Battlestar Galactica Characters and Their Trekkie Dopplegangers

Battlestar Galactica co-creator Ronald D. Moore is certainly no stranger to the military men in space genre. After all, he sat on the staff of not one, but three iterations of Star Trek when BSG was still the domain of the sci-fi nostalgic. Anyone who’s watched more than a handful would hardly mistake Battlestar’s post-apocalyptic plotline with Star Trek’s mission of space exploration, but I can’t help but see Trekkian influences in some of the characters aboard the Colonial Fleet. This has consequently led to my obsessive attempts to pair BSG characters with analogs from the various Treks.

Let’s start with an easy one:


Dr. Gaius Baltar vs. Dr. Julian Bashir



There’s no question that Cylon aider and abettor turned radio evangelist Gaius Baltar was conceived as a dark twin to Deep Space Nine’s genetically-enhanced sick bay doc. Both men get their first names from Caesar, namely Gaius Julius Caesar, and have nearly identical surnames. Both men are slender, speak with an accent that belongs on an Eton grad, and tend to explain overly technical aspects of their research in a way that annoys and frustrates everyone around them. Both have been known to pull medical miracles squarely from their respective anuses, and harbor dark secrets that they fear will result in their ostracism (or worse).

You just know that Moore and David Eick sat down at the development table and said, “Let’s take Bashir and turn him into the hard-core narcissist he should have been. And make him a better dresser.”

Of course, when the time came on DS9 to establish a cult around an enemy religion, the mantle of sex-crazed charismatic fell to Gul Dukat, which is a shame since Bashir could have been a pretty kick-ass cult-leader.



Chief Petty Officer Galen Tyrol vs. Chief Petty Officer Miles O’Brien



Nearly every descriptor you could assign to Chief Tyrol could apply to Chief O’Brien. Overworked and undervalued? Check. Of a lower social class than many of his coworkers? Check? Paunchy, temperamental, and as loyal as they come? Check, check, and check. Even the name “Galen,” despite being English, reminds one of the word “Gaelic,” which Miles O’Brien certainly is. Plus, they both dated Asian chicks (so what if O’Brien married his while Tyrol’s got shot during her perp walk?). In fact, the only word that describes Tyrol but not O’Brien is “Cylon.”

During early seasons, I often remarked that Baltar and Tyrol were just like Bashir and O’Brien except that Tyrol hated Baltar’s Cylon-boinking guts. But now that Tyrol’s accepted Baltar’s hand in friendship, maybe he can get past that whole New Caprica occupation thing, just like O’Brien got past all those lost games of racquetball.



Commander Bill Adama vs. Captain Benjamin Sisko



Make no mistake, Ben Sisko was the coolest Starfleet captain ever to wear the pips. He knew that the military had a job to do, and it wasn’t always pretty. Sometimes you’ve got to send kids to war. Sometimes you’ve got to be willing to do things to your enemy that those sissies back on the Enterprise-D would never dream of. And if you piss off-that religion-spouting lady you’re unwillingly partnered up with from time to time? No one said life in space was easy. Plus, you’ll probably be great friends in the end. Throw in a dead wife and a son who's reluctant to follow in your military bootsteps, and you’ve got a near-perfect pairing of the senior Adama and Sisko.



Captain Kara “Starbuck” Thrace vs. Ensign Ro Laren



I’m sure that Starbuck’s mom was only an abusive tyrant because she knew that trauma in childhood turns you into a badass warrior woman. Just look at Ro Laren. She spent her formative years in Cardassian concentration camps and she never met a fight she didn’t like. Much like Starbuck, Ro is insubordinate, prone to bouts of religious fervor, and ultimately warmest toward her commanding officer. Of course, when her loyalties were tested, Ro bailed to join the Maquis. Given that Starbuck's is allegedly the harbinger of death and all, it’ll be interesting to see where she lands with the Cylons.

We do get a handy glimpse into Starbuck’s future when Ro shows up as the Admiral of the Pegasus. Torture and executions for all!

Update: After much discussion, I'd also link Starbuck to TNG's Natasha Yar in that both boast short blond hair and cruddy childhoods (Yar grew up on crime planet Turkana IV), and both did it with robots. I don't imagine, however, that Thrace would be so foolhardy as to quit her absurdly popular series, only to host the fan movie nine years later.



Caprica Six vs. Seven of Nine



They’re both impossibly toned, incredibly blond, robot-human hybrids with numbers instead of names. They have also enacted genocides, been captured by enemy combatants, and have spent a good deal of their series exploring what it means to have human emotions. I suspect they’re also the most likely twosome to appear in cross-series femslash fanfiction.



Vice President Tom Zarek vs. Commander Chakotay



Ex-terrorists who fought for the little guy forced to play second banana to the female leader of the mainstream power? It’s practically the space opera version of a sitcom.



Lieutenant Anastasia “Dee” Dualla vs. Lieutenant Uhura



I know that someone has to keep the commanding officers apprised of what’s going on, but why do the communications officers always sound like glorified receptionists? (And seriously, could we see a male comm officer for once?)


Billy Keikeya vs. Ensign Harry Kim



They're young, adorable, and utterly beloved by their female superiors for their dependability. In a sane universe, girls would be lining up to frak these guys. Tragically, they never ever ever get the girl.



Jean Barolay vs. Every Redshirt Ever



When civilian volunteer Jean Barolay eagerly hopped onto Starbuck’s viper along with Anders, Athena, and Leoben on last Friday’s episode, my sig-o groaned that she was a goner. Sure enough, she’s just one encounter with a Six away from certain doom.

Barolay’s the perfect BSG answer to the redshirt. We’ve seen her in a few episodes, so it’s not completely random when she’s removed from the scoreboard. But we haven’t had the opportunity to get too emotionally attached – it was almost more resonant when her Cylon murderer gets the permanent sleep at the hands of another Six. Let that be a lesson to you; never go on missions populated entirely by characters who are more central than you are.

Canada's National Film Board Brings Us Meloncholy Kids, Celebrity Scientologists, and Post-Apocalyptic Foosball

This week, the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada posted 9 of the films premiering at the Short Corner of this year's Cannes Film Festival to YouTube. The NFB commands you to watch its videos and vote for the ones you love.

By far the most remarkable entry is "Victor Gazon," a French-language Canadian film (Anglicized for our convenience) in which young Victor creates a video presentation for school on why suicide is wrong. In deciding whether or not he should want to kill himself, the 9 year-old lists the things in life that he likes and dislikes. There are plenty of dark places in Victor's life, but he gives equal weight to all the little things that make him happy:

"Raging Ball" may not be as profound as "Victor Gazon," but what it lacks in emo and oedipal complexes, it more than makes up for in costume design.
Begoggled Noodle (who suspiciously resembles this Noodle) does battle with the teddy bear-deprived La Bestia across a foosball table amidst a host of steampunk ne're-do-wells:

Then there's "Struck," a rather light film about a man with a three foot-long arrow sticking out of his chest. It's a fine film, not dazzling, not my favorite (and aspects of it were suspiciously familiar), but pretty enough to look at:

The little sidebar on YouTube touted Bodhi Elfman as the skewered leading man. Now, to be honest, the only things I know about Bodhi Elfman are that he's married to Jenna Elfman and he's a big fat Scientologist, and I wouldn't recognize the man if he walked up to me and offered to give me a free personality test. And then wifey shows up in a cameo, and oh, that's cute, a little wink to the celeb-watching crowd. Then the credits roll and hey, look, that was Nancy Cartwright. Wait, isn't Nancy Cartwright a Scientologist, too? And so is Ethan Suplee...Is everyone in this movie a gods-damned Scientologist? Cross-referencing IMDB with Wikipedia reveals that, yes, each and every "Struck" cast member is, in fact, a Scientologist. It turns out that even Jason Dohring is a congenital Scientologist, having inherited the Hubbard meme from his Neopets exec father. Et tu, Logan Echolls?

IMDB also notes that "Struck" director Taron Lexton (who married 24 superagent Nadia Yassir a.k.a Marisol Nichols last month) has just two additional film credits to his name -- one for a student film and another commissioned by the Human Rights Department of, you guessed it, the Church of Scientology. This apparently merits him a seven minute feature with a group of actors who could earn six figures merely by expressing their flatulence, provided it was on tape. The "Struck" website explains that the actors "were all on board out of their love for filmmaking." Apparently, their common love for Dianetics had nothing to do with it.

The message, kids, is clear: become a Scientologist and you, too, can make movies with Hollywood elite!

Review: Dorm Life

College shows must be harder than they look. I can count on one hand (on one finger?) the number of solid college shows I've seen. Think about it: Buffy drops out of college with a little more than a year under her belt; Veronica Mars got canceled during her freshman year; the writers of "One Tree Hill" avoided the college issue altogether, choosing instead to age up their characters a full four years after high school graduation. Even "Felicity," a show ostensibly premised on a young girl finding herself in college, moved sharply away from academic life in later seasons. And Apatow's fresh and promising "Undeclared" went the way of so many fresh and promising shows -- canceled without even a full season of air.

"Dorm Life" is the latest ill-conceived entrant into the college genre. It focuses on a group of mostly freshman students who share a hallway in the dorms of an unnamed college. We follow these neophyte students as they laugh, they learn, they...Zzzzzz...

Sorry, where was I?

Oh, right. This show. Although "Dorm Life" wisely limits the action to the hallway itself (not stepping outside its scope with classes, parties, and visits home), and managed to cast actors actually look 18, it suffers from the twin bugbears of overcrowding and creative laziness. We are told at the start of the series that each resident has been armed with a webcam, but instead of being a series of video diaries (like certain superior series I can name), "Dorm Life" consists of full sitcom-style episodes shoehorned into a five minute running time. Maybe the writers think that web shows should all be modeled on "Friends," with each character participating in a subplot. Maybe the creators promised each member of the show's ten person cast that they would appear in each episode. Whatever the reason, the end result is that each character gets at least one line of dialogue or one sufficiently terrified look into the camera every five minutes. I may not have to live with these people, but I'm already sick of them.

This crowd of faces and plotlines might have been forgivable if any of the characters stepped outside their respective archetypes. I can just imagine the spitballing around the writers' room:

"Well, we're doing a college show. Do we have our handsome all-American nice guy?"

"Yup."

"An incomprehensible artist?"

"Yes, but, get this: everybody thinks he's a genius. 'Cause, you know, they're in college, so they all get that shit."

"Do they really get it, or are they pretending to?"

"That's the brilliant part. We never say. Leave the audience wondering."

"Love it. Is there a party animal?"

"Two, actually. Figured we'd get a little bromance going."

"Perfect. Why don't we stick them in with a homeschooled kid, just to get the juices pumping. Actually, can we give all the kids homeschooled roommates?"

"We should probably limit it to two."

"Okay, but make sure the other one gets a super obnoxious roommate. Where are we on sorostitutes?"

"Okay, so get this. Backstory: these girls have been friends since, like, middle school and they decide they'll go to the same college, room together, pledge the same house. And then they get to college and -- bang! Instant frenemies."

"Boys, I think we've got a hit on our hands."

Sadly, there are a few golden nuggets in this show that get buried in all the pyrite-coated dog shit. When one heretofore unseen character suddenly becomes the center of the hall's attention and affections because everyone just found out he's gay, he notes, "I feel like the kid in third grade who broke his arm and now everyone wants to sign my cast." And there was a clever bit where several characters stage a recon mission by strapping a camcorder to a Roomba, but they spend more time discussing the repurposing of the vacuum cleaner and becoming entrenched in far less interesting subplots than on spying on their fellow dorm-dwellers.

Nowhere is the squandered potential of the show so apparent as on the Dorm Life website, where you can view webcam companion videos for each episode that actually make the characters seem like human beings. It certainly poses a greater challenge, but I would like to see the creators of "Dorm Life" create a show around those videos rather than try to reinvent the sitcom.

[Dorm Life]
[Dorm Life on blip.tv]

Cats vs. Dogs on the Internet

Everyone knows that dogs are superior to cats. Dogs are friendly, loyal companions who have lived and worked alongside humanity for millennia, while cats are snooty, obsessive-compulsive germaphobes who long for the days when they were worshiped as gods and can't be bothered to distinguish the human leg from a scratching post. But some people are simply Cat People, and we really can't fault them for that. They have fallen under the hypnotic sway of those deep, throaty purrs, and have been compelled to purchase Fancy Feast by the gross and snap hundreds of photos of their feline overlords.

And when Al Gore invented the Internet, the cats knew. They bade their fleshy slaves to buy scanners, learn HTML, invent the digital camera. This way, their divine visages could be beamed into homes across the globe, and hapless humans from Alabama from Abu Dhabi would sigh and say, "Awww, what a cute widdle kitty." I'm absolutely sure that's how it happened.

Someone once said that 90% of the Internet (presumably the non-porn share) is pictures of people's cats. The LOLcats are perhaps the best-known incarnation of that phenomenon, but cats star in their fair share of memes. There's Stuff On My Cat, where people post pictures of objects piled on top of their remarkably compliant kitties. And that's forgetting all the videos attributing enormous talent and personality to the feline species:

[A Cat Playing the Theremin, via Gawker]

[An Engineer's Guide to Cats, via Metafilter]

But dogs, our faithful allies in the animal kingdom, have not fared so well online. Aside from the Daily Puppy, which operates on the brilliantly simple notion of posting adorable photos of people's puppies -- no LOLspeak, no carefully balanced objects, just puppies -- dogs are largely taunted or ignored. Take Fail Dogs, the canine antithesis to I Can Has Cheezburger. Instead of pictures of cats accompanied by grammatically incorrect text, Fail Dogs features photos of dogs in unfortunate or embarrassing situations, accompanied only by the word FAIL.

Get the idea?

Even dog lovers do little to improve the status of their favorite pet. Blogger and Wordpress host scores of blogs ostensibly authored by dogs. These dloggers all begin their tales the same way: "Yes, I have my own blog! Mommy was so shocked when she found me at the computer typing!" (As with the boxing glove-wearing Strong Bad, it is never explained how these prolific pooches manipulate the keyboard.) From there, the posts generally descend into banal observations on the absurdity of human life: "Mommy bought a new dress for her date. It was OK, but I've never understood the human obsession with clothes. Don't they know au naturale is beautiful?" or third person narration of their owners' lives: "Daddy says we're going to the Cape this weekend. I don't know what that is, but it sure sounds fun!"

While this says less about the relative creativity of the dogs than their owners, it does little to improve the ignominious online presence of our canine friends. I can't really control the actions of dloggers, and if they want to write inane blog entries from the perspective of their pups. But dlogs could be genuinely amusing -- as well as rescue the reputations of dogs -- if bloggers could employ them to maintain some genuine distance from themselves and explore their lives in a truly critical and thought-provoking manner. Or maybe a dlog could take a serious tact, with an intellectual pooch exploring important issues of the day and looking at how they impact the pet population. Or perhaps video dlogging is the answer -- four uninterrupted minutes of dogs looking into the camera.

Whatever it is, we can't let the cats win.

Pitchfork Launches Pitchfork.tv: Now You Don't Have to be Literate to be Pretentious

Remember music videos? Remember when you could turn on MTV or VH1 and they'd be there by the dozens -- close ups on pretty people, sorrowful teenagers walking through hallways or graveyards, zany costumes, cheap animation? And sometimes you didn't particularly like the artist or the song, but it had a cool video, and you didn't feel stupid when your friends asked you about the band. And some of them were high art, some were kooky fun, and some were like four minute versions of John Hughes movies.

But then reality killed the video star and we were stuck with endless iterations of "The Real World." When you watch Lauren Conrad flounce and flirt around Hollywood, it's difficult to remember what the "M" in MTV ever stood for.

The Internet has been remarkably slow to resurrect the music video. It's quite shocking given the popularity of MySpace and YouTube. Granted, I've lost track of the musical universe in the last few years (Don't go to grad school, kids. It makes you uncool), but the vast majority of the music videos I've seen of late have been fan videos -- not that there's anything wrong with fan vids, but a person longs for high production every now and then.

Pitchfork Media, a.k.a. the Hipster's Bible, has decided to try its hand at reviving music-based audiovisual media. Admittedly, I've never been a big fan of Pitchfork; every time I visit it, I feel like the music review site just knows how little I know about the current music scene and it's silently judging me for it. But a visit to Pitchfork.tv was a pleasant surprise. For one thing, this is a site that knows its focus is on videos. The interface is simple and clean, and, while I'm not usually a sucker for slick effects, I was a bit wowed by Pitchfork's navigation, which whooshes towards you and away without interrupting the video play. The video box remains stationary and unchanged until you make a deliberate decision to view something new. The simplicity of the site also makes the site more accessible to the musically unhip. Refreshingly devoid of commentary, Pitchfork.tv leaves the focus on the videos and just lets you click around and discover things at your own pace.

And by things, of course, I mean videos -- music videos. Pitchfork has a handy collection of videos from the past few years, and I'm finding it's a great way to sample bands that I've heard of, but never really listened to (Lord, I've missed singles). But on top of that, they have other music-related content. They are "shows," but more of the older music television vein. In "Juan's Basement," bands come play and give interviews in what appears to be some guy's basement. In "Daytripping" (embedded above) Pitchfork goes to some place that isn't New York City and shows us some band's little corner of the world as they work on their music. It shows longer features in "One Week Only" (presumably for one week only); this week it's the Pixies' reunion documentary "loudQUIETloud." All in all, Pitchfork.tv feels like a good place to start an obsession. I already feel a little less music-stupid.

My favorite videos on the site, though, are the VJ job interview videos, which play on Pitchfork's ultra-elitist, I-love-music-but-I-hate-everything-I-hear attitude:

Watch This: Meet Me in the Graveyard

Most scripted web shows are comedies -- five minute versions of sitcoms or parody shows. But "Meet Me in the Graveyard" takes on a heretofore much unexplored genre in online TV: the melodrama.

Beautiful and anxious Viola finds a video on MySpace of recovering alcoholic Ace dancing naked in a graveyard, and contacts him, begging him to take the measurements of her mother's grave, which happens to be located in that very cemetery. She'd do it herself, she explains, but she's locked away in an asylum, and fears that her mother (who attempted to hang herself while nine months pregnant with Viola) will soon rise from the dead to finish the job. Ace, who is serving a term in a halfway house, is charmed by the perpetually slip-clad girl and agrees to measure the grave on one condition: that she continues to communicate with him via video for the duration of his term. Thus, the two begin a sweet but troubled online romance.

Although its very conceit is based on the existence of modern technology, the series relies on the very traditional archetypes of the contemporary gothic tale. The relative instability of the would-be lovers allows them to them to unironically adopt almost childish ideas of vows and quests while still seeming believable within the confines of their universe. The supporting characters, both seen and unseen, provide a clever send-up of the genre -- Ace has a platonic relationship with the cemetery caretaker's daughter, a goth-attired mute who is obviously rooting for the couple; Viola's father is largely absent, but sends Viola her dead mother's clothes, piece by piece; and Viola speaks of the asylum's Dr. Holcomb affectionately, even as he seems to be trying to convince her to kill herself. Ace and Viola's respective pasts are unwound as the videos progress, but seem part of a larger mystery: why is Viola in the asylum to begin with? and why the bizarre behaviors of her caretakers?

It's a lovely and strange take on the notion that the Internet is the perfect place for weird and lonely people to find one another and offer the kind of connection missing from their real lives. And it serves as proof that, in a post-lonelygirl world, shows formated as videoblogs still have the capacity to be compelling.

Watch This: The All-For-Nots

I was all prepared not to like "The All-For-Nots." When they popped up in my iTunes Store, I figured they were either 1) a band trying to promote themselves by having a wacky web show, or 2) yet another venue for making fun of pretentious hipsters. I love to hate hipsters as much as the next person, but after "The Burg," bashing the indier-than-thou PBR-guzzling set feels so been-there-done-that.

But it turns out that's not what "The All-For-Nots" is about. Well, actually, they are a real band (but portraying a fake one on the show), and the show does come from the same team that brought us "The Burg" ("Burg" character Jed appears in the first episode, and his phenomenally atrocious band, Sea Monkey Do, is later referenced). But rather than wasting time and talent lampooning the pretensions of the sensitive artiste, AFN takes a more character-driven approach to its humor.

A mockumentary, AFN follows four band-mates, their manager, and their bassist's girlfriend on the band's first ever tour. They hit up small venues in Boston, Providence, and New York (once even inadvertently playing a 16 year-old's birthday party) and discuss their recent good fortune, music, and each other. It's a mismatched foursome. While drummer Shirley channels Ally Sheedy in "The Breakfast Club" -- alternately running away from and spouting wild-eyed nonsense at the camera -- keyboardist Paul is a lawyer not quite on vacation from the firm -- frowning at his BlackBerry between sets and redlining contracts when he's supposed to be hammering the keys. Bassist Caleb is a rock star fashion plate whose pride is wounded because his girlfriend didn't sleep with him until the second date. Frontman Johnny longs to be the coolest kid on the block, but his affinity for Barry Manilow seems to bar him from the ranks of the tragically hip. Caleb's girlfriend/groupie Farrah insists she's just along for the ride, but tends to leap on stage during shows and sing along, much to Johnny's chagrin. Manager Larry Hu (the oft-repeated joke: "Hu's Your Daddy?") is perhaps the most archetypal of the lot -- the token prepster douchebag who gear shift is permanently stuck in a hazy and self-unaware optimism.

While many web shows take the five minute format as a cue to cram in as many jokes as possible and give their characters the emotional restraint of Bugs Bunny (even "The Burg" has been guilty of this on occasion), AFN takes a slower, quieter approach. Each episode consists of three weekly parts. The first part (part "A") is the set-up -- most of the plot happens during this time, the most situational humor, the most jokey jokes. But parts B and C focus on smaller moments, conversations between two characters, or interviews with the band members (conducted by an unseen but not unheard film crew, a la "The Comeback"). And these quieter moments are some of the funniest in the show, such as in this week's episode when Caleb forces Paul into the sheepish confession that he knows the indecipherable lyrics to Sea Monkey Do's songs because he read the liner notes, despite his vocal hatred of the band. And later, when Farrah gets misty-eyed monologuing on her favorite song, it is strangely and inexplicably hysterical (although a glass of Captain and Cherry Coke might have aided my perception of its hilarity).

It's four episodes in, but "The All-For-Nots" has already won a slot in my iTunes subscription queue.