Movie Review: The Monster (2016)

A couple years back I learned about a movie called The Monster that looked pretty cool, but I was pretty busy and let its short theatrical release--I'm not 100% sure it was even playing in Atlanta but I think it was--slip by. I injured my back about three weeks ago and was advised to rest and relax, and it's a lot easier to do that with movies.

So I jaunted over to Videodrome, the last video rental shop in Atlanta, and guess what movie was there?

The Plot

Kathy (Zoe Kazan) is a divorced alcoholic raising her ten-year-old daughter Lizzy (Ella Ballentine) and doing a pretty terrible job of it. She's on her way to her former husband's house for his turn at custody--a turn that's strongly implied to be permanent--but on an isolated road late at night, she hits a wolf, wrecking her car. And the wolf has already been injured fighting something else, which has left a big nasty tooth embedded in its body.

The two must wait for the tow-truck and ambulance to arrive, but there's something else waiting in the woods, something big and unpleasant and hungry...

The Good

*The acting in the film is phenomenal. Kazan does a great job portraying the terribly flawed Kathy, who knows she has a problem and isn't able to fix it. Ballentine does a good job with Lizzy, who has to be mature beyond her years and even act as the surrogate parent to her dysfunctional mother but still in some ways acts like a child. Their chemistry and acting skills are the best part of the film. In the DVD extras writer/director Bryan Bertino was concerned about how he could make a good movie where, most of the time, the two characters are stuck in one location (their car), but it works. It actually reminded me a lot of Cujo, only with something far more dangerous than a rabid St. Bernard.

*Per the above, the script does a good job illustrating how dysfunctional the situation is. In the first five or so minutes of the film we know something is very wrong--Kathy is absent and Lizzy is the one straightening up the house (including throwing away empty bottles of booze), fixing breakfast, etc. And although I'm generally not a fan of telling stories out of order, interspersing too many flashbacks, etc. Bertino makes it work.

*The movie rolls along at a nice quick pace and is particularly riveting in the latter half, when Kathy and Lizzy have to survive the rainy night alone against something that's very rarely seen but very dangerous.

*Although the poster for the film and the Blu-Ray/DVD covers undermine this by showing full-body and head-shots of the titular creature, the monster is handled classically by never showing too much of it. We first see it out of focus lurking behind Lizzy during one of her trips out of the car and we hear its cries, but we never see very much of it until the very end. That's a good thing because in one of the sequences at the end, parts of it look a bit...plasticky.

*Per the above, there's no bad CGI here. All practical effects--it's a man in a monster suit and it's a good monster suit.

*The way the creature sounds is very well-done. Although its precise nature is never explained, it has both reptilian and avian characteristics. It sounds like a combination of, say, a big alligator and a predatory bird.

*And although the trope of the Super-Persistent Predator is often mocked--most predators, particularly solitary ones that don't have kin to care for them if they're injured, aren't going to go after prey that's persistently able to harm or elude them--it makes sense for something that's living in the shadow of human civilization. Assuming the titular creature is intelligent--and it probably is, since it knows what cars are and how they work--it knows that it cannot permit any witnesses to survive lest it be hunted down and destroyed. The creatures from The Flock and especially Wolfen operate the same way.

*The setting makes a lot of sense. The road the women are stranded on is an isolated and near-abandoned one that's been bypassed by a newer road--that happens to have a lot of construction on it, forcing them to take the back way. The fact there's a wolf there along with...something else...makes sense. Animals will quickly move back into an area humans have left, especially if there's a big reserve of natural territory nearby.

The Bad

*There's a missed chance for suspense and drama early on when the friendly tow-truck driver Jesse (Aaron Douglas, who played Chief Tyrol in Battlestar Galactica) arrives. Kathy and Lizzy are alone in an isolated area and dependent on him for help. Even though Jesse has no negative intentions whatsoever, Kathy (and the wise-beyond-her-years Lizzy) would have reason to think he might try to take advantage of them. This could be played up as an early scare, even though it would be a false alarm.

*The early parts, before the titular monster arrives, kind of drag a bit even though they're needed to establish the characters and establish audience feeling for them. I don't have any suggestions to change them without risking the bond the audience builds with them, so maybe it's best to leave them as they are.

*I didn't have a problem with this, but by trying to combine two genres, the movie might end up losing both. People who want family and addiction drama aren't going to be overly interested in a monster attacking people and people who are into monster movies aren't going to be into the family-drama stuff, even though it builds up the characters. Just FYI.

The Verdict

9.0 out of 10. This is the dysfunctional mother-daughter drama with a monster in it you didn't know you wanted to watch. Definitely check it out, at least for a rental.

Movie Review: Blade Runner (1982)

With the film Blade Runner 2049 coming out soon, it became important for the denizens of the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood to discuss the original Blade Runner. Although the film was initially not successful theatrically, it developed a devoted following and proved to be a major influence on future science fiction. Here's the podcast. And here's my review...

For the record, the version we reviewed was Blade Runner Final Cut, which lacked the Harrison Ford voice-over narration and had a much more ambiguous ending than the theatrical release. As I'd never seen the movie before, nor was this a movie from the era of my childhood like Pagemaster was, this isn't "blast from the past" for me.

The Plot

In the near future, Earth has suffered environmental devastation from some undescribed cause and people (at least healthy ones) are encouraged to emigrate to new offworld colonies. To prepare these colonies for settlement and to do the most dangerous jobs, the Tyrell Corporation has created Replicants--artificial humans--to use as forced labor. To discourage rebellions, they're only given a very limited four-year lifespan. After they rebel anyway, the Earth governments ban them from Earth, recruiting "blade runner" police to hunt them down and "retire" them.

Former blade runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is forced back into the business by blade runner Gaff (Edward James Olmos) and his former boss Harry Bryant (Michael Emmet Walsh) to deal with four Replicants who escaped from slavery on another world and have illegally come to Earth. They're warriors Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) and Leon Kowalski (Brion James), the "pleasure model" Priss Stratton (Daryl Hannah), and assassin Zhora Salome (Joanna Cassidy), all of whom are extremely dangerous. Along the way he encounters Replicant creator Eldron Tyrell (Joe Turkel) and his assistant Rachael (Sean Young), whom he soon learns is a more advanced Replicant herself. As the hunt continues, Deckard soon finds himself with divided loyalties...

The Good

*Rutger Hauer does a good job playing the warrior Replicant Roy Batty. When we first meet him he interrogates a scientist and comes off as really intense and creepy. However, he mourns for a fellow Replicant killed on Earth and his ultimate motivation is care/concern for another being. He even seeks out his creator, whom he seems to view as a father figure, for help. And when the object of his affection dies, he mourns and seeks revenge. For a thinking machine he's very human, which is probably the whole point. Roy is my favorite character in the film and during the podcast I found myself  defending his actions--of all the people he kills, all but one were part of his and the other Replicants' escape from slavery. Harriet Tubman carried a gun to defend herself and her charges from slave-hunters--although I'm not aware of her ever having to use it, I would not fault her if she put a few between some slavers' eyes.

(To be fair though, Roy killed a lot more people and many of them sound like non-combatants. Tubman led a Union raid in South Carolina, but she didn't burn pro-slavery towns down with the people in them.)

*Overall this was a very thoughtful film that discussed the issue of what it really means to be human, what rights a created/artificial but sapient being would have, etc. in a non-preachy and annoying way. It reminded me a lot of the issues that came up during the 2004 remake of Battlestar Galactica, which incidentally also featured Edward James Olmos. The Cylons in BSG were robotic slaves who had rebelled against their human creators and ultimately evolved into beings that could successfully pass as human (one is even impregnated by a human and bears a living child) and in some cases even thought they were human.

Blade Runner brings up similar issues--the human military in Blade Runner had been keeping Priss as a prostitute, a less explicitly violent version of how the crew of the Pegasus repeatedly raped a captured Cylon spy (and tried to do the same to a Cylon defector aboard the Galactica). Given how she doesn't practice anything remotely resembling her former trade on Earth to blend in (even though another female Replicant does, see below), it may be that this job was against her own inclinations and thus rapey as hell. Yes, the Replicants (and the human Cylons) are machines, but they're clearly thinking beings who have wills and desires of their own and, unlike say a robotic arm at a car factory, can suffer. To be perfectly blunt, the Replicants are basically runaway slaves being hunted and murdered. Deckard really should know better, especially given how in the theatrical cut his narration equates Bryant's "skinjob" (for Replicants) with police of an older generation using the n-word (for black people).

(Given current issues in the USA with police and African-Americans, this is particularly timely.)

*I also liked Sebastian, the scientist suffering from premature aging (he's 25 but looks like he's in his 40s or 50s) living alone with various robotic quasi-toys. He's unable to emigrate due to his health issues, which reminded me of a story from college Spanish class called "Las Medias Rojas." He takes in the Replicant Priss when he thinks she's a homeless woman (and doesn't attempt to take advantage of her situation) and shows her the robotic companions he shares the largely-abandoned Bradbury Building with almost childlike joy. The thing that came to my mind was Jesus's story of the sheep and the goats--"I was a stranger and you took Me in, and what you have done to the least of these my brethren you have done also to Me." Upon learning of the Replicants' oncoming deaths, he attempts to help them. Of all the humans in the story, he and to a much more limited extent Deckard are the only ones who treat the Replicants with any kindness, something that Priss even remarks on.

*When Deckard administers the empathy test to Rachael as a deliberate negative, he asks her what she would do if someone gave her a calfskin wallet. She said she would not only turn it down, but report it to the police. Although I hesitate to call this "showing" instead of "telling" (since it's spoken dialogue), it does show the animals-rights legislation of this future Los Angeles. It reminded me of the novel Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton in which a hardened mercenary is horrified by the concept of eating meat made from real animals in a future where vat meat is common. Given how actual animals are expensive and most animals on-screen are artificial, this (along with her comment that if she discovered her son collecting butterflies she would take him to the doctor) could also exposit Earth's environmental problems have led to far stricter animal protections.

*Zhora at one point works as a stripper. Salome in the Bible performed a suggestive dance of some kind to persuade her stepfather Herod Antipas to have John the Baptist, who had condemned her mother's marriage to the king, executed. Making her last name Salome was pretty clever.

The Bad

*The opening with the gas fires reflected in somebody's eyes as the shot tracks over futuristic Los Angeles complete with flying cars and gigantic sci-fi buildings is kind of slow. It would have been better if the focus is on Leon being brought to the Tyrell Corporation headquarters for the "test" and just happen to see the futuristic landscape as we go along. No need for artsy shots of eyes, prolonged gas-fire scenes, etc.

*There's a significant part of the film from when Deckard first meets privately with Rachael and they discuss whether her childhood memories are real or not until he starts hunting for Zhora, that's really quite dull. In the historical context what he was doing at the time (using a computer to analyze photos in great detail) would have been high-tech and fascinating to the audience and, as one of my podcast brethren pointed out, real detective work is boring. Maybe if they'd made it a more lively montage or provided a soundtrack?

*Deckard makes some very forceful advances on Rachael (bordering if not outright crossing the line into date rape if they had sex, which they actually may not have), after she saves his life from Leon no less. Even if she was to some degree or another interested in him, she's very vulnerable psychologically (she's just learned she's really a Replicant and the whole life she remembers is a lie, and she's just killed a person too) and she is dependent on his physical protection as a hunted fugitive Replicant. She doesn't seem upset afterward and sticks with him instead of running away as soon as possible (although again, see "fugitive Replicant" part), but come on Deckard.

*Some more background information about how the world came to be would have been nice. Apparently in the original novel it takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear war between the US and USSR in which the world is slowly dying. Although a nuclear conflict could affect the Earth's climate, I'm not sure how a general worldwide cooling could turn Los Angeles into something resembling a smoggier Seattle. This scenario here, devised by Canadian science fiction author Bruno Lombardi, posits that an oceanic comet impact some years prior was the cause. That makes more sense--in the novel Lucifer's Hammer, oceanic impacts by comet fragments cause it to rain worldwide for weeks. Depending on patterns of evaporation after the unnatural worldwide rain occurs, the overall world climate could be much more humid and rainy for years afterward. Plus if the impact was somewhere in Asia, that could explain how Asian Los Angeles looks in terms of its residents, culture, etc.--Chinatown, Japantown, Koreatown, etc. were swollen by massive numbers of refugees.

The Verdict

Very thoughtful, but don't expect a slang-bang action film. 8.5 out of 10.

My Thoughts on Ferguson and a Poll For You

The situation in Ferguson, Missouri seems to be winding down right now, but it was a pretty wild few days. We had such wonderful things as:

*The police using what looks a lot like military equipment to intimidate protesters.

*Rioting and destruction of property.

*Armed store owners keeping the hooligans away.

*Journalists roughed up in a McDonald's.

*Journalists getting gassed.

*Foreign propaganda outlets use this to make Americans look like a bunch of hypocrites.

*Someone writing in a respectable outlet called it a "police coup."

*I'd heard something about a state representative getting arrested too, but I haven't been able to find any corroborating evidence. I think it was referring to this state senator getting tear-gassed.

*Real soldiers sounding off on how inept the police were even with their military hardware and how if this was the "militarization" of the police force, it was the most inept militarization they'd ever seen.

*Cops telling people not to film them, even though that's perfectly legal.

*The hacker militia Anonymous shutting down much of Ferguson's government.

*A no-fly zone being declared. Very convenient for keeping away news choppers, I think, although it's the FAA and not the local cops declaring it.

Here're my thoughts. I identify as a conservative politically and/or as a Libertarian and I think this is bugnuts insane. Even IF the police shooting that set this all off was justified--and based on witness reports it almost certainly was not--the police massively overreacted to citizens exercising their rights to speak freely, assemble, petition the government for redress of grievances, etc. That the local thug element used this as an opportunity to make trouble doesn't justify the sheer overkill involved.

Some online left-wingers have been claiming Tea Party types, libertarians, militia types, people waving the Gadsden Flag, etc. have been awfully quiet about the situation, with the implication they're entirely cool with brutal police-state stuff if it's directed at black people.

Well, as a big fan of the Gadsden Flag (I plan on having the protagonist in my Wastelands series use it as his personal insignia), here's my response:

The police here have been behaving in a ridiculous manner, to the point their authority in the area has been revoked and the State Highway Patrol (led by a black officer who grew up in the area) has been brought in. Things seem to have gotten a lot better.

(And by the way, libertarians have been complaining for awhile.)

Now for some political thoughts:

*The militarization of the police has gotten absurd in this country. I could understand the need to have some kind of heavy iron for an emergency, but a lot of departments have stocked up on gear they're not likely to ever need short of an alien invasion. I'm an Eagle Scout and I'm all for being prepared, but there's not unlimited money out there. Although the problem in this situation is more of attitude than equipment, I'll steal a page from Rahm Emmanuel and suggest that a good crisis never go to waste. A relevant bill has been put forward. At the very least it might help control government spending.

*From eyewitness reports, the officer straight-up murdered the man. The robbery-suspect thing seems like an ex post facto justification for what happened, given how it didn't come out for days. If the eyewitness claim is true (it may not be--there hasn't been much of an investigation so far), he needs to be charged with the appropriate degree of murder and subject to the appropriate punishment (up to and including execution). Police have a reputation for closing ranks in the event of an accusation of wrongdoing and that needs to stop for the sack of justice.

*I've seen the suggestion floating around the Internet about having police carry small cameras on their persons to record the events of their shift. This seems like a good idea, in order to reduce police brutality and provide evidence to protect the cops themselves if a suspect attacks them and then claims to have been brutalized. It might also give them another source of information for their reports and all. Here's a poll from one of my major clients on cop cameras. If you could vote in it, that would be spiffy.

And because I'm a nerd, here's a selection from Battlestar Galactica about why the police and military are two different things.

A "Battlestar Galactica" Film Series?

I found this article online a day or two ago stating that there's a Battlestar Galactica movie in the works. Rather than being tied in with either the original series continuity or the "reimagined" series continuity, it would be a complete reboot.

I posted the article on Facebook with the caveat that the storyline is simply too big for a single film. The 2003 miniseries, which depicted the Galactica surviving the Cylon destruction of the Twelve Colonies (most of which was implied or discussed rather than actually shown), was three hours long and only covered the initial escape of the Galactica and the civilian survivors. The complete saga was four television seasons. Even if they discarded the controversial settlement of New Caprica story arc and kept them searching for Earth continuously, that'd be three.

Fortunately my friend Matt Schafer came up with a good idea. Make it multiple films. Star Wars, after all, took three films to cover the initial Rebel campaign against the Empire (the "first victory" preceding the events of A New Hope to the death of the Emperor in Return of the Jedi) and three films to cover the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker. A trilogy would be a really good way to tell a BSG story.

Here's how I would do it:

First Movie-The destruction of the Twelve Colonies by the Cylons, the flight of the Galactica and the civilians it's protecting, and the beginning of the search for Earth. In terms of the material it covers, it would be very similar to the miniseries or Saga of a Star World, the theatrical adaptation of the early episodes of the original series.

Second Movie-Here there's a choice to be made. Continue the search for Earth, or something else? In both the original series and the new series there was the story arc centered around the thought-lost battlestar Pegasus, whose commander wanted to continue the war against the Cylons. This would be the chance for some awesome space battles, but the disadvantage is that it's been done twice. Some new version of the New Caprica settlement story would also be doable. Either way, this doesn't work and the bloodied Colonial survivors continue their search for Earth. Possibly some major clue to the location of Earth is found as a result of the events of the second film, setting the stage for the third and last film.

Third Movie-The Colonial Fleet is on the way to Earth, but the Cylon fleet hunting them won't give up without a fight. One last big space battle (or campaign) to allow the refugee fleet to permanently break contact with their pursuers. You could also touch on the possibility the Colonials are bringing Earth's doom with them--if the Colonials are coming to modern-day Earth and the Cylons follow them here, we're screwed.

A complete reboot could allow for the saga to be told in another, more interesting way. In an earlier blog post, I'd suggested a way to (relatively) realistically combine the world as we know it with an advanced human civilization elsewhere is to have Kobol (the original world of the Colonials) settled from Earth by a long-dead advanced civilization thousands of years ago. Some conspiracy theory types claim there was a nuclear war in ancient India, which might provide such an explanation. Alternatively, this could be set in the future--Kobol is a lost colony of an advanced Earth.

Thoughts on Animating "Coil Gun."

I'm about one-third or so through writing a screenplay based on my short story "Coil Gun," which was published in September in the third issue of Digital Science Fiction.

In order to transform a 5,000-odd word story into a 90-page (at minimum) screenplay, I'm going to have to expand the events in the story considerably.  This I've done by beginning the screenplay several hours before the story, during the lead-up to the war.

Although this will get me to the proper length and allow for additional characterization, the events depicted would make the necessary budget for the film larger.  Things include space battles in the vein of Battlestar Galactica, the depiction of submarine-launched nuclear attacks, etc.  Anything depicted on a submarine bridge, for example, necessitates an additional set, while the special effects needed to realistically depict WWIII would cost a pretty penny.

However, the thought just occurred to me that this could be donate via animation.  This would be much, much cheaper than doing it live-action, which would require Michael Bay-sized budgets for the action sequences.

The problem is, in the United States at least, animation is generally considered something for kids.  One reason the film Titan A.E. failed despite being an awesome movie is that although it was animated, it was much more adult-oriented--it starts out with the alien destruction of Earth, features the protagonist being subject to racist abuse by other aliens, lots of gun-fights and space battles, an alien getting his neck snapped, and the female lead in a towel answering the door to her cabin and asking the protagonist "in or out?"

However, the more recent Avatar was marketed as an adult science-fiction movie and is now the top-grossing movie on the planet.  Titan A.E.'s failure could be attributed to marketing--if I remember right, it was not marketed as science-fiction for adults but instead a movie for kids.

If "Coil Gun" were adapted into an animated film, I imagine it would be done using Pixar-style 3D animation rather than traditional 2D cel animation.  I much prefer the cel look visually, but apparently The Princess and the Frog (Disney's last big cel-animated project) didn't do as well as Disney expected and that contributed to future Disney projects being digital animation.  Legend of the Guardians did the 3D thing really well, so as  long as it doesn't come out looking like Toy Story or The Clone Wars, great.

And the same rationale can be applied to my earlier project, The Gates of Vasharia.  I've described that one as "Lord of the Rings with tanks" (to say nothing of an extradimensional demonic army), so adapting that one would require a Michael Bay budget as well.  Of course, with animation, it would probably end up with an Avatar-sized budget.

A Free Stargate/Battlestar Galactica Crossover Outline Seeking Writer...

On my alternate-history discussion forum, someone posted a suggestion for a science-fiction scenario in which the Twelve Colonies of Kobol (from the 2003 "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica) were attacked by the Goa'uld of the Stargate television series.  The basic plot was that the Twelve Lords of Kobol worshiped by the Colonials were actually Goa'uld System Lords who now sought to reclaim their runaway slaves.

That prompted a lively discussion as to how the Colonials--and the Cylons--might fare against the System Lords.  The board member with the handle AtriumCarceris said the Colonials and Cylons' weapons would be ineffective against Goa'uld shields and even the Season One System Lords would grossly outmatch them.  He also cited the figure of 200 megatons for a single shot from a System Lord ha'tak (mothership), a blow that would one-shot a battlestar or basestar.

The Stargate Season Two episode "The Serpent's Lair" depicts a one-gigaton (1,000 megatons) nuclear missile failing to penetrate the shields of the System Lord Apophis's ha'tak.  I watched that episode on Hulu to see what exactly happens and it appears the ships' shields spread the force of the impact around like a bulletproof vest would when a person is shot--done so well that Teal'c and Dr. Jackson only notice slight turbulence.


I doubt the Colonials have GT-class nuclear weapons, but they do have lots and lots of smaller nukes, plus kinetic-energy weapons. Beam weapons tend to be effective against Goa'uld shields because they pierce the shields at a single point (like a knife going through a bulletproof vest) but nuclear/kinetic spam might be enough to simply overload a Goa'uld shield.


I've pondered how an invasion of the Cyrannus System (where the Twelve Colonies are located) by the Goa'uld would look.  I've created the following sequence of events based on some narrative other board members posted and my own thoughts on how this war might look...



1. Goa'uld System Lord (name) discovers the Cyrannus System. Decides to conquer these uppity humans who have gotten advanced technology without (to his knowledge) any alien assistance. That might give the slaves ideas about the necessity of their "gods."

2. Not being a complete idiot like many System Lords, he sends a small force to scout out the system. I would imagine Death Gliders, troop transports, and al'keshs for heavier support. Goal is to take prisoners and if need be, snake (possess) them.

3. Goa'uld raids on lesser colonies of the system (i.e. the mining settlement Troy, not a biggie like Caprica or Virgon) and capture of civilian ships. Among those captured are humanform-Cylon infiltrators. This is how the Cylons learn of the situation.

Now, I would imagine the raiding parties would encounter Colonial forces either responding to distress signals or investigating the interlopers. Al'keshes have shields and cloaking devices, so they'd be harder targets, but the Death Gliders will be dog meat. The Goa'uld might attack the Galactica itself because it's a weak military target, or the Galactica is the nearest warship capable of responding to a Goa'uld incursion.  The Galactica would carry squadrons of modern Mk. VII Vipers as well as 40 or so Mk. II Vipers from the first war with the Cylons.

The Colonials may be the first to know they're under attack and think these were some splinter group of the 13th Tribe, since after all, they're human. However, the presence of the larval Goa'uld in the Jaffa and full-Goa'uld commanding the Jaffa might clue them in that something is very strange here.

The Cylons, with their superior spatial technology, might be able to track the raiders back to their point of origin. I don't think they would attack immediately, since the System Lord in question is not an immediate danger to them. Perhaps they conduct probes of their own, in an attempt to gather intelligence. That would get them POWs who ramble about "the gods" and if they're attacking major Goa'uld facilities, they'd encounter Goa'uld technology that outmatches them--ha'taks, for example.

Here's where we get into internal Cylon politics. Many Cylons, including Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell), won't care one whit about the Colonials and might be content to watch the humans fight each other.

However, others might decide the System Lord is a danger to them as well and the less xenophobic might see this as an opportunity to convert the Colonials to the worship of the One True God--after all, here is something that can be used to prove the Lords of Kobol are impostors and not true gods. The Leobens, the Sixes, and the Eights might go for this.

So for the first time in 40 years, the Cylons send an emissary to Armistice Station, in order to discuss an alliance against the new enemy.

Meanwhile, the System Lord, thinking the Colonials are onto him and are likely to attack him themselves, makes ready for a large-scale invasion of the Cyrannus System...  

I figured if it was a single low-level System Lord with one or two ha'taks attempting to conquer the Colonies, the Colonials and Cylons could overwhelm him with sheer numbers.  A swarm of thousands of Cylon Raiders armed with nukes would be a particularly dangerous enemy, since the individual fighters have faster-than-light Jump capability and can't be one-shotted with a 200 MT plasma blast.  Masses of nuclear-armed Colonial Raptors would be similarly dangerous.


However, if it was a coalition of System Lords--perhaps all twelve of them that pretended to be the "Lords of Kobol" worshiped by the Colonials' ancestors--the Colonials and Cylons are screwed, especially the Colonials whose population is largely tied to the planets.

Of course, this gives anyone who wants to take this idea the chance to create a mirror version of what happened in the canonical TV program.  The fleeing survivors of the Colonial and Cylon fleets, possibly with Goa'uld infiltrators among them, travel throughout the galaxy in search of Earth--which they could learn is giving the System Lords hell--or other allies to reclaim their occupied worlds.  Survivors of the Colonial military trapped in the Cyrannus system could wage a guerrilla war against the occupying Jaffa armies.

The board member whose handle is Mike Stearns suggested that a captured Stargate could be set up at Ragnar Anchorage, which is hidden within a gas giant.  This would work in either a Colonial/Cylon victory or Colonial/Cylon defeat scenario, since the Goa'uld might not think of where it could be hidden.  In a victory scenario, it could be used as a base for wider explorations via the Stargate network; in a defeat scenario, it could be used as a means of funneling personnel, supplies, etc. back and forth between the occupied Cyrannus system and wherever the refugees are hiding.  I suggested Baltar, since he's a polymath (computer and biological sciences) could be a participant in the program.

I've got a lot going on these days, so I simply do not have time to write a crossover fan-fic covering this scenario, however awesome it might be.  I'm posting this idea here so that anyone who is interested can take the idea and run with it.  I would appreciate my name and blog URL be included as the source for the idea, however.


Good luck, have fun, and send me links when they get posted!

Some Thoughts on a Crossover Between "Space: Above and Beyond" and "Battlestar Galactica"

http://www.alternatehistory.net/Discussion/showthread.php?t=155109

A member of my message-board whose handle is robertp6165 has started writing a crossover between Space Above and Beyond and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  The basis scenario is that when Racetrack's Raptor's jump-drive malfunctions, it takes her to the Lion's Head Nebula--one of the guideposts of the Thirteenth Tribe's journey from Kobol to Earth.  "New Caprica" is never found, Baltar never becomes the Colonial president, and the Colonial survivors encounter the Wild Card squadron from SAAB.

(He said the "trainwreck" of Seasons Three and Four never happens as a result.  I liked some elements of those seasons, but the macro-plot and Final Five stuff was immensely irritating.)

Robert wanted to stick with the more extreme variant of the Chariots of the Gods theory that inspired the original Battlestar, the notion that humans are not native to Earth and there are other human civilizations out there.

(If I remember correctly, the more "normal" COG theory is that aliens visited ancient Earth and helped bring about early civilization, which isn't nearly so much of a clash with what science has discovered about our genetic kinship with Earth life even if it is extremely unlikely.  The "we're not from here" version, however, is easily-disproven garbage.)

Back when I was active on the Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar forum, I was among those who wanted the Colonials to find an advanced Earth, perhaps one where humans lived in harmony with artificial intelligences, and that Kobol had been settled from Earth.  Given the timeframes involved (I think the settlement of the Twelve Colonies from Kobol was 3,000 years before the series began), it would have to take place many thousands of years in the future for this to work.

However, when I was younger, I was really into cryptozoology (literally the study of unknown animals, it's basically stuff like Bigfoot).  Among the many books in the 0000 section of the library, where Bigfoot, UFOs, conspiracy theories, etc. lurked, was a book claiming there had been an advanced civilization in ancient India that developed nuclear technology and bombed itself out of existence.  The book cited some alleged fused glass, the sort that's found as a result of nuclear explosions, and some other anomalous odds and ends.

Here's a Google search that has some links elaborating on this theory, since I cannot remember the book I found and it's probably out of print anyway:

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nuclear+war+in+ancient+india&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Dean Koontz's novel Twilight Eyes has a similar concept--there was an ancient advanced civilization on Earth that literally bombed itself back into the Stone Age, only with this one, the perpetrators were "goblins"--genetically-engineered shape-shifting soldiers bred for war that got out of control and into positions of power.

Robert's scenario involved a war between the Twelve Tribes that founded the Twelve Colonies and a Thirteenth Tribe that objected to the former's enslavement of the Cylons and joined them in revolt as the cause of the original Exodus from Kobol.

For a back-story more consistent with what science has discovered, I suggested a mishmash of the India scenario and the Twilight Eyes scenario.  Basically, there was an advanced civilization centered on India thousands of year ago that developed artificial intelligence and treated them like uppity machines rather than thinking beings.  These early "Cylons" revolted, aided by humans who objected to the situation, and the resulting war devastated Earth.  Many of the survivors left Earth and settled Kobol (which side did this isn't really important), while those that remained behind had their civilization collapse and had to build their way back up again, to the point we ended up with the scenario depicted in SAAB.  Given one of the dangers of nuclear war is radiation-induced sterility and/or birth defects, the group that left Earth could have collected human populations not immediately affected by the war, which would explain the racial diversity of the Twelve Colonies rather than all of them being Indian.

Robert said he wanted to stick with the original back-story and suggested that the Panspermia theory used in the show to explain the origin of the alien Chigs--basically bacteria from Earth were blown clear by the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs and ended up on their planet, leading to an entire ecosystem evolving--could be used to explain the genetic kinship between humans-from-another-planet and Earth life.  Basically, all life on Earth originated on Kobol and a celestial event similar to what brought Earth life to the Chigs' world brought Kobolian life here.

It's Robert's story and it's better written than some other examples of SAAB/BSG fan-fiction that someone linked to in the thread, so I'm not going to complain too much.  However, I think I might use the "nuclear war in ancient India" scenario if I wanted to have a story with an advanced human culture from outer space in our present-day or near-future.

Hmm...a friend of mine is writing a book involving an advanced human culture from deep space.  I think I'll send him this when I'm done.  And maybe I'll see if I can get hold of SAAB DVDs--apparently it was a really good show.