renaissance poisson

i just watched the pilot for caprica (the sorta-prequel for battlestar galactica, and i liked it.

now i am going to be slave to the darn television schedule.

the pilot was very good. if you want to watch it, do yourself a favour and do NOT read syfy's summary; it is very spoilery IMO (i read it afterwards, and was glad for that). i have read very little about the show, so i'll only be talking about my impressions, and try to do so without spoilers. ( read on )

the show is filmed in/near vancouver as was BSG, and it's fun again to spy buildings and settings i recognize -- and here they're not shot in grainy high key, but they have spiffy CG additions, as befits an empire before its fall. there are quite a few little nods to BSG fans, but it's a series that stands alone, one needn't have watched BSG, or know anything about it.

til the paramour gets home. woohoo! that means 8.5 more hours until i absolutely HAVE to vacuum. :) and before that i have to clear all sorts of crap that has accumulated in the living room over the last 2 months. and go food shopping. and do laundry (yeah, that's not likely, i know). i am tired. my schedule is all screwed up. but i will bake bread, and also make some of that "cinnamon bun" stuff, with actual cinnamon this time, since the paramour likes it. as soon as i lift my butt from this comfy chair...

so what am i doing instead? if you said "watched BSG", you were correct, and i am properly ashamed.

( thoughts about season 3 episode 10, 'the passage'. )

the big disadvantage of watching a truly excellent drama showed itself last night with force. zip.ca mailed me the first farscape episodes, so i was all excited to finally see that from the beginning, because i'd only caught the occasional episode here and there. and while it always had a certain hokeyness (i never bought rigel as anything but a cute puppet, and crichton was just a wee bit too snappy), i could take it seriously for large stretches. now it's basically unwatchable for me as anything but pure comedy, and that's a pity, because it doesn't stand up as that since it's not meant as that. the acting in farscape -- wow, not so good in comparison. i know that probably dooms stargate atlantis for me as well right now.

and i better stay away from rewatching firefly for a good long time, *sigh*.

i remember the west wing doing this to me as well.

in another medium, i've unfortunately also now met a robert charles wilson book i didn't care for: darwinia. damn. maybe i didn't read it in big enough chunks? being so obsessed with BSG i've really just read a few pages before falling asleep every day, and sometimes that doesn't keep a book cohesive enough for me. oh well, he's certainly allowed a dud in any case, given how marvelous everything else that i've read by him has been.

i have never ever been so tempted to start writing fanfic as i am today, after watching the mindfracking season 2 finale. man, this hurts.

i am trying to figure out the mythology.

at the end of the miniseries, at the memorial service, the priestess sings. that's not greek, nor any language i recognize. the main title song sounds like it could be the same language, but i am not sure about that. is that an actual human language, or is it completely made up?

i don't want to google for fear of spoilers about the myth stuff. :) anyone know?

ok, so i have been seriously sucked in, and have now watched the entire first season, and am well into season two. thanks djm4 for encouraging me to give up any actual life in order to watch a bleeding tv show. :)

in the beginning i was a little peeved that it has turned out not to be science fiction. i mean sure, at first glance it has the trappings -- star ships, far-flung colonies, robots, aliens attacking humans -- but watching the first few episodes after the miniseries it became pretty clear that there's not to be any science whatsoever. a little bit later i realized that there wasn't going to be any speculation either (such as in "speculative fiction").

( spoilerish for anyone who has not seen the show at all and doesn't want to know anything about it yet )

one thing that annoys the shit out of me, is how the television format fucks with the story. i don't know why that doesn't have me up in arms all the time, but it's probably responsible for me falling regularly out of patience with television and retreating into books, which have more format leeway. because life doesn't happen in 45 or 90 min chunks. because my engagement with a story doesn't fit neatly into that format. maybe it's just much more obvious here because the production crew is clearly chafing under the restriction -- a fair number of episodes feel as if they've been shrunk just a little too much in order to fit into the standard 45 min chunk, and on the other hand, double episodes feel slightly padded. heck, these guys also don't seem to much like the concept of "season".

but aside from that, i am really enjoying this show, more than i've enjoyed any other show since the early west wing. the acting is across the board very good, and there are heaps and heaps of character development. and i am not spitting the usual nails at gender stereotypes -- mind, there are stereotypes, but gender-wise they're much less screaming out for clubbing the writers over the head than is normal for television. there are strong women here, and it's portrayed as normal that they are strong and capable, it's assumed that they are fighter pilots and admirals and presidents as a matter of course. i have issues with some of the villainy, but overall, this is a breath of fresh air.

oh, and almost forgot: it's shot in and around vancouver, and i am really getting into figuring out where specific scenes were shot. i immediately recognized the public library and the quad at SFU, and i would bet that gaius baltar's house is just up the coast from west vancouver. i feel like making a BSG photo expedition to the mainland.