Showing posts with label swan song. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swan song. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Will the new Battlestar Galactica be Remembered
I am closing in on the Fourth Season of the New Battlestar Galactica, and I am wondering what the long term impact of the series will be on televised science fiction. An article here argues that BSG still deals with relevant issues. I am a little less sure of that myself, to be honest. Terrorism, while a pressing political issue, has always varied in the amount of press coverage it received. It was "in" in the seventies and the 2000's. But will it be so forever? I think the new BSG broke new grounds in character development and provided some more radicalized political characters, such as Tom Zarek. But compared to Blake's 7 or Babylon 5, it wasn't particularly daring for its time period. Both Blakes 7 and Babylon 5 dealt with terrorists, and sympathized with them far more than BSG did. Both Blake and Captain Sherdian were in a sense terrorists themselves. I don't think that BSG is a genre shifting show in the way that the original Star Trek, Blake's 7, STNG, and Babylon 5 were. Worse, it did not stop the decay of the genre that has been occurring since the advent of reality television. Today, outside of Caprica and the new Doctor Who (and sundry spinoffs), there is very little in the way of good science fiction. Ten years ago, we had a nearly fully functional Sci-fi channel, that ran series like Farscape and the new Outer Limits (relatively decent), as well as Andromeda, which was at least decent for a few seasons. There was Firefly and Dark Angel and a host of inventive programs coming out in the wake of the digital revolution created by the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars franchises. Now, there's literally nothing out there. BSG wasn't the first of a new breed. I fear it may be television science fiction's swan song.
Labels:
Battlestar Galactica,
Farscape,
swan song,
terrorism,
Tom Zarek
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