Well, I think Moore always had a deliberate focus on the characters, too -- he wanted to consciously set the show at odds with most of what TV science fiction had focused on before, which tended to be pretty much be effects-driven action, simplistic morality plays and an occasional whizbang "it's the future!" idea. Sure, I'm overstating that for effect; it's easy to pick out individual episodes of shows that rose above those traps, but for the most part TV science fiction lagged pretty far behind written science fiction in terms of complexity and characterization. Despite BSG's various faults, being the first SF show on television that had so many people talking about the superlative acting without feeling compelled to append "...for science fiction" counts for a whole lot.
As for "Syfy": oy. I suspect John Scalzi is correct and the real reason behind the name change has less to do with some peculiar attempt to broaden the audience than it does with having a channel name that can be easily trademarked. Of course, Scalzi also brought to light that "syfy" in Polish means "venereal disease." As he wrote, "You would have thought NBC Universal's brand people might have caught this (heh) ahead of time."
It may be worth noting that the name change actually only happened after Bonnie Hammer got bumped upstairs, as it were: she runs the whole NBC Universal cable division now, and Dave Howe is president of the Sci Fi, er, VD, er, Syfy channel these days. I don't know what that means, but after the name change, do watch for rashes.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2009-03-23 23:02 (UTC)As for "Syfy": oy. I suspect John Scalzi is correct and the real reason behind the name change has less to do with some peculiar attempt to broaden the audience than it does with having a channel name that can be easily trademarked. Of course, Scalzi also brought to light that "syfy" in Polish means "venereal disease." As he wrote, "You would have thought NBC Universal's brand people might have caught this (heh) ahead of time."
It may be worth noting that the name change actually only happened after Bonnie Hammer got bumped upstairs, as it were: she runs the whole NBC Universal cable division now, and Dave Howe is president of the Sci Fi, er, VD, er, Syfy channel these days. I don't know what that means, but after the name change, do watch for rashes.