It’s clear Whedon’s taken in everything, and done so consciously, whether it be writing to the television scene ‘beat’ meter, to comix, to much other material too, that isn’t even genre.

The one thing he hasn’t done well, in my opinion, is big screen, feature film, judging by Serenity — it was deeply disappointing in the theater, and though still disappointing, less so on the small screen via dvd.

Love, C.

I can’t say whether Ronald Moore has or hasn’t watched Buffy or been influenced by it. All I can say is that I’ve never heard him mention it, not have I seen signs of its influence on his work. My real point was that the influence may very well go the other way. I just did a quick search on the web and turned up this from Wikiquote:

“I’m working on Buffy: Deep Space Nine. It will be dark and badly received.”
– Joss Whedon, Entertainment Weekly Angel TV Preview (Sep 12, 2003)

Joss was most certainly influenced by Deep Space Nine; Ron Moore may or may not have been influenced by Buffy, Angel or Firefly.

Incidentally, Moore isn’t the only creative element on BSG who has a history with Star Trek. See this article about David Weddle, one of the team responsible for “Maelstrom” (and quite a few other BSG episodes). He speaks explicitly to the question of story arcs and the disappearance of “the reset button” as a TV phenomenon, citing Deep Space Nine as a transitional show in the process. It’s really interesting reading.

It seems fairly odd that Moore has never seen a single, solitary ep of Buffy, since he’s a pro, and pros, especially in television, need to know what’s up, since the industry moves so quickly. Even more odd, if he’s never encountered a single discussion of Buffy over all those years that the show tended to dominate so much talk re television broadcast. That’s focus that is awesome!

Shoot, I didn’t (and still don’t) have a television, and I didn’t watch Buffy in those years, and even I was up on what was said about it! Nor was I seeking it out. Just like I knew what was being discussed re the various st shows, which I never watched or sought out either.

Love, C

1) To say that Heather Havrilesky is turning her back on the show is
overstating it quite a bit. In her own words: “Don’t get me wrong, I’m a
long way off from giving up on “Battlestar,” no matter how much I
question the writers’ recent choices.”

2) Ronald Moore has been writing story arcs on television since before
Buffy came along. He was a writer and producer for Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine from the 3rd season onward, and it strikes me
that the setting and feel of BSG owe a fair amount to that earlier show.
As far as I’ve been able to tell (having read a lot of interviews and
listened to a lot of podcasts), Moore has never even watched
Buffy, let alone homaged it or ripped it off.

OK, points having been made, I have to say that the treatment of
Starbuck’s character has finally made me angry. I’ve scoffed at or
complained about various plot developments on BSG before, but never have
I felt fundamentally betrayed by it. If something isn’t revealed by
season’s end that explains or reverses the events of “Maelstrom”, I may
actually give up on the show.

Doing a quality project also takes time and money. Mostly these more recent ventures don’t really have either. Deadwood cost, I thnk, a million point 5 per episode …. Buffy’s costs got higher with each season too. And it was intense work, for everyone, almost around the clock. And for the actors, physical work, even with stunt replacements.

Creative people are influenced early in their lives by what it is there. SF/F lovers, though, seem particularly prone to re-creating even as children what they love. (That said, Vaquero, for instance, was a mad movie lover as a child, and he’d spend hours creating ads, with photos and promo copy, and even writing his own theme songs, for movies he loved.) So now it’s the para-normal or whatever. Mostly, well, they don’t work, at least not for me. Buffy was an exception, an astonishing, splendid, blessing of an exception — and I didn’t like it at all, the first eps I saw in the first and second seasons. The h.s. stuff really put me off. But, really, it was the commercials, I think.

Love, C.

I haven’t seen third season BSG so have no opinion on it, but as I am watching via Netflix things like Veronica Mars (first season) and Deadwood (we just started the second season), I’m interested to see how Hollywood is finally catching on to the finite telenovella - well, all right, these are all multi season shows, but the story arcs are within boundaries and while VMars has mini-narrative arcs with each ep and a larger arc played out over the full first season (while Deadwood is more a telenovella in the same way Rome is/was), these are not remotely reset episodes, that is, where any given ep can be viewed out of order and enjoyed to the same level.

So I would say that Hollywood in general is trying to catch the curve of telenovellas that other countries have been doing for years.

But, having said that, I agree that we then end up with lots of similar looking things done by people who either are trying to cash in on a hot fashion and/or genuinely caught up by the attraction to that particular sub genre and wanting to play in that sandbox.

Which maybe is a long way around to saying that HB is sure doing some interesting work these days. IOW, it’s late, and I can’t quite make this post fit in a neat basket.