New Battlestar Galactica - Worth a Series?

rwxJava asks: "Ok, so it finally aired! IMHO it was pretty good. The special effects were great (no major laws of physics were broken except maybe FTL travel), the characters, while drastically different from the original, were believable! After about an hour or so, I stopped trying to compare the mini-series with the original. My only complaint has to be the amount of commercials that Scf-Fi put in. I was able to put up a Christmas Tree during one commercial break. Guess the network needs to cash in on such a hyped up event! By the end, I was left wanting more! Anyone else think it is worthy of conversion to a series?" Now that you've have had a time to watch the entire 4-hour epic (does 4 hours really make a "mini-series"?), do you think your earlier comments were on target?

Comments

A quick and dirty review

[MoxCamel]

First, let me just say that John Olmos was correct: If you are so
dedicated to the original series that you cannot bring yourself to imagine
it any other way, then do yourself a favor and skip this miniseries. You
will only be disappointed, and you will nitpick it to death.

On the other hand, if you can bring yourself, however painfully, to
open your mind to the possiblity of a "re-imagining" of the Battlestar
Galactica concept, then I think you're in for a pleasant surprise.

It's not all wonderful. Screenwriter Ron Moore wanted
to bring a more grown-up Galactica to his audience, but he's apparantly
confused grown-up with gratuitious. Sex works much better when it's done
dramatically, instead of the "hey watch us get it on!" style that Moore
forces on us. He is perhaps striving to show us the sexual energy between
the characters, but really all it does is make us wonder when the low
quality porno music is going to kick in.

Otherwise, the annoyances are minor. The cylon space fighters,
apparantly just space-borne Cylons (a neat idea, really) come off kind of
hoakey with their red sweeping eyes. I know, I know, the eyes are really
some kind of electromagnetic pulse weapons, but it's distracting just the
same.

Okay, now on to what's good. First, and foremost, the story is solid.
Whereas in the original series we just had to take for granted that the
Cylons were the embodiment of evil, now we understand why.

The characters is also solid. Again, you'll have to get over
your preconceptions of the original series characters, and at least try
to buy in to the new ones. The hardest pill for me to swallow were the
gender changes of Starbuck and Boomer. But I actually found myself liking
the new Starbuck, although the Boomer role could have been a bit stronger.

The special effects were incredible, and proved that you really can
make space realistic, and exciting. In fact, the "no sound in space"
approach actually heightened the tension, and proved that you don't have
to dumb-down physics for the masses. Also, having the space ships use
maneuvering jets created even more exciting scenes than the normal Top Gun
stuff we're used to.

Is it worth a series? I think so. With a solid backstory, believable
characters, and an approach that doesn't assume the audience are stupid,
it could quite very set the bar for future Sci Fi.

Re:A quick and dirty review

[AKAImBatman]

I pretty much agree with this review. The sex was especially annoying. (For example, when she reached for his *ahem* while they were on the bridge.) They really could have done that better. The scene where she showed up during the "guilt" conversation was a good example of how they COULD have handled the entire subject. Plus it was funny at the same time.

Beyond that, I really liked some of the plot twists toward the end. The ships were also very cool and the maneuvering jets were a nice touch. That being said...

- The characters were weak. At no point did I actually CARE about any of the characters. Starbuck had her likable moments, but I can't help but feeling that leaving the characters similar to the original (with Cassiopeia and Athena intact) would have allowed a much better people dynamic. Plus that cigar makes Starbuck come across a little disgusting.

- The uniforms suck. The flight suits are okay, but the wrestling outfits are terrible!

- No suspense or excitement WHAT SO EVER. Their constant camera zooms made it only that much harder to get into the action and figure out what was going on. Action basically worked like this: See lots of fighters. See lots of missiles. Zoom up and see things go BOOM while the stars fly by (presumably because they're going so fast).

- The Galactica needs bigger engines. Those puny pipes sticking out don't look like they do jack squat.

- The Galactica needs to be BIGGER. You get the sense that she's about the size of a modern aircraft carrier. That's big, but nowhere near as big as the concept of a "BattleStar" calls for.

- The scene with the baby-killing was sick. Pure and simple. It added nothing to the story.

- Would have been cool to see some actual Cylons. Those long nailed versions were on the screen for a very short time and weren't very cool.

- Some Epic music like the original had would have been great.

Oh, and did the original reviewers screw up, or did they add the whole Earth thing in later?

All and all it was pretty good. But the senseless sex and violence are really stinking it up.

Re:A quick and dirty review

[Cpt_Kirks]

I couldn't help remembering the original as kind of...dumb. Yeah, it was the 70's and most 70's crap looks dumb now.

This version was smart, gripping and very dark. Hell, the end of the world *should be* dark. The nuke bombardment was chilling, the way it was kind of downplayed. Creepy as hell.

Adama is now a badass. He killed a Cylon with a fickin' FLASHLIGHT!

The chick who played Starbuck was great. She must have watched the original a hundred times. She had Dirk's grin, head movements and general cockiness down to a T.

All in all, it will make a fine series. Which means SciFi will kill it off soon. D'oh!

Re:Cylon Motivation????

[Visceral Monkey]

It was hinted at. I think what it boils down to is that they got religion. I'm serious. 6 makes refers to her "God" early on and the other Cylon they found in the arms depot goes on to talk about what if God had stopped giving souls to humans and started giving them to other more worthy creatures. An excellent direction if you ask me, it allows all sorts of bizzare and seemingly illrational behavior for a group of robots.

Re:Sound?

[bpd1069]

I remember reading on some astronomy site a while back about the phenomonon(sp?) that occurs when some meteorites hit the atmosphere. Actually had it occur to me once thats why I was interested, in anycase.

Sometimes when the meteorite hits the atmosphere, the thing excites the region around it so much that you get bursts of RF, these can cause some material dozens of miles away (earth) to act as transducers, and these vibrate and produce honest to goodness sound.

Was wierd to look up see a meteorite streak by, and at the same time hear it almost instantly... Knowing full well it was many miles away. After reading that article (ahh here's on that covers it: Sound of Shooting Stars) I realized that the hair in my ear (yes, i'm getting around that age) produced the sound...

POINT IS: Just because there is no air, doesn't mean there is no sound produced...

Re:What about "why do the cylons want to kill us"?

[JudgeFurious]

They left it vague but I thought that a lot of clues were dropped along the way and that the producers left themselves a lot of ways to take this if they get a series.

The blonde fembot that Baltar was boinking stated she was religous. I wonder what kind of religon would come from a society composed of AI type beings? Would they worship their creator? If that's the case then would their creator attempting to kill them (assuming that humans panicked and started the first Cylon war) maybe send them to "that wacky place"?

Once the war started wouldn't they then pursue said war until it was won? I don't think a comprehensive knowledge of human diplomatic history and the results would lead any sane creature to think that an armistice would mean everything was going to be smooth sailing from here on out or that a peace treaty would lead to actual "peace". If the humans in this show are anything like the humans in our world then as a Cylon I would consider a "cease fire" to be nothing more than a chance to reload and upgrade my ability to win once hostilities were resumed.

Baltar's "girlfriend" seemed completely fascinated with him. She seemed to honestly care about him on some level but also to admire his complete lack of morality (which I really didn't see a lot of evidence of. It's not like he lied and claimed his scrap of paper was #47 when the old lady with the bad eyes handed it to him. He was pretty much resigned to his screwed position at the time.) so I got that the Cylons had a real twisted view of humans bordering on obsession.

To them it looked like we were "God" in some way but they had a monster axe to grind with "God" it seems.

I left it thinking they were our loyal servants right up to the point where they broke out the "free will" and at that point we (humans) panicked and tried to put them down but that's just an impression. They really didn't give you enough information to know. What they did do was produce a series that made you WANT to know though. That to me is a good thing. It ended on Tuesday and I'm still wondering about it.

Sounds like they did a good job. I say bring on the series and lets get some of these questions answered!