Battlestar Galactica - a Review

Battlestar Galactica - a Review

I never watched Battlestar Galactica (BSG) when it was 'on' - I recall flicking on to a few episodes to see scantily clad young ladies sweating, and thought it wasn't for me. So, I'm late in the day here, but a colleague recently lent me the entire series box set and since March I've been ploughing through them. And so here is my review of the much-admired show.

Spoiler Alert

Contains *many* spoilers!

Cylon!

Cylon!

In summary it struck me a lot like Lost. Remember Lost at the beginning? When it was clever, mysterious, and intriguing? When you were thinking - is the island moving? does everything that kid think of materialise? who are The Others? What do those numbers mean?  And then - much like other J.J. Abrahms shows - it just fizzled out. An idea that started one way; became too popular so it *had* to be drawn out, and then became nothing sensible in the end. So, that for me, is almost BSG. 'Almost' I say, as at least BSG *ended*. And properly - there's nothing more to see here. We're done.

Grumpy Old Cylon

The Pilot

The pilot show was excellent. Very good indeed. It took the original 70s series premise and shifted it into the now. A re-boot that both made sense, and extended the original ideas. Characters were introduced carefully and with a decent back-story. Good sci-fi that you wanted to watch. All in all a truly excellent start to a show. Well done.

Seasons 1 and 2

Grumpy Old Man

Unfortunately that heady start was not maintained. Almost immediately the scripts and plots began to meander, not knowing quite where they were heading. Unsure between fixing on a story-a-week idea, and a grander concept.

Political and religious themes were introduced, but given such wafer-thin treatment that they were hardly worth mentioning. Certainly not handled on a serious level.

Certain currents ran throughout but not sensibly (50,000 survivors with a huge press corp; an ex-convict taken seriously as a presidential candidate; a clearly psychotic traitor - yes, you, Baltar, given more and more credence and power) It was a world that made sense only if everyone was congenitally stupid.

Not to say that all things were bad. The sub-plots involving the Caprica-bound Helo and one-of-many Boomer was well done; in complete contrast to the obvious sports-jock fling between Anders and Starbuck. But the original attacks of the Cylons, the breaking of the truce, the Cylon skin-job in-fighting and angst (given they'd just wiped out billions) never really explained. No rationale. Overall a big disappointment given what came before.

Fit Cylon

Season 3

The toughest to get through. I know several people who gave up at this point, and I almost joined them. We start well enough with the occupation of New Caprica, but the subjugation and rehabilation of the survivors is too quick - collaborators one week; Galactica soldiers the next.

The episodes became tedious - Baltar's trial and acquittal too unbelievable. Tyrol and Starbuck's weekly personality changes. The Lee, Kara, Anders triangle too re-hashed. Themes introduced and dropped willy-nilly. But I stuck with it, and towards the end we at least seemed to be heading somewhere. The apparent death of Starbuck (who was convinced though - let's see hands) and then the final reveal ... four of the final five out in the open.

Season 4 (or Season 4 plus the Final Season in the UK)

Not Quantum Leap Cylon

In some ways I think this is my favourite season after the pilot ... although things were dropped and introduced rapidly, we were given a conclusion and an ending, something which we're often denied. And the actual ending? Well, it was exciting even if not entirely convincing.

The final showdown between the humans and renegade Cylons against the remaining Cylons was fairly well done, and then we finished in a final sort of way.

Not the worst show I've ever seen, but as sci-fi ... well, the political and religious themes weren't as well thought out as on Babylon 5 (which had an awful final season, and pretty dire concluding penultimate one); and never captured the joy or the comradery of Farscape (possibly the best of all sci-fi series ... had it ended at season 4).

Major Grumbles

My main issues lie around several, what we'd call, "changed premises":

Timeline

Cylon Jock

Maybe I'm a bit thick, or I've missed something but I thought this all took place about 50 years after the 1st Cylon war that both Tigh and Adama took part in. And at that point there were no 'skin-jobs'. Yet the Final Five were around on "Earth" 2000 years before. What? Man invented Cylons, so how was that possible? What's going on?

Cylons are un-detectable

(apart from by Centurions, or other Cylons, but not by other skin-jobs - i.e. a Cylon will spot Anders and back-off, but the others won't; apart from when they are revealed, when they will - clear?)

Stubbly Cylon

So we know Balter was talking doo-doo when he was building his Cylon detector, and even when they conveniently declared "this aint a Cylon cos their DNA is the same as when we last recorded it" (yes, I know). But in essence these things are identical, down to DNA level with humans.

Conveniently Introduced-late Cylon

Apart from in those episodes when Athena can stay out in high radiation longer than humans; or when they need to navigate large FTL jumps, when she'll hack open her arm and pull a piece of metal out of it! Like - they never spotted *that* on the tests, eh? I mean, I can understand why these things happen, but it does insult your audience a bit when a few weeks later you're talking about skin-jobs being identical to humans. It's shoddy, and not something that makes a show great.

Changed Personalities

Chief. Chief Chief. Lee. Lee. Lee. Starbuck. Starbuck. Starbuck. 

Not-a-Cylon

And why does Tory become instant "bad Cylon" when she finds out; yet Tigh barely change at all?

Here, there be Angels

So, if we can get over the fact that Baltar acts constantly and consistently like a lunatic - talking to himself; being shifty; acting suspiciously, we eventually find out that he's being guided by an angelic Six; whilst his Caprica Six is being guided by angelic Baltar. And although these angels are sub-standard (appearing only to one person) we then get Angel Thrace, who is a fully-interactive, drinking, swearing, fracking, human. Except she aint.  Nor, it appears, is she leading mankind to their doom. If she did, then it was when she led them to "Earth" as after that, she was dead. So that wasn't their doom was it? No. It wasn't.  You can't trust hybrids clearly.

Earth/"Earth"

Drunk Angel

Okay, he's my biggy. You recall in Season 1 when a number of the crew were magically transported to Earth? And the reason they know this was Earth, and the Earth they were looking for ... well, it was because this planet looked up at the heavens at the constellations of the zodiac. The twelve star signs that were the basis for the 12 colonies. So that meant (and we did see those constellations) that this hunk of rock was this Earth here. The one we are currently on. Given that, howcum when they arrived at the ashened, nuclear-wrecked Earth they were seeking, and had been guided to; and the one they recognised as being their Earth ... howcum it turned out to be some other planet. The "BSG-Earth" and not at all our Earth? Our Earth of course is where they ended up on. A planet they had clearly never seen before, but one which was our Earth, and quite a recent version given the positions of the continents. So, they were teleported to BSG-Earth, travelled to it, yet it wasn't our Earth. They ended up there later. Yet it *had* to be our Earth, due to it's stellar location. So, in Season one, BSG-Earth was our Earth. By Season 4, we'd given up on that idea. Poor.

Jessie J

Hendrix

So, if they ended up on our Earth, and I'm guessing the idea is they seeded life here, then the Hendrix they were listening to wasn't our Hendrix. So, this "all this has happened before, and will happen again" is very literal. Unto each generation a Hendrix is born. And a Dylan. And they will write and cover a specific song. Makes you wonder why you bother, eh?

In summary...

Generally, a lot of the acting was good, especially from Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, and Tricia Helfer. The rigour of military life and command was also well handled in the most, and there was a nice 'reality-grime' to life on board. They were well-defined if fickle. And it ended. Never discount the value of an ending.

Personally, I thought that it would turn out that *everyone* was a Cylon. And this was a re-enactment they went through as penance for the destruction of an entire race. That would have been a nice twist.

Overall, enjoyable, but not the great ground-breaking show people would have you believe.