A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

On September 21, 2009, Universal Studios Home Entertainment (UK) released Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series, a 20-disc Blu-ray collection that presents all four seasons of the 2003-2009 "reimagined" military science fiction television series that originally aired on the Sci-Fi (now SyFy) Channel. Based on Glen A. Larson's original Battlestar Galactica TV series that aired on ABC during the 1978-79 season, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick's was grittier, darker, and was geared for a more adult audience than its 1970s forerunner.  The plot of Moore and Eick's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica follows the outline's of Larson's original version. In a distant corner of our galaxy, humans live in the star system of Kobol, on 12 planets they call the Colonies. The Colonials have developed faster-than-light space travel, advanced electronics, and even a race of highly intelligent robots called Cylons that serve many of their needs.  "The Cylon...

Pros:  Solid script. Great performance by James Sloyan.  Gripping Cold War-style tale Cons:  A few plot holes and other minor errors Although Gene Roddenberry did not conceive  Star Trek  as a "space war" action-adventure series when he pitched it to the Big Three networks (ABC, CBS and NBC) in the mid-1960s, he realized that if he wanted his show to be an outlet for socio-cultural commentary on American and world society he would need to create interstellar adversaries to his United Federation of Planets. Because in storytelling terms the Federation is a 23rd Century "America-in-futuristic-avatar," Roddenberry and the  Star Trek  writers created two different stand-ins for the now-vanished Soviet Union: the Romulan Star Empire and the Klingon Empire. a In  Star Trek: The Original Series  and its six feature film spin-offs ,  the Klingon Empire was the predominant "Soviet" stand-in, appearing in seven episodes of the 19...

One of the neat things about channel surfing on a hot, hazy and unusually lazy weekend afternoon is that sometimes infrequent TV watchers such as me can sometimes find new channels which have been added to the Expanded Basic lineup. Such was the case when, a few years ago I – purely by chance, mind you – was flipping through the channels on my family room television set when I noticed that Comcast (my cable provider) had added BBC America to the channel package I subscribe to.  This was a surprise to me – I don’t often scrutinize my bill for any lineup changes, and I don’t have the time to watch as much TV as I used to –  and I was kind of pleased even though at first I didn’t think it’d be too relevant to my TV-viewing tastes. That is, until I perused the then-current issue of  TV Guide  and noticed that BBC America supplanted Spike TV (the former TNN channel) as the go-to place to watch reruns of  Star Trek: The Next Generation,  the made-for-syndica...

The Bonding Stardate 43198.7 (Earth Calendar Date 2366) Episode Production Number: 153 Episode Number (Aired): 52 Original Airdate: October 23, 1989 Written by: Ronald D. Moore Directed by: Winrich Kolbe The Episode:  On Stardate 43198.7, the  Galaxy- class  USS Enterprise  (registry number NCC-1701-D) is in standard orbit over an uncharted and seemingly uninhabited Class-M planet. An away team led by Security chief Lt. (j.g) Worf (Michael Dorn) is exploring the surface. After the away team makes its initial survey, Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) learns that the planet was once inhabited by a culture known as the Koinonians. The Koinonian culture had apparently wiped itself out in a war, leaving only archaeological relics behind. Before the away team beams back up to the  Enterprise,  Lt. Marla Aster (Susan Powell), an archaeologist, is killed when one of the leftover bombs from the Koinonian war explodes. " Away team is aboard, captain. One dead ...