Return to Galactica?

Back when I first began this time-consumer I wanted to do something different with my weekends, something that I could do every week so I would always know what to discuss, and leave the rest for free weeks. It worked so well with my weekly comic reviews, until trying to read and review all those comics at once was drawing time away from more important ventures. Like basic housekeeping. (The Clutter Report is probably the smartest idea I’ve had in years, if not ever.) Still, a Saturday night posting I could put together and let it post while I hit the club and danced my stress away was a good plan.

I decided to take a cue from Siskoid‘s site. At the time he was doing a daily review of every Star Trek TV show, movie, comic, and novel. (This along with Bully’s “365 days with” postings also inspired the now daily comic reviews.) But what to do? Then I hit upon it.

“Saturday Night Galactica” had me using the power of Hulu, which still has the classic series up, to go through and review every single episode of the original Battlestar Galactica. My plan was actually to review all those episodes, then Galactica 1980 (a spin-off that makes classic fans cry), and finally the remake. The point was to show why I liked the original, give the fan-hated sequel a chance to defend itself, and to finally make myself watch the new series to explain why we old fans ignored it while giving it a fair and honest textural beatdown assessment both on its own merits and as a series that took the name of a beloved (to many, including) series.

So what happened? Nobody read it. Granted, the site had just started and even now, two years later, I barely break 200 reads a day, but even then I had some readers on other articles. “Saturday Night Galactica“? None. Plus trying to do screen captures from Hulu is a headache. When you pause a Hulu video the image fades a bit and a big “PLAY” button blocks your view so I have to capture a shot on the run. If I mess up, I have to try to rewind the video back to the right spot and try again. It’s annoying.

So I ended up scrapping the whole idea and decided to go generic with videos I could link to or even embed (I really hadn’t discovered Vodpod at the time) on a WordPress-hosted site. Adding in the occasional webcomic and then using Vodpod, “Saturday Night Theater” became the Saturday Night Showcase, and that’s done rather well.

However, part of me really wants to return to that famed ragtag fleet. I’m thinking about returning to that original series, not as a weekly review or replacing SNS. I’m thinking more of a running series, like “Scanning My Collection”, which I would have been writing right now but Liefeld’s Battlestar Galactica (yes, that exists) is so bad I don’t know where to begin writing the article. And now with knowledge of Vodpod I can post the actual episodes, but I’ll still have to do screen caps to keep the review and analysis form being a huge wall of text. I know my eyes get sleepy trying to read too much text on a monitor. The question is, if I write it, will they read? Perhaps you saw it in the sidebar, but I set up a poll (not that those ever get much use around here, either).

I’ll also post this poll to the That Guy blogspace and Twitter once this article goes up. A month from now, we’ll see the results and learn whether or not I should bother. If I ever get the DVD’s I may consider doing a video version instead, but first I’ll see if it is even worth the effort before deciding how to do it. Let me know what you think because the Seraphs and I aren’t on speaking terms. Long story. In the meantime, why not see the reviews I already did way back in the day before I was any good at this.

• Saga of a Star World (Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3): The pilot episode which was broken into three episodes for syndication.
• Lost Planet of the Gods (Part 1) (Part 2): When the male pilots get sick, female shuttle pilots become Viper pilots.

I may consider redoing those now that I’m a better writer and understand the software better, but those versions will remain because I’m too lazy/busy to fix them to see how far I’ve come. But do I return to the series? It’s up to you, kids.