Yet another Battlestar Galactica reboot

I agree in principle, but Moore left behind a much more compelling universe than Larson did.

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I haven’t pieced together a timeline, but did assume that the picture of both starbucks was very early in production… like those “meet you source” lunches actors have. I like to pretend that this is when Dirk begins seething inside, he is older, replaceable, and his alpha masculinity is now a detriment.

Meanwhile, I can’t imagine Sackhoff meeting Benedict after his comments were made public, unless she just wanted to continue to torture him in person.

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Wasn’t that just the last couple seasons of Stargate SG-1? :wink:

Speaking of which, there’s another franchise I’d happily welcome back to the screen. Somebody needs to finish the story of the Destiny, dammit!

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Not necessarily if a reboot needs to stick to certain trappings from whatever was done with what came before it, even if the story is original it will have inherited some expectations and baggage that it will need to account for. I do get that choosing to reuse an existing IP helps get approval and funding, especially if it has an active fanbase and that’s why i mentioned that i’m not surprised by the decision to do so but i would prefer to see something different.

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Ah, like Babylon 5. JMS had the ending plotted out before beginning the series, just like you say.

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B5 needed a confluence of things unlikely to ever happen again:

1 - a creater with a specific vision and a clear idea of what the beginning, middle, and end were going to be.
2 - a happy “mistake” that left no budget for writers, requiring the creator to write over 100 episodes all by himself, and
3 - a network that never interfered in the creative process after the first episode.

One will be hard-pressed to duplicate that again in history.

For BSG specifically, I’ve heard reported numerous times that item #3 above was one of the biggest issues - that the studio kept pushing the creators to change the direction or plan for the show, as an example.

Season 5 of B5 almost didn’t get made, and the series finale was actually shot in season 4 as a result, but the studio didn’t ask JMS to change anything, just reported the financial realities of PTEN (the network) at the time and he adjusted accordingly.

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And this is only talking about the second reboot, inspiration can only get more convoluted from here.

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S8XPmt

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Yeah, in that respect it’s very understandable, especially if it’s not a “reboot” exactly, but just playing in that universe. It’s actually an interesting universe to play in. On the other hand, in the case of an actual reboot, it’s also a lot more… specific than the original. The original is a pastiche of various elements and unformed enough that you can do something wildly different, riffing on any one of those particular elements, and claim it as a remake. Like, for example… Moore’s version of BG.

I wonder how often that is the case, though. Sometimes, even with really popular “properties,” what’s kept is a single, superficial element. E.g. the new “Child’s Play” movie is about killer-AI toys, not a toy possessed by the spirit of a serial killer, because that’s what the guy who made the film was interested in. But often, especially with more obscure IPs, even that’s not true. There are so many adaptations and remakes that share, at best, a single idea with the supposed source material, except that idea isn’t unique to the ostensible source. (E.g. the iZombie tv series.) The Caprica prequel very much felt like an unrelated project that got altered a bit to make it try to fit that universe.

This sounds like a case where the creator wants to play with someone else’s toys (Moore’s BG universe), but we’ll see how much it ends up hewing to what Moore set up. It’s still possible there are only a few ideas from Moore’s BG that were appealing to play with and it was easier to connect it to BG to get it made.

One could do it for a streaming service now, except it would have to be 30 episodes (at most) rather than 100.

In some sense this is how culture works, but it’s a bit odd when a recent remake is not just based on the most recent iteration, but is honest about it. I remember when the Total Recall reboot came out, and claims were made that it was based on PKDick’s short story, not the previous movie. Except that, when you look at what little the movie remake shares with the story and earlier film, 100% of the preexisting elements came from the previous film, most of which weren’t in the short story.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was an interesting one, as it was a pastiche of the source material, but was followed by essentially a “reboot” where it was all relocated to contemporary times. And unrelated, subsequent generations of adaptations of the stories still ended up referencing those movies.

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Just continue Caprica, maybe? Please?!

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ffs just do a new fucking show for fucking fuckity fuck’s fucky sake

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I was so disappointed at how The Expanse developed… one of the best science fiction tv shows evar, and the alien thing turns out to be… oh for fuck’s sake another goddamn stargate.

Sure, why not. Provided the ‘man who slept for 500 year’ isn’t a cheap excuse for a cheap SW knockoff, but make a series that’s actually based upon the original material.

like Buck Rogers wasn’t a cheap Flash Gordon ripoff, which wasn’t a cheap Princess of Mars ripoff, which wasn’t a cheap Doc Savage ripoff, which wasn’

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The two characters were so interchangable that they literally cast the same actor for the film serials (though I think he used the screen name “Larry Crabbe” for Rogers and “Buster Crabbe” for Gordon).

Flash-Gordon-Buck-Rogers-55-Old-Time

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And to bring it full circle, I see that Flash Gordon poster, and I think “Crap, not another holodeck episode.”

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Babylon 5

I now recall they already did this in 2007. What else does NBC have in it’s library? Alf? Quantum Leap? V? Supertrain?

Oh, fuck yes Supertrain. That’s what the world needs right now. A massive self-sustaining train that crosses the nation with all the drama of a mini-city aboard. You can update it with some sort of conflict between first-class and the scum in the baggage car who illegally invade the forward areas of the train and destroy its John Galtian creator and his whole creation because that is what poors do. Talk about timely. And totally original.

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I am seriously disappointed to learn this. I was going to joke that it was Dwight. So, now I’m reading what he has said, and, damn. I won’t be able to watch Lt Barclay the same way again. And the fact, that he uses the name Howling Mad to sell his ideology is appropriate, but destructive to his legacy.

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I like how the number of likes that this response has attracted indicates an appreciation of the response without indicating an appreciation of the idea.

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