DVDs, Wedding Stuff & Outlines

In what is an unabashedly geeky moment of pure SF Joy, I saw the review on IGN for the Battlestar Galactica season 1 set. I was expecting the review to be good and it was. But what’s more important is that the review means the set is now available for shameless mass consumerism, and that means it will be available in Singapore at some point in the near future, and I want this set BAD. I haven’t wanted a DVD set for a television series this badly since Babylon 5, but then from what I’ve seen, Galactica has the potential to equal, and perhaps surpass what I saw in Babylon 5, so I’m a happy little nerd bouncing around the island hoping that some day reeeeeeeeeeal soon, I’ll be able to walk into the store and see that DVD set up there so I can squeal like a pig and roll around on my back until the foaming at my mouth stops.

In other news, yesterday the Fiance and I met up with the Solemnizer. I’m not sure how the others work, but this guy wanted to meet up with us and have a little talk first, to discuss the wedding plans, who we were, why we wanted to get married, how long we’d known each other, and stuff like that. He also needed to meet us so that he could sign some form saying that he had legally and voluntarily given us his operating number as a Solemnizer so that we could file for the marriage registration online, but have black & white proof of his having given us the number when the time came to pick up the physical documents. We also ran into his wife, the JOanne from my previous hunt, who wished us luck and once again expressed her okay-ness with the rather bizarre set of circumstances regarding why she was unsuitable for the wedding.

And of course, the mini-series continues apace. I’m hoping to have the outline (Or at least my end of it) done by tonight. The rehearsals have been going to some very weird places, but as it’s for the benefit of the actors, and to give us some idea of what their character is like (and because everyone is aware of the HUGE difference between television and stage work in Singapore and what is acceptable in either medium) we don’t expect to use everything, nor could we really. Some of the stuff they do is either well into the red zone, or financially impossible to pull with the budgets of local television. It’s really a shame. They’re generating some very nice moments, and there quite a few character pieces I’d love to use, but they are just impossible to pull off because the humanity they portray is in direct contrast with the reality that the broadcasters are obligated to present.

It’s inevitable, I think, that the final product is going to be grossly watered down. I just hope that the people in charge are aware of that, because it’s something me and the other writer always have in the back of our heads, and we also know that the company that’s providing the equipment for this has had enough experience with the Singapore broadcasting system to know what they are going to say “NO” to when they see the scripts and episodes start rolling out.

Oh well…

Whoohoo For Rag-Tag Fleets

Man, I live in a damn cave…

While friends who had the good sense to remain in North America get a weekly dose of pop culture goodness (Though from what I’ve been hearing of late, this may no longer be such a good thing. Oh, for a quick injection of a Hercules cartoon with Newton, that stupid centaur…) I, having more or less quite happily sunk into the Artistic Hermit phase of my life, no longer watch MTV Asia (I’m too old for it), local television (I’m too foreign for it) or cable television (I’m not commercial enough for it) and only occasionally step out to watch movies (I’m mostly too jaded for it). The vast majority of my time is spent A) sitting here staring at this monitor for either writer-ly, job-ly, or game-ly reasons, B) plugged into a video game console occasionally wiping the drool from my mouth as its Matrix-like qualities suck me in. AGAIN… C) watching DVDs as I have come to love this format more than life itself.

However, thanks to a certain friend who is entirely too intelligent and entertaining for his own good (Godfrey, you know who you are…) I was alerted to an old, guilty childhood pleasure that was getting stuffed into the “Reimagination machine” and was on the way towards getting spit back out soon.

That was, of course, the new Battlestar Galactica series.

Man, I am hooked.

I’d heard people previously lambast the thing before it had even come out, and I have to admit, even I had my doubts initially. I loved the vipers from the original but the whole “By your command” thing–and, as the years wore on the increasing curiosity as to why a mechanized organism would require THREE freakin’ crew members for a fighter–and more importantly that kid Boxy and his stupid android dog, made me wonder if this new version was such a good idea.

God bless Ronald Moore, for he made me so happy to be wrong.

It took a while, but lo, only a couple of months ago, the DVD of the original Scif-Fi Channel mini-series FINALLY made it to these shores, and I snapped the damn thing up and consumed it greedily, despite the fact that I had already watched a region 4 DVD somewhat earlier thanks to the generosity of an Australian geek.

Galactica has all the usual ingredients of “neat” science fiction television, ie, cool fighters, cooler space battles between fighters and a lot of technology that seems peachy-keen. But on top of that is the much more interesting premise of “The war is over. We lost,” which is a pretty rare thing for SF television to tackle.

The original premise of the 1978 series (Which I forced myself to sit through for comparison’s sake. Thanks Eugene. Urrrrgh…) was a riff straight outta’ Eric Von Danikin’s Chariots of the Gods (A whacky, non-fiction book that posits that ancient Earth civilizations have been influenced by visitations from space) that played on the idea that “There are those who say that life here, began out there…”

Meaning that humanity is actually a visitor to Earth, and that we’re originally from another planet (Called “Kobol”) and that Kobol, the seed world, sent out colonies amongst the stars. The majority of the 13 tribes of humans, 12 of them in fact, settled in a 12 world star system and happily stayed there. the 13th tribe went way, way off and found Earth.

Galactica in 1978 was the disco version of the holocaust that occurred with the 12 colonies. At war with a Reptilian race turned mechanized warriors called “Cylons” they had fought their robot foes for a thousand years and were on the verge of finally negotiating for peace. This turned out to be a huge sham thanks to the traiterous human Baltar, and instead the 12 colonies were annihilated in one fell swoop. The survivors banded together in a fleet, protected by the last surviving Battlestar, Galactica, a massive capital ship that did double-duty as aircraft carrier and destroyer, and though pursued by the Cylons, they decided that there was nothing for it but to try and find the remaining 13th colony, Earth. And so the series began.

It only lasted a season, and probably for good reason. The initial very dark and intriguing genocidal storyline of the series premiere quickly devolved into “This week, the Cowboy Western episode” and “This week, the Touched By An Angel” episode, and quickly lost its way.

The new one, however, aside from receiving a fresh injection of science fiction cool with updated special effects, sticks to one simple idea, “Let’s take it seriously, this is damn dark stuff here…”

And so with the new series you really feel the pressure. These people are running for their lives and know it. They worry about food, they worry about water, they worry about leadership and government, but most of all, they worry about the Cylons–who in this iteration are the creation of humanity that rebelled–and outclass them in just about every military manner, right down to the fact that the humans are forced to abandon high-end computer networking technology since the Cylons can infiltrate and destabilize human systems in short order, which is how they ended up nuking the 12 colonies to hell.

It kicks ass. I’m digging it in a big way and am eagerly awaiting the DVD collection of season 1.

And The Guilty Pleasure Of The Week Is…

Lego Star Wars.

I wish I were making that up, but God help me, I’m taking this game out for a spin and enjoying it tremendously. Despite the fact that it was designed for children, and that all the characters and settings are made out of Lego, this somehow manages to feel more Star War-sy than the vast majority of “serious” Star Wars games I’ve played, and even edges out the new trilogy the games are based on. There’s something deliciously fun about taking a Lego Obi Wan and whacking away at a Lego Darth Maul until he breaks into his component blocks. I shouldn’t be enjoying this…

But I am…