It may be okay, but it ain't Battlestar Galactica
After the new episodes of SG-1 and Atlantis, both of which were good, I decided to watch some of Battlestar Galactica.
The title says it all.
Part of what made the original great was the premise. These were humans who were looking for earth, and culturally, they weren't anything like us. The only things that they people in the original series had in common with us were the things that are fundamentally human. Hopes and dreams and fears and flaws. The new series seems to be based far too much on modern times, even to the point of the marines being armed with undisguised P90s (not a good idea to have those particular firearms representing futuristic weaponry in a timeslot after two shows wherein the characters use real P90s).
The inventive curse words in the original that let them pull off what to the people on the Galactica would have been R-rated dialogue in a censorship-heavy era were cool too. In the first five minutes, I heard no less than three RL cursewords in the new version.
Why did they feel they had to change most of the characters? Apollo went from being a cool guy with an adopted family to some whiny guy who isn't even named Apollo. Starbuck when from being a rather Han-Solo-ish guy for whom Dirk Benedict was the absolute correct casting choice to being a girl, and again, isn't actually named Starbuck. Boomer went from being a black guy to an asian girl, and yet again, is not actually named Boomer. Colonel Tigh is no longer an uptight black guy, he's an uptight white guy who also happens to be a drunk.
And Richard Hatch (the original Apollo) had a guest appearance as a convicted terrorist. Yay.
And to top it all off, the interior sets in the ships are all really dark. Unless they went into 'red light' mode, the original series had bright lighting in the ships.
All in all, I don't think it's a good sign when the commercials for the series that have these glowing quotes from critics blatantly refuse to even mention the original (which, as you can probably tell by now, I am a fan of).
Edit: One last thing. They don't even have the distinctive and rather inspiring opening theme from the original series. It's like they're purposefully trying to distance themselves from it.
The title says it all.
Part of what made the original great was the premise. These were humans who were looking for earth, and culturally, they weren't anything like us. The only things that they people in the original series had in common with us were the things that are fundamentally human. Hopes and dreams and fears and flaws. The new series seems to be based far too much on modern times, even to the point of the marines being armed with undisguised P90s (not a good idea to have those particular firearms representing futuristic weaponry in a timeslot after two shows wherein the characters use real P90s).
The inventive curse words in the original that let them pull off what to the people on the Galactica would have been R-rated dialogue in a censorship-heavy era were cool too. In the first five minutes, I heard no less than three RL cursewords in the new version.
Why did they feel they had to change most of the characters? Apollo went from being a cool guy with an adopted family to some whiny guy who isn't even named Apollo. Starbuck when from being a rather Han-Solo-ish guy for whom Dirk Benedict was the absolute correct casting choice to being a girl, and again, isn't actually named Starbuck. Boomer went from being a black guy to an asian girl, and yet again, is not actually named Boomer. Colonel Tigh is no longer an uptight black guy, he's an uptight white guy who also happens to be a drunk.
And Richard Hatch (the original Apollo) had a guest appearance as a convicted terrorist. Yay.
And to top it all off, the interior sets in the ships are all really dark. Unless they went into 'red light' mode, the original series had bright lighting in the ships.
All in all, I don't think it's a good sign when the commercials for the series that have these glowing quotes from critics blatantly refuse to even mention the original (which, as you can probably tell by now, I am a fan of).
Edit: One last thing. They don't even have the distinctive and rather inspiring opening theme from the original series. It's like they're purposefully trying to distance themselves from it.