Thursday, March 22, 2012

Is The SyFy Channel Finally Out Of The "Galactica In Name Only" Business?




http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/03/battlestar_galactica_prequel_b.html

The SyFy Channel is very bad at what they do. They are very bad at anything and everything they do, particularly if it involves the "Battlestar Galactica" property. No one will deny this and everyone has realized this from day one. With any hope, the cancellation of "Blood & Chrome" yesterday as a weekly television series will also signify the end of Ronald D. Moore, David Eick, Bonnie Hammer, David Howe, and Mark Stern ever putting their "slimy paws" on the "Battlestar Galactica" property ever again.

What these individuals have done to the "Battlestar Galactica" property in the past decade has been absolutely disgusting, shameful, an embarrassment, and a blatant disregard for the general all around responsibilities inherent in broadcasting. When even the mighty Glen A. Larson refers to the style of scriptwriting in "GINO" - (Galactica In Name Only) as..."lazy"....in no small part due to the fact that Ronald D. Moore's space faring characters routinely wore contemporary business suits and many other visual cues that jarred you out of the fictional reality that this was supposed to be a civilization "not of this Earth"... you know something went terribly wrong in the conception process.

What showed up on the SyFy Channel under the brand name "Battlestar Galactica" was not "Battlestar Galactica" in any sense of the word. What showed up was ignorant Corporate America's lazy interpretation of what it thought "Battlestar Galactica" was. The problem all along was Bonnie Hammer, David Howe, and Mark Stern not being Science Fiction people, not being "Battlestar Galactica" people, and not being "artsy, creative" people. The three of them are marketers, statisticians, and severely flawed business people in their collective approach to television programming. And at some point along the way, Ronald D. Moore failed to carry along with him the supremely creative environment he came from while working for Rick Berman on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" when he moved on to the assignment he shouldn't have accepted: Rebooting "Battlestar Galactica" for NBC-Universal. Also at some point along the way, Ronald D. Moore turned into a mindless, corporate drone while making "GINO" - ("Galactica in Name Only") for NBC-Universal / SyFy Channel.

Stripping away all of the stealth marketing nonsense that was designed to help this show, including such B.S. as an invite from the United Nations, and some "Cereal Box Award" given to the show by Harlan Ellison, we were left with a television series ("GINO") that was quite frankly, bad television. It was bad enough that "GINO" wasn't "Battlestar Galactica", but it was also bad television overall.

No one has been better off career wise after doing this show. Not Bonnie Hammer, David Howe, Mark Stern, Ronald D. Moore, or David Eick. And especially not the cast members. If anything, Edward James Olmos has gone down in history as one of the worst actors of our time, even surpassing William Shatner in the original "Star Trek."

Surely if "Battlestar Galactica" had been owned by another corporation during the past decade, the nonsense this property went through during the past decade never would have happened.

I have said it before and I will say it again. Everytime Universal Studios touches the "Battlestar Galactica" property, bad things happen. When Universal Studios can't even manufacture a decent DVD set of the "1978 Battlestar Galactica" series - ("Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Series")...of course they're going to screw up everything else along the way as well.

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