Friday, March 20, 2009

They Have A Plan...


The series finale of BSG had its share, and more, of holy frak moments tonight. I found it very satisfying, from the frantic moments of combat to the awe inspiring sight of ships deliberately flying into the sun to the Return of the King-like multiple goodbyes at the end. I'm a sucker for a good redemption story, and there were several redemptive threads here.

It's refreshing to see a very SFnal story that not only doesn't ridicule faith, but embraces it as essential to life.

It's also fitting that the Sci Fi channel is bidding farewell to its most critically and popularly lauded show in the same week that it has announced that it is changing its name to "SyFy". The network's press release said that the new name is more of an "extensible brand", one that will be free of connotations of -- and I paraphrase here -- video game loving geeks who live in their parents' basements, and will appeal more to females. Talk about dissing your core audience...

Given the pure dreck that "SyFy" usually broadcasts, it's also fitting that some marketing genius missed, as has been pointed out widely on the Net this week, that "syfy" idiomatically translates as a venereal disease in Polish, and as excrement in at least one Nordic language.

It's rather fascinating to watch a whole cable network jump the shark.