Battlestar Galactica (2004): Miniseries, Part 3

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I've nearly finished writing about the 2003 Battlestar Galactica miniseries. This article has three parts and you're looking at the last of them. If you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO just click the appropriate text. Speaking of appropriate text, I was a bit surprised that they kept the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica logo for their gritty serious reimagining. I suppose that would've been one of the few things it had in common with the other attempts to bring the series back.

Original star Richard Hatch had been trying to get a proper continuation of the classic series going and in 1998 he filmed a 30 minute pilot movie called The Second Coming to pitch his concept to Universal and show it off to sci-fi conventions. The conventions apparently loved it, but Universal wasn't interested. Then a few years later Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto began work on another reboot idea that made it as far as pre-production. The 9/11 attacks along with Singer's commitments to the movie X2: X-Men United jammed a stick through that project's spokes. It was going to be a co-production with Fox and when it failed they decided to go with another sci-fi series instead... called Firefly.

So fans could have gotten a continuation of the original Battlestar Galactica story, it was actually in development, but instead they got a brand new story that used the basic premise as a starting point. I can see why this series was a little bit divisive at the time.

There will be SPOILERS here for BSG '78: Saga of a Star World and this BSG Miniseries. I'll won't talk about the later episodes, though I might mention at some point that the series has a controversial ending. I won't say what happens, just that it's controversial.

---

Previously, on Battlestar Galactica:

The Twelve Colonies have been devastated by a surprise attack by the Cylons and President Roslin has organised the surviving civilian ships into a fleet. Meanwhile the last surviving military vessel, Battlestar Galactica, has gone to Ragnar Anchorage to resupply on ammo. Unfortunately the ship's captain, Adama, has become trapped inside with a mysterious arms dealer after an accidental explosion. No seriously, the explosion was 100% accidental, the Cylons weren't involved at all. That's just how their luck goes.

And now, the conclusion:

Alright Adama and his new friend are currently looking for a way out of the corridors of Ragnar Station (played by a walkway leading between two buildings at a sugar refinery).

The arms dealer doesn't look so good right now and he's a little annoyed that Adama's walking behind him, like he doesn't trust him. The guy explains his view of the human race, saying that they're one step away from being savages beating each other over the head with clubs over scraps of meat. He thinks that maybe the Cylons are God's retribution for humanity's many sins. Maybe God considered them to be a mistake and decided to give souls to someone else instead. I'm pretty sure that viewers are supposed to guess this guy might just be one of the 12 human-looking Cylon models. He's certainly giving off 'death to all humans' vibes. Adama has no reason to assume that Cylons can look human however, so he's got no idea who he's stuck with.

This side of the series, about the Cylons resenting their creators, is all new for the reimagining and gives it some extra depth that the classic series didn't have. It's not just about the heroes getting to Earth, or even about how far they'll go to survive, it's about them dealing with the consequences of past sins.

With Adama gone, Tigh is in command of Galactica and he's not willing to accept Roslin's argument that the war's over and their job now is to care for the 50,000 refugees out there. Roslin's been hit and miss with her decisions so far, but it's hard to argue with this one. In fact I feel like leaning close to the screen and saying:

"Tigh, what's the point of the military? To defend the state and its interests against external threats maybe? Well right now those 40 ships out there are the state and they need Galactica's help. If you fail to save those survivors then you're free to carry on with your pointless suicidal last battle against the entire Cylon fleet, but until then your job is to protect your people!"

But talking to the screen is weird, so I'm not doing that.

Lee manages to haggle Tigh up to giving them two 'disaster pods', but that's as far as he'll go. That's some efficient writing by the way. No one ever explains what a disaster pod is, but it's obvious by the name and context how they'll be useful. Meanwhile, in the original series, Galactica offered aid to the refugees immediately. In fact Adama was the one who pulled the fleet together.

Elsewhere on Galactica, Baltar and Billy are roaming the corridors, utterly lost. So Billy goes to chat to Dualla for directions. And Tyrol is reunited with Boomer.

Suddenly everyone's kissing! Well, everyone but Baltar.

Tyrol and Boomer aren't even trying to hide their relationship here, that's how strong their emotions are right now. Though they kind of ruin the scene by mentioning that Boxey's a new crewmember who needs quarters. That's another reason he mostly turns up in deleted scenes from this point on.

Kara and Lee have an emotional reunion as well, though no kissing there. Turns out that Lee's the CAG now, so he'll be in charge of the pilots on Galactica.

Back on the station, the arms dealer figures out that there's something in the storm that affects Cylon technology and that's what's making him so ill. Adama had suspected that he was a Cylon in human's clothing and now it's been confirmed he's turned a bit mean, saying hurtful things about his brain "or whatever it is you call that thing you pretend to think with".

We get a repeat of what Six told Baltar earlier, that when a Cylon dies their consciousness is transferred wirelessly, but that's smart writing I reckon. Repeating important information helps a viewer remember it. We also learn that they can't use this connection to transmit other data, like the location of the Colonial fleet for instance, as he claims he'll tell the others about Ragnar when he dies. Adama guesses that if he could've transferred his consciousness to escape from this storm he would've done it already.

Then the arms dealer says a line from his speech back to him: "Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things you've done." But we don't have time to wonder if there's a Cylon spy on Galactica, as the arms dealer reveals he's not as weak as he seems and grabs Adama by the neck.

Things get a bit Terminator as the killer robot throws Adama across the room and then rips off a hot steam pipe with his bare hands. So Adama beats him to death with his flashlight. Weirdly this is the only Cylon vs human ground combat we get in the whole miniseries. It's a very impersonal apocalypse, and kind of low budget as well. It seems like most of the money went on the sets.

Over in the CIC, Baltar learns from Gaeta that his Cylon-modified program was actually uploaded to Galactica's system, same as every other ship. But their computers aren't networked so there was never any reason to load it into memory. Adama's stubborn insistence on not networking their machines saved them.

Baltar decides it'll be a good idea to purge it anyway and to sort out the Viper Mark VIIs so they won't be affected in future. Wait, they have Mark VIIs again? How? It seemed like they were all destroyed earlier. This is like Voyager's shuttles all over again!

Gaeta feels sorry for Baltar, thinking that he must feel incredibly guilty that his own software was used to bring down the Twelve Colonies, but Baltar's hallucinatory Head Six knows him better than that. She calls him out on his bullshit, saying that she loves him because he's not burdened by a conscience. See, this kind of insight is why we need Head Six around!

This is the first time in the series that Baltar has to talk to someone while also talking to Head Six simultaneously, and she's already got her distinctive piano theme when she appears. Well okay it's played on a gamelan, but you know the one I mean. It shows up at the start of every episode.

Head Six is useful for other things as well too, like drawing Baltar's attention to a familiar-looking device attached between the monitors above the table in the centre of the CIC. Well it's not familiar to us, but Baltar remembers seeing Six carrying one just like it back on Caprica.

They could've found a less obvious place to hide it, instead of right between the screens everyone's always looking it. Also those monitors must really give the crew neck strain. That's why the Enterprise has a viewscreen at the front of the ship, so you only have to look forward.

Head Six claims that she wasn't the one to plant it, which means there is another Cylon spy on board... end of act two! Well, that's what Baltar believes at least, but (spoilers) the Cylon actually left Galactica ages ago. And then came back.

It's still not clear what Head Six is though. Baltar had already seen the Cylon device before so the series is leaving open the possibility that she really is just his subconscious connecting up dots. He is suffering a lot of stress right now and she's weirdly helpful for a Cylon.

ACT THREE

Head Six claims not to know what the device does and she's definitely not forthcoming with the identity of the other Cylon agent, so there's another mark in the 'maybe she's imaginary' column.

It's in Baltar's interest to not get blown up or whatever, so he has to warn the crew about this. But he can't do that without revealing his knowledge of secret Cylon devices. After a brief distraction with Head Six trying to have sex with him right there in CIC, Baltar's attention is drawn to Doral.

He's a civilian who spent a lot of time on Galactica recently and has had access to CIC. Head Six doesn't remember seeing him at any of the Cylon parties, but that hardly matters. His guilt is irrelevant: as long as he can be plausibly implicated as a Cylon agent it'll give Baltar an excuse to point out the Cylon device! One problem though: no one but him knows that the Cylons can look human now.

Cut to Adama back on the ship and the dead Cylon from the station being wheeled in on a stretcher. Baltar's just that lucky. Now they know that anyone could be a Cylon; they even bleed like humans. Tigh finally gets around to telling Adama that his son's alive, so he heads down to meet him. The two decide to skip the ‘being angry and distant part' and go straight to hugging.

Poor Lee, now his face is covered in sweat and blood.

This is the series all over really: it drives the characters apart so it can have the moments where it brings them back together. Well, sometimes.

Adama and Tigh have a secret meeting with their Cylon expert, Baltar, to figure out what they're going to do about this latest revelation. Turns out that the arms dealer was called Leoben and when the doctor cut him open he looked just like a human on the inside. They had to cremate a tissue sample to get any sign that he was synthetic.

Baltar is acting very concerned about the implications of Cylons looking human despite the fact that he's known about it for hours and what he needs is an excuse to implicate someone. Fortunately they're both counting on him to create a Cylon detector! It's already seemed like Baltar was in a comedy story of his own, but when he's put in a scene with Tigh and Adama it's like he's almost a cartoon character by comparison. And it works somehow, keeping the tone from being too grim or pompous.

Anyway they're keeping this a secret between themselves for now, to avoid a panic in the fleet. They don't need people accusing each other of being Cylons.

Starbuck is going to take a Viper Mark II out through the storm to see if the Cylon fleet is onto them and waiting outside. But first she wants to admit to Apollo that it's her fault his brother Zak died, not his dad's! He wasn't a good enough pilot, he should've failed basic flight training, but she passed him anyway because she loved him. She figured this was the perfect time for confession seeing as it's the end of the world.

So Lee only just forgave his dad and now he's got someone else to be angry with!

Meanwhile, with Baltar's help they have caught the nefarious Doral! Of course he claims to be human and he's not showing any symptoms from being in the radiation, but that could just be because he hasn't been here as long as Leoben! Baltar has absolute confidence in the results from his made up bullshit test and Tigh's too bored by his explanation to question it.

Baltar leaves the room... but on the way out he remembers that he saw Doral screwing around with a strange looking device in the middle of CIC. So now that job's done and Galactica is potentially saved, possibly prolonging Baltar's life just a little longer. And it's all thanks to Head Six, weirdly.

Starbuck reaches the edge of the cloud and yep there's a Cylon fleet lying in wait. I guess this is the kind of space storm which only has one safe path in and out, so they can't escape out the other way.

I like all the mechanical dials in the Mark II cockpit by the way. It doesn't just make it look archaic, it also makes it look very believable.

ACT FOUR

With the human Cylon business over, Adama's finally free to chat with Roslin about their next move... though she makes him sit there and wait until her business is concluded. I guess she's been a politician long enough to know how to show people who the boss is. Then she asks him if he's planning a military coup!

Adama makes his plan clear: he intends to take the Galactica out and fight back against the Cylons. So Roslin points out once again that the war is quite obviously over. They have one battlestar and 50,000 civilians left and that's it. They might be safe for a while if they hang around Ragnar, but there'll be no future for them. The human race will go extinct if they don't get the hell out of here and start making babies. But Adama's not the type to give up on a fight just because his President is giving him a convincing and logical argument followed by a direct order, so he just walks away and heads off to CIC.

Adama joins Tigh, Gaeta and Lee as they figure out their next move. Lee's part of the inner circle now! But the scene keeps cutting to Dee and Billy chatting about their kiss earlier, and Adama's attention is clearly on them.

I like how the last scene ended with Roslin making an absurd statement about making babies to give Adama a reason to dismiss what she's saying and walk away, and I also I like how the more he thinks about it, the more he realises she's right. Which leads to this exchange:

ADAMA
They'd better start having babies.

TIGH
Is that an order sir?

ADAMA
Maybe, before too long.

It's the old 'protagonist sees something unrelated, has an epiphany' trick, and it works really well here. Well, in my opinion at least. Adama decides that they're going to make a run for it and they're going to bring the civilian fleet with them. But the Cylons have taken the whole system, there's no safe place to hide, so they're going to have to make a jump past the 'red line', further than anyone's ever gone. And before they can do that they're going to have to leave the storm.

They need to stick their nose out of the storm just long enough to get an FTL fix. Doral won't be coming with them however as he's getting left behind on Ragnar station. But they're at least giving him some food and water! They still don't know for sure whether or not he's a Cylon but they can't take the chance. Poor desperate Doral asks "What kind of people are you?" which is pretty much the question at the heart of the series.

This shot of the fleet flying through the storm reminds me of a scene in Saga of a Star World:

Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World

The circumstances are very different, in the original series they were making a shortcut through a minefield, but both scenes show the ship leading the fleet through a colourful zone of space weirdness.

Hey, this gives me a chance to compare the two Galacticas. The original ship is very Star Wars in its design (because it was designed and built by people from Star Wars), but the new ship has a style that's pretty much all its own. They're both extremely grey however. Well, most of the time.

Galactica emerges from the storm and gets to work sharing some of that ammo it picked up with the Cylons outside.

Hey we're getting that close up of the guns like in the original series, but this time it's more obvious where they're located on the ship. This scene also shows that this bit of the ship couldn't have ever had armour panels over the ribs, as they would've been covering up the guns.

I'm kind of anxious though about how they're just cutting loose with their guns, spraying wildly into space. They only just resupplied on ammo and now they're burning it all off! The gunfire does serve a purpose though, as this is what they have in place of sci-fi energy shields. It's a wall of flak to protect them from incoming fighters and missiles. And it does its job, as a squadron of Cylon Raiders get chewed up and has to turn back.

With the perimeter set up, Galactica launches its Vipers, and there are more of them than you might expect. They've got a mix of Mark IIs and retrofitted Mark VIIs, led by Apollo and Starbuck, and they're going out to keep the Cylons off the civilians ships long enough for them to FTL jump out. It's a bit like the fight at the end of Saga of a Star World... but only because it's a fight at the end of the story and Apollo and Starbuck are in it.

One thing I like about this scene is that the storm around Ragnar provides the tiniest hint of colour in some shots. Otherwise it's all very grey and dark.

Those Cylon basestars are looking a lot pointier than they did in the original series. Each one is basically equivalent to Galactica in their ability to inflict harm and there's two of them out there, with seemingly a million little fighters swarming around them. It's all very unfair.

The dogfighting goes about as well as it did last time, with Vipers blowing up all over the place and Starbuck getting most of the enemy kills. Apollo even manages to get one of his engines shot off, which kind of sucks considering all the work the deck crew went through to restore it for his dad. It also presents a problem as Galactica is retracting its flight pods and getting ready to follow the fleet to safety, and he needs that engine to land.

Fortunately Apollo has a lunatic guardian angel, as Starbuck keeps him covered and then forcefully attaches their two Vipers together by shoving her gun up his nose. So if either of them pulls a trigger they're both dead, but then they'll be dead anyway in a couple of seconds if Galactica leaves without them. Galactica's already hanging around longer than it should, as missiles are slamming into the hull and glass is getting broken all over the CIC.

In the original movie they just skipped over the whole concept of faster than light travel, so the Vipers seemed like they could probably outrun the capital ships. Here though, once Galactica hits that pedal it'll be light years away.

The series does that thing where the pod's basically closed in one shot, then seven seconds later there's more than enough of a gap to make it through. In fact they come in at the top of the gap, where it's at its smallest, and the animation's weirdly jerky. The scene always bothers me when I see it.

Anyway, they slam down on the landing deck and Galactica is finally able to jump. They did it, they saved the fleet!

Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World

Then we get a recreation of this iconic shot of Galactica with the rest of the fleet. Well, kind of. There are a lot more ships flying alongside Galactica instead of following it in the new version. I can spot a couple of familiar looking vessels there however, recreated in CGI.

There's the Colonial Movers container ship in the foreground and the mining ship with the three discs on its back in the background. That ship on the top left might be the Celestra, I'm not sure.

I'm not really that familiar with the original BSG fleet to be honest, so I'm struggling to tell if any of the others are also 25 year old designs making a return. Though hang on, that vague shape up on the extreme top right looks kind of familiar somehow.

I'll run an enhancement filter over the upper right quadrant and see if I can clean it up any.

A FEW MINUTES IN PHOTOSHOP LATER

Seems like the Colonial fleet has more than one legendary sci-fi battleship watching over it!

This shot was used in the opening credits as well, so we came really close to getting the Enterprise in every episode, but the titles don't show the bit of footage which has the ship on screen.

ACT FIVE

Now that they've left the Cylons in the dust, the crew can get down to the business of holding fancy funerals and being miserable. There are 50,000 people stuck on 40 ships with no chance of a resupply or even being able to step outside for a breath of fresh air, so they don't have an abundance of hope right now.

This scene reminds me of a scene about a third of the way through Saga of a Star World, where Adama addresses a crowd of representatives from all the ships. Here it's the priest who swore Roslin in, Elosha, who's telling the audience about how they came from Kobol and colonised the Twelve Worlds. The Lords of Kobol apparently gave them some help back then and they're praying for a bit of assistance from them this time as well.

Then Adama hijacks the funeral, yelling “So say we all!” and making everyone present join in. This was actually improvised on the set by the actor and it really works! Now that everyone's woken up, he's got some bombshells to drop: their sacred scrolls talk of a 13th colony of man, on a planet called Earth, and he knows where it is!

Everyone in the room knows the legend, a lot of them worship the Lords of Kobol, this is part of their mythology, but Adama claims that high ranking officers like himself were actually told the location of Earth, and he alone knows how to get there. It'll take them a while, but they will find a new home. So say we all.

He actually gets applause out of them, which is kind of inappropriate for a funeral maybe, but it's nice to see them all cheer up a bit.

Of course Roslin was already high enough in the government to know that he's lying his ass off to give the people something to live for, but she agrees to keep his secret if he agrees to respect her authority over the civilian fleet. This is playing out a little different from the original series, where Adama never claimed to know where Earth was and he ended up opposing the civilian leader.

That's an awesome painting of the first Cylon War behind them by the way and it's shame we don't get to see it clearly.

Meanwhile Tigh decides to bury the hatchet with Starbuck, but she's not even close to being done hating him yet. She calls him a weak drunk bastard and there's not much he can do about it seeing as she's the best pilot they have. Truce denied!

And Baltar learns from Head Six that some of the Cylons are sleeper agents who don't even know they're Cylons. So any one of them could be a perfectly decent and loyal human being one minute and a traitor the next, even him. Well except for the 'decent and loyal' part; at his best he's only loyal to himself.

And it's in his interest to secretly leave Adama a note about the 12 Cylon models. Okay it's not explicitly shown to be Baltar who leaves the note, but the way the scene plays out, with him skulking around the hallways of Galactica on his own, there's little doubt that it's from him.

But the episode isn't quite over yet, as the Cylons break into Ragnar station to pay poor unfortunate Doral a visit. In fact the entire Cylon fleet enters the Cylon-killing storm, which seems like overkill but I guess they're just being thorough. This is another example of the story giving us immediate feedback on Roslin's choices. Now we know that running was definitely the correct decision, as if they'd decided to hide out in the storm they'd all be dead now. It's kind of a high stakes game they're playing!

Surprise, Baltar's guess was right and Doral actually was a Cylon. Also look, it's a metal Cylon! They've finally made their second appearance in this 3 hour miniseries!

We also learn that the Cylons buy their clothing in bulk. I can't be certain why the production crew gave each group of Cylons identical outfits and hair styles, but I suspect the reasoning was "It'll be much quicker to film". It's also funny how only 3 of the 12 models make an appearance here, because it's far too early to reveal that Boxey was a Cylon all along.

The Leobens, Sixes and Dorals chat between themselves about what they're going to do about the 50,000 surviving humans and decide that they're going to have to chase them. After all, when the losers of a war go off to their own planet and have time to rebuild they inevitably return at some point down the line to get revenge. That's what they did.

And then Boomer turns up to assure the others that they'll find them. We even get the "By your command," Cylon catchphrase at the end, though it's not clear to me whether it was Boomer or Six who said it.

Man, the Boomer on Galactica is going to feel really dumb when she's activated and realises that she was the one who rescued Gaius Baltar and gathered the human fleet together. And who even knows what's going on with Head Six actually helping Baltar catch an undercover Cylon agent. Things are getting complicated and I haven't even reached episode 1 yet.


CONCLUSION

---

I've been giving some thoughts to the subject of remakes, reboots, revivals and reimaginings lately, because they keep happening! There was that live-action Cowboy Bebop last year, J. Michael Straczynski's working on a remake of Babylon 5, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has been busy reimagining chunks of the Original Series, and so on.

Personally I have a lot of sympathy for the people who were annoyed that Battlestar Galactica got put through the reimagination blender, because I often feel the same way about other franchises. The way I see it, ongoing sagas that suit continuation instead of reinterpretation like Star Trek, Stargate and Star Wars should really be left alone, as a continuity reset is just going to make things confusing and frustrate people (eg. DC Comics). But if the original story has reached a conclusion (like Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy for example) or has been ruined beyond salvaging (like the 90s Batman movies), or both (like the Daniel Craig Bond films), then maybe it's not so bad to drop the old continuity and come up with something brand new. Most people would agree Galactica 1980 did a pretty good job of ruining classic BSG, but even if you ignore it entirely I think the nature of BSG's story means that jumping back in after 20 years was never going to work out how people hoped. Any BSG continuation was always going to be a distinct show full of new characters no matter what remake project made it to screens.

People have accused RDM's BSG as being 'Galactica in Name Only' (or GINA for short), and well... yeah, sort of. The whole series has a very different tone to the original, it's shot very differently, and aside from 'Galactica leads a Colonial fleet away from the robot apocalypse to look for Earth' the plot's pretty different as well. They dropped the casino planet entirely! In fact the characters don't even share names a lot of the time. Apollo, Starbuck and Boomer are now Lee Adama, Kara Thrace and Sharon Valerii, and Tyrol, Roslin and Gaeta are brand new as far as I know. Six doesn't even have a name at all! Plus Starbuck and Kara Thrace are so different as people I wouldn't even call her a 'female Starbuck'; she's just a regular Kara Thrace. I think it's almost a shame that this is called Battlestar Galactica, as great as the title is, because it's aimed at a different audience and it's attempting to do different things. It doesn't need to have that title any more than the original Battlestar Galactica needed to be called Star Wars, despite the lawsuits claiming it was a blatant copy.

Someone might also accuse it of being of one those gritty reimaginings that takes something that people enjoyed as kids and makes it absurdly serious and grimdark to grab their attention now that they're cynical adults (that Power Rangers fan film jumps to mind... it even features Katee Sackoff). BSG 2004's characters aren't exactly known for being heroic shining beacons of morality. Which is weird, because morality is definitely on this miniseries' mind, with Adama questioning why they're worthy of survival and a character even yelling "What kind of people are you?" In fact a lot of the conflict here comes from good people having different ideas of what the right thing to do is. I mentioned earlier that Ron Moore came away from his short time on Star Trek: Voyager with ideas on how to improve it, and one thing he's done here is to split Captain Janeway in half, creating two characters: Adama and Roslin. They're both minor leaders elevated to a position of supreme authority who only want the best for their people, they just have different priorities, experiences and perspectives that cause them to butt heads. So basically Janeway's inner conflict has been brought out to where we can see it. So far we've been getting immediate feedback on Roslin's choices, and every tough call she's made has been the right one aside from when Lee had to bail her out with the pulse generators. It's less clear whether Adama bringing Galactica to Ragnar instead of helping bring the fleet together was the right move, but he certainly would've doomed humanity by fighting the Cylons so it's a good thing he came around in the end. People mock the original for going straight from an apocalypse to a casino planet, but I thought it suited the mythological side of it, with the survivors being tempted by peace and comfort. This new BSG has the survivors being tempted by war and revenge instead and fortunately Adama passes the test, making them worthy of survival... for a little longer at least.

Edward James Olmos is a great Adama by the way. In fact all the cast are good, and while I'm listing positives I should mention that the music, set design, direction, VFX... pretty much everything works, is distinctive and fits together as it should. Okay the CGI has gotten a little dated and I'm not keen on those space explosions, but overall this is a fantastic looking series that balances its darkness with plenty of light, and spices up its normality with a good portion of weirdness. It's generally very grounded, with naturalistic conversational dialogue and a cinéma vérité documentary filming style, but every now and again a mysterious hallucination will appear or someone will start talking about how the sacred scrolls say that the Lords of Kobol led their ancestors to the Twelve Colonies, and it gets a little bit strange. In an interesting way. It hints that there's more going on here than just a gang of refugees fleeing through the barren hostile wilderness of space from the descendants of their vengeful robot creations. I know the original series had more going on in it as well, but I didn't get that far so I can't really compare them. I have just watched Saga of a Star World however, and I think this is a better introduction. It spends much more time with the characters before their world begins to fall, but I didn't find my attention slipping at all. In fact it has a much stronger middle third, and doesn't get distracted with Boxey getting a robot daggit or Starbuck cheating on his girlfriend, or whatever. Sure it's still a little unfocused maybe and it's three bloody hours long, but I have to give it a big thumbs up overall. It doesn't retcon or replace the original and I think the world's better for having both of them in it.

It's a shame that when I recommend the series to people they're always put off by the shakycam. C'mon, it's not that bad!

---

NEXT EPISODE

It's possible that I'll write about more Battlestar Galactica in the future, especially if people want me to. But next on on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'll be writing about Babylon 5's Darkness Ascending! I'm getting into the final stretch now and the end is in sight.

Thanks for reading and extra thanks if you decide to leave a comment.