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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Much-Needed Defense Of Battlestar Galactica, August 5, 1999
This review is from: An Analytical Guide to Television's Battlestar Galactica (Library Binding)
John Kenneth Muir has authored a superb analysis of the Battlestar Galactica TV series, noting the show's many critics, its strong audience pull, and so forth. He analyzes all 17 of the show's episodes, explores some of the behind-the-scenes production problems, and offers the strengths and weaknesses of the overall show and individual episodes.
Muir's theme is that Galactica, warts and all, was nonetheless an entertaining and thought-provoking series that didn't deserve the kind of criticisms it got from the likes of sci-fi author David Gerrold and horror author Stephen King - Muir reprints blasts by those two and others against the show, blasts that display the ever-indefensible strain of elitist snobbery distressingly common to sci-fi.
Muir's strongest insight lies in his analysis of the show's hawkish view of war-and-piece issues. Sci-fi tends to be drearily pacifistic, based not on any realworld context but on sheer myth. Battlestar Galactica was different, and remains such even today. The show's hawkish philosophy is based on what has happened in the real world, not on the dreams of pacifists. Galactica's viewpoint has been repeatedly verified throughout history; where, for instance, can the one-world pacific viewpoint of Star Trek be verified in the real world?
There are naturally areas where one can disagree with Mr. Muir - his analyses of the episodes Lost Planet Of The Gods and Gun On Ice Planet Zero are absurdly harsh; in GOIPZ he repeats the valid but misunderstood criticism that the Fleet could have simply bypassed the Cylon-armed planetoid, never realizing that the Fleet is in effect surrounded by Cylon base stars and cannot do such an end-run - and he overanalyzes cliches within the show, such as the court-martial cliche used in Murder On The Rising Star.
Muir's overall analysis, though, is spot-on. He recognizes Battlestar Galactica as an enjoyable and thought-provoking series, and includes a list of ten recomended changes for revival of the series. Some of these recommended changes have found their way into the SCI-FI Network's well-made reimagining of Galactica, and Muir's recommended changes can serve as rules to be applied to any film genre - the bad-guys-who-can't-shoot-straight cliche in particular has to be changed. Before the SCI-FI Network's series, many of these recommendations were employed in the Maximum Press and Realm Press versions of Galactica and in Richard Hatch's novels.
It all proves the durability of a sci-fi series wrongly dismissed then and later.
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27 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Much Needed Corrective, But Too Many Flaws, July 21, 2000
This review is from: An Analytical Guide to Television's Battlestar Galactica (Library Binding)
On the plus side, Muir is to be commended for finally setting the record straight concerning the one thing that "Battlestar Galactica" has taken an unfair rap for so many years about, that it was a "ripoff." As he tellingly notes, not only was the George Lucas lawsuit highly suspect (and eventually dismissed) but Lucas himself had a far bigger track record of "ripping off" other sci-fi stories for Star Wars, if one were to apply the same standards to his work. Unfortunately, as one of those who views Galactica as more than just a "guilty pleasure" (I am the author of more than a dozen Galactica fanfic stories) there are ultimately a good many things about this book that end up driving me up the wall. First off, Muir gets way too carried away with his literary criticism style and this causes him to fall in love with ideas of his that are not borne out by what BG's creators have said. Case in point is Muir pushing the long-discredited "Cain in the wreckage" theory concerning the episode "War Of The Gods." Terrence McDonnell, Galactica's story editor, laid this to rest once and for all in 1993 when he said that they had filmed a scene showing the victims to be fellow demons of the Count Iblis character but ABC censored it. Muir chose not to consult McDonnell, Glen Larson or any other participant in the production of the show on this point, or any other one for that matter, and that is simply inexcusable when he's going to bandy about theories that are not correct. I also object to Muir's irresponsible use of the term "fascist" to describe Galactica's underlying political ideology, which is closer to the spirit of Reagan conservatism than it is to liberalism. For Muir to use an ugly term like "fascist" to describe viewpoints that are merely part of the normal conservative fabric says a lot about how there are some people on the left these days who are far more irresponsible than 50s paranoics of the right ever were about "communist" ideas in popular entertainment that they perceived.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Review of Battlestar Galactica, July 10, 2002
This review is from: An Analytical Guide to Television's Battlestar Galactica (Library Binding)
This book is a detailed anaylsis (with some author bias) regarding Battlestar Galactica, but not its [dumb] offspring, Galactica 80. It goes into many things from the creation of the show to an episode guide to a look at the many legal problems and issues with Star Wars. I like the author's take on the Star Wars vs. Galactica mess. He does have a point regarding copying. If Kurosawa and the creator of Flash Gordon used Lucas' logic then all the profits from Star Wars should go to them... His analysis of each episode is actually pretty good. He doesn't shy away from calling a number of episodes dogs especially the cowboy in space junk. Not everything that Glen Larson did regarding Galactica turned to gold. My only problem was that he over emphasizes the importance of both BG and Space 1999 in SF TV. I think that in terms of visuals, BG and Space made a difference in SFX and how they were done on TV (no more Salt Shakers and styrofoam sets!) As for writing? No, because it wasn't all that good. If both shows had better writing then they wouldn't have been canned after two years, but that is just my opinion.
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