Battlestar Galactica
Friday night started out as a little bit of a dissapointment. The wife and I went to go see the movie, "Electra." We weren't expecting much, and the movie pretty much met our expectations. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't very good. - I'd give the director a "B" for effort, maybe, but he just didn't have the skill to execute. Too many characters and relationships to explain, the pacing was off, it moved too slowly - particularly during action scenes. I'd say it's a worthy rental if you are fond of superhero flicks - I've seen far worse. If you thought Daredevil was good, then you'll probably like it.

ANYWAY - after the movie we went home feeling kind of 'blah'. But we'd taped the new Battlestar Galactica - the two premier episodes - and spent another two hours of passive entertainment watching them. I really enjoyed the miniseries, and so far the episodes seem to share the same high quality. The blahs went away.

If you haven't seen them at all - it's worth getting the sci fi channel for. But besides the names, the theme of the ship design, some of the setting, and the core concept, it doesn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to the old 1979 / 1980 series. Which is a good thing - though I loved the original series as a fourth-grader, the cheese level makes it more of a comedy as an adult.

First off, the cosmetic changes. The next-gen Cylons are cyborgs that appear - and feel - human. Starbuck and Boomer are girls. Colonel Ty is a balding white guy, and an alcoholic. The semi-anonymous pencil-neck council (quorum?) of the twelve have been replaced by a single President representing the civilian government - Mary McDonnell plays the former secretary of education, sworn in as President as the highest ranking survivor of the cylon attack who was in the chain of succession. And of course, the ships and special effects are MUCH cooler.

The show is dark. The first episode opens just days after the miniseries ended, as they have been pursued relentlessly by the cylons. Every 33 minutes, the cylons reappear. Nobody has gotten any sleep in five days - nerves are raw, ship FTL drives are starting to fail, the human race has a total population of approximately 50,000 people and dropping. People are starting to make bad decisions, and there's suspicion that the cylons have human-appearing infiltrators among them that are broadcasting their position and preventing an escape. The survivors are very much in mourning over the nearly complete destruction of their race, tempered by the realization that they barely staying a few inches from death themselves.

You've got a major cast member who is actually a cylon and doesn't realize it (though the individual suspects by the second episode). You have a cowardly, self-serving and possibly insane Baltar who betrayed all of humanity without realizing it, but now continues to betray them in fear that the truth about him will be discovered. You have strained relationships between Adama and his son, sexual tension between Apollo and Starbuck (I can't even thinking of that without thinking of Dirk Benedict, and that makes me CRINGE), difficult negotiation between military and civilian government, and the gradually increasing terror that anybody - even one's best friend or lover - could be a Cylon infiltrator. The acting, dialog, and overall direction is stellar - I'm totally hooked on the series in a way that only a few shows have ever done.

They've also done a good job of making the technology believable. While the physics of space combat are still not 100% accurate, they ships still have inertia and flit around more like rockets than jet fighters. In the miniseries, when the Cyclons knock out a squadron of vipers with a virus to their computer systems, the ships continue to move forward (though they do start to tumble). The ships behave very organically. Players of Void War ought to feel right at home.

I do have one nitpick with the second episode. Without giving anything away that isn't revealed in the first three minutes of the episode, a cylon infiltrator destroys half the water supply of the Galactica - which has near 100% water reclamation and is providing water for half the fleet. The water freezes and dramatically flies off into space in billions of frozen chunks. So then they have to scour the sector looking for water, while riots start to break out over water rationing. Here's my question - after they repaired the water tanks, why didn't they just fly off into space and just start scooping the water back up again? It's not like it WENT anywhere. Even reclaiming only 33% of it would have made a big difference, right?

Ah, well. Guess you can't get it right all the time. Nitpickiness aside, the series rocks. With Babylon 5 and Firefly gone, I was worried about whether or not we'd see another worthy space-opera TV series. (I did TRY to get into Enterprise - I really did.) Now I think we've got it.

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:34 AM (Permalink)