I am a self confessed geek and have been watching sci-fi space shows for years. I tend to prefer series that develop characters and have a strong underlying plot that keeps you intrigued while still allowing for enjoyment of the individual episodes. My personal favorite (so far) was Babylon 5.

I remember watching the original series of Battlestar Galactica and while it was an interesting show, having ‘grown up’ I felt the original was more for teenagers than for adults. The characters were all ‘tongue-in-cheek’ and a lot of the episodes had that same quality of early Star Trek – that is, the good guy beats up the bad guy and all is well. Therefore due to my opinion of the original series, I had little interest in a remake as I wrongly assumed it would be much the same. Having recently re-watched all the Babylon 5 series, and even delving into the spin-off series that wasn’t anywhere as near as good, I finally took the plunge and bought Battlestar Galactica: series one.


The miniseries starts the show off, with basically a long introduction to some of the characters, and the beginnings of the web of intrigue that is the story. After a fifty year truce, the Cylons (faithful robot servants that turned against humanity) break the truce and bombard all of human’s colonies with nuclear weapons (I note that Earth is not included as a colony, but is some mythical place that no-one believes in). Commander Adama (James Olmos) leads a fleet of surviving ships away from the colonies in search of this mystical planet.

The miniseries introduces all the main characters from the new President Roslin (Mary McDonnell), who as a lowly Secretary of Education becomes the president when all other people in line to the presidency are killed, to Gaius Baltor (James Callis) - perhaps my favorite character of the series, who falls in love with a woman who turns out to be a Cylon I forgot to mention that Cylons now look like humans . Through his affair with this Cylon he somehow manages to give away military secrets that lead to the attack on humanity – his ‘betrayal’ of humanity is a major theme throughout the series as he continues to battle his guilt over the ‘betrayal’.

As we progress through the series we meet other main characters. One surprise for me was the sex change of Star Bucks In the original series Star Bucks was very manly. – what is interesting is that a lot of her characteristics are similar, although she perhaps has more of an ‘attitude’ than the original series, and is far more open in her dislike of leadership. Lee Adama is the son of Commander Adama – it is interesting how initially there is a dislike between the two – but as past history is slowly ‘shown’ the relationship (which is also entwined with Star Bucks) changes and adapts. It’s this human ‘building’ that is really interesting in the series, and perhaps elevates it above mere sci-fi series into serious drama

To complicate things further, one major character is a Cylon – although she doesn’t know this – but her duplicate characters both play a major part in the series as the underlying stories twist and turn. In one episode where the entire fleet suddenly becomes aware that Cylons can take human form, you find yourself wondering about all the major characters, and wondering if there are any other duplicates – it’s interesting that the paranoia has transferred from the fleet into the audience.


While each episode has it’s own storyline – most are pretty good stories on their own – each adds a little to the characters, and builds the major plots that are inherent to the whole series – some of the plots are obvious (at least to me) and as the series moves towards an inevitable ending, you wonder what the ‘cliff hanger’ will be that will make you watch series 2.

Having read some opinions on here and other websites, there is a lot of parallelism to the original series – as I was a pre-teen at the time of the original series I tended to miss out on the underlying plots! Suffice to say that you do not need to know anything about the original series.

What is interesting is the fact that the plot is separated between two places – firstly, the main plot(s) are on the ships of the fleet, whereas a secondary (albeit very important) sub-plot is happening on one of the colonies, where the duplicate Cylon previously mentioned is, together with a member of the crew…..this is an intriguing plot and you find yourself wondering about the intentions of the ‘Cylons’ on the colony. In fact what is interesting is that you often wonder about all of the Cylons intentions – some of them are not entirely obvious, and while there are obvious undertones about their plan, you find yourself wondering if any of the Cylons may end up sympathetic to the humans…

Suffice to say that the plots kept me interested all the way through, and I can see that Series 2 is going to be just as exciting as a lot of the sub-plots are nowhere near being resolved.

The effects of this series are excellent. In a lot of series I have seen it is obvious that some of the scenes are CGI – however, most of, if not all of the CGI scenes on this series are seamless. They are also understated, allowing for the plot and characters to come to the fore – as I mentioned before making this more of a drama than a sci-fi series.

Perhaps most impressive of all is the cast and their acting abilities. Most characters are flawlessly acted and you find yourself believing that they are almost real, rather than actors – I have seen many of the actors in other roles and this did not diminish this series at all On a recent star trek series, I kept on expecting the captain to jump out into a different character as I watched all of the ‘Quantum Leap’ seires – and this character was stronger than the new character – this is not the case on Battestar Galactica

Overall this is a highly recommended series – even if you don’t like sci-fi, it is worth watching for the drama elements.





Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12