Are Friends Electric?
Warning: Geek Fanboy Posting
If you're not watching the revamped "Battlestar Galactica" on SciFi, you're missing one of the best written, produced, and acted show on the telly. Forget the cheesy 70s series with its shiny chrome robots and feather-haired B-level actors. The producers of the new Galactica took the basic premise--that the robots in another part of the galaxy revolted and killed nearly all of the humans on their twelve colony homeworlds, and are hunting down the few thousand survivors who escaped on a motley group of civilian and military spaceships--and jettisoned almost everything else.
A big new development is that the Cylons have evolved and now, shades of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," look, feel, and act exactly the same as human beings (though there is limited diversity...the "skinjobs" only come in a few models, but there are many copies of each), and that they believe they are doing God's bidding. To orient yerself in this universe, check out the excellent 2-hour mini-series movie on DVD and you'll be able to jump into the series from there--or check out this handy primer.)
Anyhoo, the third season premiered a week ago, with a premise that only a science fiction show can get away with: the humans, who had thought they had found a planet to inhabit that was unknown to the Cylons--dubbed New Caprica--are now living under Cylon occupation (much like Vichy France under the Nazis, with the human President techically still head of state, but in reality very much compromised). Of course, many of the crew of the Galactica, the good soldiers that they are, have opted to fight back using guerilla tactics. The human insurgents are shown blowing up a Cylon ship and send a suicide bomber to the graduation of the first class of police academy recruits (who are viewed as traitorous collaborators), which ends up killing many humans and a few Cylons (who don't die, but have their personalities/memories transferred to another robot body through--and I love this--a 'resurrection machine'). The Cylons respond with increasingly harsh measures, including unlawful detentions, interrogations that include torture, and rounding up lists of suspected insurgents in the middle of the night and making them "disappear" in a ravine outside of town.
That's right folks...in this brave new world, we've confronted the enemy and he is us: we're the Cylons.
* * * *
"Are 'Friends' Electric?" is from Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army's "Replicas" album.
If you're not watching the revamped "Battlestar Galactica" on SciFi, you're missing one of the best written, produced, and acted show on the telly. Forget the cheesy 70s series with its shiny chrome robots and feather-haired B-level actors. The producers of the new Galactica took the basic premise--that the robots in another part of the galaxy revolted and killed nearly all of the humans on their twelve colony homeworlds, and are hunting down the few thousand survivors who escaped on a motley group of civilian and military spaceships--and jettisoned almost everything else.
A big new development is that the Cylons have evolved and now, shades of "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," look, feel, and act exactly the same as human beings (though there is limited diversity...the "skinjobs" only come in a few models, but there are many copies of each), and that they believe they are doing God's bidding. To orient yerself in this universe, check out the excellent 2-hour mini-series movie on DVD and you'll be able to jump into the series from there--or check out this handy primer.)
Anyhoo, the third season premiered a week ago, with a premise that only a science fiction show can get away with: the humans, who had thought they had found a planet to inhabit that was unknown to the Cylons--dubbed New Caprica--are now living under Cylon occupation (much like Vichy France under the Nazis, with the human President techically still head of state, but in reality very much compromised). Of course, many of the crew of the Galactica, the good soldiers that they are, have opted to fight back using guerilla tactics. The human insurgents are shown blowing up a Cylon ship and send a suicide bomber to the graduation of the first class of police academy recruits (who are viewed as traitorous collaborators), which ends up killing many humans and a few Cylons (who don't die, but have their personalities/memories transferred to another robot body through--and I love this--a 'resurrection machine'). The Cylons respond with increasingly harsh measures, including unlawful detentions, interrogations that include torture, and rounding up lists of suspected insurgents in the middle of the night and making them "disappear" in a ravine outside of town.
That's right folks...in this brave new world, we've confronted the enemy and he is us: we're the Cylons.
* * * *
"Are 'Friends' Electric?" is from Gary Numan and the Tubeway Army's "Replicas" album.
posted by Steve from Moon | 9:30 AM
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