Our lack of more Battlestar Galactica episodes means that the evenings stretch ahead of us, bleak and empty. In a desperate attempt to fill them, PJ suggested we watch the pilot of the original BG and, in a moment of weakness, I agreed. It's very . . . different. I don't just mean the hairstyles (feathered bangs! on men!!), the use of the same special effects shots time after time, or the hysterically bad acting -- although it is highly entertaining watching Lorne Green play Adama as a paranoid nutjob and Jane Seymour representing the daftest mother in the world (seriously, Sirena loses her son Boxey THREE times in the pilot episode alone!). Times and budgets have changed and we can't use the same standards to judge these things.
However, viewing BG 1978 and BG 2004 side by side confirms one of the theses in Steven Johnson's book, "Everything Bad Is Good For You"; TV has become far more complex and demanding of the viewer. The 1978 2-hour pilot is a straightforward run through the Cylon attack, the end of the colonies, finding a new planet, and walking into another Cylon attack. The handful of key characters are introduced and we take them at face value: Adama (paranoid nutjob); Apollo (uptight, moralistic "hero"), Starbuck (comedy value and ladies' man); Baltar (traitor); Sirena (Worst. Mother. Ever!); and a handful of women who are variously criers, screamers, or girlfriends. There are no back stories, no complicated facets to their personalities, no conflicts above and beyond the ones set out as surface stories. There are good warriors (and the daft women who love them) and bad Cylons: That's it.
Compare this with the 3-hour miniseries that kicked off the new BG -- the three grimmest hours of television I've ever watched. A vast array of characters are introduced, some old, some new. We now have a female Secretary of Education who becomes President after the 47 people ahead of her are wiped out; Starbuck and Boomer are both women (although the casting director did a remarkable job of hiring Katee Sackhof, who looks very similar to Dirk Benedict); Gaius Baltar is a top Colonial scientist who's being manipulated by a very sexy Cylon into betraying mankind; and on it goes. Characters have become more complex, their motivations and drivers briefly glimpsed in throwaway lines or vignettes. Every hour is packed with detailed stories that layer action on motivation on conflict, forcing the viewer to concentrate -- everything is relevant. Most importantly, perhaps, there is no such thing as "good" and "bad". Colonel Tigh is an alcoholic hardass; President Roslin is a sympathetic mother figure who can also chuck Cylons out of airlocks without a thought or cut dodgy political deals; and the Cylons have feelings. (When watching BG 1978, I was rooting for the Cylons to take out Jane Seymour, but that probably doesn't count.) Politics, religion, the role of the media in wartime -- all the issues so relevant to us today are explored through sci-fi. Best of all, there are no children (although I'd love to see BG 2004 reintroduce Muffet 2.0, the animatronic "daggit" -- not enough shows have comedy animals).
And Battlestar Galactica isn't the only example of hugely involving television. Lost, Arrested Devlopment, and 24, even Life On Mars and Footballers Wives from the UK, require the viewer to pay attention; the gun shown in the first season may not go off until the third season, but you'd better remember it. If Hollywood execs want to understand why their box office receipts are heading south, they should watch TV: How can their 2-hour movies compete with the richness of these shows? It's obvious why Peter Jackson needed 10 hours to tell The Lord of the Rings and 3 for King Kong. It's also why sequels have become so prevalent; you need the first film just to set up the back story and characters but the result is that these films feel so slow as the "plot proper" is squeezed into the final 20 minutes. Rare is the movie that can establish its characters in the first few minutes and then actually tell a story thereafter. (Compare Batman Begins with War of the Worlds to see this difference and Spielberg's story-telling abilities in action.)
MPAA: It's not downloading that's killing movies; it's television.
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3 comments:
I don't think that most people did know the War of the Worlds story, but my point remains that Spielberg very quickly and effectively sketched in the backgrounds of his characters. As for BB, maybe it shouldn't have been a film at all: No film should really be more than 2 hours, so if you can't get through a very bloated back story in 30 minutes and move on to the main action, it shouldn't be a film. And besides, "everybody" knows the story of how Bruce Wayne's parents are killed in Gotham in front of him. I don't think BB actually played that much with that bit of the story. It was just the overblown Nepalese training sequence that did my head in.
Yikes, no non-Blogger-account comments? You are a harsh blogmistress!
Anyway . . . nice entries on what I like to call Saladbar Galactica. (And thanks for the spoiler warning!) We're about halfway through Season 1 on DVD and enjoying it muchly. As with Lost, the further you get into the episodes, the more fascinated you become with the characters' backstories.
I'm afraid I have to agree with Meneer Jackson on the Batman count. Christian Bale did a bang-up job, in my opinion. Best line from the film undoubtedly has to be, "You know how it is, you're at a party, someone is passing around a weaponized hallucinogen..."
Why Saladbar Galactica? Cuz there's a little somethin' for everyone?
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