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.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 2 Review - Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the second half of Star Trek: Lower Decks' second season. If you'd rather go back to the first block of reviews and read about the first five episodes, then you should click THIS LINK.

Star Trek series often have a big shakeup behind the scenes during their first few seasons... but not this time. They didn't even replace the showrunner! In fact I can't think of much to talk about in this intro so I'll just mention that there'll be SPOILERS for this season and previous Star Trek series, and get on with it.

Star Trek: Lower Decks - Season 2 Review - Part 1

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm writing about veteran Star Trek series Lower Decks, which returned for a second season recently to show newbies like Prodigy and Strange New Worlds how it's done.

Well I say "recently" but the second season started in August 2021, so it's actually been almost a year now. Funny thing is, I actually wrote about each episode immediately after watching them, so I've just been sitting on these reviews all this time. It never felt like the right time to finish the article and get it published, because I had all those other series to write about first. Netflix's live-action Cowboy Bebop remake took priority!

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be spoiling the events of every episode I review and probably something from earlier Trek episodes as well.

Babylon 5 5-14: Meditations on the Abyss

Episode:

102

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Writer:

J. Michael Straczynski

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Director:

Mike Vejar

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Air Date:

27-Mar-1998

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Babylon 5 season 5 episode 14: Meditations on the Abyss. I'm not sure about that title as meditation isn't typically all that thrilling. Though abysses can be dramatic sometimes I suppose, especially when there's a risk of all your hopes and dreams falling in. James Cameron even made a film about one once.

The episode was written by showrunner J. Michael Straczynski, though that goes without saying really. There are just eight episodes left after this and they're all by him. This was the final episode to be directed by Mike Vejar however, which is a shame because he's a contender to be the greatest director B5 ever had. He did come back for the movies and the Crusade spin-off though.

SPOILER WARNING: this is episode 102, which means there are 101 other episodes that I could spoil at any time, and I'm definitely going to spoil this one. The particulars of subsequent episodes will remain undisclosed however.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 3

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about the last third of the Battlestar Galactica: Saga of a Star World TV movie. Well, roughly a third. I haven't measured it to the minute and I have no idea how the film was split when it was divided into three parts for syndication.

If you want to go back to PART ONE or PART TWO you can click either of those links.

I'm sorry it doesn't actually say "Battlestar Galactica" up there, by the way. The words fly onto the screen one at a time, so this is the best I could do without using a distracting looping video. It's a good title though I reckon; it's dramatic without being too cheesy, distinctive enough that it'll be at the top of the results in a Google search, and it just sounds nice out loud. Lots of 'a' sounds in a row.

SPOILER WARNING: I'll be giving away basically everything that happens in the movie.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 2

Today on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm still working my way through the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica movie, also known as Saga of a Star World. If you want to go back to the start of the film, click this link: PART ONE.

The film was written by Glen Larson, who was some kind of series-creating machine at the time. Battlestar Galactica was the 6th series he'd created (out of a total of 22), and his previous series, Sword of Justice had started airing the previous week. I feel like he's mostly known for Quincy, M.E., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Magnum P.I. and Knight Rider, but I might be wrong and there could be a massive fanbase for Manimal, Automan and Night Man.

The film's credited to director Richard Colla, but Glen Larson had a bit of a rift with him due to creative differences halfway through filming and he was replaced by Alan Levi. The reason why Levi wasn't credited on the film was Larson had a bit of a rift with him as well. Apparently Colla shot about 25 days of footage and Levi then shot another 27 days, which is quite a lot for TV. As far as I know the average at the time was about 7 days per episode, so they put a lot of time into this.

SPOILER WARNING: Every single thing that happens in this movie is going to get spoiled.

Battlestar Galactica (1978) 01-03: Saga of a Star World, Part 1

Episode:

1-3

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Writer:

Glen A. Larson

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Director:

Richard A. Colla and Alan J. Levi

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Air Date:

17-Sep-1978

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching the epic first episode of the original 1978 Battlestar Galactica series! Well, first movie really. I've called it episodes 1-3 because it was later split for syndication, but it's all one film.

Battlestar Galactica was originally supposed to be a miniseries made of just three stories: the Saga of a Star World TV movie, The Lost Planet of the Gods, and The Gun on Ice Planet Zero, but things escalated quickly and they found themselves rushing to make another 17 episodes. And then it got cancelled after one season. And then it got a sequel series. And then that got cancelled after half a season. It makes Lost in Space and Star Trek's modest three season runs seem pretty lengthy by comparison, especially as they'd been on repeat in syndication for years.

Though at this point in 1978 there hadn't been a science fiction series like this airing new episodes on US TV in a long while. Space 1999 had just finished in the UK, plus we had Blake's 7, and Doctor Who was on Tom Baker's fifth season (they'd just reached The Ribos Operation), but there was a real absence of glossy expensive American sci-fi. Fortunately Star Wars happened, and executives had suddenly become a lot more interested in stories about spaceships and ray guns... like the one that creator Glen Larson had tried to pitch a decade earlier.

There was a bit of interest by the public as well, as Saga of a Star World aired to an estimated audience of 65 million viewers! That's about five times as many as watched Star Trek's The Man Trap 12 years earlier, and four times as many as watched TNG's Encounter at Farpoint 9 years later... I think. Basically, it was wildly successful. In fact it was later released in cinemas as a theatrical movie... because it cost a damn fortune and they wanted to get some money back. I've seen a few numbers given for its budget and one of the lowest is $7 million (the poster says $14 million). To give that some context, Star Wars: A New Hope cost $11 million the previous year.

Okay, this is basically going to be a reaction video in text form, with comments under screencaps. That means there'll be SPOILERS for the entire feature-length story. I won't be spoiling the rest of the season however (because I have basically no idea what happens in it) and I won't spoil any story content in the 2004 remake series either. The movie is two and a quarter hours long so I'll be splitting this article into three roughly equal parts that probably won't line up with when the syndicated episodes start and end... because I don't actually know. I'm not exactly a classic BSG expert I'm afraid.