Thanks again for the original posting. I’ve been busy with my own projects so I had no idea this was even in the works. I finally got to watch the two initial installments, and I see SfFy eventually plans to air a two-hour feature film.
I had the original 70s BSG pilot on in the background when I read the first post, which was just serendipity. I enjoyed both series, original and reboot, and think it’s safe to say both of them came along at the perfect time in my life to appreciate what each was doing. Reviewing the original pilot, I have trouble believing the Colonials could have fought a thousand year war against the Cylons, let alone survived them for as long as they did. The core systems apparently had no integrated defense system whatsoever, and the fleet didn’t come to a state of alert when an entire wall of bogeys flew into their patch. I repeat, these are people who’ve supposedly been fighting
for a thousand years. I found the reboot’s version of the attack much more believable; someone thinking with his ***k getting a LOT of people in trouble. My least favorite part of the reboot was all the mysticism, which IMO employed a lot of
Deus ex Machina to untangle sticky plot points. I think the show suffered badly from the Writer’s Strike, but everyone on staff had to pretend it hadn’t. What I found profoundly unbelievable about the reboot series was the amount of Cylon sympathizing going on. I can’t speak for anybody else, but if someone killed 99% of everyone I know, including my entire family, burned my house down, and torched all my guitars, I wouldn’t like them very much. IMO that mutiny in the final season would have happened much earlier, but that’s all it is, my opinion of a scripted show. A lot of my fellow nerds tend to take these things
way too seriously.
I think a lot of what people who strongly preferred the Original series to the reboot like from their stories is a sort of morality play, and a level of moral certitude epitomized by Lorne Greene’s Adama. They don’t like a lot of moral ambiguity or navel-gazing, which the second series was full of. Example: Angel Six is outraged that Admiral Cain sanctions the torture of Gina Six, but the idea that the genocide that put everyone in this situation to begin with, might have been in some sense, well –
wrong, never seems to occur to her. Also, WHY DIDN'T THE REBOOT HAVE COUNT IBLIS? Discuss among yourselves.
As for dedicated BSG sims, I know there’s BSG Online, which I’ve never played, and so can’t comment on. It looked more like an arcade-type thing to me than a proper flight simulator. The offering I thought had real promise, was Beyond the Red Line, which was being done by a group of modders based on the open-source Freespace game engine, but which was aborted due to creative differences. Does it seem to anyone else that these developmental teams have a lot of the same issues as rock bands? Have a look a the story HERE:
http://www.shacknews.com/article/48215/mod-is-dead-beyond-the
Anyway, the demo can still be downloaded in a number of places. First check HERE:
http://www.freespacemods.net/download.php?view.426
Here’s a video of gameplay.
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I really liked the demo; you get to do your advanced flight training with Starbuck. I don't know if it's really Katee Sackoff they have doing the vocie work, but it certainly sounds like her, prodding you to Viper proficiency. What it really reminded me of though, are the XP LucasArts offerings like X-Wing Alliance, that I can't get to work on my current Windows 7 rig. BtRL demo still does work, however, though I have no idea how it would function in Windows 8, which I have no current plans to get. I'm an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" sort of guy. If my old computer hadn't given up the ghost, I'd still be running all my applications in XP. Anyway, Enjoy.
JAMES
