Too much confusion, indeed

[prog]

It occurs to me that I'd be remiss to overlook this news, given all my previous whining about broadcast television so: three cheers to the Battlestar Galactica producers for taking a risk I've been waiting for someone to try, and announcing the publication of a direct-to-DVD BSG movie later this year. It will be a side-story about another ship in the same universe, and will help take the edge off the long wait until the next season of the main show starts.

I stopped giving BSG Neilsen support when I stopped using my TiVo (and watching any broadcast TV at all) months ago, but I've instead been giving them a buck or so every week via iTMS downloads. I have to imagine that my cold hard dollar is objectively more valuable to them than my watching their hour's TV ads, but I have no idea if their (and their network overlords') popularity-accounting methods weight downloads versus TV-watchings that way. I'd be surprised if they did.

But someone's paying attention, what with all these green lights. I am thrilled at the gutsy move to take a TV show off of the broadcast channel entirely (or have a DVD release that's simultaneous with a broadcast; I'm not really sure yet?), and I applaud the smart toe-dipping maneuver of doing so with a one-shot movie. TV is a medium that wants to subvert itself after 50 years of the same damn paradigm, and I'm thrilled that it's finally found a champion.

Speaking of both classicaljunkie and BSG, she and I finally watched the season finale on Friday (during the precious time in between the week-long business trips she's made recent habit of) and I was greatly amused at how much she hated it. Apparently Entertainment Weekly agrees with her. Well, fooey on you all; I thought it was brilliant, and still got the chills from the ending sequence on my third view-through.

The default audience reaction to making revelations of that magnitude is always disappointment, because the thrilling fun of the uncollapsed waveform is gone. But through excellent acting, editing, and visual effects, they made it so much better than that. For me, anyway!

This is a really dumb userpic for BSG posts.

Comments

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if I would have felt differently about the thing that was spoiled at game night if I hadn't been spoiled. Probably so, but my opinion probably wouldn't have improved.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Nobody liked this exceot for me!! (And daerr but he likes everything.)

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Well, I haven't really been a big fan of the series in general. I don't think it was horribly out of line for the show. It does feel a bit like shark-jumping, but I'm still planning to watch the next season.

[prog.livejournal.com]

It may be, but I wouldn't word it like that. The exec producer's been saying that he feels the show is heading toward its conclusion, and that its fourth season may be its last, not because they'll run out of network approval but because the story will be done.

"Shark jumping" is, imho, really better reserved for the more traditional model of American episodic TV, where the show just goes on and on for as long as they can get away with, until it runs out of gas and goes splat.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

I liked it (so far). But I wasn't so sure about the Bob Dylan lyrics.

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

I think I liked the big reveal; I almost certainly liked the way it was done. How I wind up feeling about it depends alot on what happens next.