Man, the past is cool. I wish I could go back and visit....

[lunadelcorvo]

So my son has discovered Battlestar Galactica. No, not the much (possibly 'over') -hyped SyFy series that aired a couple of years back. I mean the original (dare I say 'real?'*) Battlestar Galactica. Oh, and now he's on an A-Team kick, too. (Also the original, natch. Gotta love Netflix Watch Instantly.)

It's....nice to see it again, if a little embarrassing. It's homey and comfy and awkward all at once. Much like going back to your high school reunion, I imagine. For one thing, it was all so real, so dramatic, so...epic back then. Now I have to admit, it's sort of cheesy. Endearingly cheesy, but still. This is where some of the embarrassment comes in, I suppose.

Then there's the remembered girl-crush. Oy. I mean, Starbuck, on whom I will confess I had a heck of a crush (the cigar-smoking, sexy, womanizing Starbuck, that is), still looks darn good in the reruns. Then I remember he is now 65. This is a hard pill to swallow.

Still, I have to say the past is pretty cool. But I really wish I could visit for real...

*You gotta allow me this one, sorry. I know, I'm totally dating myself, but I grew up on the first series. It was seminal, formative, precious.

Comments

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, I loved Starbuck/Face. Then they filmed an episode of the A-Team and my grandpa's store, so I got to meet a bunch of them. I was totally scared of Mr. T, even though he's the nicest guy ever, but I really, really wanted to meet Face. But guess what. Dirk Benedict is a HUGE asshole. HUGE. I was just a little kid, and he completely refused to talk to me, even though he was in my family's store! I ended up hanging out with Lance LeGault (the colonel who chased the team). He showed me his gun and everything. It turns out they used bb guns, which is why they never pointed them at each other on screen.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

BB guns? Wow. Interesting choice for prop guns.... Which episode, do you recall? (Just for grins). Vis a vis Benedict, *shrug* I don't mean to downplay what happened to you, but actors are people, too. I've dealt with enough of them (both the famous varieties and less so) to take them with a grain of salt, and a dash of pity. They can get stretched pretty thin. It's a shame you had a bad experience though.... :(

[doctoreon.livejournal.com]

I can't remember what episode it was. This must have been more than twenty-five years ago. I was just a little dude.

[lucretiasheart.livejournal.com]

You're not the only one who has these moments, as I'm sure you're well aware! |^D

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do know... they are always a bit of a shock, though, aren't they? ;)

[lucretiasheart.livejournal.com]

Sure are!

[samuraiartguy.livejournal.com]

Raising my head from pre-press and herding teenagers for this one.

I draw down the ire of both camps for not "taking sides" and liking both incarnations of BSG... but I will admit that the 70s version had moments of high cheese. ... and painfully shoddy production (the endless recycling of SFX sequences to the point of visual shorthand comes to mind). However, the re-boot "Galactica 1980" was almost unforgivably wretched.

[sentimental13.livejournal.com]

I'm telling ya, watch the new one and you'll get a crush on the female starbuck! I know, I know, quite a diversion from the original, but still a good show in its own right. I don't consider it as much a relaunch as a take on the world post 9/11 and using a moderately familiar sci fi venue to go there.

Also, so glad he's enjoying the old BSG. Is the original movie on netflix? If not, I've got that and you're welcome to borrow or I can get you a copy.

[raven-moon.livejournal.com]

Maybe that's it, and I'm thinking I just am sick of seeing things that were once hopeful be recast into xenophobic paranoia.

Granted this may be fueled in part by my confrontation with another bit of 80s hopefulness [in the midst of the cold war, how odd] utterly perverted by the same kind of paranoid 'OMG it's different, kick it's ass, blow it up, quick before it destroys all we hold dear' hatefulness. I was recently poleaxed by a trailer for the "sequel" (and believe me I use the term veeeery loosely) to E.T. (here: http://cyranothe2nd.livejournal.com/144999.html)

That, and the immeasurably darker tone to BSG (as far as I know, I admit I haven't seen much of it), among others, seem to be very telling indicators about the way we do see the world, and while I'm certainly nobody's idealist, it really, really sucks. And it's really, really starting to piss me off to see the things from which I learned hope, openness, fairness, and possibility turned utterly dark and threatening.

And yet at the same time, we can reify the crackpot religio-capitalism of Atlas Shrugged, because sure, we really need a little more flag waving on that front...after all, there are probably still a few restrictions on unbridled greed at any human cost still lingering about, and we want to stamp those little suckers out, you betcha! I suppose it seems that our culture is becoming really, really, dangerously, even neurotically pessimistic, misanthropic, and paranoid.

But isn't that where we are now? Multiculturalism? It's evil, and they are going to enslave us all! Diversity? No, they are trying to attack our culture! Lending a helping hand to someone? Oh, f*ck no, that's socialism and it's the biggest evil of all.... I mean, really, who the heck wants to view the world that way? And yet... here we are.