Is SGU ripping off BSG?

[Tobias March]

Linkage (http://www.somnopolis.net/2009/08/18/does-this-look-familiar-to-you/)

A quick google shows I'm not the first to have thought this.

Of course one could argue that BSG is a variation on Voyager, which Ron Moore previously wrote for - although he didn't stick it long for the simple reason that he found the Trek precepts too limiting for the concept, taking his ideas with him and adapting them to BSG.

Now Stargate is taking on that premise also, a show which in the past has seemed to me to be even more of a conceptual milquetoast than Star Trek. Controversy is eschewed and story resolutions punctually arrive between ad breaks.

As for Dr David Rush's superficial resemblance to Dr Gaius Baltar - well that could be all it is.

However, if it emerges Robert Carlyle's character has some involvement in the attack on the Earth military base - well I told you so.

[Sighphi]

Lost in Space.
Next.

[Charles RB]

Hartnell Doctor Who too, technically.

[Donald M.]

Lost in Space.
Next.

To go further, before Lost in Space there was the very similar Gold Key Comic series Space Family Robinson. Both it and Lost in Space take obvious inspiration from Swiss Family Robinson, an 1812 novel that was first adapted to film in 1940 and whose popular Disney adaptation also predates both.

Swiss Family Robinson, of course, takes its inspiration from Daniel Defoe's 1719 classic Robinson Crusoe, widely considered the first English novel.

Then there's The Odyssey . . .

People are forever obsessing over how this has similarities to that, but to paraphrase Roger Ebert, it's not what it's about, but how it is about it.

Not to say SGU will necessarily be good (or necessarily be bad, though I'm not a fan of the franchise and won't be checking it out) but so what if its premise has some superficial similarities to BSG, ultimately it has to succeed or fail on its own merits.

[Hoss]

Yes, there are a limited amount of stories and nothing is truly new.

That said, the similarities are glaring in the tone and feel of the adverstisement for SGU. It is quite obvious that the makers of that show are trying to evoke BSG. The question is whether the actual show will develop its own identity or continue to mirror the look and themes of BSG.

[7thangel]

but did any show give it's characters the opportunity to jump into someone elses body to have sex?

have they brought a woman in a wheelchair who jumps into a lesbians body that's in a committed relationship and used her body to have sex that male doctor?

did bsg or stargate legitimately piss off and been accused of marginalizing several real groups of people (once again) before they aired?

:evilsmile:

[Ontir]

What's "SGU?"

[Charles RB]

Stargate Universe.

[Ontir]

Oh. OK. I don't watch the "Stargate" shows.

[Sighphi]

To go further, before Lost in Space there was the very similar Gold Key Comic series Space Family Robinson. Both it and Lost in Space take obvious inspiration from Swiss Family Robinson, an 1812 novel that was first adapted to film in 1940 and whose popular Disney adaptation also predates both.

Swiss Family Robinson, of course, takes its inspiration from Daniel Defoe's 1719 classic Robinson Crusoe, widely considered the first English novel.

Then there's The Odyssey . . .

People are forever obsessing over how this has similarities to that, but to paraphrase Roger Ebert, it's not what it's about, but how it is about it.

Not to say SGU will necessarily be good (or necessarily be bad, though I'm not a fan of the franchise and won't be checking it out) but so what if its premise has some superficial similarities to BSG, ultimately it has to succeed or fail on its own merits.

Well, i didnt want to go that far but....yes.

[Ontir]

There's also the Book of Exodus, and Moses leading the Hebrews through the desert to the promised land. Galactica was very much that.

[rawhidekid]

(Ecclesiastes 1:9 NIV) What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun

Or as BSG said it I'm paraphrasing. It this has happened before and will happen again.

You can read it two ways.

1.) I shouldn't try cause I can never come up with something original.

or

2.) Cool someone else has felt that same way I do. Lets see how they walked this out. Maybe I can but my touch into it.

[Tobias March]

Lost in Space.
Next.

Call it the Twilight/Buffy effect -

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a critical hit, but never really the ratings winner the WB network (and later UPN) hoped for. However, it laid the groundwork for Twilight - teenage girl falls in love with vampire; good fangster practices ‘vegetarianism’, by not feeding on humans; vampirism as sexual metaphor etc.

Stephenie Meyer claims to have never watched Buffy, yet her first novel appeared shortly after the series ended. Huge commercial hit, succeeds where the former failed in attracting legions of teenage fans. However, the subtext of the original - feminism, queer theory, the disillusionment with adulthood - is inverted into female submissiveness and sexual repression.

BSG and this SGU are not the first stories to focus on a crew of humans ‘lost in space’. Nevertheless, the latter is so similar to Ron Moore’s show I fear it will be reduced it to a husk of itself. I cannot even watch Buffy anymore, its project having been so successfully reversed by the insipid Twilight. Stargate has an awful habit of tarnishing the source material it absconds with also.

[Sighphi]

Sorry but Buffy isnt the start point of those things.
Forever Knight (1992 tv show) had a Vamp detective that didnt feed on humans. Sounds like Angel TV series, doesnt it ?
Vampirism has been a sexual mephator and girl falling for vamps since the original vamp novels back almost a 100 years ago with The Vampyre and Carmilla.

Buff might have brought back the genre to the forefront a bit with a certain type of storytelling but it's far from the source of all these things.

[Charles RB]

Huge commercial hit, succeeds where the former failed in attracting legions of teenage fans. However, the subtext of the original - feminism, queer theory, the disillusionment with adulthood - is inverted into female submissiveness and sexual repression.

Now that raises disturbing questions.

(I thought Buffy had done quite well in ratings though)

[Arvandor]

Now that raises disturbing questions.


Oh it be true. It's a trope and I'm sick of it.

Anita Blake; Twilight; Bitten; and all other female written goth romances - they're nothing but pathetic rape fantasies, where the supposedly strong and independent female protagonists are instead weak, spineless, and utterly subservient to their bad boy lovers.

[7thangel]

Oh it be true. It's a trope and I'm sick of it.

Anita Blake; Twilight; Bitten; and all other female written goth romances - they're nothing but pathetic rape fantasies, where the supposedly strong and independent female protagonists are instead weak, spineless, and utterly subservient to their bad boy lovers.

twilight is full of subtle with morman doctrine, whether some think that's bad or good.

[kalorama]

Yeah, there's a long, long line of stuff from which the basic premise of SGU was ripped, going back well before Galactica.