That said, beyond the special fx, which were remarkable at the time, there's not much to write home about when you watch the show as an adult. I've got the whole original series on my Netflix instant queue, and I'll watch an episode from time to time, but if you've seen any one episode you've seen the show. The formula is this - Galactica finds a planet. It contains some valuable resource. Commander Adama is convinced that it's a Cylon trap. Dirk Benedict smokes a cigar, sexually harasses someone (This is set several millennia before Women's Lib), and then flies down to the planet with Boomer. It's a Cylon trap. Everyone escapes with their lives, but not before learning/imparting some special lesson from/to the native peoples of. . . wherever. A solid enough set-up, but it gets boring after awhile. Probably why this show only last one season, and Star Trek The Next Generation, which had as many as three rotating storylines, managed to stick around the better part of a decade.
The main things that I love about the original show are Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene, Jane Seymour, and the rest of the pretty solid cast (Keep your eyes open for Ed Begley Jr!); Baltar, because who doesn't love a slimy, cowardly fuck of a villain; the Cylons, who were a badass combination of Stormtroopers and Robby the Robot; and premise aside, the generally lighthearted, fun tone of the whole thing. If the show had given me time to ruminate on the whole "Genocide of the Human Race", I would've been pretty bummed out; or if I had put any thought into how the premise was playing off of the idea that human civilization was founded by aliens, I would have snorted my Count Chocula back into my bowl. But it keeps it going at a quick pace, and keeps the laughs, aliens, and action coming.
Cut to 2004: People in the nerd community are praising the new remake series of Battlestar Galactica. I have my doubts; chiefly, that it stars Edward James Olmos, and runs on the Sci-Fi Channel. Not generally signs of a high quality product. So I manage to hold out on watching it until Entertainment Weekly runs an article proclaiming it "the best show on television" in the wake of The Wire's recent departure. Being a huge Wire nut, I'm instantly intrigued. And that's probably the main stick in my craw.
In Good Will Hunting, Stellan Skarsgard laments that there are only a handful of people in the world that could tell the difference between himself, a gifted mathematician, and Will Hunting, who is a true, natural genius mathematician. Sometimes I feel as if I've been cursed with the same ability in regards to filmed entertainment. Ok, in comparison to say, Law and Order: SVU, or something, Battlestar Galactica might be amazing. But, having seen two seasons of Battlestar, it's nowhere near the quality of The Wire, or most any other show on HBO for that matter. In fact, I would argue that it's not even up to the quality of the original series.
It starts out strong; in the mini-series/pilot, we see the destruction of
By episode two, I've stopped buying it. Characters either act in completely irrational ways, or in ways that seem to contradict from episode to episode. Boomer has blackouts during terrorist bombings, but is incredulous when people accuse her of possibly being a sleeper agent. Adama commissions an independent council to find the robot terrorists, who can look like anyone, and then gets pissed off when he is called upon to prove his humanity. Baltar's motivations are. . . questionable, and seem more convenient than anything else. This show is silly to the extreme, and the more seriously it takes itself, the more I want to laugh.
There are ideas that I like. The heroes are polytheists, and the Cylons worship "the one true God", who is heavily implied to be the God of Abraham. If the humans and Cylons make it to Earth, does it then mean that the Cylon religion is the one that survives? Starbuck and Boomer have become female, which might be directly inspired by an episode from the first series in which the women on board are trained to be Viper pilots. And the fact that Cylons can look like humans in this version adds an extra level of tension, and potential philosophical discussion on "what it means to be human"; even if that isn't the most original concept of all time (I wildly point at any number of sci-fi books and movies).
But frankly, they fuck a lot of these ideas up. So Starbuck is a chick now. Cool! Except why does she have to have a tortured past (Possibly involving incest? It hasn't been fully explored yet.), and an inability to love, mixed in with lots of crying and insecurity? What happened to Starbuck smoking cigars and taking names? Is it too simplistic of me to just want her to sexually harass her shipmates and punch people in the face, without a convoluted explanation as to why she's such a badass (but not really a badass)?
And the worst thing by far; the blonde. Don't get me started on the blonde in the red dress. Every time I think of this show, I'm going to hear her breathy voice saying "Gaius". She's just not an interesting character, at all, and the show has been spending so much time dealing with her. She feels like one of those characters from Lost, who supposedly is relaying important information, except you know that the writers are actually just playing with their dicks and have no idea where this story is going.
If they do have some idea where it's headed, they're certainly taking their sweet time with it. The entirety of season one could have been condensed to five episodes. I don't mind dragging things out as long as there's either character development or entertainment, but what this show has had to offer so far is people taking turns screaming "I'm not a Cylon!" for an hour. Not exactly compelling or informative.
So, Battlestar fans (If you're still with me); is it worth continuing? Will I be satisfied with the eventual outcome? I'm nerd enough that I'll probably watch the rest of the series, regardless of how irritated I am with it. I have seen worse, after all.
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