Oh yes, I don't want to infer that the new Galactica is not a great series. In point of fact, I too was waiting for the pilot anxiously. Critically speaking I think the new series is done quite well, it is just sitting hollow with me, perhaps because the novelty of the first series is not there. Ah, the fascinations of our youth, when Star Wars and all the highly technical SFX productions unfolded in front of us back in the late 70s, it was as if someone reached into our creative consciousness and extracted our very imaginings. Reading stuff like Asimov and Heinlein and Lovecraft and Mcaffery, then seeing those visualizations rendered on the big screen, it was just so much gratification. After a while it became an expectation, that any good sci-fi required all this cgi and technical extravagance; plot substance and real drama being secondary (similar I suppose to pornographic sellout, which has also overtaken the medium).

I guess by advancing the state of the art, it allows our imaginations to progress. To me, it seems that it has the opposite effect. Think about how much imagination it took for audiences to sit captivated watching those old Flash Gordon serials.

That's what is great about the storytellers sitting around the campfire. How do you tell a story like Star Wars to a bunch of kids sitting around a semi circle (oh yeah, I forgot about "Reign of Fire")?