When they do that they start to lose their audience because everyone thinks they've finished the season. Then the networks slip in some new episodes or shift the timeslot and they wonder what happened to their audience. Battlestar Galactica has received a lot of good press recently because for a retread of a TV series from the 70's it's actually quite good. The original series was created to capitalize on a resurgence in interest in Science Fiction TV and movies that happened on the heels of Star Wars. For a television show, it had an outrageous budget, due in large part to the cost of special effects. This was in the day before computer generated special effects could do the job a lot cheaper.
The new series arrives at a time when US television frankly sucks. It's repetitive and derivative. After all, how many "CSI's" and "Law and Order's" do you really need to see in one week? The old series had some good elements to it that made it successful. The core of the show was centered around an extended family of characters: Cmdr Adama, his son Apollo and his wife Serina, and adopted son Boxey. Apollo's cigar-chewing, womanizing, gambler and wingman Starbuck. Starbuck's girlfriend Cassiopeia. Col Tigh, the ship's XO. The backstory in both series is that humanity consists of 12 colonies (each one coincidentally named after a constellation). Caprica (Capricorn), Aries, Geminon, etc.
In the new series humanity fought and won a war with the Cylons several years before and since then the Cylon Empire has been silent and humanity has sort of rested on its laurels. The Cylon's then launch a sneak attack against all of the colonies and the survivors band together in a rag tag fleet. The quest for a mysterious lost 13th colony called Earth gives both series a good focal point. In the original series, Adama had read the old texts and had some idea of where to find Earth. In the new series, Adama doesn't really believe in Earth and is merely using it as a pretext to keep what's left of humanity moving in a direction away from the Cylons. This is like finding out that Moses didn't believe in the Promised Land. Speaking of Moses there are a number of biblical parallels that were in both series. The 12 Tribes of Israel (The 12 Colonies).
The quest for Earth -- the search for The Promised Land. Adama -- Adam. And in the new series, the legend that the leader of the remnants of humanity will not live to see their arrival on Earth, just as Moses failed to enter the Promised Land. In addition to the quest for Earth, there were a number of underlying motifs that gave the original series it's sensibilities. The names of the characters were by-and-large all from Greek mythology. In the new series those names have been turned into "call signs". However, no one in real life goes around calling pilots by their call signs except while they're in the air. A friend of mine recently gave me the 3 books that make up Rumi's Mathnawi.
As I was reading it I came across the character of Iblis. In the original series, Count Iblis was the incarnation of the devil who was eventually found out and marooned on a planet. I didn't realise where the character's name had come from until I started reading The Mathnawi. The method of time keeping in the original series was sort of metric (but never really explained). Yahren = Years, Centon's = hours, Microns = minutes. Again, a motif that differentiated them from us. The planet Kobol (the home world for the 13 colonies) in the original series resembled Egypt. This is important because it gave the audience a clue about how the 13th colony got started. It point's back to Erich von Daniken's theory that the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials. The original series hinted that the Egyptian's were really the 13th colony. When the fleet finally discovered Earth in the short-lived revival of the TV series in the 1980's there was a lot of disappointment that Earth wasn't technologically advanced enough to deal with the Cylon threat.
This series had some problems because one of the main characters in the show was Dr. Z, a mysterious boy with otherworldly powers and knowledge. It lost a lot of its credibility and it's audience with that character. Evidently some network executives thought that the show was intended for young children. The audience for the new series is definitely not the kids who watched Shazam and Isis on Saturday morning TV. There are a lot of fresh ideas in the new series that have captured audience interest. Especially an audience who never saw the original series. They're drawn to the show by the darker personalities of the main characters, and a more fully realised cast. The character of Baltar, played in the original series by John Colicos with a certain evil frisson, is now a rather depicted as a rather narcissistic character. The new Baltar, has a Cylon lover named Six who used his knowledge to gain access to Caprica's defense computers and override them to allow the Cylon invasion. Baltar's unwitting treachery, is compounded by the fact that Six implanted a device in him which allows her to communicate with him. Think of it as having your own personal holodeck implanted in your senses. In this case, Six can make him see, feel and taste her.
This has rather comical ramifications when they have amorous encounters in public. One of the primary differences between the original series and the current show is that the Cylons have definitely evolved. They have three distinct series of robots. A more advanced computer-generated trooper -- not the men in tin suits from the previous series. A bio-engineered ship robot. The brains of the ship are organic. And a fully organic cylon. This last series is the most interesting, because they've taken the title of Ray Kurzweill's book "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and used it as the theme for these new Cylons. They resemble humans in virtually every respect, and they are on a quest for humanity on two different levels. They believe that humanity lacks "humanity" and a sense of God and yet they are also desperate to learn what it means to be human. An interesting paradoxical dilemma. There are however a number of technical/logical holes that the series creators have glossed over:
- The Cylons communicate with one another to form a borg-like hivemind. They can be destroyed, but their essence is immediately transmitted back to the hivemind, and can inhabit another body. The robotic equivalent of reincarnation. Presumably, the Galactica's sensors would be sensitive enough to be able to pickup these transmissions, especially now that they've found a number of hub-like transmitters around the fleet. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out the frequency and then use that fact to track down every Cylon.
- Why is it that they have a hivemind, but they don't sense the treachery happening within their own ranks? Witness Boomer's destruction of the Cylon basestar and her ability to seemingly evade capture on Caprica.
- The new Cylons resemble humans on a number of levels. From the superficial down to the sub-cellular level. Their proteins are indistinguishable from human proteins. If they really wanted to learn what it is to be human it would make more sense to remain amongst the humans and simply observe them, rather than slaughter billions, and put them on the run.
- Baltar is currently so flaked out by his encounters with Six that he's often seen talking to himself -- or in more compromising positions. He's as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers. With a man in such a tenuous state, why would you elect him to the Vice Presidency? Why wouldn't you keep someone who is in such a state under constant observation? Instead, he's devising a Cylon detector.
