TV stuff

Nerd alert. What follows is horribly geeky. You have been warned.

We watched Battlestar Galactica last night. Meaning, of course, that we watched the first half of the pilot from the new BG last night. It was good, much better than I expected it to be.

Three observations.

One, it was my wife who wanted to watch it. It turns out that she, of little childhood TV, had indeed watched and been impressed by the original BG. Who knew?

Two, I haven't done the research yet, but some of the folks on this show either worked on or watched very closely the show Firefly. BG was very Whedon-esque, at least visually. Especially the outside scenes and "silent space." I'm glad that either a) these guys are working again, or b) someone was paying attention.

For example, check out the opening sequence. It's one long, single take, walking through the ship and showing everyone going about their business. Compare it with the opening sequence of "Once More, With Feeling." Nice.

Three, as I was watching the bombing of the planet, and seeing the plumes from numerous nukes in the background, all I could think was, "This is just what Al-Quaida wants to do to us. I can't believe this is on TV."

Either a) someone goofed, b) SciFi is more "red" than other Hollywood outfits, or c) in an effort to tug at our heart strings, they accidentally stumbled on a Truth, produced and aired it, and will soon return to more "blue" material. This is more likely, and I forsee many, many plots about how the Humans created the Cylons and then abandoned them, making them all nasty, a la "it's our fault." Cynthia McKinney, call your office.

Final note. During last night's 2-hour geek festival, there were lots of commercials for other SciFi channel shows. They look decent. When did this happen? we've had satellite for about 3 years now, and I blocked SciFi back then, because they showed slasher movies during the day, and I didn't want my kids stumbling across stuff like that. But now . . . hmmmm. Well, it's back on the list, and if we stumble across something good while surfing one night, I won't be as surprised.