Scifi info

I enjoyed The Dresden Files on SciFi (the science fiction channel) this year. It wasn't perfect, by any means. I found the tendency for Harry Dresden, the main character, to get into fights by the end of the second act to be too formulaic. Still, the story about a modern day wizard detective (based on the novels of the same name) was interesting. It was also filmed in Toronto, which brought a smile to my homesick lips.

It's been cancelled. Figures.

In the spring SciFi ran the show Painkiller Jane, a stupid title for a show about a near invulnerable woman working for a shadowy government agency (a cheap ripoff of Nikita, which itself was based on the French move La Femme Nikita). The show was about as stupid as its title, at least that's the feeling I had from watching the premiere episode. It's been cancelled, too. Good, because it didn't deserve to stick around after they cancelled Dresden.

This summer SciFi premiered an updated version of Flash Gordon, based loosely around the film that came out in 1980. It even used the same theme song by rock group Queen. It had potential. I saw the first episode. So did a lot of people, as it had the strongest ratings of any new SciFi show this year, suggesting it would be around for a while.

It was awful. The acting was horrid, the writing was about as bad as the acting. It looked like it was filmed by a high school film arts class.

Fortunately, it's been cancelled, too, and much quicker than the other two shows. This is good, because it didn't deserve to stick around after they cancelled Painkiller Jane. Yeah, it was that bad.

I learned some new stuff about Battlestar Galactica. If you only remember Battlestar Galactica from the campy show from the 70s and 80s (I actually paid to see the pilot in the theatres), you've been missing something good. It started as a miniseries based on the show but much darker and a lot better produced. Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell are the most well known actors in a very good cast.

The series is set in another part of the galaxy, where the people worship the Greek gods. They have legends of a lost tribe that settled on a far away planet called Earth. The humans built sentient machines, called the Cylons. The Cylons rebelled, destroying most of humanity with nuclear weapons. The survivors escaped in a hodge podge (known, officially, as a "rag tag") fleet of ships, including an aging battleship/carrier known as a "battlestar". The fleet is looking for a new home, and the ultimate destination is Earth.

Anyway, the season ended this spring with a cliffhanger. The new season wasn't supposed to start until early 2008. That's not quite the case, now. They are playing a telemovie, called "Razor", in November. Then the season will run in the new year. They're splitting the season in half, with a cliffhanger separating the two halves. The big question is the length of time between the first half and the second half. Jamie Bamber, who plays Lee "Apollo" Adama, said that the gap between the two halves will be long, perhaps as much as 10 months! Recently rumours have surfaced that it might be as short as a month.

Where did I get all this neat information? Syfy Portal.