TV: Sci-Fi Friday

It's Sci-Fi Friday, as the Sci-Fi Channel likes to call it, which means it's time for the best TV you're going to see this summer. I'm talking about the season two premiere of Battlestar Galactica tonight. This is just a tremendous show (it's solidly in my top five), full of great acting, inventive special effects, and actual ideas, about faith, destiny, and what it is to be human, which you don't get a lot of in most sci-fi these days. I can't wait to pick up from last season's ass-kicker of a cliffhanger ending, with half the cast scattered throughout the galaxy, Adama critically wounded from an assassin's attack, and President Roslin in jail following a military coup. I made Ian watch that episode when it was on NBC last week, and I think I got him hooked on the show (though he won't be watching tonight, since he's in San Diego for some reason or another). Now I just need to hook all the rest of you!

Also, I've got a wicked crush on Katee Sackhoff. Can you blame me?

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Also premiering tonight is season nine (!!) of Stargate SG-1. I've never watched the show before, but I'm thinking of tuning in tonight because Ben Browder is joining the cast, which will make it as close to Farscape as I'm going to get anytime soon. (Ooh! I see Claudia Black is guest-starring in at least the first five episodes. It's a Farscape reunion!) What makes me reluctant to check it out is the vast back story from the past eight seasons that I'm not going to have a clue about. For example, here's an excerpt from SciFi.com's recap of the last episode from the previous season (a two-parter):

Satellite sweeps of the Giza plateau show no traces of the ZPM's energy signature. Whether Ra took it with him when he left Earth is unknown. The SG-1 team might not know where the ZPM is, but they know where it was: Giza, in the year 3000 B.C.E. Against Carter's better judgment, she, O'Neill, Daniel and Teal'c take the Puddle Jumper equipped with the Ancient time-travel device back to 3000 B.C.E., with O'Neill — the only one who possesses the Ancient gene required to fly the craft — at the controls.

My head is spinning! Here's another quote:

Kawalski and his team, along with O'Neill, Daniel and Carter, fly to Chulak through the stargate. There they are met by Jaffa soldiers loyal to the Goa'uld system lord Apophis, taken prisoner and locked in a cell. Apophis' First Prime, Teal'c, questions them. O'Neill tells Teal'c that that they know he secretly hides his resentment of the Goa'uld and his belief that Apophis is a false god, and that in an alternate future he frees the Jaffa. Teal'c, hiding his true feelings, calls this blasphemy and takes Daniel to see Apophis.

Who the? What the? Man! I need to go lie down for a while!

I'm hoping tonight's premiere will be a good jumping on point for new viewers, but I ain't countin' on it.