Tag: Battlestar Galactica

Like many other sci-fi geeks around the country I was tuned into SciFi’s Battlestar: Galactica. The series started off with two episodes back to back. It’s part drama, part sci-fi series. Watching the LowDown show that came just before the gave me the distinct impression that it was going to be more soap opera/drama than pure sci-fi. More like B5 than separate standalone episodes like the original BG series. The tone and style was set by the mini-series, and continues in the series. Cylon infiltration, sabotage, spies and traitors. And that was just the first two episodes.

I’m going to enjoy watching this new series. With it sandwiched between Stargate: SG1 and Stargate: Atlantis, Friday nights are going to be a veritable orgy of sci-fi.

One thing I do find odd is how religious the new Cylons seem to be. Somewhat unexpected for a machine intelligence. Maybe we’ll discover the reason behind it in later episodes.

You can even read Ron Moore’s Movable Type powered blog to find out his take on the episodes.

There might be some spoilers here. I’ll try to keep them to a minimum.

The SciFi adaptation of Battlestar Galactica is over. From the opening scene, I could almost hear the collective wail of agony from BG purists (if there is such a thing) out there.

I liked it.

Wail away BG purists. It’s not like you didn’t know it wasn’t going to be a remake of the original series. It’s not like SciFi and the creators didn’t make it absolutely clear from the outset they weren’t going to simply redo the original series with updated FX. They made it quite clear that they were going to rewrite from scratch. Oh, they kept a lot of things. The story concept and some of the ship designs remain. The characters have been largely rewritten and redeveloped. They don’t resemble the characters from the original series at all. Cylons have advanced significantly.

It’s different, more gritty and edgy than the original. The Cylongs are bigger and badder than ever. Characters are harder and more complex. Galactica, the Colonial flagship in the original series, is set to be decommissioned and destined to become a museum in the new series.

I liked the tributes to the original series they put in. There were exhibits in the museum-to-be’ showing a Cylon and Cylon basestar from the original series. The Cylon ships have the red eye moving back and forth, as do the mechanical Cylons. The Vipers look mostly the same (all the fancy new ones get wiped out).

There were a few things I didn’t like. The technology isn’t quite as advanced as it was in the original series. Vipers shoot machine gun style, the Cylon ships launch missiles and attack with nuclear warheads. Galactica is kind of ugly looking, but I’m sure it will grow on me, just like the Enterprise-D did.

As just a 2 part mini-series, I didn’t think it was long enough. I wanted more. But hopefully, more will come in the form of a series.

I wonder when/if the series will start.