Okay, I'm writing this Saturday afternoon; no idea when Blogger's blog-by-mail feature will actually post it.  Just so you know.

 

Last night saw the SciFi Channel premiere of the new Battlestar Galactica, which is way, way better than anything called Battlestar Galactica has any right to be.  Of course, regular readers will know I was pretty impressed by the miniseries, and I had heard that the series kept the quality up, but it's nice to actually see that turning out to be the case.  I've actually read comments online from fans of the original show--there are some, it seems--who claim that they will absolutely not be watching this new version, because it's so completely different from the original.  Their loss; the original was crap, and this so isn't, it's like it needs a special license to use the same name.

 

Don't get me wrong; this isn't the greatest show ever produced for TV.  Not even the greatest show currently on (that would probably be Carnivale, on HBO).  But after six hours, I'd put it on the same level as a Lost or Desperate Housewives, easy.  It gets points for creating three-dimensional characters and putting them in situations without easy solutions.  It actually looks like it's going to be about something with subtext, with themes that resonate all too well with our post-9/11 world.  It appears to be dealing with politics and religion and war and genuine human emotion, all wrapped up in some pretty cool visual effects.  All in all, I'm even less encouraged to leave the house on Fridays than I had been before.

 

I should point out that I did faithfully watch the original series, when it came on.  It was in 1978 or whenever, and I was nine years old, and a huge Star Wars fan, so when something that looked a lot like Star Wars came on TV, I watched it, as you do.  As an adult, however, I can't watch those episodes.  I just can't.  It's not that the production is so much of its time; so are Columbo episodes, and the Avengers, and the Prisoner, and Rockford Files, and... and... and... It's just that it's not good.  It's all the usual crap: good guys constantly coming out unscathed against overwhelming odds (because they were fighting the slowest robots in creation), planets which just happen to be just like the Old West or the Middle Ages, just because those stock sets existed on the Universal backlot, coupled with really boring characters.

 

(Oh, my favorite objection to the new series is the changing of Starbuck from a man to a woman, because--and the DVD has some fat guy at a convention actually saying this--his appeal was in the fact that he was a cigar-smoking womanizer.  Now, I did watch the original series, and I've rewatched episodes in recent years, so I know I speak the truth when I point out that the "womanizer" had a steady girlfriend throughout the whole series.  Yeah, there was talk about what a roguish cad he was, and how he wouldn't settle down... but he pretty much was.  So much for what fans want.)

 

I don't know; much as I still love the things I loved as a kid, maybe I'm more open-minded than the average fan.  I mean, I'm not upset that the new Battlestar Galactica isn't a stupid craptacular like the original, and I could care less about who is wearing Green Lantern's ring.  (I also don't care that the new Doctor Who doesn't wear a hat.)  I want things that spark the same levels of enjoyment that my childhood favorites did, but I also recognize that I'm a different person now, and that I'm not going to be entertained in exactly the same way by exactly the same sorts of things.

 

New episodes of Canterbury Tales, Teen Titans, At Home with the Braithwaites, and MI-5 tonight...