In 2003, when the Battlestar Galactica Miniseries aired for the first time, Walter White had yet to mix his first batch of meth, Don Draper hadn’t ruined any of his wives or childrens’ lives and Netflix didn’t have one original series to its name. Friends was still on the air! In other words, it was a different viewing landscape, with peak TV still on the horizon and (gasp) nothing to stream. And so almost 15 years and who knows how many excellent dramas and dramedys and anthology series later, the question is what does Battlestar still have to offer us? When it premiered, it seemed to be a show for nerds – the spaceships and robots and Syfy channel logo in the corner gave that away. And during the years it was on, nerds (or scifi aficionados, if you like) flocked to it. But these days the internet has made us all nerds – nerds who argue online about the Twin Peaks reboot and listen to all of Chris Harwick’s seven podcasts. So now that TV is so much better and we are too (obviously) the question is, do we still need Battlestar – is it still worth revisiting? My answer: Abso-fracking-lutely. And here’s why:
- It’s about politics
Recently a friend told me she was 10 minutes into a conversation with a random Lyft driver – they were casually chatting about the Senate’s use of the nuclear option and whether or not it was worth it to filibuster a super majority – when she realized how weird the whole thing would have sounded to her a few years ago. But not in 2017. Politics isn’t just what we’re talking about it, it’s what’s on our minds and what we’re spending our free time trying to change. Enter Battlestar Galactica, a show in which almost every episode there’s political scheming, power struggles and showdowns between rival factions. And the political world of Battlestar isn’t just the volleying of high-minded ideas. On the show there are real world consequences – often the loss of precious human life – that result from the words politicians say and the decisions they make.
2. It’s about A.I.
It’s not that our robot overlords are coming – they’re here you guys. If the dog in that gif could speak, he’d be saying “This is my new master. Eff you Sylvia, and all those sweaters you made me wear.” So in an age when we should really start thinking about the range of ethical issues surrounding the advent of artificial intelligence (not to mention whether they’re on Tinder already), Battlestar can serve as a guide and a big red flag of what mostly NOT to do. You know, don’t get enslaved by the race of robots you engineer to be your servants, don’t get complacent when they leave behind the planet they’ve been fighting you over for years cause they’re probably just getting read to bomb the shit out of you, don’t insult them by calling them Toasters… just the basic stuff. The biggest takeaway from human/cylon dynamic on Battlestar is that if we create new technologies with forethought and caution, we might manage to avoid the total destruction of our race. Which brings me to..
- It’s about the end of the world
While I understand that on a daily basis we have to act like it’s all good in the neighborhood, let’s just acknowledge here that at any given moment there’s a host of volatile factors that could come together to wipe us all off the face of the planet. There, I feel better, don’t you? But whether it’s a tweet fight between Donny and Kim Jong Un that does us in or you just happen to be one of the people the Rock doesn’t come to save in the event of a natural disaster, it really does feel like the apocalypse is especially nigh. And if you’ve watched even the first 20 minutes of Battlestar, that feeling will be familiar to you, because that’s how THE ENTIRE SERIES STARTS: worlds, not just one world, blown to smithereens, whole cities lost and centers of power reduced to rubble. And the 70+ episodes that follow are an in-depth examination into how we got to that point (possibly helpful) and how to carry on from there (most likely crucial).
- It’s about having empathy for the “other”
Some scifi shows give you baddies that look like day old meatloaf with arms, tell you they’re pure evil and let you cheer as the heroes exterminate them one by one until they’re entire race is extinct. It’s the easy path to a feeling of satisfaction and moral superiority. Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, gives you a race of advanced AI that we are responsible for creating, puts human faces on them and presents them as both calculating purveyors of genocide and fervent believers looking for love and their place in the universe. You will find yourself siding with them against the awful humans, and against everything you thought possible. And once you have that moment where your favorite character from the past 10 episodes is revealed to be a cylon, you’ll realize you can’t even trust yourself to know who to hate – and that’s kind of the whole point.
- It’s the ultimate binge
If you have the willpower to start Battlestar Galactica and not be immediately sucked into binging the entire series, well that’s how we know you’re a cyclon. When I saw the Portlandia sketch that showcased how a mild-mannered couple might have their lives hijacked by an addiction to the series, it was all too real. “You’d know who’d never call? Starbuck!” is something I swear I said to my husband during our great Battlestar binge of 2013. And notice that Carrie and Fred are putting physical discs in an actual DVD player. Weird, right? It’s notable that people were binging Battlestar when it still took that much effort to watch one episode after another. Before it was socially acceptable to watch entire seasons of shows in one couch-sitting, people binged Battlestar because it was too good not to.
- It’s a pop culture touchstone
In addition to its appearance in that brilliant episode of Portlandia – and in case you haven’t seen it all, that sketch goes on for several parts and features some really special guests – Battlestar has made its mark on the pop culture landscape far and wide. We all know it’s one of Dwight Schrutes favorite things (only bears and beets are better) and the show is regularly referenced on The Big Bang Theory (Katee Sackhoff even stops by for a visit). Basically other shows know they can mention Battlestar as a short-hand for hardcore nerdom. Current shows like Humans, The Expanse and The 100 owe a lot to the new ground it broke as a serious drama with a science fiction setting. It’s featured on myriad “Top Television” lists and has been highly praised by other genre masters like Stephen King and Joss Whedon. In a way, BSG laid the foundation for how we would come to relate to TV and movies in the decades ahead (binging them, rewatching them, obsessively discussing them, ending relationships over them) – don’t show up to a pop culture fight without it in your arsenal.
- Its got strong female characters
The fact that one of the best characters in BSG – the reckless, charming fighter pilot with the call sign Starbuck – was written for the reboot as a female (after having been played by a man in the original series from the 70s) says a lot about the show’s embrace of a feminist perspective. It’s take is far from perfect, and critics have rightly pointed out its failings when it comes to gender equity, the most glaring of which is probably the hypersexualization of many of the female leads. But for me the saving grace is the depth it imbues in all its characters, male and female. Yes, some of the women are sexy and sexual, but they are never just that. They are also intelligent and/or naive, scheming and/or brave. They are competent at their jobs, but fallible as people, and never presented as less than the equally flawed male characters. And I know if Kara Thrace and Lara Rosalind become role models for the next generation of young women looking to become warriors and world leaders, I’m certainly ok with that.- Its got a big reveal
I have a TV related theory that ever since the awful ending of Lost crushed our belief that a show can be built around a satisfying twist, our collective consciousness just hasn’t recovered. So we salve our wounds with shocking deaths on Game of Thrones (which have become less shocking since some people won’t stay dead..) and even ruin decent twists by way of the internet (ahem, Westworld) before the showrunners get a chance to go “ta-da”. That’s why it’s such a thrill to see the identity of the 12 cylon models (and especially of the final five) unveiled over the course of the entire Battlestar series. Some of the reveals are more rewarding (and make more sense) than others, but they all pay off. And as a bonus, the shocking mystery of “who’s a cylon” that drives so much of the show is something you can threaten to spoil for all your friends who aren’t watching it as fast as you.
- There’s a really fun board game based on the show.
I own it (and one of the expansion packs) and you’re all welcome to come over any time to play. Seriously, one of the best way to spend 5 hours of your life at a time.
- It’s about what make us human
Riddle me this – what other TELEVISION SHOW has had its cast visit the actual IRL United Nation to talk about human rights issues? None that I know, though I really didn’t research it that hard. But I know that the cast of Battlestar did do that and that Edward James Olmos gave a speech about how we are all members of one human race and led the entire auditorium in a chant of “So Say We All,” and no, you’re crying just thinking about it. The ultimate reason this show is now and always will be relevant is that it does not just pay lip-service to some high-minded ideals, it does the work of character and plot development to force its viewers to consider the questions that are the essence of our humanity. The very first line spoken in the show is Number Six leaning over to ask a human: “Are you alive?” And Battlestar Galactica answers, yes, we are and here’s how we prove it – here’s what we are living for. So the justification for our very existence serves as the stakes for this, one of the best shows ever created.
A gang of misfit kidnappers find their tiny target far more bloodthirsty than they bargained for!
So, unfortunately, the trailers gave it away and let’s be real that’s why most of us are here, the knowledge that the kidnap victim Abigail (Alisha Weir), codenamed by the would-be kidnappers appropriately as ‘tiny dancer’, is in fact, a vampire. Not a spoiler, point of fact, one of the film’s actual great selling points. And the reactions from the misfit club when faced with a real actual f*cking vampire, range hilariously from the blunt “no such thing as vampires” all the way to, “Are we talking True Blood or Twilight rules or what?” all while covered in buckets and buckets of blood.
Anyway, the gang manages to subdue and abscond with the aforementioned Abigail, in a pre-prepared duffle bag, like you do, and converge to a new location, a house oddly similar to the one she was just taken from. Welcomed and given codenames by a man who introduces himself as Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito), our misfit club is told to simply hold down the fort in this strange old house with the girl chained up in a room and one person to attend her, for twenty-four hours, and they’ll all get paid.
As inevitable as the tides, the dopey druggie Dean (Angus Cloud) is the first to die, and we’re going to give that death-style points for inspiring terror right off the bat. The very controlling Frank (Dan Stevens, holy crap yes that is the guy from FXs Legion) is also of course the most suspicious – of everyone around him, sure, but also he himself is totes sus. We don’t learn terribly much about the musclebound tank who gets dubbed Peter (Kevin Durand), he’s your pretty typical little-brains-heart-of-gold muscle-for-hire any proper gang needs, right down to the bottle problem. Sammy (Kathryn Newton), well, even for being a purported hacker-type, she has, like, reality issues. Rickles (William Catlett), he’s arguably the most dangerous among them, ex-military and yet somehow here and involved in kidnapping for a few mills. Joey (Melissa Barrera) is our Final Girl, and though she has the inevitable problems in her recent past, she seems more capable of doing the hard thing and still somehow empathizing at the end of the day. Must be her burning desire to get back with her son.
The fit hits the shan pretty quickly, and Abigail morphs from tiny dancer to tiny monster, though honestly, the way Abigail spoke the entire time in the film, if the ‘nappers had been paying close enough attention, would have been a solid clue. The performance from Alisha Weir as Abigail is incredible, as she literally dances a fine line between comedy, tragedy, and outright monstrosity. With a face full of makeup and the force of a tiny tornado to back it up, Weir brings to mind the great performances of the vampires in 30 Days of Night who saw the practicality in the need to trap their food, but also, play with it a bit first before feasting! Anything else would give away the absolute fun time that is Abigail, so you should go see it, out in theaters now!
Fans of the beloved medical comedy series Scrubs were recently treated to a thrilling surprise when John C. McGinley, who portrayed the iconic Dr. Perry Cox, dropped a photo on Twitter hinting at a potential reunion project. The image, showing McGinley alongside his former co-stars, sparked a wave of excitement and speculation among fans who have been longing for more adventures with the beloved Sacred Heart Hospital staff.
While details about the reunion project are still scarce, the mere possibility of seeing the gang back together again has sent waves of nostalgia through fans who fondly remember the show’s original run from 2001 to 2010. Scrubs was not just a sitcom; it was a heartfelt exploration of friendship, love, and the chaotic world of medicine, all wrapped up in a quirky and often hilarious package.
At the heart of the show was the bromance between JD (played by Zach Braff) and Turk (played by Donald Faison), whose antics and deep bond served as the emotional anchor for the series. Their dynamic, along with the sage wisdom (and relentless sarcasm) of Dr. Cox, provided viewers with memorable moments that have stood the test of time.
As we eagerly await more news about the Scrubs reunion project, one thing is for sure: it’s time to dust off those old DVDs, rewatch our favorite episodes, and get ready to welcome back our favorite gang of doctors, nurses, and janitors for what promises to be a memorable reunion.
But Scrubs was more than just its main characters. The supporting cast, including the eccentric Janitor (played by Neil Flynn), the neurotic Elliot (played by Sarah Chalke), and the wise-cracking nurse Carla (played by Judy Reyes), each brought their own unique flavor to the show, creating a rich tapestry of characters that fans grew to love.
While the photo shared by McGinley has fueled speculation about what the reunion project might entail, whether it’s a one-off special, a new season, or something else entirely, one thing is certain: fans are eagerly awaiting any opportunity to dive back into the world of Sacred Heart Hospital.
In an age where reboots and revivals are commonplace, Scrubs stands out as a series that has the potential to recapture the magic that made it a fan favorite in the first place. With its blend of humor, heart, and unforgettable characters, a reunion project has the opportunity to not only satisfy longtime fans but also introduce a new generation to the joys of life at Sacred Heart.
The story of the rise of Coriolanus Snow, from teenage Capital City pawn to rising Dictator of the Hunger Games!
Apparently no one out here in post-apocalyptic Panem has heard of irony and so they name their children things like Coriolanus (Tom Blyth), Tigress, and further off in Hunger Games lore, after swamp plants like Katniss. Corio’s father was a legendary general and that is pretty much the only reason young Snow and his meager family of grandmother called Grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan) and sister Tigress (Hunter Schafer) are tolerated here in the Capital City at all.
Most of the snotty youngsters at the academy won’t let Snow forget how far his family has fallen, but he’s generally not concerned with them. What is concerning is the strong disapproval of the drugged-up Dean Casca Highbottom (Peter Dinklage) and the creepy attention of Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Viola Davis) as she lurks in the classroom sniffing out talent. The Dean feels very strongly the annual Hunger Games should end, while Gaul is violently adamant that not only do the Games continue, but that they get as much more attention as possible. And young Snow is stuck in the middle, when the yearly prize money normally awarded to the academy student with the best grades gets switched out for, you guessed it, the student that can make this years’ Hunger Games as entertaining as possible.
Whilst the students are protesting this sudden change, the annual Reaping is about to commence, and big shock and surprise, Corio’s candidate from District 12 Lucy Grey Baird (Rachel Zegler) is chosen as a Tribute. This is where the film begins to really take off on musical wings, for as it turns out, Lucy Grey can sing. Boy, can that gal sing! She can sing, she can play guitar, she can work a crowd, she can calm things down, she can fire ‘em up too! And Corio, being no dummy himself, instantly plots ways to use his Tributes amazing voice to draw attention to her, and admittedly his own, plight!
Though far too many people sneer at the idea, Corio takes his position as Mentor to his Tribute seriously enough to sneak onto the tram taking the Tributes to their habitat, which turns out to be a completely appropriate moniker, as this year the Tributes are held before the Hunger Games in a large zoo habitat so the weatherman ‘Lucky’ Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), host of this years games, can MC the hell out of everything up close and personal!
What happens at this years Hunger Games and the subsequent consequences to both Corio and Lucy Grey is actually only half the story, and the movie. Coriolanus has always had to be opportunistic, but learning to be absolutely ruthless when necessary under the tutelage of Dr. Gaul, who basically thinks it’s always best to be merciless, is an eye-opening education indeed. Even after they’ve both been consigned to military service and his friend Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andres Rivera) decides to finally rebel, Corio and Sejanus continue to deceive each other and themselves, to accomplish their separate goals. Not even the love Corio swears he feels for Lucy Grey can save him, or them, from the adamant absolute necessity of the Hunger Games continuing. And after all that’s happened, Coriolanus Snow has gotten a terrific education in the best way to be the absolutely ruthless next Hunger Games advocate, and oh yeah, President of Panem.
The movie does itself no favors by trying to stuff not one but two major storylines and a bunch of side storylines sadly introduced and then ignored, into the film. It would have been entirely possible to turn Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes into two different movies, separated between feathers and scales if you like, and do justice to the major storylines in both. Blyth gives a fine performance as a young Coriolanus Snow, but the fact that President Snow is played by Donald Sutherland in all three of the Hunger Games films means Blyth has incredibly large shoes to fill. Rachel Zegler as Lucy Grey is absolute fire, and yes the actress did sing the songs in the film herself, including the Hunger Games franchise epic song, ‘The Hanging Tree’. Every time Lucy Grey opens her mouth and sheer soul-searing music comes out, it provides a distinct counterpoint to the soul-crushing ambition of Coriolanus Snow and further demonstrates the District and Caste separation Hunger Games is known for. And if, by the end of the film, Coriolanus Snow has come to agree that the Hunger Games must continue but perhaps under his own auspices, he has no one but himself to blame when another younger but still rebellious female blows it all up in his face!
Choose rebellion or conformity for yourself in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes!
‘Abigail’: Bite Me Harder Tiny Dancer
Scrubs Reunion: The Band Gets Back Together
‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’: Rebellion with a cause
Wondercon 2024 presents The Spiderwick Chronicles
WonderCon 2024:Day Three
WonderCon 2024:Day One
Scrubs Reunion: The Band Gets Back Together
‘Abigail’: Bite Me Harder Tiny Dancer
Wondercon 2024 presents The Spiderwick Chronicles
‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’: Rebellion with a cause
Thatsmye Interviews: Les Weiler on Henchin’: the Series
Disney Legend Andreas Deja’s Hand-Drawn animated short MUSHKA premiere
Resetting Mortal Kombat A New Beginning with Mortal Kombat 1
William Shatner: You Can Call Me Bill
The Les Files With John C McGinley
