The Great Gnome Press Science Fiction Odyssey

When I first heard that there was a remake of BSG I thought “Oh no. They are going to take a treasured television memory of mine and turn it into garbage.” Well, I was wrong. They happened to turn out one of the finest television series I had ever seen. But now we are nearing the conclusion, I am concerned. This post over at True Science Fiction got my wheels turning and brought into better focus some things that had been kicking around back there for several weeks.

Now, I’m not talking about what’s actually going on in the show, but more how things are being presented.  When BSG began, for the first three series actually, it was a show that you could really sink your teeth into.  The story was solid, it was being presented in a measured and well constructed fashion, it was well paced, ergo it was easy to follow.  There was even scope for kind of ‘interlude’ episodes like the ‘Scar’ installment where Starbuck was chasing her Cylon nemesis around.  Just as an aside, that episode might be worth watching again – was there something in there that had relevence to Starbuck’s now ambiguous position?

Anyway, now things are different.  I know that the show is coming to a head and events are unfolding rapidly, but hang on.  Why?  The only reason I can see is that they have to wrap this thing in season 4.  The pacing of the show isn’t being driven by the story, it’s being hussled along by the deadline.  As a consequence, we now have many plot threads that I, at least, find difficult to keep straight in my head.  I can’t, as I could after each episode in the previous seasons, carry a full picture in my head and savour the experience.  There is too much going on.  I made the observation earlier that I could really sink my teeth into the show.  Now it’s like a nibble here, run over there and have a brief sample, and scurry over to another location for another little nibble.  I don’t enjoy that as much.  I still enjoy the show, don’t get me wrong, but the experience isn’t what it used to be.  Am I making sense?

As I alluded to in the title of this post, I can’t help drawing a parallel with Lost.  The show started out solid, a great experience.  A show to dwell on and enjoy until next week.  Now it’s a whole week of “WTF!?!?” until next time, then repeat.  BSG isn’t quite in that league yet, but the comparison is unmistakeably there.

Come to think of it, Galactica cracking up the way it is is an excellent metaphor for the show.  And like Adama, I just hope they can patch it up and hold it together until the end.

This entry was posted on February 16, 2009 at 6:08 pm and is filed under Television with tags BSG, Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.