Battlestar Galactica – An Early Tease

I think that over time I've mentioned the fact that as someone who blogs about Television as an amateur critic I am at a disadvantage because the networks don't send me "screeners" – episodes of shows sent out in advance by production companies so that critics can have copy to review before the show airs. It is part of my lot in life as an amateur critic, and while I accept it, I have to say that it would be very convenient around season premiere time to have copies of the new shows to review without having to either watch the show as it goes to air or find the time to watch a taped copy. And now I have the opportunity to do just that.

The Sci-Fi Channel in the US has been making a major push to promote the season premiere which will air on both the Sci-Fi Channel in the US and on Space here in Canada on Friday April 4^th. As part of the promotion for the start of the final season of the series, the network (through a company specializing in online promotion) has been sending out material to bloggers and others with an interest in television in general or Battlestar Galactica in particular, or both (that would be me). This included a review screener. Getting the screener included some restrictions, the biggest of which was this one: "After the 3/31/08 hold, I will provide only spoiler-free coverage, which means that ANYTHING that happens in the last 15 minutes of the episode is completely off-limits." I confess that this may put a crimp in my style, but it was a condition I was aware of so let's see how it goes.

The first thing that viewers will note when they see the episode on Friday night is a new introductory sequence instead of the sequence that tells us that human beings created the Cylons, the focus now is on the twelve humanoid Cylon models – seven have been revealed (Sharon, D'Anna, Cavil, Leoben, Doral, Simon and Six), four are living in hiding (Tigh, Anders, Tyrol, and Tory Foster), and one will be revealed. Once this opening sequence is completed and the requisite recap of the important events of the past couple of episodes – notably the apparent death of Starbuck – is finished the action immediately picks up from where we left off at the end of the last season, with the Colonial Fleet unable to jump following a massive power outage, and a huge Cylon fleet closing in on them. Oh yes, and Lee finding a live Starbuck. The battle starts off badly, and the fleet suffers a huge loss in its population when one of the big passenger ships is destroyed and another is badly damaged. And with the Cylons seemingly on the verge of finally eliminating humanity, something happens that causes the Cylons to break off their attack. And that's all before the first commercial.

There are three main plotlines in this episode. The first deals with the four hidden Cylons. There are some tantalizing hints that they aren't entirely the same as the humanoid Cylons that we've come to know. They are wracked with doubt as to what their role in things is. This seems particularly true of Anders while Tigh is the one most determined to retain his humanity. It also fits the notion, stated by series creator and Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that these Cylons are fundamentally different from the others that we know. For them, as well as for us, the questions of where they came from, why they've been activated and where their loyalties actually lie, is something to be discovered.

The second storyline concerns the return of Starbuck. From the moment that we first see her and her ship there is something noticeably different about her and the ship. In fact the difference is so noticeable was that my first thought was that the appearance of her ship was a bit of bad CGI work. But of course the look of things is entirely deliberate, and adds one more aspect to the mystery of what happened to Starbuck. Her claims that she's been to earth and knows how to take them there are greeted with suspicion to say the least. There's a time discrepancy – for Kara only hours have passed but for the fleet several weeks have gone by. And then, while she has pictures of the planet she calls Earth, her ship's flight recorders are blank. When combined with the condition of her Viper and the general human paranoia about the remaining five Cylons Indeed, there's one scene with Lt. Gaeta where this come bubbling to the surface. People are not in a mood to listen to what Kara says.

Finally there is Baltar's story. In Herman Wouk's The Winds Of War there is a line where Captain Henry, speaking about his son Byron who is trapped in Warsaw, tells his wife that their son will come out of the wreckage of the city, probably holding someone else's pocket watch. This pretty much describe's Baltar's situation. Set adrift after his acquittal on a ship where most people would sooner kill him as look at him. He manages to find people who will not only accept him but embrace him. And virtually all of them seem to be women – attractive women. For the moment our Gaius is doesn't understand his situation – even with the guidance of his personal Number Six – but still as happy as a pig in warm...mud.

Inevitably most of the episode takes place within the claustrophobic world of the ship. That's hardly surprising; unlike the 1979 version of the series this version of Battlestar Galactica has never been about the big space battles. Rather it has been about the ship and the people who serve as its crew, and the fleet and the survivors of the attack on the Colonies. I suspect that this episode's opening sequence may be the biggest battle sequence that we've ever really seen in this version since at least the first episode. The fact is that the quality that makes Battlestar Galactica one of the best shows on television is that the aspect of the story they focus on isn't combat but characterization and relationships between people. The original Battlestar Galactica was very much the opposite. Characterization was virtually nil, being replaced with "action" and frequent use of stock footage. The current Galactica is about people forced to deal on a daily basis with life and death situations where they can't afford to make mistakes. This episode, like so many others on this show, is anchored by conversations. To be sure there's action but even when there is violence it is used to reveal something of the people we are watching.

There's a lot more to each of the stories that I've mentioned, but I'm trying to avoid the whole matter of spoilers and I don't think I can go much further than I have without revealing too much, or without revealing elements from the final fifteen minutes. I don't think it's revealing anything shocking to acknowledge that the episode as a whole offers a lot in the way of questions without providing much in the way of answers. That's the way of the show. There's a whole season left to provide us with answers (not to mention additional questions). The episode is definitely satisfying, and I think I have to disagree with Alan Sepinwall, who wrote that "it doesn't majorly advance the plot" if only because I at least don't know where the plot is going right yet. And really, should we expect major advances in the plot in the first episode of a new (and sadly final) season? Or should we expect what this episode in fact manages to deliver, the foundation on which this season will play out; what sets Tigh and the other three "hidden" Cylons apart, what Baltar's part in things is going to be, and of course, the quest for Earth. While I doubt that this episode with excite viewers with a massive WOW factor I have a definite sense that people will come away with plenty of questions but still eminently satisfied. In short, I think you're really going to like this one.

Sci-Fi Channel Upfronts Via Press Release

I'm not sure about most people who blog about TV, but from time to time I get press releases sent to me by various networks or publicists. Most of the time these are condemned to the trash section of my email client for what I regard as a couple of good reasons. One is immediacy. It really doesn't make much sense for me to mention that Larry King will be interviewing Senator Obama on Thursday on CNN, or to run excerpts from an interview of General Petraeus by Kyra Philips of CNN, just to give a couple of examples of material that dropped into my email box on Wednesday. Another consideration is my ability to give an informed review of what is actually on the screen. Because I'm a Canadian I don't always get to see shows at the same time that they debut in the United States either because a Canadian station or cable network doesn't have the show or because it has appeared on a Canadian service that I don't have access to (because I can't afford it or Shaw Cable doesn't offer it or – in the case of something on HDNet or other Hi Def only channels I don't have an HD TV). I would have loved to have written about John Adams but it was on Movie Central which I'm not prepared to pay an extra $11 for, and it probably won't make it onto the Canadian version of History Channel for a year or two. Then there are shows that just don't make it onto a Canadian station. Since I'm going to be talking about the Sci-Fi Channel's upfronts, I'll just mention that the Tin Man mini-series, which was just one of the highest rated shows that that network had last year, still hasn't aired in Canada. I don't get network preview DVDs or press packages (not that I'd say no by the way if anyone wants to contact me about it) so when it comes to writing about new shows I am dependent on what I see on TV. Worst of all is the occasional sense that I might not be doing the "right" or ethical thing.

Still, I increasingly feel like I'm missing a bet when it comes to at least some of these press releases, at least ones like this where there's a long lead time and an effort to promote, or at the very least to inform readers of something to look forward to, rather than to get me to review something that I haven't seen and maybe won't see. At the very least I can express an opinion on what the press releases say without making myself look like too big an ass right? And come to think of it since when has that ever stopped anyone in the media or the TV business.

For me the biggest announcement was undoubtedly the long anticipated Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica. Caprica will be presented as a "backdoor pilot" which may be turned into a series. Set fifty years before the Cylon attack on the Colonies, the series will followthe rivalry between two families, the Adamas and the Greystones during the time when developments were occurring in artificial intelligence were being made. These developments would eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons. According to Mark Stern, the Sci Fi Channel's Executive Vice President for Original Programming, "We couldn't be more excited to see this long-anticipated project get off the ground. It's an amazing script, and, though clearly inspired by the Battlestar mythology, it is not just a pale spin-off. This is a smart, thought-provoking, emotional, and compelling character drama in its own right." Battlestar Galactica's co-Executive Producer David Eick added, "While Caprica will have its own personality, it will carry on Battlestar's commitment to

pushing the boundaries of the genre, and we're thrilled that SCI FI has seen fit to giving us another opportunity to tell character-driven stories in challenging ways."

From a fan's perspective – or maybe I should say from this fan's perspective – Caprica offers an opportunity to see the society that spawned the characters who make up this series, and perhaps answer some of the questions that have been bothering me a bit – like the fact that they have advanced space travel but never seemed to have developed weapons more advanced than what we have. It is a society that is advanced in some ways and backward in others and it will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

In other "scripted" series news from Sci Fi, three pilots and a mini-series were announced by the network. True Believer is described by the network as "a quirky, contemporary dramedy about a 20-something comic book nerd who hires a washed-up real-life Superhero to be his crime-fighting sidekick and teach him the ropes. Together, this unlikely duo set out to save the World." Actress and comic book writer Rosario Dawson will be the Executive Producer while David Atchison (who is Dawson's co-creator on the Image Comics book Occult Crimes Task Force) will write the pilot along with Matthew Spradlin. The Stranded is a project which comes out of Sci Fi's partnership with Virgin Comics to create comic book titles that "integrate the unique spirit and vitality of both brands and create intellectual properties that can be developed across all mediums from publishing, film and television to digital and gaming." The Stranded is one of Virgin Comics' top sellers. The series deals with five seemingly ordinary people who discover that everything they remember about their past is a lie and that in fact they are actually from another world, called Standfire. Worse, the past that they are just discovering is coming back to try to kill them. The third pilot, called Deputized is about "an average Joe" who finds himself with special abilities after he is accidentally fitted with an alien exoskeleton that can't be removed. As a result he is enlisted as a member of "the inter-galactic police force that patrols the universe." The scripted miniseries that Sci Fi will be running is called Alice and is a modern retelling of the Alice in Wonderland story in much the same way that Tin Man, which was the network's most watched program ever, was a modern retelling of the story of The Wizard of Oz. It should probably come as a surprise to no one that Alice is being created by Writer/Director Nick Willing and Executive Producers Robert Halmi, Sr. and Robert Halmi, Jr. who were the people behind Tin Man.

I have to say that there seems to be a rather disturbing familiarity about a couple of these projects. The plot description for The Stranded sounds vaguely similar to Roswell and probably has a couple of references to other series as well. However the one that sounds really familiar is Deputized. Substitute "power ring" for "alien exoskeleton" and you have a plot description that is eerily like the concept that John Broome used for the revival of the Green Lantern in 1959, while the idea of an exo-skeleton or a costume that grants special powers or abilities but can't be removed is reminiscent of another DC Comics character, Blue Devil. Of course, much will depend on how this concept is executed.

In terms of reality programming, Sci Fi is promoting the return of Ghost Hunters International, a spin-off of their popular series Ghost Hunters in which a new team of "ordinary people" debunks stories of paranormal activity. In the first season Ghost Hunters International examined some of the "most haunted" locations in Europe. In the second season the show will extend its reach to include "notorious haunted hotspots" In South Africa and New Zealand as well as returning to Europe. Also returning will be a revival of the series Scare Tactics, to be hosted by comedian Tracy Morgan (30 Rock), in which unsuspecting victims are "are placed into elaborately staged scary situations involving movie-style special effects and makeup. The horror hoaxes are skillfully designed to tap into the wildest fears of the prank's prey." A more interesting show for me is Mind Control with Derren Brown, a British series in which the magician and "psychological illusionist" manipulates human behaviour while at the same time debunking the paranormal. I've seen some of what Brown does – it's been posted on YouTube – and I find him fascinating.

Estate of Panic is a new reality competition series in which seven people in each episode are challenged to find money in a massive estate. However there are challenges along the way. Two people are eliminated in each of three challenges, with the money that they've found being added to the pot that the eventual winner will take home. In all honesty it sounds like a redressed version of the NBC series Fear Factor. The other new reality series is called Brain Trust. In it a group of geniuses (a Mensa member with a perfect SAT score, an award-winning computer scientist/ neuroroboticist, the man with the highest recorded IQ in the United States, a behaviourist and gamer; a math whiz and author, and a successful software developer) are brought together to find new solutions to everyday problems. Once they've developed a new approach it is tried in a "real world" application.

Finally, in a tie-in with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, Sci Fi will be presenting Mystery of the Crystal Skulls hosted by Weekend Today host and NBC News reporter Lester Holt on May 18^th. This is how the Sci Fi press release describes the special (because I can't summarize it and do it "justice" without wanting to burst in with my own sceptical nature): SCI FI feeds the Indy frenzy with the real story of and search for the legendary crystal Skulls. Glimmers of ancient civilizations and lost worlds have forever intrigued and tantalized but few ancient mysteries generate quite the fervor of the Crystal Skulls: 13 quartz crystal human skulls, now scattered to the four winds, discovered amid ruins of Mayan and Aztec societies. Legend tells us that should they ever be united, they may unleash untold energy, revealing secrets vital to the survival of humankind. In the new special Mystery of the Crystal Skulls, SCI FI and host Lester Holt (NBC News/Weekend Today) explore the history of the Crystal Skulls: the myths, the legends, the controversies and the scientific tests performed behind closed doors. It digs even deeper for the truth with new lab tests, as well an expedition into the jungles of Belize to track down the missing skulls, a quest worthy of Indiana Jones himself.

Finally, Sci Fi is pushing the fourth and final (*sniff*) season of Battle Star Galactica with website content including a one-time streaming presentation of the fourth season premiere episode on the Sci Fi website on April 4^th at Noon Eastern Time (the press release says Noon EST which would be Noon CDT so you might just want to show up at the site early). This is nine hours before the episode is broadcast on the Sci Fi network. And no doubt this won't be available to anyone whose Internet Address doesn't say that it's American. There are also going to be "webisodes" and a "social gaming experience" called "Join The Fight! Cylon or Human," in which players pick a side and engage in battles for points through various games and challenges. Also available online is an original Web series called Starcrossed, written by David Hewlett of Stargate: Atlantis, about the behind the scenes "antics" at a long running science fiction soap opera.

Sci Fi has also posted a number of videos related to Battle Star Galactica at their YouTube Channel. They include the four part Battle Star Galactica Revealed program, and these two short videos previews:

Finally, just because it's fun, we have this clip from Wednesday night's Late Show With David Letterman.

Short Takes – June 4, 2007

I ate salmon last night. I should never eat salmon, but it was something new and I knew my mother wanted to try it so.... At least this time I didn't vomit. I came close, but the fish stayed where I put it.

The Big Donor Show: It's several days after the fact and I still don't know how I feel about this one although I edge slightly towards agreeing with the network. As I'm sure you know, the Dutch network BNN put on a reality show – produced by Endemol, the same company that created Big Brother just about everywhere (but not in Canada for some reason; we have to be content with watching Americans) and has spread like a giant fungus all over the world – about a woman dying of a brain tumour who was going to choose one of three patients to donate her kidney to (apparently she had only one). The potential recipients had a one in three chance of getting the organ but that was far higher than their odds on a waiting list (in the Netherlands or probably anywhere else in the world). Inevitably the notion of the show brought condemnation from just about everyone you could think of, from Pope Benedict on down. There were calls in the Dutch Parliament for the Health and Media ministers to prevent the show from airing. Of course as we all know by now, the show turned out to be a hoax – or rather the central premise did. The terminally ill woman turned out to be a perfectly healthy actress and the three patients, while really ill, were in on the stunt. After revealing the hoax, Endemol Director Paul Römer stated "Let there be no misunderstanding, I would never make a program such as 'The Big Donor Show' for real. I do understand the massive outrage very well. But I also hope for people to understand why we did this. It was necessary to get the shortage of donors back on the political agenda. I call up everybody to get very angry about that, and to fill in a donor form." The Dutch Minister of Education, Ronald Plasterk called the show "a fantastic idea, and a great stunt" although Christian Democrat MP Joop Atsma, who led calls for the show to be banned, claimed that he didn't feel it had contributed towards solving the problem. The proof, one way or another, may be in the figures – two days after the show aired the Dutch national news program NOS News reported that over 50,000 organ donor forms had been requested.

BNN was an appropriate venue for this stunt. The network is aimed at a youth demographic; the sort of people who tend not to fill out donor cards because they think they're going to live forever and also the type of people who tend to get into car and motorcycle accidents. The network is also known for shocking content, some of which can't be named or described in a family blog, and for medical shows like It Could Have Been You and Over My Corpse in which youth with handicaps are consulted and tell about their lives. The biggest reason that the network was an appropriate venue for the show is found in the network's name. The initials BNN originally stood for Brutaal News Network (Flagrant News Network in English), but when network founder Bart De Graaf died in 2002 it was rebranded as Bart's Neverending Network. De Graaf had been in a serious car accident as a child which resulted in severe renal failure which also led to a growth disorder that made him look like a 12 year-old boy. A popular presenter on the Dutch network Veronica (an outgrowth of the famous pirate radio station) de Graaf underwent a kidney transplant in 1997, the same year he founded BNN. His body rejected the kidney in 1999 and he died in 2002 at age 35. Laurens Drillich, current chairman of BNN, said of The Big Donor Show, "We very much agree that it's bad taste but we also believe that reality is even worse taste. I mean, it's going very, very bad with organ donorship in the Netherlands. We as a broadcaster, BNN, had someone who started our TV station who needed kidneys and was on a waiting list and died eventually at the age of 35. That happened five years ago and in the last five years the situation has only gotten worse in the Netherlands." I'm not entirely convinced that The Big Donor Show was a good idea but it is often the case that people need something shocking to get them to do things that they really should do anyway – look at how blood donation went up immediately after the World Trade Center attacks but only 5% or Americans donate blood. If The Big Donor Show got people to sign organ donor forms and they and their families live up to the promises that those forms make, maybe it made a difference. I hope so.

Doctor Who won't end after four season: The British tabloid The Sun – a paper that no self respecting parakeet would even relieve itself on – reported a few days ago that Doctor Who would be axed in 2008 because producer Russell T. Davies wanted to move on to new projects and "He and senior staff have hatched a plot to hand in a group resignation in summer 2008." Davies claimed that the heavy workload, "nine months of 16-hour days every year" was taking its toll and he wanted to move on to new projects. This was followed almost immediately by an accurate news story from the Guardian newspaper (registration needed) stating that while Davies might go, the show wouldn't: "there isn't any way it would be axed even if he left. He loves the show and he does feel that maybe it would benefit from some new blood." (I can just picture the editors at The Grauniad drooling in anticipation of making The Sun look like a bunch of total prats.) Not only don't I think that Russell T. Davies is not indispensible as producer of Doctor Who, it is my opinion that it's about time for him to go even if he doesn't want to. In its original incarnation Doctor Who had a turnover of producers about every three or four years until the arrival of John Nathan Turner. Turner served as producer for nine years – three times longer than average – and oversaw the decline and cancellation of the series. It's my opinion that a show like Doctor Who needs a continual regeneration of ideas which basically can only come through periodic turnover of writing and production staff. That's what Turner forgot and what the BBC will hopefully remember.

Battlestar Galactica on the other hand will: On the other hand producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick have confirmed rumours that Battlestar Galactica will end after the fourth season. The rumours first surfaced at the 2007 Saturn Awards when both Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackoff told an interviewer that the fourth Season would be the show's last. At the time Moore denied the report but confirmed it on June 1. In an interview about the discrepancy between his two statements he said that "the decision to end after season four needed to be a collective one, which would be why there was some disconnect with prior reports." The plan had always been that there would be a beginning middle and end to the series and they both feel that they will have told the tale they want to tell by the finish of the fourth season. As much as I love the revival of Battlestar Galactica – and I love it a lot – I find this sort of finite storytelling to be one of those ideas that should be adopted a lot more on television. It was key to one of my favourite series – Babylon 5, although that series sort of went off the rails when the decision was made to wrap up both the Shadow War and Earth Alliance Civil War storylines in the fourth season because it appeared that the show wouldn't be around for a fifth season...and then it was. As long as producers are able to get a reasonable guarantee that they will have the time they need to tell their story having a plan is a good thing, but how many TV executives – particularly in broadcast TV – are willing to make that sort of guarantee? The answer is "damned few", right Kidnapped and Vanished fans.

Who does the PTC hate this week?: The PTC's criticism of a lot of shows stems from a fallacy and nowhere is that clearer than in the organization's hysterical condemnation of the season finale of NCIS for "grotesque violence." The first line of the second paragraph of their diatribe states "On the 5/22/07 episode of NCIS that aired during the so-called "family hour" of 8 p.m. ET/PT". Indeed the phrase "Family Hour" "is used in the subtitle for the article: "Horrific Drug Scene Aired During 8pm 'Family Hour' and Without Appropriate Content Ratings". Well here's a news flash for the PTC – you're thirty years out of date. The "Family Hour" (or to be totally accurate the "Family Viewing Hour") was a restriction imposed upon the television networks by the FCC starting with the 1975 television season. It was struck down by US Circuit Court Judge Warren Ferguson in 1976. Ferguson found that the FCC, having lobbied the networks to implement the scheme rather than holding public hearings on the matter had overstepped its bounds and that as a result "the Family Viewing Hour had no binding merit."

Ah, but what of their criticism of NCIS? What is the "grotesque violence?" Well it was directed against a corpse. In the episode, Tony DiNozzo and his girlfriend Dr. Jeanne Benoit are held hostage by a drug dealer who wants the balloons of heroin that are in the digestive tract of his dead drug mule. As the PTC describes it, "The scene shows the dead smuggler having his midsection sliced open and his blood-soaked organs pulled out of his body. The man's digestive tract is sliced open and heroin powder spills over his bloodied torso. When a fight ensues, one character stabs the drug dealer with a scalpel and another character shoots the drug dealer. Then the junkie-sister is seen burying her face in her brother's bloody entrails as she snorts the heroin off his dead body." Needless to say the PTC is outraged: "This episode was rated TV-14, with no content descriptors. Based on the graphic violence, the "V" descriptor should have been used, and due to the foul language, the "L" descriptor should have been employed as well." But they go on: "This episode, this scene, is one of the most grotesquely violent programs we have ever seen on primetime broadcast television. At a time when the nation holds a heightened sensitivity to the volume and degree of violence on television, CBS seems intent on baiting the Congress to act on the recent recommendations of the FCC and expand indecency standards to include graphic violence when children are in the viewing audience. And not only did CBS choose to air this episode during the 8 p.m. 'family hour' when they knew millions of children and families were in the viewing audience, but they ignored the industry's own 'solution' of attaching a proper content rating." And they call on their members to inundate advertisers and CBS affiliates with letters: "If the sponsors knew about the content of this episode, they must be called to account; and if they did not know about the content, then they should demand – and receive – a complete refund from CBS. Furthermore, we are calling on the viewing public to communicate with their local CBS affiliate to ask how their actions serve the public interest, as required by each affiliate's broadcast license. It is outrageous that CBS – which uses the public airwaves for free – would have the nerve to air something so graphically perverse and violent when they know millions of children and families comprise the viewing audience."

This whole thing, particularly the PTC's continual diatribe on "correct" applications of descriptors raises a lot of questions. Easily the biggest of these is who, at the networks, applies the descriptors and what are their guidelines. Obviously the PTC would like a central body – presumably with similar views to their own – to impose the descriptors on the networks. However even a central body to provide ratings and descriptors for TV shows would be rife with problems. The documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated deals with the Motion Picture Association of America's ratings board and found among other things that films with homosexual themes were treated far more harshly than films with heterosexual themes, that "the board's raters receive no training and are deliberately chosen because of their lack of expertise in media literacy or child development," and that many ratings board members either have no children at all or none under the age of 18. The question of who decides on the ratings for shows and the descriptors attached to them is, I think, a legitimate one.

On the other hand I personally find the scene that the PTC is most infuriated by to be less than what they claim it to be. The demand for the language descriptor is absurd – the language in this episode is no worse than on any number of other episodes of the series or other shows on at the same time. People have quite frankly seen worse violence to living people than what happened to the drug dealer in this episode (he's stabbed with a scalpel and DiNozzo shoots at him but doesn't hit him). So the PTC's "grotesque violence" is all happening to the corpse of the dead "mule" and to be quite honest we've seen more graphic depictions than that in autopsy scenes on CSI, and Crossing Jordan; even a few episodes of Quincy were reasonably graphic back in the day. No I think what really set the PTC off on their crusade – this "crime" against families was deemed worthy of a press release and call to action of its own and isn't designated as the PTC's "worst of the week" – it the moment when the "mule's" junky whore sister snorts the drugs from off his remains. Yes the scene is shocking and more than a little disgusting but it is in character for the person performing the act, a heroin addict desperate for a drug fix.

But what would the PTC replace shows like NCIS with if they had their way? Well we can get a sense of the sort of pap that they would replace most shows if not all with by looking at their Best of the Week shows. The most recent of these is ABC's National Bingo Night. This is a show that many people have found to be so dismal as to be unwatchable and reviewers were even more shocked by. To the PTC it was great because "This provides a great opportunity for friends and family alike to enjoy a family activity together." This follows a trend in that the PTC wants more game shows and "gentle" reality shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The last scripted series to be labelled as the PTC's Best of the Week was Everybody Hates Chris on March 2. I've only been able to find one other scripted show that they liked – a CBS Hallmark TV movie called Valley Of The Light – although the Council's archives appear only go back to the beginning of February 2007. Meanwhile many series from the five broadcast networks have been named as Worst of the Week and virtually every show on TV has been given a "Red Light" rating in the organization's Family Guide to Primetime TV, and I don't anticipate any change in the coming 2007-08 season. These people don't want good television or television that challenges the viewer; under the guise of "protecting the children" they want television that doesn't offend anyone that will be watchable by the lowest common denominator – the person who is most easily offended. The rest of us suffer from their insistence on not being offended. The public, based on Nielsen ratings, wants shows like CSI and Grey's Anatomy (the two top scripted shows on the list) – both of which the PTC has condemned for violence and sex (not to mention language) – while the PTC wants the networks to serve up pablum like National Bingo Night. And it insults us all, including Canadians because so much of what we see is the product of the American broadcast networks.

A Little Light Entertainment

Thought you might be interested in something I found on Drawn. Illustrator Dylan Meconis has done a series of drawing of the Battlestar Galactica characters done as if they were on The Simpsons. In addition to Admiral Adama and Roslyn there's a complete series including Starbuck, Baltar and Six, and a hilarious one of Dee, Billy and Apollo. Great stuff!

Short Takes - April 30, 2006

Another week of distractions and stuff that needed to get done and kept me away from Blogging.

Oh no, not HER: Meredith Viera will be replaced on The View by Rosie O'Donnell. So now we have a woman named Katie (and is it just me or would she be taken more seriously if she went by the name Katherine?) as the anchor of the CBS Evening News; a woman named Meredith doing puff pieces on Today, and a woman named Rosie doing whatever it is that they do on The View. Now on the whole I don't object that much to O'Donnell - I even think that she can act - but I'm just not sure of how well she's going to play with the other children. I can certainly see her and naive conservative Elisabeth Hasselbach having more than a few confrontations.

Prequels are a coming: While there's some discussion as to what the new Star Trek movie, to be helmed by J.J. Abrams, will be about what we've been told is that it will be a prequel featuring Kirk and Spock at Starfleet Academy. As the article indicates this may not be the case, although Abrams indicates that he's interested in possibly doing something contemporary to the Originals Series. Now it appears that Sci-Fi will be producing a prequel to Battlestar Galactica to be called Caprica. The new series will apparently be more of a family drama focussing on two families, the Adamas and the Graystones and will be set fifty years before the destruction of the Colonies at the time of the development of the first Cylons. Just to be clear this probably means that Bill Adama will probably just be getting ready to graduate...out of diapers. Some people aren't sure that the sequel is a good idea on the grounds that it's too soon or will dilute the franchise. However a combination of the two shows has some potential in keeping a Galactica related show on the air for an increased part of the season as well as giving viewers a sense of what Colonial society was like. It should also be noted of course that Doctor Who will be launching a spin-off this Fall to be called Torchwood (CBC has already signed on as a co-producer).

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time: Michelle Rodriguez, who has most recently been seen on the series Lost has done her time for a drunk driving charge in Hawaii. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to the charge last Tuesday and was sentenced to spend five days in jail and pay a $500 fine, or do 240 hours of community service, Surprisingly to some, Rodriguez opted to pay the fine and do the time, apparently on the grounds that "autograph hounds would hassle her if she did work hours." She went to jail on Tuesday and emerged on Friday, having been given credit for time already served immediately following her arrest. Personally I think there was a bit more to her decision. 240 hours of community service would have meant hanging around Hawaii for twenty to thirty days depending on how many hours she worked a day. Presumably this could have been disruptive to her work schedule. Doing the jail time, which she reportedly spent reading and watching TV, meant that she was free in a week.

Like a Swiss Watch: The Law & Order franchise just keeps chugging along. All three Law & Order shows have received early renewals from NBC, along with Crossing Jordan, Las Vegas and Medium. The Las Vegas renewal calms the fears of some fans that by assigning the show to the Friday night "death slot" in the second hour the network was hanging it out to die. No word as to what the network will do with Crossing Jordan and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which will both lose their timeslots to Sunday Night Football but I at least wouldn't be at all surprised if they stay on Sunday night and run straight through with new episodes after the football season ends. Of course with the renewal of the main Law & Order series came the announcement that the incumbent ADA under Jack McCoy, Alexandra Borgia (played by Anne Parisse) will be leaving the show. Since Jill Hennessy left the series there have been four ADAs, played by Carrie Lowell, Angie Harmon, Elizabeth Rohm and now Parisse. Her tenure in the role is the shortest yet, just a season and a half.

I you can't do fiction, play games: After this season's rather weak dramatic efforts and the sliding ratings for The Apprentice NBC seemed to hit gold with Deal Or No Deal, so what could be more natural than another game show. The network has given the greenlight to a show called 1 Versus 100 to be produced by Endemol Productions. The premise is simple - one player competes against a "mob" of 100 other people in a trivia competition. The more people the one player beats the more money to be won. A player can stop at any time and take the money but if the player outlasts all 100 of the "mob" they can win a multi-million dollar prize. Of course if the player gets an answer wrong the prize is nothing. The show, which has elements that are reminiscent of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? is popular in a number of European countries and at least has the virtue of being more of a challenge than Deal Or No Deal which is also produced by Endemol.

A House is a Holmes: I've mentioned the various ways in which Dr. Gregory House is like Sherlock Holmes in the past, but one escaped me until the past couple of episodes - music. Holmes was an accomplished violinist who owned a Stradivarius and reportedly played professionally following his "death" at Reichenbach Falls. House is an accomplished piano player. Of course it helps that his residence - apartment B at 221 Baker Street (?) - is on the ground floor. So much easier to put a piano in there than in Holmes's second floor walk-up rooms. (Or maybe it's just because Hugh Laurie is a very good piano player.)

Galactica, Then And Now

I remember the original Battlestar Galactica and not without a certain fondness. It was on the whole awful but on the whole it was a good sort of awful. The whole show was full of stock characters and they were one dimensional characters at that (to be honest that is an insult to one dimensional characters everywhere). It was formulaic. Take one handsome heroic type (the Richard Hatch who didn't get naked on Survivor), mix in a lovable rogue with a heart of gold as a sidekick (Dirk Benedict who took much the same character over to The A-Team) and a great mass of patriarch (Lorne Greene of course, playing the sort of character that he had been typecast as and had come to despise). Kick in some women who act solely as love interests for the younger males (one for the steadfast hero, two for the rogue with a heart of gold) and some generic supporting characters who only exist so that the hero and the sidekick can look good. As a villain bring on a scenery chewing traitor (Lord Baltar played by John Colicos who in real life was one of Lorne Greene's closest friends) backed by a bunch of faceless minions. Mix well and top with a cute kid and dog (or in this case a robot dog). As for the writing, the less said about that the better. It was usually a set of stock plots guaranteed to get a lot of action and not draw too much attention to the one dimensional nature of the characters. You want examples? Try these: hero separated from the group forced to combat one or more of the enemy in strange circumstances and emerge victorious; rogue with heart of gold searches for his "real" father and finds someone who says he is but then reveals he isn't except of course he is but doesn't feel worthy of his son; hero or rogue gets accused of murder he didn't commit and has to rely on his best friend to help him escape custody and find the real killer; etcetera etcetera. As for special effects, well let's just say that they blew most of the effects budget in the three hour pilot movie and reused every bit of spaceship footage and explosion footage (and even footage of the Cylons in their spaceships) that they could. When needed they even cut in footage from other Universal productions. In one episode I recall them using firefighting scenes from The Towering Inferno. It was a typical product of Universal Television in the 1970s, memorable but mostly for the wrong reasons.

The less said about Galactica 1980 the better. Let's just say "invisible flying motorcycles" and "super-scouts" and leave it at that. Oh yeah, it starred Kent McCord. That should tell you everything you need to know.

You can understand from that diatribe that I was looking toward the revival of Battlestar Galactica but not necessarily because I was overly fond of the original. My theory was that they couldn't possibly make anything worse and I wanted to see how much better it could be. The answer is a lot better starting with the theme music. The original Battlestar Galactica theme by Stuart Phillips and Glenn Larson was symphonic and heroic, as fitted the times but not necessarily the subject matter, while the melancholic new theme music reinforces the notion that this is the story of a people defeated and on the run. The casting is far tighter since one of the problems the original series suffered from was cast bloat - too many characters with very little to do - and the result has been to develop other characters and give them more depth. Making Starbuck into a woman while retaining the rogue with a heart of gold aspect, has eliminated the need for romantic entanglement for the two lead characters, even if that aspect is never developed. Adama as interpreted by Edward James Olmos is far less patriarch and much more a military leader, while his chief aide, Colonel Tigh, actually has a character (a troubled one), which couldn't be said for the corresponding character in the original series. The heroic characters are given a more "warts and all" characterization; they aren't perfect, they have flaws and more importantly they have conflicts. Indeed the show is is far more oriented to the characters rather than the action.

As for the villains, the basic run of Cylons are character-free automatons, as they should be. They aren't being commanded (badly) by a human traitor like the original Lord Baltar and indeed we know nothing of why they do what they do. Instead of being the robotic creations of a lizard-like species (a fiction dictated by the network or the studio during one of the periods when TV violence was under attack - shooting a robot is not as "violent" as shooting a living creature) the Cylons were originally created as a robotic workforce for humanity which rebelled, warred against their creators then disappeared to their own worlds until evolution allowed them to return to destroy humanity. The villains are more than adequately represented by the various "Cylon moles" - Cylons who look like humans and may not even know what they are - who have motives most of which we can't fathom. There is a interesting exchange between two of the Cylons in human form: "We are Humanity's children. They are our parents in a sense." "True, but parents have to die eventually. It's the only way children come into their own." For the most part, so far at least, the Cylons are like Winston Churchill's description of the Soviet Union: "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".

Which brings us to perhaps the most interesting creation in the new series: Dr. Gaius Baltar. Instead of being a conventional traitor willingly selling out humanity for personal gain as in the original series, the Baltar on the current show is an inadvertent traitor, seduced - literally - by the Cylons. Baltar has survived the Cylon attack through a combination of circumstances, but he's been left emotionally unstable. He's torn between guilt over what he's done and fear of being discovered leaving self-preservation as his one overriding priority. His instability is exacerbated by a presence that only he can see, his Cylon lover, known as Number 6. We, and Baltar, don't know what she is. Is she merely an expression of Baltar's psyche, or is she a Cylon projection into his mind which is guiding him. For that matter is Baltar a human or is he a Cylon who doesn't know that he's a Cylon - something that's not entirely impossible given that Baltar survived the shockwave from a nuclear blast that destroyed his home and killed one of the bodies of his Cylon lover - and the vision of Number 6 is merely his way of interpretation of the instructions that are being sent to him. Whatever the reality, it causes Baltar to seem to the viewer to be almost schizophrenic with major swings in mood and attitude. In a solid cast, James Callis's performance as Baltar stands out.

Battlestar Galactica is one of those rarities, a old show that has not only been successfully revived but has been significantly improved in the revival. Well worth the effort to find and see.