OK - The show is on Fridays at 10:00 p.m. on the Sci-Fi Channell. If you don't have the Sci Fi channel, the Mini Series as well as Season 1 are now available to rent on DVD. No excuses. lol. Go to
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/ for the official page or
http://www.sciencefictionbuzz.com/battlestar-galactica-news.html for fluff. The epsiode "33" - the first of season 1, won a Hugo for best short film sci-fi. Yeah. It was that good. It beat Lost.
Let me first set up the show: Take all prejudgement from Glenn Larson's 70's show and toss it away. BSG is now a metaphor for 9/11. Ron Moore, the creater and producer of the "re-imagining" has started by re-telling the origianal series in a very Ultimates-esque fashion. Yes, they are searching for Earth - but that is something that starts out as a lie to give people something to believe in and turns into something much more spiritual and very real in the second season. Big differences:
1.) Apollo, Starbuck, Boomer, etc. They are only pilot code names. The characters have real names now. Apollo is Lee Adama, son of Commander Adama, which has remained constant. Starbuck is Kara Thrace, a tough cigar chompin, hard drinking, ahrder fighting - woman! Dirk Bennedict, eat your shorts. Starbuck is cooler now than ever before. And she's hot.
2.) The Cylons can create humanoid cyborgs that are virtually undectable. There are many copies of model. Boomer, the black dude from the original series, is now an Asian chick named Sharon. Oh, and she is also revealed to be a Cylon. Each of these Cylon models have a different purpose. Sharon's, for example, is to procreate.
3.) Commander Will Adama is now just a military officer on an old Battlestar that is about to be decomissioned. The Galactica escapes the Cylon attack because it does not have a wireless computer network. The XO, Col. Tigh is no longer a salty haired black guy. Now he's a drunk bald white guy. And is he EVER an arsehole. The role of Serina has been changed into that of Presdient Laura Roslind. She was the Secretary of Education for the colonies. But, well, everyone else died. And she's dying. "And a dying leader shall show them the way to Earth" or something like that. And she's a religious prophet it turns out.
4.) Baltar, the traitor from the first series, is now a respected Doctor and Scientist in the Fleet (as oppossed to a sulking mystery dude on a Cylon Basestar). He is still the traitor, however in this series he is an unwitting accomplice. He had been having an affair with a humanoid Cylon, whom we know as "Number 6," and leaked the passwords for the Colonial Defense System to her - he thought she was making improvements to the network. Now she haunts him, his own personal devil (ie: Lucifer, the little robot that was Baltar's buddy in the original series), that only he can see. She's hot. In one Episode he thinks he is banging Number Six - then a crew member walks in to see him wanking.
5.) There is no little kid with a robot dog. Yet.
6.) Instead of the Cylons being a reptillian race that took on complete cybernetic appearance, now they were created by the humans and rebelled.
7.) The writing makes Lost look lost. It makes Desperate Houswives look desperate. The special effects are A #1 Duke of New York.
8.) They don't have laser guns. They don't wear silly clothes. The Galactica has a lived in look. The story lines are taken right out of our headlines.
9.) The Cylons are religious zealots. There can be only 1 God! The humans have many false gods. They are wrong, they must be destroyed.
Sound familiar?
10.) The vipers look frakkin real! There are Vipers similar to those on the old show (they are antiques that were museum pieces) and newer, sleaker, shinier Vipers. The Cylon Centruions are big mean mo-fo's. The Raiders are no longer crewed by Cylons - they ARE Cylons!!! The space combat is no longer George Lucas WWII dogfight inspired. It is real science space combat. No explosions ringing through our TV speakers. There is no sound in space people.
And I could go on . . . and on . . . and on . . . watch the show people! Here is a critical review of the show:
"September 20, 2005 17:10 - Blogcritics reviews Season 1
"In terms of sheer science-fiction satisfaction, this has been a most excellent summer. Not only did I discover the estimable Joss Whedon's Firefly, but also the latest reimagining of Battlestar Galactica.
"In the 2003 mini-series, 40 years have passed since humanity fought against the Cylons they created. There was no clear winner, since midway through the conflict our robotic foes inexplicably took off for the far reaches of space, never to return.
"Or so we thought. In truth, they came back wearing our skin. Number Six, above pictured cyber-seductress, gets genius and womanizer Dr. Gaius Baltar to unwittingly assist her (it?) into penetrating our defenses. Soon after, the 12 colonies we're living on get hit by nukes. All our ships with networked computers get disabled almost like someone just hit the "OFF" switch.
"Suddenly, the archaic Battlestar Galactica - a ship with no networked computers to speak of and long considered a relic of the First Cylon War - becomes the only hope for the continued survival of our race.
"This background leads to some of the most gripping television I've ever seen."
And then there is this:
"September 9, 2005 14:57 - The Christian Science Monitor loves Battlestar Galactica
"The best show on TV. Really.
"The 1970s series Battlestar Galactica was so dinky that it played like "Bonanza" in space (it, too, starred Lorne Greene). The Sci-Fi Channel's radically reinvented version shares the same premise: A fleet of refugees traverses the galaxy in search of a far-off promised land, Earth. This time, though, it uses the story line as an allegory for the post-9/11 zeitgeist. The characters and plotting are so complex that you'll find other shows like "Lost" comparatively dull. Catch up by renting the miniseries pilot followed by the first season."
Hmmmmmmmmmm . . . didn't I say something like that already?
Leather
)
