Saturday, December 02, 2006
"Battlestar: Galactica" Changing Timeslots
SciFi Friday just won't be the same without "Battlestar: Galactica." I don't know how I missed this, but apparently "BG" is moving to Sundays at 10 p.m. beginning January 21. That means the male fans of NBC's Sunday Night Football will be up for grabs. "BG" will be facing off against "Crossing Jordan," "Without A Trace" (the strongest of the bunch) and "Brothers & Sisters." "B&S" might (I stress the "might" grow into something with tender loving care and the "Desperate Housewives" lead-in, while "Without A Trace" is a solid hit and the aging "Crossing Jordan" not to be underestimated. But all of those shows skew heavily towards older adults. So this might not be a bad timeslot for "Battlestar: Galactica" -- unless HBO weighs in. As long as SciFi stays away from originals on HBO, "BG" could be fine. ("The Sopranos" doesn't start till March 11, which would be about 3/4s of the way through "BG"s season.) Now here's hoping they'll shake the show up a bit - the last two have been the weakest yet from this show, which has stumbled creatively since racing through their "we're colonizing a planet, a long time has passed, oops the Cylons are back" storyline in four episodes.
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2 comments:
From what I've read, SciFi is pairing BG with their new series, The Dresden Files, based on a great set of books by Jim Butcher. This might be just what BG needs to break it out of the doldrums. As for the last two episodes, I thought they were quite good. This show has always been more about the drama and less about its science fiction elements and last Friday's episode in particular ("Unfinished Business") was some of the finest acting of the series -- which is hard to pick from. I do agree however, that the escape from New Caprica came way too quickly. It would have beeen much more interesting if they could have stretched the occupation and resistance to twice the number of episode than they did. The first few episodes of Season 3 were simply fantastic. I hope this time slot change works, because I would hate to see BG bite the bullet. SciFi is owned by NBC and they're not know for sticking with critically acclaimed, but struggling, series.
BG is definitely not flourishing, but I think it's safe for at least a fourth season -- the show is a signature series for SciFi. Every network has good and bad examples of shows they were patient with or cut down too soon. NBC's is as good as anyone's -- Cheers, Hill Street Blues, Seinfeld and so on all became hits after extremely low-rated starts. St Elsewhere was almost kept on as a loss leader. And recently American Dreams and I'll Fly Away eeked out three seasons each thanks to critical acclaim and little else. (I hope the same happens with friday night lights.) I read the first two books in the Dresden Files after they announced the series and it could make a good show. I'm concerned though that Dresden Files starts at 9 p.m. and BG at 10. I'm glad BG isn't facing one of the biggest hits on tv (desperate housewives) but that's a deadly timeslot for Dresden and means it will probably have a very weak lead-in for BG. Surely BG should be launching Dresden, not the other way around. I really liked the first few episodes of this season, too, and I care more about the characters than the sci-fi elements, but the last two seemed to be treading water to me. The boxing one with all those flashbacks? It seemed to me like they suddenly regreted leaving New Caprica too soon and wanted to show us what we'd missed.
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