretty good from what I saw (more complex characters than the original; not so corny). One criticism though, I think it will date just as the old series did (which was way too obviously stuck in the 70s) but not quite so much perhaps — not just because of the effects, but also because of the dialogue. There was one particular line that made me cringe, “Let’s go kick some Cylon ass.” Aside from it being rather, erm, crass, it’s an all too common movie/TV cliché of the day. Sometimes for a show to endure well, it’s best to make it as timeless as possible (of course Galactica, like LEXX and others, doesn’t take place in the future…) – there are exceptions… They tried to make The Prisoner timeless in a way, but then in the final episode, The Beatles “All You Need is Love” is blaring on the jukeboxes as they start gunning down the establishment – subtle, huh? 😉 — not to mention words like “hip”. Great how the Galactica looks with its old WW2ish looking components – was also well explained why they used “primitive” technology in the series… of course their technology is not really supposed to be based on Earth technology, but nice for the viewer to have easy reference points… dialogue included, I suppose.