Battlestar Galactica (2004): Miniseries, Part 1

Writer:

Ronald D. Moore

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Director:

Michael Rymer

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Air Date:

08-Dec-2003

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm watching the two-part Battlestar Galactica remake miniseries. The parts are sometimes called Night One and Night Two but on my DVD they were edited together to form one 3 hour movie. Wait, 3 hours? I struggle enough writing about 90 minute movies! This is going to absolutely destroy me.

Okay, okay, I can do this, I'll just split it into three parts covering an hour each, it'll be fine. Oh by the way, I've called it 'Battlestar Galactica (2004)' up there, because that's the year the actual TV series started airing, and that's what everyone calls it. Even though this actually came out at the end of 2003.

The miniseries was directed by Michael Rymer, who I don't actually know much about. He'd just done that Queen of the Damned movie apparently (which was a sequel to Interview with the Vampire). Writer Ronald D. Moore, on the other hand, is a much more familiar name to me. His writing career began when he joined Star Trek: The Next Generation in season 3, then he wrote a couple of Trek movies and moved on to Deep Space Nine. It was all going well until he joined Star Trek: Voyager, which was a series about a group of people trapped together on a spaceship with limited resources on a long journey to a shining planet called Earth. Basically, he didn't get on with the way his former friend Brannon Braga was running things and he quit after two episodes, taking with him a whole lot of ideas on how the series could've been improved.

Four years later he got another chance to tell a story about a starship crew on a journey, only this time he was in the captain's seat, and this is what we got. It's a more naturalistic and grounded series designed to appeal to viewers who'd gotten tired of cheesy Star Trek space adventures with reset buttons and Starfleet protocols, but didn't want Farscape's goofy characters or Firefly's playful dialogue.

This BSG is also a reimagining of a series from 1978 and seeing as I just watched the pilot movie, Saga of a Star World, I figured I might as well compare the two as I go. This means that there will be a few SPOILERS for Saga of a Star World mixed in with a ridiculous amount of spoilers for this miniseries. Seriously, I'll be going through it scene by scene. I'll not spoil a thing about what happens later though. In fact I won't even drop cheeky hints, because screw cheeky hints.

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The miniseries begins a lot like the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica does... well okay it skips the heroic theme and the credits flying past the camera, but it does start by giving us a bit of an introduction to the setting.

The original narration focused on the 'ancient astronauts' side of the story, talking about how "There are those that believe that life here began out there", while this goes straight to the Cylons. They were created by man apparently, not an extinct race of alien reptiles, so that's a fairly major change to the lore straight away.

We also get to see this very OG BSG-looking shuttle docking at a space station. In fact it looks to me like an exact CGI recreation of the original 70s model, all matt grey and greebled up with little bits stuck to the hull to add detail. 90s television had a good number of colourful spaceships like the White Star, Red Dwarf and Moya, but then in 1999 Star Wars took all the colours away to use in its prequels and left TV shows like Stargate Atlantis, Firefly and Enterprise with dull grey spaceships again. So this 25 year old model actually suits the early 2000s sci-fi aesthetic just fine.

It's been filmed in an unusual way however, as the series was going for a more of a documentary style, with the space scenes shot like they were being recorded in real life. In this case the scene's been shot like it's NASA footage from a camera bolted onto the side of the ship. We even get to see the little thrusters firing.

Wait, what was I talking about anyway? Oh right, the Cylons were created by man to make life easier on the Twelve Colonies. But one day they decided to kill their masters and there was a bit of a war.

After a long and bloody struggle, an armistice was declared and the Cylons had to make a very Battlestar Galactica journey across space to find a new home.

This is another huge change from the original, which starts off with the Colonial fleet ambushed on its way to the peace talks with the Cylons. Then all their Colonies were destroyed. Things worked out significantly better for the Colonials in this reality. Incidentally it's called the Cimtar Peace Accord, which was the name of the old moon that the Cylons sprung their ambush from in the original.

The plan was that the humans and Cylons would maintain diplomatic relations, so now this guy has to visit this remote space station every year to see if any Cylons show up wishing to talk. But no one's seen or heard from them in 40 years. You'd think he'd bring a book or a Game Boy or something.

I suppose he did bring some notes on the Cylons to read. Hey it's the design from the original series! By the way, this is possibly the only time they ever use the word 'yahren' instead of 'year' in the BSG reboot. So there's some fascinating trivia for you.

Here's some more trivia, the actor is wearing old age makeup in this scene.

There was originally supposed to be a bit of a montage here, with the officer visiting the station year after year, getting visibly older to show the passage of time, but they decided to just cut to the chase. Oh plus I should mention that he's Boxey's dad, which is revealed by the photo on the table.

Now I'm trying to imagine what it'd look like if an original BSG Cylon actually did turn up and sit down on the chair opposite. That's not going to happen however, as it turns out that the Cylons have had a bit of upgrade in the meantime...

Two hulking robots stomp into the room with their guns drawn… and then immediately fold the guns away. I guess when you're a new model Cylon that humans have never seen you want to show off your cool gun hands.

The Cylons are CGI now and they've lost their 80s twinkly star filter lens flares, but they've still got that Knight Rider red eye sweeping back and forth. Wait, Cylons… Cyclops… why did it take me this long to get that?

Then Trisha Helfer comes in, sits on the table front of the photo of the confused human's wife and son, asks if he's alive, and then gives him a kiss. I imagine the BSG porn parody probably starts much the same way. He's even more confused when a missile comes in from a Cylon ship and blows the whole space station to pieces with them all still in it!

Well that achieved absolutely nothing, except to kill a few Cylons and potentially tip off the humans about an incoming attack, but I suppose that's the point. The Cylons are back and after 40 years of isolation they've gone a bit strange. Hang on, this begins with the antagonists blowing up a space station as the first step of an invasion? That's how Babylon 5 starts too!

Though Babylon 5 didn't have a bit of debris fly off the station and hit the camera, knocking it spinning off into space! That's one way to make viewers feel like the cameras are actually there in the scene.

This would be where a regular episode would cut to the title sequence, but there aren't any opening credits in this miniseries so all we get is the logo and I've shown that already.

ACT ONE

Then we get to see the new Battlestar Galactica herself, looking a bit like a spaceship skeleton. I get the impression she had a bit more armour on during the Cylon war, but this stripped down look suits her. It gives the ship a distinctive appearance, despite it being a reimagining of the original Galactica, and the deep shadows create the illusion that the hull isn't all the same dull shade of grey. Even though it is. Speaking of illusions, that shadow under the name is actually painted on, it's not 3D text.

Even space is surprisingly dull and grey right now, without anything around to add even a hint of colour. No planets, no moons, no pretty nebulae.

The visual effects in this are all CGI this time, created by Zoic Studios, who were building on the techniques they'd been using on Firefly a year earlier. Visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel's experience went back a bit further than that however, as he's part of the reason Deep Space Nine looks so great. Zoic's actually still around, creating effects for series like WandaVision, The Orville and For All Mankind. (I doubt they're still using LightWave 3D though).

Whoa, suddenly colour!

These hallways are a lot bluer than I remembered them being, plus the picture quality's a little less scruffy than I expected as well. The rest of the series was filmed with HD digital cameras, but they pushed the contrast to increase the noise and blow out the highlights because they wanted a grittier look. This miniseries on the other hand was shot on 35mm film, like basically every US space opera before it, and it's a bit more restrained.

The Galactica is currently in the process of becoming a museum and there's a tour guide going around giving us helpful exposition. He explains that the ship is 50 years old and was designed to operate with technology that was antiquated at the time, like phones with cords and manually operated valves. When you're fighting an enemy who are experts at cyberwarfare it's smart not to give them too many ways to screw you over.

Meanwhile Commander Adama here is practicing his speech for the decommissioning ceremony. The original Commander Adama was played by Lorne Greene who brought a lot of gravitas to the role. So when it came to casting his successor they needed someone who could match him, and they got Edward James Olmos. They did well.

This is a really elaborate and ambitious shot that snakes its way through the Galactica's giant corridors, meeting characters along the way and sticking with them for a bit, before getting distracted by someone else and following them instead. It's possible there are a couple of sneaky cuts in here that I didn't spot, but it looks like a pretty seamless three minute shot to me.

Then we get our first glimpse of amazing looking multi-level CIC (Combat Information Center) set. It was a smart idea to start this reimagining off with a big expensive miniseries, as it provided them with some big expensive standing sets to add a bit of production value to the TV show. I love how crowded this place is by the way. If you want somewhere to look like a proper command centre, filling it with people helps.

The room seems to take more inspiration from Ops in Deep Space Nine than the bridge of the original Galactica I reckon, with that table in the middle. It's definitely not taking any inspiration from the USS Voyager's bridge. In fact I don't think there's even a single carpet on this whole ship.

Anyway we're introduced to New Starbuck, New Colonel Tigh, some of the deck hands, Lieutenant Gaeta... lots of people. Then we follow Adama as he heads down to the hangar bay and finds that his crew has something for him to see:

It's an old school Colonial Viper from the original series! Well, almost but not quite. It's curvier for one thing. Plus it has always annoyed me that those fan blades don't actually have room to spin inside those engines. Though then again it's a spaceship so maybe they don't?

Okay I just checked and they don't spin, so that's a weight off my mind! Here's some extra trivia for you: there was a Battlestar Galactica video game for the PS2 and Xbox released a couple of weeks before this miniseries, and it has a weird mix of ships from different eras. It use the Galactica design from the 1978 series but its Vipers look like this one.

What actually happened is that this miniseries took its Viper design from the video game, because it looked better than anything their concept artists were coming up with. You can read the whole story on the designer's website if you're interested.

This particular fighter has a bit of history to it as it's the Viper that Commander Adama flew in the Cylon war! They found it in a salvage yard and restored it so that it can be flown in the decommissioning ceremony later. Plus they've got another gift: as they've dug up an old photo of him standing next to it. He's presumably the one that looks like a cardboard cutout of the Fonz, and the two kids are his sons.

I like how everything's so chilled out and everyone's so respectful right now. It really gives you the feeling that these people haven't lost their worlds to a sneak attack and they're not being hunted across space by killer robots.

Meanwhile down in the pilots barracks, the ship's XO, Colonel Tigh, is flipping tables and getting into a fight with ace pilot Starbuck, who's been antagonising him throughout their card game. Well they've been antagonising each other really; they're both kind of assholes.

There was a scene like this in the original series and Starbuck won back then as well, but there was a lot less table flipping afterwards. Plus in the original BSG the card game was called Pyramid and there was a ball game called Triad, while in this the names have been flipped (because writer Ron Moore got the names mixed up).

Most of the characters in the series are loosely inspired by characters in the original series, though some are basically unrecognisable. Colonel Tigh has switched skin tone, Starbuck has switched sex and Boomer on the right has done both. A lot of people were unhappy about the changes, calling this ‘Galactica in name only', but the series didn't even keep the names half the time. Starbuck is now a callsign for Kara Thrace and Boomer is a callsign for Sharon Valerii

Anyway Kara punches Tigh and gets sent to the brig, then we get a nice scene in Adama's quarters where he convinces his XO not to press charges. It shows how close Adama and Tigh are as friends and how much he cares for Kara. Hey I thought this was supposed to be the miserable series where everyone hates each other!

I remember the original movie had a lot of scenes in Adama's quarters and they haven't gotten any less grey in the remake. These quarters haven't got any rivets in the walls though, or even a window. There aren't really a whole lot of windows on the Galactica, for much the same reason that a tank doesn't have a windshield.

Then we cut to Caprica City on planet Caprica. Not as many pyramids around as in the original series' Caprica, but we do get to see it in the daylight, which is nice.

It's not the most realistic CGI city I've ever seen, but it's a real step beyond what I've been getting from Babylon 5 lately. Even though the series were only five years apart and used the same software. They were only rendering the effects in 720p though, so they had to be upscaled for the HD release.

Hey, a sloping window, that's kind of like a pyramid.

Another thing I've noticed about Caprica is that there are loud spacecraft flying overhead all the time, including a fairly famous one on the left.

It's Serenity from Firefly! If I was some kind of spaceship-spotting nerd I'd point out that it's curvier revised model, not the angular one they started off with, but fortunately I'm not that far gone.

This is our introduction to Laura Roslin, who's currently waiting in a doctor's gigantic office for news about her tests. The doctor's dialogue is mostly drowned out by the sound of the spaceship in the next scene, but we don't need to hear the words. It's obviously bad news.

It cuts to Roslin sitting on board the ship, but she's not seated for long as she rushes to the privacy of the toilets to freak out about her diagnosis. She's barely spoken two words so far, but we already know more about what's going on with her than almost any other character.

Roslin was played by Mary McDonnell, who'd played Stands with a Fist in Dances with Wolves and First Lady Marilyn Whitmore in Independence Day. So they did well to get her really.

Back on Caprica we meet Trisha Helfer again, whose character is considerably less dead than she should be considering that we just saw her get blown up on a space station. Right now she's cradling a stranger's baby, while mumbling things about it being so fragile and wondering how the neck can support so much weight. This is a concern.

But she eventually puts the baby down without incident... and then secretly murders it in its pram. This woman just can't help killing humans! Though she looks a bit distraught about what she did afterwards. I guess either her emotional reaction wasn't what she expected or this was a mercy killing. Because she knows what's coming.

One thing that's interesting about this shot, is that everyone in it is dressed like they're walking around Canada in 2003. There has been no attempt to sci-fi up the fashions whatsoever, despite the fact that this is taking place in an indeterminate year on an alien world that still hasn't been blown up yet. The only costumes that are remotely sci-fi are the uniforms... and the US Space Force went on to borrow their design in real life.

ACT TWO

Act two begins with a tiny bit of an interview with genius scientist Dr. Gaius Baltar. We see just enough for the presenter to tell us how awesome he is and for him to talk about how the ban on researching artificial intelligence is an outmoded concept. I mean sure there was a Cylon War, but that was ages ago.

Count Baltar is one of the main antagonists in the original series, as he intentionally betrays all of humanity purely for his own benefit. The guy's a very two dimensional moustache-twirling villain but he was made awesome by actor John Colicos. Dr. Gaius Baltar on the other hand is like a cross between a Rik Mayall character and Julian Bashir from Deep Space Nine, who feels that he's the smartest and most charming person in any room he walks into. He's not particularly evil, he'd do anything for the people he cares about, it's just that the only person he cares about is himself.

The camera slowly pans around the interior of his beautiful beachside house as he talks, revealing what may be three disc-shaped Magnate Awards, his collection of live fish in jugs (what the hell Baltar?), and the unnamed Tricia Helfer Cylon walking in through the door. Then it cuts to after the interview to show that the two of them are getting down to business. The kind of business that makes your spine glow red.

Well now they've just gone and given away how to spot a Cylon.

Meanwhile on Galactica, Boomer is secretly having sex with Chief Tyrol, the guy who presented the antique Viper to Adama earlier. I'm starting to think this series is its own porn parody. Still it's nice to see Tyrol reveal another aspect to his character besides 'is extremely respectful to superior officers'.

Oh wait, before that there's a scene of him greeting a pilot called Apollo, who's just arrived on the ship and is about a bit confused about the auto-landing system not kicking in. Tyrol tells him that all the landings on Galactica are manual, because of his dad's orders. Apollo's dad I mean, not Tyrol's.

Turns out that 'Apollo' is just a callsign. This is Lee Adama, the Commander's son, and right now he's a bit of a dick who won't even shake Tyrol's hand. Lee's miserable in his briefing later as well, especially when he's told that he'll be flying his dad's Viper as he leads the flyby during the decommissioning ceremony.

By the way, we can kind of see the modern Viper space fighter behind him, the type that isn't 40-50 years old. I think Adama's fighter was a Viper Mark II and the one Lee arrived in is a Viper Mark VII.

Then we get an almost subliminal glimpse at some kids playing as Cylons behind Baltar and his Cylon frriend as they go for a walk.

We learn that she's been secretly helping him develop a project for the Defence Mainframe. He assumes she did it to get a sneaky glimpse inside the mainframe, so that her company will have an advantage bidding for a contract, but she insists that she did it because she loves him. And also because God told her to. Baltar doesn't exactly have much respect for her faith, or any faith really, calling it mysticism and superstition. But he's willing to overlook her beliefs because she looks like a model.

She's got to go off and meet someone though. We don't get to see who she's meeting, but we do hear her say "It's about time, I wondered when you'd get here."

Cut to an old school Cylon Centurion on display in Galactica's starboard flight pod! Proof that BSG definitely has a sense of humour. It also hints that it might be a little self-aware about how long it's taking to get to the Cylon attack. 27 minutes and still no apocalypse. Some people might feel that it's spinning its wheels a bit and leaving us waiting for the fireworks to begin, but I can forgive it. Especially as this is all the time we'll ever get to hang out with the characters before the end of their world.

Over on the other side of the ship, Aaron Doral (the tour guide from the start) welcomes Secretary of Education Laura Roslin and her assistant Billy Keikeya to the Galactica. Unfortunately Billy gets distracted by communications officer Anastasia "Dee" Dualla walking by and loses his way in the maze of corridors.

So he picks a hatch and wanders right into the bathroom, where Dee's having a wash. I guess now I can add Billy and Dee to the long list of characters we're following in this story.

Meanwhile Roslin has met Adama and already they're not getting on. Adama is refusing to allow the installation of a networked computer system that'll allow museum visitors to find places like the restroom. We've just seen how hard it is for visitors to find their way around so I get where she's coming from. On the other hand we've also see how easy it is to find yourself in the restroom, so I can see his side too.

Adama makes the point that people have died on this ship because someone wanted a networked computer to make things easier and that's apparently a thing he's concerned about happening after the ship's been decommissioned and turned into a museum. It seems like he'll be getting his way... this time.

And now Apollo and Starbuck has been reunited at last! Though their relationship is a little different than it was in the '78 series as they haven't seen each other for two years and it's implied that she was close to his brother Zak... before he died. The guy is killed at the start of the classic series as well, but here he died before they even got to the Cylon attack!

We aren't told how it happened, only that Lee blames his dad for it. And that's why he's been a dick the whole time he's been on Galactica, because he really doesn't want to be anywhere near the guy. This is another big change, as Original Apollo had a great relationship with Classic Adama. They're really dialling up the drama here.

Back on Caprica, the humanoid Cylon comes by to Baltar's place only find him in bed with another woman... which is actually something that happened in the original series, kind of. Only it was Athena catching Starbuck with another woman. She kicks the woman out and I love the way that Baltar says "Bye" to her as she goes. He's so pathetically meek and apologetic.

Meanwhile Doral has Lee and his dad pose for a really awkward photograph, even though Lee really wants nothing to do with him. Once the two are alone he really lays into the guy, blaming him for pushing Zak into being a pilot when he wasn't cut out for it and pulling strings to get him into flight school. So this reunion just got even more awkward.

By the way, Edward James Olmos wore blue contact lenses to make it more plausible that he could be Jamie Bamber's biological dad. Because the guy just can't help but go the extra mile for his roles.

Back on Caprica, it turns out that the Tricia Helfer Cylon has some important topics to discuss with Baltar, like the fact she's a Cylon infiltrator who used the access he gave her to the Colonial Defence Mainframe to give the Cylons a way in. Baltar is terrified about the implications... he could be blamed for this! He could be found guilty of treason. She assures them that won't be a problem, as everyone who could charge him is going to die.

Then we get another shot of the museum in the starboard flight pod, where people have gathered for the decommissioning ceremony in front of the biggest window on the whole ship. First Lee leads a Viper flyby (accompanied by the original Battlestar Galactica theme playing as the Colonial anthem) then Adama finally gets to give that speech he was practicing at the start of act one.

He doesn't though. He's got Lee's words on his mind and this drives him to give an alternative speech adlibbed from the heart, about how they've never answered the question of why they deserved to survive during the Cylon War. People do terrible things, they visit their sins upon their children, and they refuse to take responsibility for what they've done... or created. It's one of those clever double speeches, where he talks about his own issues with his sons with no one in the audience realising it. Well almost no one.

Turns out that Lee has his dad's words on his mind, as he's listening to the speech on the radio in his Viper cockpit. But he won't be sticking around to have another chat as it's his job to escort Roslin's flight back to Caprica. So he's basically swiping his dad's plane! Speaking of classic starfighters, it's hard to tell but one of the Vipers in this shot is actually an original '78 model.

I don't think much of Baltar's weird portrait-aspect double TV setup, but it is handy when you want to watch two news reporters getting nuked at the same time.

The attack on the Twelve Colonies has finally begun! It happens 42 minutes in, compared to 26 in the original series. We don't actually get to see much of it, no elaborate shots of of skyscrapers getting blown to pieces or of Cylon Raiders swooping down to strafe panicking pedestrians, but this actually suits the miniseries' documentary style and the 9/11 influences are strong here. It makes so much sense to see Baltar reacting to disaster happening on the news first before he experiences it himself.

Funnily enough, he's not taking responsibility for the things he's done. He's mostly freaking out.

Okay, now the nukes are definitely seeming like an 'us' problem.

The Cylon reveals that she's got no escape ship and no way to get him off the planet. When she dies here she'll wirelessly transmit her thoughts to a mindless copy of her body somewhere else and walk away in that shell. Baltar on the other hand is screwed! Also it turns out that there are 12 models of humanoid Cylons and she's number 6, so that seems like information that might be useful at a later date. It gives us something to call her at least.

Six isn't quite done being helpful yet as she tells him to take cover behind her as the windows are blown out by the blast. That's probably not going to be enough to protect him from the full force of a nuclear explosion or the radiation that comes with it, but hey the blast might give him superpowers. That's always a possibility right?

There's a shot the original series didn't have, with all the explosions going off around Caprica. We still don't get to see any of the other 11 colony worlds under attack though.

At one point during development the Twelve Colonies were all going to be on the same planet, but I'm glad that was changed that as it wouldn't have really made a lot of sense. I mean why would there be a fleet of ships travelling the star system if there's only one world? And why would many of them have faster than light drives?

Anyway, Galactica's a little out of the loop, they're not watching the news like they were in the original, but the message finally comes from Fleet Headquarters telling them that the Cylons are attacking.

ACT THREE

Tigh's a little bit incredulous, thinking that HQ is pulling a joke on Adama. He was just one day from retirement after all. But Adama gets on the upside down phone and tells his people to get ready for war. Which means Starbuck gets to come out of the brig! Though they don't actually have any ammunition on board to fight the war with, so that's going to be a problem.

On the plus side the fleet wasn't tricked into bringing all its battlestars into one place without fighter cover, so things aren't going quite as badly as they did in the original series. Though they do find out that they've just lost Fleet Headquarters, so that seems like it might be a problem.

Cut to a wing of Vipers Mark VII's out 2 hours from Caprica. I don't know what they're all doing out here, but they look like they have a purpose. There's also a new kind of craft out there called a Raptor, which is basically the series' version of the shuttle, mostly used for reconnaissance. Galactica's CAG (air group commander) is leading the wing, and Boomer and co-pilot Helo are in the Raptor. Apollo couldn't be there though as he's escorting Secretary Roslin's ship home and Starbuck has only just been released from the brig so she missed out as well.

Back on Galactica, Adama tells Starbuck that they've lost 30 battlestars already, which is a quarter of their fleet. That means that Galactica's gone from being 0.83% of the fleet to 1.11%! It turns out that they still have some fighters left to launch, trouble is they're all in the museum. Starbuck gets on it, or at least gets Tyrol to get on it. It's going to take some effort to get them in the air as the starboard flight pod's launch tubes have been replaced by a gift shop. Man, it sucks that we never get to see the gift shop! I like all these orders being shouted and stuff getting done though.

Back in the CIC, Dee's getting reports of malfunctions throughout the fleet, with an entire battlestar losing power. Nice job letting the Cylons into the mainframe Baltar.

It's at this point that Galactica's attack squadron finally encounters the new Cylon Raiders. They're very different looking to the old ones and now they have pulsing red eyes like the robots do!

The music goes all drums as Boomer's Raptor pulls back to give the Vipers room to kick ass. One thing that sets Battlestar apart is composer Bear McCreary's distinctive percussion-heavy soundtrack and that's definitely coming through strong right now... so it's interesting that Richard Gibbs was the one who wrote most of the music for the miniseries. It shows that McCreary did a great job of taking what Gibbs established and running with it.

Unfortunately all the Vipers' systems suddenly shut off, which is a problem as they need the those systems to fly. The CAG calls for Jolly to take over, which is another character I remember from the original series! Unfortunately we don't actually get to see them. Or hear them.

And now they've been blown up, so that kind of sucks! Poor Jolly. I hope these weren't all of Galactica's Viper Mark VIIs, or else they just lost all their Viper Mark IIs. Also the Cylons are using missiles now! There were no smoke trails like this in the original BSG; the Cylon Raiders fired bright blue laser bolts.

The sound's also gone a bit muffled now to make it feel like they're really in space. Sure there's supposed to be no sound in space as there's nothing there to carry the vibrations, but it's a compromise that gets the point across.

Fortunately Boomer and her co-pilot Helo are able to avoid their systems being compromised and (barely) escape by using decoys to distract the missiles. Trouble is that shrapnel pierces the hull, damaging their Raptor and tearing through Helo's leg.

They decide to drift towards Caprica with the engines off and hope that the Cylons mistake them for debris. They're only about 100,000 or so miles away I reckon, so they should be there within a couple of months. Unless they're travelling far faster than it seems like they are.

I like how professional the two of them are acting now that they're in combat. They really come across like they were trained to do this job. In fact the cast actually did go through a boot camp together and there was a military advisor on set to help make things more authentic.

Hey there's another battlestar over there on the left. It seems like it's missing a bit of its armour as well, which might explain how it ended up being cut in half.

Back on Galactica, Adama gets on the upside down phone again and gives his crew an update. Caprica City was hit with a 50 megaton thermonuclear weapon. The bombs dropped at the end of World War II were around 20 kilotons, so yeah that city is just gone now. The Cylons have also hit other worlds simultaneously and it's not looking good.

Then the story goes to check on what Roslin's up to over on Colonial Heavy 798. She goes to the cockpit to confirm what she's heard on the radio and finds the pilot shaking in shock. I thought I remembered how this scene was going to go, but I remembered wrong as what actually happens is that Roslin tells them to contact the Ministry of Civil Defense to see what their ship can do to be useful. In every disaster there's always someone rushing to help and it turns out that Roslin is one of the helpers.

Speaking of disasters, 9/11 occurred just two years before this was filmed, so the actors would've had some fairly vivid memories to draw from when it came to portraying their reaction to what's happened. Roslin seems to be handling the news better than most, though I suppose her world already ended a few hours earlier than everyone else's when she visited that doctor, so she's had a head start on processing her shock and despair.

She starts giving people instructions but Doral interrupts as he wants to know who put her in charge. So she explains that this is a government ship and she's the Secretary of Education, and this gets him to sit back down in silence. This isn't entirely ideal as what she wanted him to do was go down to the cargo area and get it set up as a living space, but hey at least he's not being a problem.

They do have another problem however: there's an inbound missile and their antique escort Viper has gone AWOL. Colonial Heavy 798 is about to become the latest victim of the Cylon massacre.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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COMING SOON

Man, this miniseries just keeps going and going and I'm only a third of the way through. I'm starting to have regrets!

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, the second hour of the Battlestar Galactica miniseries, covering the end of Night One and the start of Night Two. But if you don't have to wait until then if you've got anything you want to say about this first hour.