Saturday, February 06, 2010

HOW TO RUIN A PERFECTLY GOOD JUNK TV SHOW IN JUST THREE EPISODES


Longtime readers of Doc40 will doubtless remember that, after some initial misgivings, I became quite a fan of the remake of Battlestar Galactica, and was particularly taken by Dr. Gaius Baltar and the blonde humanoid Cylons whose spines glowed neon red at the moment of robot orgasm. Although the final season rather fell apart at the end, the show had been a regular feature of Friday nights when I had nothing better to do and before the DVR came to stay. On the strength of this previous connection, I set the controls for the new show Caprica, the supposed prequel to Galactica, hoping to derive a similar space opera enjoyment. Unfortunately not. Instead of intergalactic intrigue, space warfare, hot cyborgs, and a bit of religious ambiguity (with Bob Dylan), I found to my dismay that Caprica is all about some cute teenager who is killed in a terrorist attack so her grieving dad builds her avatar (that’s right) into what will be the first Cylon. Not a Viper, hyper-space jump, or glowing spine in sight. The only conclusion I can draw is that some executive idiot decided it would a cool move to screw the fans of the previous show and go after the Twilight market. Not cool. Asinine. If teenage girls weren’t lured by the kick-ass, hard-drinking, female fighter pilots on Galactica, they aren’t going to go for this saccharine Caprica crap. The toilet level ratings confirm this. Caprica jumped the shark in the pilot. What we have here is yet another example of abandoning the base that put you where you are for some nebulous grass-is-greener demographic. It seems a primary delusion in this modern world, adopted by both presidents and bad TV shows.

The secret word is Epsilon

Click here for the Pink Floyd playing Interstellar Overdrive

4 comments:

Your driver said...

Can't disagree with you. I have to say I liked the remake of The Prisoner. I didn't want to like it. I don't like it as much as I like the original, but it really was pretty good and very different.

x_S said...

... MASS EFFECT!

I know you said you don't have the thumbs for video games, but damn, you're missing out... The asari, the salarians, turians, volus & elcor... The geth, the protheans & collectors... humanity in the mix & that's barely the tip of the iceberg.

Still, Mass Effect has been good enough to produce mediums outside of games, such as novels & comics... sample chapters & previews included in the following link.

http://masseffect.bioware.com/market/books/

Worth checking out in my opinion, though, I do play the games & am a fan so my opinion is hardly unbiased.

x_S said...

back to further my point about "barely the tip of the iceberg"... a wikipedia list of races from the mass effect universe w/ descriptions & pictures.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_in_the_Mass_Effect_universe

Matt said...

+10 for the Obama reference. Sad, really.