The new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

[Sea Tyger]

That's so odd....I found the beginning, well, highly disturbing (there was no need to show Number 6 killing the child...absolutely no need whatsoever -- I literally changed channels for a bit after that), and it colored my view of the whole show.

I thought Olmos was phenomenal as Adama. I liked Mary McDonnel's portrayal (although I agree that they could've come up with something different for her to be suffering from...the breast cancer problem seemed out of place for an advanced society). The flight deck chief was a great character. Starbuck was also very, very good. Colonel Tigh was horribly written; the original Tigh was one of my favorite characters in the show -- I was very disappointed that they decided to pervert him like that.

The military sequences were spot-on! That's what a ship's crew is supposed to do in a crisis....there's no shouting out orders, no overly-emotional statements. You do your job and you stay professional. That part was phenomenal.

So, overall, I was highly disappointed by most of the non-military stuff, but I loved the military parts (which is most of the second hour). Now that all of the really disturbing stuff is out of the way, I hope to enjoy the conclusion tonight.

[Highway Hoss]

First of all, as I posted before, I agree with that IGN review 100%. It mirrors my feelings on this "reimagination".

Sea Tyger, I definitely agree with you on that point; the military bits were well done.
In all fairness, the CGI of the space battles was OK; I do like the fact that they actually made it look like a true space battle, not the usual WW2 style combat you see in space. The new Vipers look very sleek while the Cylon ships look much more alien.

BTW it would be interesting to see a battle with Trek ships waged in this more realistic mannner and at the true distances such battles take place at (thousands of kilometers as opposed to the point blank range we ususally see).

One problem I had was that the the viewer seems detached from the whole holocaust that was going on; you never actually see any other battlestars being destroyed or see any colony but Caprica getting wasted (and even that felt remote to me). Too many of the characters seem emotionally detached during these sequences too; one of the more powerful scenes from the original BSG pilot was the bridge crew of the Galactica watching the colonies getting destroyed on their monitors with tears in their eyes, then Athena sobbing "...why weren't we protecting them (the colonies)"?

One thing about the original also was that by using a distinct design motif, distinctly different units of measurement (like microns and metrons) and different expressions like "feldgercarb", it made it plain that this was a different human civilization; by removing this, the colonies just look like us with a different paint job.

I don't blame the actors for this; the acting overall was OK. I did like Edward James Olmos performance as Adama. I do agree though on Tigh; that character was a plain insult to the original. I could never see Terry Carter's character turning over a game table in a fit of pique. As for Starbuck...to paraphrase Lloyd Bentson "I've seen Lt. Starbuck and she is no Lt. Starbuck." Dirk Benedict's character would never have been so crass as to grossly insult a superior officer at a gaming table and certainly not slug him!

As for the sex, I am no prude, and I am not necessarily against sex scenes. if it is relavent to the plot. The sex scenes here were really pointless, especially Boomer and the crew chief. Also keep in mind the original BSG was a family show; someone who saw the title on their listings would assume the same for this new series.

Yes BSG was cheesy at times; it did have its flaws. But as one reviewer noted in the local paper "Cheese should sometimes stay cheese."

The real beef I have is that if this miniseries had created its own unique title and identity, it would work better; by borrowing the title and other aspects of a series still loved by many people, it constitutes as one fan noted a case of brand misappropriation.

[Cmdr Powers]

Originally posted by Highway Hoss
One problem I had was that the the viewer seems detached from the whole holocaust that was going on; you never actually see any other battlestars being destroyed or see any colony but Caprica getting wasted (and even that felt remote to me). Too many of the characters seem emotionally detached during these sequences too; one of the more powerful scenes from the original BSG pilot was the bridge crew of the Galactica watching the colonies getting destroyed on their monitors with tears in their eyes, then Athena sobbing "...why weren't we protecting them (the colonies)"?

Hoss, I think you've managed to hit the one thing about the new BG that bothered me the most. While I agree with Sea Tyger about how the crew reacted realistically in military terms, I feel that dramatically, it stunk. "Oh my, Caprica is being nuked. Gosh, that's too bad, isn't it?"

TBS, I generally enjoyed the show quite a bit and am looking forward to tonight's outing, but you do have it right- the emotional detachment just didn't feel right. They seem almost bored about the whole thing. Fortunately, its starting to sink in and the characters are starting to come to life as the second hour cranks up to the credits.

As a parallel, I'm trying to imagine the US Navy attempting to get that carrier in New York Harbor (I forget which one it is) to sea and using all those mothballed museum pieces on its decks!

[Ronin84]

Hitting head....

USS Hornet maybe?


Commander Powers, love the signature line.

[aelius]

Actually the carrier in New York harbor is the USS Intrepid.
As for the detachment that is how military personnelle are trained to react in a crisis. Anyone breaking into tears on the bridge would be relieved. Also when overwhelming disasters happen people generally react in two ways, they suck it up and try to do what they can saving the tears for later or they break down and lose it. Soldiers usually, and I stress usually, do the former. Some react to the crisis better than others of course.
As to Col. Tigh. I always found Col. Tigh to be the comic relief in BSG. He was so clueless about anything but his duties that the other characters poked fun at him and he usually didn't even realize it. Only once in the entire series did he show anything other than mild competance and that consisted of warning Starbuck and Apollo that the landing bay was unprotected by complaining about it at the officers club rather than just coming out and telling them something was wrong. Of course he did it that way because he had been ordered not to do anything. That was the one bit of cleverness he showed in the entire series, other than that he was simply the guy he relayed Adama's orderes and acted as the butt of jokes by the rest of the cast. No I could never see him kicking over the table at a card gme, but then he never would have been in the card game to begin with, he never fraternized with the crew. When he wandered into the officers club to warn our heroes Starbuck said he had never seen him there before. The idea of making him into a bitter alcoholic at the end of his career is a way of injecting some life into a character who was otherwise as dull as cardboard. In summery the origional Col. Tigh was a cookie cutter XO from any number of movies or TV shows, the new Col. Tigh was at least an identifiable character with his own identity. Whether you like the new character or not at least he is not generic.
The motif as Highway Hoss described was lacking. That's the one thing I think could have been done better. You have to wonder how a culture seperated by thousands of years comes up with names like William and Laura, but I figure that is so the audience has an easier time identifying with the characters. And in all fairness I remember a few characters from the origional who had reasonably modern names. They were one shot minor characters to be sure, but they were there none the less.
I especially liked the treatment of Baltar. I always found the origional Baltar to be a comic book villain. No offense to John Colicos, who I always thought was brilliant in the role, but Baltar himself was an idiot. It was obvious to me as a teenager that the Cylons were going to toss him out of an airlock as soon as he had eliminated the Galactica, but it never seemed to occure to him. He seemed to think he was going to go on to be some kind of great Cylon leader afterwords. Gee, just what I always wanted, to rule over an empire of robots! The idea that his own ego led him to inadvertantly betray the colonies to the Cylons is much more believable. I am looking forward to part two to see how they carry on with that.

[Jem'hadar]

I only caught the latter half of the show last night, but it's being repeated tonite at 7 pm so I hope to catch all of episode 1 before watching episode 2.

Overall I really like the new mini-series. It's different from the original, to be sure, & I did like the original. But the new imagining is also good. The new BSG has a grittier, more realistic tone to it that fits today's audiences.

It was interesting to see that they portayed the Galactica as an old ship that was ready to be mothballed as a museum & the Vipers to be equally outdated. Was the Galactica from the original series also supposed to be very old? I just don't remember. In today's terms it would be like if all of America's nuclear aircraft carriers were destroyed & they had to bring the Intrepid & New Jersey back into commission.

I also like the new Cylons. While it's good they kept some of the more robotic Cylons, that fact that they have new android models makes them actually more dangerous. Cylons can now pose as humans & infiltrate human defenses/society.

It was also interesting & very disturbing how the Cylons used nukes to commit genocide. I don't remember nukes coming up often or at all in the original series. But here the Cylons were eager to use nukes against humans. I was surprised the Galactica was able to survive a direct nuke hit. It must be one tough ship.

I liked the tactic the Cylons used of disabling the computers of the human vessels. Unlike the mass waves of Cylon ships in the old series, here we only have a few, but since they were able to completely disable humanity's ships, the Cylons only needed a couple of ships to take out the human fighters. These Cylons seem to rely more on missiles than lasers for space combat.

So far my favorite characters are Apollo, Adama & I actually like the President. She gives a strong performance of a relatively low-level cabinet member who is suddenly thrust into leadership of all humanity during their worst crisis ever. Although not trained for the job, this President seems to have a natural talent for leadership, even if her decisions don't always seem correct to me.

I look forward to episode 2.

[Capt. Anderson]

Jury is till out for me on this one.


Likes so far.

1. Adama
2. Madame President
3. Cylons used in the beginning
4. Use of the new and old Vipers
5. Better explanation as to how 12 colonies were defeated.
6. Use of military terms

Dislikes
1. Using the orginal names as call signs. Grrrr
2. Starbucks portrayal (crass and insubordinate attitude)
3. Little or no reference to Egyptian culture
4. Maybe the cheese from the orginal should have been served to all the whining I heard.
5. Baltar being unwilling participant in Cylon attack. Please
6. Use Nuclear weapons
7. The Uniforms used.

[Sea Tyger]

Originally posted by Jem'hadar
In today's terms it would be like if all of America's nuclear aircraft carriers were destroyed & they had to bring the Intrepid & New Jersey back into commission.

Actually, in today's terms, it would be more analogous to pulling the Forrestal (CV-59) or Independence (CV-63) out of retirement. The Galactica is a supercarrier in every sense of the word.

[Balok]

I was much more impressed than I expected to be. I've found SciFi productions to be hit or miss in quality, so I wasn't sure what to expect. But darn near everything about this impressed me.

The most ardent criticisms I've heard seem to be coming from that part of the fan base that didn't want *anything* changed, and I'm gonna draw more fire from them now: my impression is that Moore & co. took the original concept, which was solid, and ran it through a stupid-extractor, to remove most of the dumb stuff.

Specific stuff that I liked:

• Olmos' performance as Cmdr William Adama.
• The Galactical has a more solid feel to it; it *looks* like a super carrier.
• The way in which the colonies were defeated so thoroughly is more realistic.
• Baltar is more realistic; few men wake up and say "today I will be evil"; instead, things start innocently enough and before long, they're in it deep and they don't know how they got there.
• The people are real people, with real problems and real flaws.
• Unlike Sea Tyger, I feel the death of the infant served the important purpose of establishing how little regard Cylons have for human life -- anyone willing to kill an infant will kill anyone.
• Cylon model six's comment about the Centurions -- "They're still around, they have their uses" -- we see a hint of the mistake humans made: a machine society with classes. Did the humans make their machines so well that the machines had all their flaws? Did those flaws play a role in why the machines tried to murder their creators?
• The (new) President and the potential for conflict. I expect this will be key to tonight's episode.
• The technical details of carrier operations, and the space battles were all well executed.
• Cylons that *are* their ships. Even back in 1978 as a callow youth, I wondered why Cylon fighters were "manned". Why not just put a robot brain in them? Well, that's what they've done.

Overall, I really liked the re-imagining. I'll go so far as to say that if they put Moore in charge of a new series, I'd give it a chance.

[Phantom]

Now, see this is where the trouble begins. Originally the Cylons weren't robots (read the orginal novel of BSG by Larson) they were organics in armour. I think I have mentioned this before, but there is a particularly good scene in the book where Imperious Leader is thinking back to his days as a Centurion.

And I have to agree that one of the best, and well acted scenes, from the original was the scene on the Bridge with all the crew watching as Caprica was wasted. I always thought there was real emotion there. Other wise the acting was mediocre at best.

BTW, how could Caprica been destoryed more "totally and realistic?"

[Sea Tyger]

Spoiler Warning if you haven't seen this yet....
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They did it again! What is with these a-holes that they have to show a child's death on screen? Geez!!! Wasn't mentioning it to the President enough?

Okay, I feel a little better now.

Fesarius, I caught that reference, too. My problem was with the portrayal; they did it only for shock value, when they could have shown the Cylons' disregard for humanity in another way.

As a father, that disturbs me in ways that I do not need to be disturbed. There is no greater fear than contemplating the mortality of your own children. It wasn't necessary to the show. Someone got carried away with their metaphors, IMO.

Now that I have that off my chest, I loved the second half. Two words: Super Carrier. That was a beautiful space combat.

Too bad I won't be getting the DVD when it comes out.

[Grimace]

Originally posted by Lowly Uhlan
There's fans of the original BG that are all blowing their gaskets on other websites in response to the new Galactica,...Snip...

Not so much blowing a gasket as expressing their displeasure, just as many people here express their pleasure with it. It doesn't make their opinions any less valid than your own.

I didn't care for it. The acting was sub-par in most cases. The inclusion of gratuitious sex and violence offered another sad tribute to our times. Too many people think that if you don't have adequate sex, cussing, and fighting, the show is too wimpy and unrealistic. Such things don't make a show good, in my opinion; it only cheapens it, reducing it to a low level so that it appeals to the more visceral crowd.

Recently I borrowed the Battlestar Galactica DVD set from a friend. My wife had only seen one or two shows back when she was young, and always viewed the show as kind of silly. When I watched the first episode, she was hooked. We've watched only a total of 4 episodes thus far, and last night we watched the first part of this remake. She's even of the opinion that the newer show was a lousy "re-imagination" of the original. This is coming from someone that used to dislike the original show as a child, and only started watching it again less than a month ago. This is also coming from a person that likes shows like CSI and other such "gruesome" shows on TV. She felt the remake used both violence and sex needlessly. She also felt that it did a massive injustice to the original characters.

Remake or not, re-imagination or not, the show was really not that good. A majority of the acting was hollow and sounded as though the actors had no real idea of what their character was supposed to be doing. The only character I enjoyed, based on the acting, was the Chief. He was the only one that was portrayed as someone that was worth worrying about whether he lived or died. The others were just "there" (or whiny brats like Apollo, or obnoxiously overplayed like Starbuck, or hollow non-acting like Boomer, or completely wrong for an officer like Col. Tigh).

So I definitely fall into the category of "didn't like the show".

[Cmdr Powers]

I greatly enjoyed part two. And I even dug out my old 1979 copy of the BG Photostory to compare it with. This one is much better and I'm sincerely looking forward to further episodes, be they miniseries or series.

[Ezri's Toy]

Originally posted by Grimace
Too many people think that if you don't have adequate sex, cussing, and fighting, the show is too wimpy and unrealistic. Such things don't make a show good, in my opinion; it only cheapens it, reducing it to a low level so that it appeals to the more visceral crowd.

Life was never Leave It To Beaver even when that show was running. People swear (espcially soldiers). People want sex. People have sex. That's life. . . not just "low" life. And, in the new BG, those elements were not excessive.

(As for me, with the new Starbuck, I have a new, sexy, kinda butch sci-fi heroine to ogle. "Starbuck's Toy" has a ring to it, dontcha think ?. )

As for fighting: um, the show is about a war. And, in a war, where tensions are high and spirits are low, there's a lot of in-fighting amongst the troops. "Save it for the enemy" is a cliche for a reason.

Now, the original BG, where everyone was cheery and light, despite the fact that the majority of humanity is dead and the remainder are being chased by relentless death machines. . .that's unrealistic.

[Ezri's Toy]

Originally posted by Sea Tyger
Spoiler Warning if you haven't seen this yet....
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They did it again! What is with these a-holes that they have to show a child's death on screen? Geez!!! Wasn't mentioning it to the President enough?

They did not show a child's death on-screen. They implied it with a sound effect. And, when the sound effect was played, there was no image of a child on the screen. That's not the same.

Regardless, the scene did have a purpose: It was to establish that Number Six had no mothering instincts and, therefore, had no regard for human life at all. It's the key scene that establishes the character (a villain) and the Cylons in general.

I physically cringed and squirmed at the scene. . . which is extraordinary because I'm a horror film buff who has seen a lot worse on-screen. I reacted the way the film makers wanted me to react -- emotionally -- which is a very hard thing to achieve.

So, if the scene disturbed you, you've got to realize that was what it was supposed to do.