Why The SyFy Channel's Underwhelming Attempts At Creating An Outer Space Soap Opera Failed

http://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Dark-Attempt-Battlestar-Galactica/dp/144994079X/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1314714764&sr=1-3

Just about any concept could work as a television series or television movie if you had access to the producing and scriptwriting talent to make it happen. The SyFy Channel's love affair with the notion of placing homicidal maniacs from All My Children's "Pine Valley" aboard a spaceship called Galactica might even have worked if they had had access to people with enough talent to make it happen. Only having access to Ronald D. Moore and David Eick from day one is what doomed this concept from day one.

There's a reason why Ronald D. Moore and David Eick have never broken out of their collective coccoons of only appealing to an extremely miniscule audience. Mass market audiences by the score simply don't like what they do, and their thought processes while doing it. Mass market audiences by the score simply didn't like their take on "Battlestar Galactica." There are many other things about Ronald D. Moore and David Eick that mass market audiences by the score didn't like about Ronald D. Moore and David Eick...and continue to not like...

1. Their repeated inability to instinctively sense what mass market audiences by the score would enjoy and find attractive to watch.

2. Their repeated inability to exhibit a sense of humor in their embarrassing body of work.

3. Their repeated inability to create characters mass market audiences by the score would find attractive and care about.

4. Their repeated inability to exhibit good scriptwriting.

5. Their repeated inability to exhibit originality and inspired thinking in anything they do.

6. Their repeated unwillingness to fix the repeated, blatant problems in their production design and costume design. Contemporary urban settings and business suit wardrobes being the primary complaints.

Soap operas aren't all doom and gloom. Well produced and well written ones run the entire range of human emotions including happiness. This is another area where the SyFy Channel and Ronald D. Moore / David Eick completely did themselves in. How can you attract mass market audiences by the score when the story you are telling consists of nothing but characters who are mental patients in terms of their emotional health and the situations they repeatedly find themselves in are unpleasant and suicide driving?

What is the actual underlying problem here? SyFy Channel and Ronald D. Moore / David Eick are not the best in the business when it comes to creating television programming such as this. Not by a long shot. They only do what they know how to do in the producing and scriptwriting departments. And that isn't good enough. Not by a long shot. They only know how to create negative drama. And negative drama by itself does not bring in mass market television audiences by the score. You have to balance it out with healthy applications of humor and upbeat storytelling. This is why Ronald D. Moore and David Eick never move on to bigger and better things in the profession they are in. (A profession that should have thrown the two of them out on the street ages ago.) A profession that should have done the same to the entire SyFy Channel.