12 posts tagged “bsg”

I tend to do quite a bit of navel gazing during yoga classes, and by navel gazing I mean putting my introspective head on though I do literally spend time gazing at my actual navel as well. I find yoga quite mindless, especially when you filter out the mediation and the new age rhetoric, as all you are doing is breathing and following instructions for a series of poses. I like to think I do my best thinking on the mat, and today I was mulling over why I have been feeling so out of sorts. I managed to identify key ingredients that had been missing this week - escapism and thinking.

Escapism comes in many forms.  My favs are studying ancient civilisations and watching genre tv shows based on cool futuristic stuff (hello science fiction and fantasy).  I find that both of those things lead to thinking and that in turn leads to a happy me. Does this makes me an uber nerd? Because I really hope so. Last week was primarily about the day job, and in the evening I only had time to watch the Daily Show and Colbert. As much as I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert they are very much based in reality, and given that most of my favourite shows are on break for the summer there are slim pick-in's for programs that transport you to a galaxy far far away. 

Is it odd that a lack of Fringe, Supernatural, Battlestar Galactica, Chuck and Doll House disrupt my reality so much? Not really when you think about the Obama-BSG article the Onion ran a few months back. Dude, I am totally on the same page as I have an entire summer to fill before school and the new tv seasons begin in earnest. What am I meant to do till then?

Next up will be my summer sci-fi survival guide.

In between work, fretting about revision, searching for cheap flights and waiting for the new Clive Owen film to open I've been distracting myself with:

• The Independent has a clip of Richard Curtis' new film about the pirate radio stations of the 60s -   The Boat that Rocked 
• The Guardian has a swearific clip from In The Loop (the feature film version of political satire The Thick of It) and I find myself coveting the Obama style teaser poster. Me want.  
• The new Star Trek trailer looks aces, but I am hoping Alex will be able to hold out till I get back from London
• Lex Luther bailout pitch featuring Jon Hamm (from Mad Men)
• BSG panel discussion at the UN next week. Screw the Emmys, Golden Globes, etc this is way better recognition and perhaps we have no podcast because Ronald D. Moore is prepping for this?
  

Okay folks I've given this show FOUR episodes and it still sucks. Is it just interference by the Network or has Josh Whedon lost his mojo? It's not funny like Chuck or dark like BSG or even psycho-dark like Dark Angel. It's just lame.  Every episode I watch makes me want to bang my head against something hard. I have a few suggestions for how Dollhouse could have been marginally more interesting:

• Fix the Premise: Still struggling with why people would want to hire a dolly-active rather than a regularly trained person. This week's episode (Gray Hour) kicked off with Echo delivering a baby in a fancy Alpine style cabin. Why oh why oh why? The only scenario in which it makes sense to hire dolly-actives is if you set the dollverse in some dystopia future where there really is demand for these skills.  Think Dark Angel's post cyberpunk Seattle. 
• Ditch Echo: Sorry but Eliza Dushku doesn't have the range to be a different character every week. There is bland wiped Echo and then a Faith-Echo hybrid when she is switched on.  Dushku's lack of acting chops was highlighted this week when two actives played the same character, ace cat burglar - Taffy. First we had Echo-Taffy (angry blah) then we had Sierra-Taffy (much better), so I think we need to promote Sierra and change her name to Nora to give Ibsen a little love.
  
• Sprinkle in some Michelle Forbes: All sci-fi drama is better with a little Michelle Forbes.
  
• Dial down the nerd: Topher is an arse, and now they have given him a faux-punk assistant, Ivy, with the worst fake nose stud ever.
  

I use to think it weird that in December all my favorite shows would go into hibernation until the new year. In the UK Christmas is when the BBC et al come out all guns blazing to wow a nation but now I cherish the respite.  The heart grows a little fonder for some shows and forgets others.  I thought that we were on the cusp of welcoming 24 back onto our DVR but Alex just veto it (sorry Jack). Let's be honest when you peek the list below we have more than enough shows to be going on with, and 24 is no Battlestar Galactic. Five days until BSG's season 4.5 kicks off - woo hoo!

• Battlestar Galactica (1/16/09)  - Who is the fifth cyclon and what happened to Earth?
  
• Burn Notice (1/22/09) - Highly addictive, and the Miami setting eases winter blues
  
• Chuck (2/2/09) - It has more than the touch of the Walter Mittys about it and a definitely a guilty pleasure
  
• Dollhouse (2/13/09) - Josh Wheldon's new show so will give it a whirl but I get Ibsen flashbacks every time I think of the title
  
• Fringe (1/20/09) - MASSIVE DYNAMIC and the wonderfully inappropriate Walter
  
• House (1/19/09) - Duh!
  
• Lie to Me (1/21/09) - Mr. Orange reads people
  
• Life (2/4/09) - Quirky crime drama with Band of Brother's Captain Winters
  
• The Mentalist - Simon Baker reads people
  
• NCIS
  
• Psych - fake psychic reads people
  
• Supernatural (1/15/09) - Mythology, monsters and classic rock
  
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2/13/09) - The end is neigh and John might meet his dad
  
• United States of Tara (1/18/09) - quirky comedy about a suburban mum suffering from spilt personality
  

Thank the gods for staggered start times otherwise I'd never have anytime for anything else! Quite an alarming list and only time will tell which shows get left on the DVR.

The second half of the fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica will kick off on January 16th. For some reason I thought it wasn't going to air until much later next year, so praise the gods that I was mistaken. To start getting us in the mood check out the promo. It looks so frakking good! Can't wait to find out who the final cylon is, and how Ronald D. Moore et al tie everything up!

Once again, Alex and I have started to try and work our way through Star Trek: The Next Generation because someone says that we can't re-watch Deep Space Nine until we have finished TNG. It's a bit like having to eat your greens before tackling some really tasty deep fried chicken. The last time we tackled this project we managed to get through the first two seasons, and I want to know at exactly what point did TNG get good? Was the tipping point Picard going Borg? The gem from the last few episodes we've watched is Whoopi Goldberg. It was genius to cast her as Guinan and I started to get excited about seeing her. So that got me thinking about which guest stars really bring it. The ones who shake things up, are a nod to the genre or just are just plain annoying (in a good way). In no particular order here are my favourites (and I think they really show my age):

1. Whoopi Goldberg - Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Goldberg appeared in 28 episodes of TNG, she is  the landlord of the Enterprise's bar '10 Forward' whose planet had been devastated by the Borg. Not only is Goldberg an outstanding actress, her characters back story was a great segue into Star Trek's newest villains - the Borg. 
2. Marlee Matlin - Joey Lucas in The West Wing. IMDB is trying to tell me that Matlin appeared in 17 episodes - was it really that many? Over the years that The West Wing has sustained us through the Bush administration there were many great guest stars - Mary-Lousie Parker, Janeane Garofalo, Oliver Platt, Steven Culp, Jorja Fox, Adam Arkin, etc - but if I had to pick just one it would be Matlin's turn as political pollster Joey Lucas.  Her character is bright, and ballsy. She butts heads with Josh, and the pair tip toe around their mutual attraction. I can forgive Matlin for putting on her tap shoes to appear in Dancing With The Stars because I can always dust off my West Wing box sets.
   
3. Maggie Wheeler - Janice in Friends.  The character of Janice was a tour de force. The "real" New Yorker that rubbed the bridge and tunnel crowd the wrong way.  Her laugh shattered glass, she took being annoying to a whole new level and she is the Achilles heel to our Friends. There is no escaping her, and that's what we loved about her most. She was brash, and she irked the hell out the smug set. 
4. Bebe Neuwirth - Lilith in Fraser.  Lilith is like an iceberg. Icy cool, and the most dangerous part of her is hidden beneath the surface.  Her power was in how everyone reacted to her. She doesn't need to lift a finger to keep those Crane boys in check.
   
5. Richard Hatch - Tom Zarek in Battlestar Galactica. Okay, this guest star role isn't perfect but it is pretty fraking cool to have the original Apollo cast as a terrorist. A nod to the BSG's heritage that shakes things up, just like Starbuck being a girl.   
   
6. Stephen Fry - Dr. Gordon Wyatt on Bones. I am still holding out hope that Fry will guest star on House but his three episode on Fox network's sister show tided me over for a bit (and sustained my interest in this procedural drama). Fry was, as ever, a joy to behold as the psychiatrist assigned to help Booth open up after an incident, and truthfully I'd pay to watch Fry pottering about in any TV show bar the truly dreadful Kingdom.
7. Bruce Harwood, Tom Braidwood & Dean Haglun - The Lone Gunmen in The X-Files.  These guys are the epitome of conspiracy theorists, and brought some colour to Scully & Mulders FBI grey.
   
8. John Barrowman - Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who.  Before Captain Jack took over Cardiff he appeared as the bi-sexual alien with a predilection for vintage clothing and flirted shamelessly with the Doctor. 
9. Supernatural. Okay, this is a total cop out but one of the things that I *love* about this show (other than Jensen Ackles) is that they embraced the genre and incorporate lots of "genre specific" guest stars. Callum Keith Rennie, Amy Acker, and Linda Blair to name a few.
   
10. Dean Stockwell - Brother Cavil in Battlestar Galactica. It's Dean Stockwell as a Cylon. It doesn't get any better than that.
    

I totally forgot that this was on so hurrah for YouTube. The 'Top 10' is funny but I get the impression that Letterman doesn't have a clue who they are or how fraking awesome they are.

My reward for holding my shit together this week was to come home to Battlestar Galactica Razor.  The first question is how come a huge BSG fan like myself had not watch Razor when it aired in November. Well, it is quite simply since Alex was in London I couldn't bring myself to watch it without him, and a couple of weeks after it aired it was being released on extended DVD. Now I don't know about you but that made holding out for a couple weeks not that bigger issue, and it turned out to be fan-fraking-tastic.

BSG Razor is a movie-length episode that was devised to keep us fans sane between season three and four since the gap between is nearly as long as the Trojan war. Of course Razor only really comes between season three and four in the sense of when it was aired as the action takes place on the Pegasus with Apollo in command, and with flashbacks to the Pegasus under admiral Cain (and a few flashes that go even further back to final days of the first cylon war).  Through the eyes of Kendra Shaw it addresses the myths surrounding Cain's brutal command, and delves back into the early experiments of those Prometheus like cylons.

I really don't want to spoil it for my friends who haven't watched it yet but what I will say is that it left me mulling over the following things:

• That the powers that be at BSG are constantly forcing us to redefine what it means to be human, a hero, and a barbarian (in the sense a non-human)
• How two commanders when in the same situation can come up with two different answers that are both right
• That BSG has the strongest female characters on TV or film (and that includes any of the roles played by Jodie Foster)

It has left me really excited for the fourth (and final) season.

I kid you not there is NOTHING on television this evening, and nothing on the DVR that tickles my fancy at this exact moment. We lasted less than 10 mins on Fox's "hot" new show Drive... the character stereotypes were SO dull and obvious.

The shows we've lost interest in now out weight the season passes on our aforementioned DVR. Seriously at the moment our must see tv consists of House, The Unit, NCIS, The Daily Show & The Colbert Report (and Supernatural for me). Rome has finished, and The Tudors is not comparable (BTW could the voice-over people at Showtime stop pronouncing  'Tudor' like  a nasally  'tuna').  Battlestar Galactic, Dexter and Psych seasons are over for the moment.

Prison Break got so bad it became unbearable, and after watching BBC America's The State Within the antics of Jack and CTU looked very silly. My suggestion to the producers of how to salvage the shows... send Jack to the same South American prison as Schofield. Bones got a brief reprieve whilst Stephen Fry was guest starring but now his arc is done so am I.

This weekend I watched the updated adventures of Robin Hood on BBC America. What can I say, it is more Robin of Hollyoaks than Robin frolicking amongst the great oaks, and no Clannad.  I think it failed to miss the mark because, like Torchwood, it didn't go dark and political enough. Robin's period is rich with analogies for now: the crusades, tightening up of laws, shell shock/post traumatic stress, oppression and tyrannical rulers. This could have done for medieval forest based dramas what BSG did for elevating the SciFi genre.

So, my initial thoughts...

Since Robin does not have a sun tan how do we know that Robin has been abroad? Why he has a fancy non-anglo bow, a curved sword and a pin with an eastern motif on it. I just can't buy him as a man of the people with an interest in free market market economies and an Earl to boot - sort of a medeival verison of Bruce Wayne and Batman.

Peasants aren't mucky enough and CGI arrows are cheating.

Love Richard Armitage but he makes a pitful Guy of Gisborne since he is woo fully underused. He is like a sulky child lurking about in his leather outfit.

Alan Rickman has ruined it for any actor tackling the weighty part of the Sherriff of Nothingham. Keith Allen tries his best as a budgie squisher but he is no Alan Rickman.