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TV Review: Battlestar Galactica, Seasons 1 – 4

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Last July I wrote a review the Battlestar Galactica miniseries (which I actually watched in May 2008). The miniseries was a pretty decent production, though I couldn’t follow most of the “inside” lingo. In any event, after I watched the miniseries I began watching the first season. Unfortunately, I stopped watching the first season before the summer ended and I didn’t have a chance to finish the season until this past week.

My apologies for the boring introduction to the review!

Some History for the Series
The first season of Battlestar Galactica follows the survivors of a Cylon (robot) attack on the Twelve Colonies. The survivors are living in what is known as the “Fleet” – which is the logical name that they give to all of the spaceships that survived the attack and are carrying human passengers. The show stars Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama (and thus Commander of the Fleet) and Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin (President of the Colonies/Fleet). Jamie Bamber also stars as Olmos’ son, Captain Lee Adama (a fighter pilot) and Katie Sackhoff stars as Starbuck (another fighter pilot).

The first season follows right after the miniseries ends with the surviving humans (slightly less than 50,000) are on the search for a mythical place they know as Earth (yes, our Earth). The bulk of the series takes place on a ship called Battlestar Galactica which is an older type of warship that wasn’t affected by the robot attack due to its age. Commander Adama is prepping for retirement and getting his ship ready to become a museum.

Then the attacks hit and the series begins.

My Review
Now, lets get down to some business in terms of what I thought of the television series. I really enjoyed the first season. The best part of the first season was that when watching the episodes it seemed more like watching a prolonged movie and not your traditional television series. I like that. Of course you get all of the history talked about above in the first season, but you also get the progression of the main storyline – that the humans are running from the cylons and trying to find this mythical place called earth.

By the end of the season, the refugees haven’t found earth, but they have found a planet known as Kobol (or the place where humanity was said to have begun). It’s sort of an interesting twist on what one would expect as the payoff for the first season – look for earth, find a different planet, get attacked by the bad guys anyway.

The second season and third seasons become a little bit too episodic for my liking. I understand that this is a weird criticism for someone to report about a television series, but when one of the biggest draws of the first season is the feeling that you’re watching a prolonged movie, it’s a bit of a bummer when the following seasons begin to feel more like your traditional TV show. The other criticism that I have with the second and third seasons of the show is that many of the plots are retreads of earlier pieces of the series.

For example, how many times is there a mutiny (or mutiny-like event) declared where Admiral Adama has to retake control of the battlestar? Or how many times does Lee Adama have to reconcile with his father? Same deal with Starbuck and the Admiral. Then you have the constant battles for power in the colonial government where President Roslin is in charge, then unseated, then she becomes President again – I mean she even gets rid of her cancer before it comes back again! It began to wear on me as someone who was so impressed with the first season.

Then you have the occupation of the “New Caprica” planet first by the refugees and then by the cylons as invaders. I watched that part of the end of season two, the intervening webisodes, and the beginning of season three with a sort of “ehhh” attitude. I don’t know – it was just a bit tedious to watch when you consider that the first season was so well put together and that this is one of those traditional television series where the “good guys” are always going to win in the end (in fact, isn’t that the way with all TV shows?).

And although it began to make sense toward the end of the fourth season, I really didn’t like how the last five cylons wound up being such major players in the series (Col. Tigh? Really?). However, the fourth season really did a great job of tying up loose ends and the series finale was very well done.

If you get a chance to watch the miniseries or first few episodes of the first season, I would suggest giving it a shot. There’s probably not much value in watching a random episode in the second, third, or fourth seasons if you don’t really know anything about the series, but I reiterate that the series is definitely worth watching and the series finale is worth the time investment.

And for those of you who are a little down now that Battlestar Galactica is over, don’t worry. The spin-off series, Caprica, is coming soon!

Quick Review: Battlestar Galactica Series Finale

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Tonight was the last Battlestar Galactica episode in the four-season series and I was pleased with the way the writers ended the show. One of the biggest problems that television fans generally run into with niche shows like Battlestar Galactica is that they don’t often last too long (in this case, only four seasons) and when they are canceled, the show generally doesn’t have a chance to write a decent ending for the fans. Thankfully, that was not the case with Battlestar Galactica.

I’ll put up a more thorough review of the entire series in the next few days, but I wanted to offer some quick comments on the finale itself.

  • Endings: It was nice that all of the fans of the show were allowed to see the respective stories of each of the main characters come to a reasonable end. It can be assumed that General Adama spent the rest of his life living near to the grave of President Roslin, who we also saw enjoying her last few minutes of life. The sudden disappearance of Kara “Starbuck” Thrace was a little weird, but it speaks to the nature of her being nothing more than a ghost for the last season. Still weird.
  • Connections to Today: I thought the writers added a nice touch by having the planet which the refugees finally landed on be our earth, but 150,000 years ago. And making Hera the “mitochondrial Eve” that made so many headlines a few years back was a nice spin, too. Also, it was a nice touch to have the angel versions of Caprica Six and Gaius Baltar walking around modern day earth with early versions of what could grow to be cylons as part of the backdrop.
  • The End of the Cylon/Human War: The final battle between the Battlestar Galactica and the cylon colony base ship was well done and it looked great in high definition. Also, the way the “war” ended between the two civilizations (complete with the cylon leader blowing his head off) was a good way to end the constant conflict.

So that’s the quick and dirty review of tonight’s Battlestar Galactica series finale. All in all, a great show which answered all of the right questions. Sure, some people will want to know more about how the human refugees went from an extremely advanced civilization to essentially nomads and there might be an opportunity in the future to tell some of that story via a made-for-TV movie or maybe through some quick webisodes shorts or something. However, I think that most people will be content with what they saw and will be eager enough to see the coming made-for-TV movie “Battlestar Galactica: The Plan” this summer!

And for those of you who are a little down now that Battlestar Galactica is over, don’t worry. The spin-off series, Caprica, is coming soon!

TV Review: Battlestar Galactica Miniseries

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Let me begin by saying that I watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries about two months ago so my memory isn’t as sharp as it could be on this topic. I didn’t have strong feelings one way or another one the miniseries and I only watched it because for some odd reason it kept popping up on different mediums that I frequent (online, radio, television). The premise of the miniseries seems compelling and if I have it down right it goes something like this: humans created these robots called Cylons to help them out with everyday “stuff” (think the Jetsons). As in all good science fiction stories, the Cylons got smarter and began to kill the humans which led to the obvious war between humans and robots and the obligatory ceasefire when the robots chose to get up and live somewhere else.

The miniseries begins with the robots essentially going back on that promise and blowing up all of the humans (some 20 billion) except those who are in the Battlestar Galactica (which, incidentally, was about to be retired from the fleet) and other spaceships. The total number of humans up in the air during the attack and thus alive? A little less than 50,000. Going from 20 billion to less than 50,000 in one day is a pretty bad day on the battlefield, don’t you think?

Get that? The only humans remaining are those who are on the spaceships, which have now formed their own fleet and are desperately trying to avoid the robots so they can save our species. To avoid the robots, the humans use an FTL (faster than light) jump.

In order to form some type of respectable government, the politicians that are in space look to the senior-most official to assume the role of President. This happens to be the Secretary of Education which causes a great deal of angst among the hardened military officials who were literally minutes away from retirement before the robot attack. They don’t want to take orders from a glorified school teacher and can you blame them? The writers of the miniseries added a twist in this particular area by making President Roslin both the last remaining figure of governmental authority and diagnosing her with breast cancer. She, like the rest of the human species, is in literal race against the clock.

There are some interesting back-and-forth scenes between President Roslin (played by Mary McDonnell) and Commander Adama (played by Edward James Olmos). The first victory for the President is convincing the Commander that with almost the entire human race wiped out, the war is over and Battlestar Galactica needs to head into “save our asses!” mode. I made that phrase up, obviously.

The miniseries also has three other intriguing aspects. First, the robots have figured out how to look and act just like humans and they have spies planted on the ships. In fact, some of these spies may not even realize that they are robots until they are remotely activated. Second, these humans are not Earthlings. These people hail from an “earth” called Caprica and are part of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol (of which Earth is not a member). And the third, and related, intriguing aspect of this show is that some of the people up in space know about our Earth and think it is a legend. Nonetheless, the crew dedicates itself to finding Earth as the last hope to preserve the human species (though I assume that we’re all living pretty fine on Earth without these people).

The show was kind of fun to watch, but it had too much inside-speak for my liking. Maybe if I get a chance to watch it again I’ll understand more of what is going on during the show. If you’re into this sort of thing, then I would recommend giving this miniseries a shot; if not then I don’t think you’re missing too much in terms of pop culture by not watching! This miniseries served as the basis for the Battlestar Galactica show that is on the Sci Fi Channel now so you may want to catch a few episodes before you decide whether or not this is something that you’re interested in watching.