Absolute Disbelief

by spacepug

Checked out another excellent article by Maureen Ryan over at the Chicago Tribune about the upcoming BSG prequel series, Caprica, and my jaw dropped open in shock.

If you thought going from SciFi to SyFy was a bad marketing move, get a load of the new poster for Caprica. Wow, not only have they produced a completely unoriginal image (echoes of Dollhouse, Terminator, how many others?), they’ve sexualized an underage girl and made a mockery of their own claim that the show will be serious drama. All with one poster. WTF were they thinking?

Honestly, now I’m worried. Not at all because they have cut the series order by one episode, but because the marketing department’s move is, in my opinion, a huge misstep. Caprica is going to be a tough sell, period. It’s a drama with just enough sci-fi to make mainstream viewers nervous, and probably not enough sci-fi to guarantee the dedicated geek following. Why shoot yourself in the foot so early? Perhaps they’ll come up with a better game plan before January 22nd.

Agree or disagree? Comment below.

The Cylons’ Secret

My plan was to work my way through the BSG novels.  Just by chance, I got them out of the library in reverse order.  So somehow I still ended up saving the best one for last.

The Cylon’s Secret by Craig Shaw Gardner is the best of the three, in my opinion.  One of those reasons may be that the story is set in the past, before Adama became Commander of the Battlestar Galactica.   Generally, I’m not a fan of prequels, but in this case, unexplored territory worked in the author’s favour.  Pay no attention to the cover, however, since sexy Six doesn’t even appear in the story.

We meet both Adama and Tigh when they are younger, though still scarred by many years in the military.  We also meet Tom Zarek, before he became a political activist.  It’s an engaging story.  Zarek is part of a pirate crew, salvaging outlying outposts in the wake of the first Cylon war.  They come across one planet which seems to be unaware of the outcome of that conflict, one where humans and Cylons still live side by side as they had before the rebellion. At least, the humans on the colony are unaware.  The Cylons have a secret.

Here, there are some inconsistencies as well.  Like the Cylons have laser guns instead of bullets.  Not sure how that one crept past the editors.  But these minor details don’t get in the way of your enjoyment of a substantial story.  I really enjoyed the exploration of what it must have been like for Capricans the day the Cylons rebelled, and their house servants, dishwashers and nannies all simply walked off the job.  I have an image in my mind of a dryer with legs marching out our front door.

This novel had some great characters and a good pace that kept me turning pages.  Well worth the read.

Unity, a BSG novel

Unity is not a very good title for Steven Harper’s Battlestar Galactica novel.  Sure, it is the name of a radical religious group that plays a role in the story, but that one word doesn’t really capture the essence.  The image on the cover does a better selling job, for what is  a pretty exciting tale of the race to cure a highly infectious disease.

After an overly quick end to a Cylon attack and the recovery of another Colonial survivor, many of our favourite characters start falling victim to the “plague of tongues,” which makes them shake and speak nonsense before they collapse and die.  The plague spreads rapidly and the carrier finds himself caught up in a mix of pop hysteria and religious fervor.  As always, the Cylons are hot on their heels, waiting to attack at any moment and the resulting tension ratchets up with each chapter.  There’s plenty of action, and an exciting race against time to find the cure.

Despite the medical focus, this is definitely a Starbuck story, though Baltar gets some nice development as well.  I thought the author pushed the “giggly teen crush” angle for Starbuck a bit far, but he provided compelling reasons for his choices in some interesting, if incorrect, background.  Once again, I found myself wishing I had read this 2007 book before I saw the last season of the show.

A fun read.  4 out of 5

Next up: “The Cylons’ Secret” by Craig Shaw Gardner

Sagittarius is Bleeding

Novel by Peter David.  Review by spacepug.

I’m already missing Battlestar Galactica, so I thought I would try to fill the void by finally getting a hold of the novels, starting with Sagittarius is Bleeding by Peter David.  Below is a brief (but spoiler-free) summary of the book and my thoughts.

As the story begins, Laura Roslin has been miraculously cured of cancer thanks to a transfusion from the unborn child of Sharon Valerii, but now she is haunted by dreams of blood and death.  She wonders if the cure had a nasty side effect, or is she just going mad?

Battlestar Galactica was one of my favourite TV shows.  Laura Roslin was my favourite character on the show.  Peter David is one of my favourite writers.  I should have liked this book much more than I did.

One of my usual criteria for judging any novelization is how well the writer captures the essence of the characters we’ve seen on TV.  David is certainly adept at that, as his many Star Trek novels will attest.  He does an admirable job of portraying both Laura’s vulnerabilities and inner strength.  He even gets inside Sharon’s head in a way that I found more compelling than her TV portrayal.  There isn’t a false note to any of them.

Perhaps the biggest drawback with this novel is that so much of the plot is driven by characters who aren’t in the TV series, namely Boxey and newcomer Freya Gunnerson.  The plot is well constructed and unfolds in an unexpected and exciting confrontation at the end of the book.  Almost until the end however, it seemed the plot wasn’t going anywhere.  There was no sense of imminent danger.  One of the biggest challenges in writing a TV show novelization must be that you have to create a sense of threat and intrigue, and yet are unable to truly alter the path or mindset of any of the characters in order to preserve the “canon.”   This novel was first published in 2006, and unfortunately the ending makes little sense, as events on the TV series have since overtaken these and resolved in a very different way.

It was a quick and moderately enjoyable read.  If you want to experience some of the true genius of Peter David, find one of the Star Trek: New Frontier novels.  His Captain Mackenzie Calhoun is one of my favourite creations in the entire Trek universe.  For a really satisfying BSG novel, I’m going to have to keep reading.  Next up in my sights: Unity by Steven Harper.