Battlestar Galactica
Just to be perfectly clear, this post probably has spoilers, or links to spoiler materials, so if you’ve not watched the first season, take it from me and go buy it then come back a week later and read the post.
Seeing as we don’t seem to agree on comic book movies (you are soo wrong), I thought it was weird that I effectively bought into the new Battlestar Galactica series based on his ‘recommendation’. I mean Mike’s a space geek (and proud of it), so he was bound to like it. When I saw the ads for it a while back on Sky I was intrigued, but unfortunately I don’t do TV, with the odd exception (Smallville, F1 and Lost). It’s not so much that I didn’t want to watch it on TV, it’s just that because I’m actually not programmed to wait for a program it slipped off my radar, and by the time I remembered it, it was like 3 episodes into the series, and I hate playing catchup.
So Michael’s recommendation and a small throwaway blurb in Wired and I was well up for this series. I started watching it something like 2 week ago, half way through the mini-series, Sylvane comes in and see the pyrotechnics and decides to stick around and see what’s going on.
For the next week we’d watch a couple of episodes a day, that’s how addicted we got to the program.
Storyline
The storyline is a very simple one. However all story are enhanced by the way they're told. It's a fact. Some of the most fascinating ideas for a story fall flat on their face due to poor exectution. In the case of BG, it's succeeds.If you’re reading this because you’re still on the fence here’s a quick synopse of the first 10 minutes of the mini-series. There’s a lot more to it but this sets the scene for you, then go out and rent/buy whatever and watch the series:
The story centres around the 12 colonies. They exist somewhere in space, and they are very advanced humans. 40 years ago the man-made Cylons (read: robots) revolted against the humans, their masters. The war waged for a while (can’t remember how long) but a stalemate was reached, and the Cylons gathered themselves and left. A space station was made to act as a port where Humans and Cylons can talk things over. Every year the Humans send a representatives, every year the Cylons send no one…until now.
What follows is an intricate plot through the complete extermination of the human race. I’ll leave it at that because I’ve said too much already.
Characters
Apparently the original Starbuck was a man, oh the controversy. So in re-imagining this series some of the pilots and the president are women. I love Starbuck. She's insane, she's tough and she's got some classic lines in the series.Now I’m probably in the minority here, but I really love Gaius and his relationship in his head with Number 6 is great fun. Sylvane and Archie got really bored by these scenes and annoyed at the music in the background that would always play whenever these two decided to talk to each other. Can’t really say that it bothered me, since I was enjoying the dialogue that was being exchanged. The good Doctor also had the most memorable lines and scenes in the series… and not all of them were with Number 6 directly.
Obviously I love Commander Adama, lots' of presence on the screen and his face is just fucked up enough and wrinkly for you to believe that he’s been through war. His voice is just like the guys in the cinema trailers, you know the ones that have been smoking since they were 5 years old, so it’s this harsh voice. He shows a lot of inner anger and the role of a man with the world literally on his shoulder. The nice thing about this guy in direct comparison to say Sheridan in Babylon 5 is that he’s not the hero Commander, in that he gets into the fighter and tries to act like he’s 20 years old. He knows his place, and knows where he has to be and that he makes the decisions, while others execute; if they’re good soldiers they do as they’re told. Definitely adds a bit of realism to the whole situation.
Special FX
Just a little history, I’m not a Star Trek fan, I’ve seen my share of Generations, but just bored me to tears, and well the storyline was a bit too generic for my liking. I’m a Babylon 5 nut. I love the series to bits. Admittedly it does look a bit dated now that I’ve gotten into Battlestar Galactica, but B5 set the pace for all other television space operas; what being the first to use CGI properly, compared to the models that were used for all previous space operas.
So how are the fx in BG? Astounding is the word that comes to mind. It reminds me greatly of Robotech, in what they’ve done with the sheer amount of Cylon ships that are sent one after another. The missiles also have that trailing gas effect best seen in the Macross Plus series.
One thing that I wasn’t really impressed with, which makes Firefly that more special, is the fact that there is sounds in space. We all know in space no one can hear you laugh. Sound doesn’t travel, so that was a bit disappointing, at least because I got pretty excited about that. Also let’s not forget that while Babylon 5 actually explained how artificial gravity was created in space, these finer points in the BG universe are just glossed over as with most space operas.