March 26th, 2009, 15 Comments »
Last night I finally got a chance to watch the Battlestar Galactica finale. Early on in the show, at about the 2:00 mark, the camera pans across a futuristic cityscape. At one point it passes over an inlet or river. There’s a bridge in the foreground and a geodesic dome further back. Here’s a screen capture:
Does that remind anybody else of False Creek, the Cambie Street Bridge and Science World? I couldn’t find a perfectly analogous photo (I suppose I could install Google Earth and see how it looks), but this one gives a lower perspective:
And here’s an aerial view of the region.
Obviously the show is shot in Vancouver, and I’d imagine that the special effects are done locally, so it’s only natural that we might recognize bits of the city in the finished product. This is the first time, though, that I’ve noticed renderings of Vancouver in a CG-only shot.
Warning, Spoilers Ahead
As for the finale itself, I give it a ‘B’. Some random notes: the final battle was reasonably satisfying, in an SDF-1 Macross sort of way. In retrospect, I’m still unclear on why Hera was so important to everybody, practically speaking.
I’m glad they found Earth, but it was a bit silly when they’d already found an ‘Earth’. It seems highly implausible that, after four years of a brutal struggle for survival, that the humans would send all their remaining assets into the sun. But what do I know?
The bit with Gaius and Caprica 6 each having a kind of Swayze-esque ghost was charming the first time I saw it, but they pushed their luck. That whole present-day New York denouement to the denouement was incredibly cheesy, and really should have been cut.
My unanswered questions:
- What was Starbuck in the fourth season? A corporeal angel? I noticed that nobody called her “Starbuck”, which I suppose meant something.
- How many cylons are left? Aren’t there a bunch of baseships out there still, roaming the galaxy?
- What will future generations of humans do when they find the lyrics to Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” written on some cave wall?
Here’s an interview with the cast and creators which may answer some of these questions–I haven’t read it yet.
UPDATE: I spoke to a member of the visual effects team who said that since the Caprica City scenes are shot on location in Vancouver, it made sense to base the look of the CG city on Vancouver, but with a few extra “futuristic” buildings thrown in.
The second photo is by Steena.
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January 23rd, 2009, 9 Comments »
You know, through three and half seasons I’ve found Battlestar Galactica to be a strong show. It’s got a very watchable visual style, decent acting for a sci-fi series and, until recently, a really engaging plot. I especially liked how creator Ronald Moore skillfully wove contemporary themes through the show. It’s something that science fiction often does, but Moore and his writing team managed it without being overly preachy. I’d recommend the show to nearly anybody.
There’s seven or eight episodes in the show’s fourth and final season–there was a quizzical six month hiatus between the first and second halves of this season.
Something seems to have gone deeply wrong in-between.
I was underwhelmed by last week’s episode, and tonight’s was really no better. The show just seems to be recycling scenes and plot points from early seasons. How often have we seen (minor spoilers from tonight’s episode ahead) these scenes before?
- Starbuck jawing with fellow officers in the pilot’s room.
- Admiral Adama and President Roslin having mopey conversations about her mortality.
- Tom Zarek fomenting dissent among the fleet.
- Ships rebelling against Admiral Adama’s ham-fisted martial decrees.
- Admiral Adama approving the use of deadly force against his fellow humans.
- A lot of pitched drama about babies.
And the show seems to have abandoned any of its perspective on or critiques of our world. The last two episodes just seen like talky soap operas in space.
Maybe the extra few months away from the show flipped some ambivalence bit in my head, but I find myself totally unimpressed with BSG’s latest efforts. Anybody else?
9 Comments »
July 25th, 2007, 7 Comments »
Set Nerd Phasers to Discombobulate.
So we just finished watching season three of Battlestar Galactica. It’s a pretty great show (and Julie likes it too, which reduces the geekiness factor as far as I’m concerned). The performances are above average for science-fiction TV, and the direction is very strong.
I’ve been most impressed, however, by the strength of the writing. As Cory Doctorow likes to say, all science fiction isn’t about the future, it’s about the present. I’ve really admired how the BG writers have taken on a schwack of contemporary topics–torture, military justice, terrorism, racism and so forth. For example, several episodes function as cutting criticism of American foreign policy.
I have a few outstanding questions about the show, but the one that’s most frustrated me is this: how big, exactly, is the Cylon fleet?
Do they have 1000 of those big base ships, or eight? I think the most we’ve seen is four or five, but I’ve got no idea if that’s the same four or five, or entirely difference groups (they don’t have license plates, so they’re hard to distinguish). Unless I missed it, the humans haven’t exactly exhausted much brainpower in counting the opposition.
Did I miss something?
On a related note, I wanted to discuss a particular aspect of the final episode of season three. I’ve included it after the break, so that if you’re still catching up, there won’t be any spoilage. If you’re such a person, read the comments at your own risk.
Read more…
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July 5th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Via Kate, I read about how the Sci-Fi Channel invited a bunch of bloggers and digital journalists to Vancouver for a week of set tours and panels with casts and crews for the five shows that are shot locally.
“You expect to see cameras at these things, but to see all these people with their laptops open, blogging live from the events — it was a completely different use of media than I’ve ever seen,” said Dave Howe, Sci-fi Channel exec VP-general manager.
The only show I know anything about is Battlestar Galactica. We’re currently working our way through season three, so keep your fracking spoilers to yourselves, please.
In any case, I did some quick searches and turned up a bunch of reports from TV Squad, including a set tour report and a video of the cast and crew panel (Jamie Bamber may be a looker, but he’s got one poncy accent. That said, his accent work is excellent.).
The press tour was organized by New Media Strategies. One thing they could have done better was to create a little microsite that aggregates all of the blogger’s content–photos, audio, video, blog posts–in one place. That way readers of any one attending blogger could easily access the content created by the other attendees. If they did create one, they needed to make it more findable.
It’s been my experience that when marketing people put on events for bloggers, they think exclusively of the event itself, not about the (more important, because they last much longer) digital artifacts that live on afterward.
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