Barkerburgh

Last night I had a great night of television SF, which I am generally a sucker for, except for Star Trek:Franchise. I mean Enterprise. It sucks. Sucks sucklingly.

Last night, I watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. I was interested in it when I first heard about it, missed it the first time round, Reid (whose opinion I can usually trust on things like this) said I should really catch it, so I did.

Usually when I’m watching TV I have the computer on, writing something or testing something in VB or web stuff, but the quality of this (goddamn Battlestar Galactica, of all things!) was so good, in the storytelling sense, in the characterization sense, in the SFX and CG sense, that I didn’t even want to work on my next famous novel. (I did though, a bit.)

I raised myself on science fiction; my parents were idiots about science and education, and through TV SF of the day (more properly ‘Sci-Fi’), Saturday morning cartoon physics, and SF literature. Later I started looking up all the stuff I thought was true, (warp drive, ghosts, Atlantis, et cetera), learned how to tell the difference, but not hate the fiction, and I came to be the science junky I am today.

But I don’t watch Star Trek:Booby Prize, which did I mention sucks?

Americans generally don’t know how to tell an SF story on television. They’re all the same, rip-offs (the Star Trek franchise eats its own parents and shits clones!), and the movies, feh. Double feh. The Brits can tell good stories in episodic TV SF; witness Space:Island One, or Star Cops.

And I sure as hell didn’t like the original Battlestar Galactica series. It was just Star Wars rip-off crap. Even back then I realized the name was even meant to suggest the same things as the name Star Wars. I watched maybe five episodes of it.

But these guys, Christ, they’ve taken most of the basic ideas of the original, shaken them up, got kickass writers and production designers, and made this miniseries.

The fourteen year old boy in me, which admittedly is most of me, was sitting there thinking, “Oh my God, this is exactly what would have happened to us if twenty years ago we had a war with a race of artificial intelligents that we created who then rebelled and then now they decided to attack us and wipe us out. Exactly!”

They didn’t pull any punches and they resorted to tricks and misdirections. They emotionally manipulated the audience (Me) like crazy and left me wanting more, more, MORE!

And you know what, no sound in space! Just a soundtrack! (Later note: Reid says there were sounds, like machine gun fire, but I heard that as part of the soundtrack, sounds that enhanced what we were seeing in soundless space, but were not space sounds themselves…got it?)

I can’t wait for the series to start.

And of course, yesterday was when the news of the Indian Ocean tsunami reached us, and so last night I had nightmares about floods, nukes and deaths I was powerless to prevent.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

aiabx : So, Reid, how was the holiday in the Dominican Republic?

rae : Bad. We got a case of malaria.

aiabx : Give it to Barker, he’ll drink anything.

lp : Hahahahaha!

mgc : Wha..?

Thank you very much, ladies and gentleman. I’ll be in the Boom Boom Room until Saturday. Make the cook’s day, try the veal. If nobody dies this time, he gets his chef papers.

mgc : Wha..?
…

Is this thing working?

I went to see this on Saturday with Laura Suzuki, (cf)and her friend, the author/illustrator Loris Lesynski, both fine folks.

Peter Cook, among others, was right!

Well, all I can say is what a fine, fun piece of CG cinema. Although I think the hair was so good that they really faked it like Clutch Cargo lips. No, really.

Internally consistent with plot and humour in a way that I like to compare to Galaxy Quest. And Ghostbusters.

Funny? Funnnneeee!

Violet Parr was a great character, and Edna Mode, and even Syndrome, the bad guy.

Great visuals.

Lots of nods and tributes to the genres that inspired it, again like Galaxy Quest. And Ghostbusters.

If you didn’t like it, go read a book, you reader. Or listen to a CD, musicky. It’s your loss, losey.

Get a cape.

(editor’s note: references to Ghostbusters added later, after forgetting about it and then seeing it late last night on TBS - I usually don’t like seeing good movies on TV - especially on TBS - what with commercials, editing and bowdlerizing the dialogue, for frig’s sake, but some are still really watchable cuz the vibe is still there, like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off - where was I?)