Year:
2003
Studio:
USA Cable Entertainment
Feature:
4/5
DVD:
3/5
The new Battlestar Galactica started out with a 4-hour miniseries. When
they were making it and announced they were going to redo everything
and nothing was sacred there was a whole lot of furor. Personally I
didn't know what to expect.
After watching the 180-minute movie I came away quite impressed with
the story. There is a whole lot more subplots and conflicts brewing.
Lee "Apollo" Adama (Jamie Bamber) was estranged from his father,
Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos), because of Zack's death
two years earlier.
Lt Kara "Starbuck" Thrace (Katee Sackhoff) has an antagonistic
relationship with Colonel Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan) because she thinks
he's an incompetent drunkard and he thinks she's an insubordinate
bitch. Notice that they made Starbuck female which is cool and that
they kept the old character names but made them pilot nicknames rather
than real names.
In any case, after 40 years of peace the Cylons -- who were originally
created by humans and rebelled against their masters -- return to wipe
out humanity. They've already infiltrated the colonies with their human
models as exemplified by Number 6 (Tricia Helfer) who has been in a
two-year relationship with brilliant scientists Gaius Balter (James
Callis).
The colonies are destroyed and the survivors flee the Cylon tyranny.
Baltar is a conflicted man, shallow and self-centered but certainly not
on the Cylon's side. A major new character is introduced: Education
Minister Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) who is suddenly elevated the
President of the Council when everyone else is killed.
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Overall I was
very impressed with the story and subplots. I didn't like the
documentary camera style. I also thought the music was too subdued. The
whole effect is to give it a more gritty realism which I didn't
appreciate. It made the cinematography rather uninspiring which may
have been the intention.
There's nothing really new here that hasn't been done by other science
fiction series. They just applied it to Battlestar Galactica and with
television special effects have gotten better. I think the appeal is
all the unresolved subplots which would have been deadly in a
standalone movie but the miniseries was designed to set up a regular
series so all the loose ends are ok.
Extras
Feature Commentary with Director Michael Rymer and Executive Producers
David Eick and Ron Moore. On the one hand the commentary has good
anecdotes and they explain lots of why they did things this way and
what they cut out and what these things mean. On the other hand the
trio were a bit too smug with themselves and I got the distinct
impressions that a lot of things were done just to make it different
from Star Trek (two of them worked on TNG). So overall liked the
content but hated the attitude.
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