Battlestar Galactica (Season One)

I grew up on the original Battlestar Galactica, but even as a kid, I knew I was being pandered to with robot dogs and flying motorcycles and a cute kid hanging around on a military ship.

But the premise — robots all but wipe out humans elsewhere in the galaxy, and a ragtag fugitive fleet makes its way towards the semi-mythical Earth while pursued by the relentless Cylons — was sound.

Jump forward to 2004, and the new incarnation of the series. Most of the characters are reimagined, even if they fit into the same general niches — two of them are even women now — and the entire affair takes itself much more seriously. No robot dogs wrestling cute kids on the floor of a military cruiser here.

Likewise, the special effects are a major leap forward and the dogfights in space are shot in bar-raising documentary style fashion, making them feel much more immediate and dangerous.

The tweaks to the Cylons, both toasters and a new series that look like humans, make them much more interesting and frightening, and the changes to their human collaborator make him more than a joke. (Although Baltar is still a joke, much of the time.)

The acting, especially by Edward James Olmos and Grace Park, is also miles beyond the original cast (although the original Apollo has a recurring role in the new series, playing very much against type).

But …

(You knew there’d be a “but,” didn’t you?)

But the writing is sloppy at times to the point of carelessness. I’m not one to nitpick minor details like the names of characters’ never-seen parents or what have you (although it’d be nice if all the characters stopped calling the NCO “sir”), but major plot points appear and disappear out of the ether.

At the end of the miniseries (included in this DVD package), Commander Adama receives a note in his quarters stating that Cylons look like humans now, and noting how many models there are. Who left this note? How did they know the information and why share it with him? And, most importantly, why wasn’t this ever followed up on?

Likewise, the Cylon plot doesn’t appear to make much sense, nor does some unseen Cylon infiltrator placing a key clue on the bridge of the Galactica to be found make much sense either.

(I’m also not a fan of alien humans wearing neckties and a Caprica that looks an awful lot like contemporary America/Canada, but I get they had to save money somewhere in the production process.)

But the good outweighs the bad, and the whole affair is carried off with such style that it would be a huge shame for any space opera fan to not give it a try, just to see if a BSG without robot dogs is for them.

Strongly recommended to fans of the original and to those looking for a more gritty alternative to the relentlessly utopian Star Trek franchise.

Hesperia Expo location

OK, got the location: Maria and I will be at the Hesperia Expo tomorrow from 10 to 5. This year, Sultana’s doing some renovations over the summer, so the chamber of commerce’s expo will be held at Epicenter on I Avenue near Hercules Street. Hope to see some readers there.

You’re most common grammatical errors

We could all learn from this list. I know I always screw up on #4 (i.e., I get the two of them confused).

(Source.)

Dixie David Lee Roth

What the hell has happened to David Lee Roth?

TiVo caught him on the Tonight Show (which I could never watch without being able to high-speed through it, as Jay Leno’s unbelievable awfulness gives me a headache every time) playing a cover of “Jump” off his new album. It’s apparently a gimmick album, with fiddle, banjo and other “Southern” instruments standing in for Eddie Van Halen and company.

It was awful.

I know a lot of people haven’t liked Roth’s post-VH rock stuff, but I did (“Sensible Shoes” in particular is a great, great song), but if he’s going to go in another direction, it should be one that works. This was Roth grinning like he was lobotomized, surrounded by musicians who seemed incredibly bored and exposing that “Jump” is not one of the world’s most complex songs and loses a lot once a much-younger Roth isn’t squealing and howling over top of it.

What the heck is the point of this new album? Is it just to finally kill Eddie Van Halen? I figure, after how he and Sammy have been treated the last few years by the Van Halen brothers, he might be entitled to screw with Eddie like this, but ugh, do we have to buy it? Or even listen to it in promotional appearances?

Awful, awful, awful.

• In other news of the weird, MC Hammer has a blog. Warning: Turn off your office speakers before clicking that link. Please Hammer, don’t hurt everyone’s job situation.

A week in the Rogue Isles

From Cryptic Studios:

Calling all heroes and villains! The latest free content update for City of Villains™ and City of Heroes® is live and available now! Villains will find they can now climb to the upper echelons of power, reaching levels 41 to 50, and encountering the PvE zone Grandville, and the dynamically changing PvP zone Recluse’s Victory. Villain content includes patron powers, mayhem missions, new power sets, new costume items and much more. Meanwhile, Heroes also get cool new costume items* and can also access the PvP zone Recluse’s Victory, where they must defend Atlas Park™ against the villains’ assaults. The ultimate battle between good and evil has begun.

Your account has been reactivated and will remain active through the end of the weekend, Sunday at 8:59pm PST / 11:59pm EST. Log-in to play now!

Normally, this is sort of the play cycle I like: Log in for free, play long enough to remember why I don’t pay a monthly fee for the game(s) (the content is just too thin, although it’s better in CoV) and then the account runs out again.

This time, though, it means hunting down all my CoH/CoV disks to reinstall them. Oy.