Spoilers for the current episode will happen every time so you have been warned!!
Synopsis:
After 40 years of peace, the Twelve Colonies are attacked by the Cylons, a race of machines that humanity had created in the past. The nuclear holocaust leaves humanity no choice but to flee towards the star as a ragtag fleet of ships, protected by the Battlestar Galactica, the last known military vessel of it’s kind.
Overall Impressions
Whether you’ve seen the original show or not, this first entry into the “re-imagined” series bridges the gap incredibly well. Sure, there were plenty of fans from the original who disagreed with this assessment early on (I’ll talk about that more in another article). However, most of those concerns were alleviated with this mini-series (or throughout the first couple episodes in the first season) and the initial torrents of boos that show-runners Ronald D. Moore and David Eick received started to subside.
I grew up watching re-runs of the 1978 series on the SyFy Channel (was still stylized as the Sci-Fi channel back then) and remembered loving it. The drawn-out pacing of the original series made it hard to stay engaged all the time since stories usually took place over 2-3 episodes (assuming that re-run episodes were aired correctly.)
I had no such problem diving into this mini-series when it originally aired on NBC back in 2003. I was immediately hooked on the changes, especially the reintroduction of characters that eventually become my favorites, even ones that I continued to have a love/hate relationship with. The spark it created is exactly why I come back to this series again and again.
War on Terror
Moore and Eick set out to challenge their viewers, not only to mix up the standard sci-fi fare, but to present complex moral quandaries that the audience had to judge. In post-9/11 America, these challenges came in an increasingly difficult time when the most popular show on TV was 24 on Fox. A series known for it’s action hero tendencies and lone gunman justice in the face of terrorism, it made no apologies for it’s lack of depth or complexity.
In an environment that painted all villains as brown and bad, BSG buckled against that idea hard. Sure, it was very apparent who the bad guys and good guys were. However, as quickly as the show established that dynamic, it quickly began to plant seeds of doubt with Boomer’s Cylon reveal in the final moments. Having humanoid-cylons was already rich territory to explore, but it was knowing how close they were to our protagonists that helped build tension before season one.
Adama’s Second Speech
Edward James Olmos was very adamant that he wouldn’t do the show if the team of writers and performers didn’t take it seriously (he was deadly serious and had a “no aliens” clause in his contract.) Many of the cast members have called him and Mary McDonnell the leaders of the show, not just as their characters, but how they galvanized the crew to give their all.
No scene in the series encapsulates that off-screen leadership more than Commander Adama’s speech that closes out the mini-series. He was originally only scripted to repeat, “So say we all,” once. Yet, his energetic and charismatic repeating of the phrase sent shivers down the other actors’ spines and helped them engage with him over and over. That moment created the series’ catchphrase that we hear over and over again not only across episodes but also in reunion specials and at conventions every year.
Subtle Building
TV pilots are usually hampered by trying to do too much. They either try to establish so many characters that it bogs down the plot or the concept isn’t fleshed out well enough in the allotted time. Doing a mini-series helps alleviate those issues, however you can still run into some traps. Thankfully BSG managed to avoid most if not all of them.
We get strong introductions to our main crew and partnerships, like Commander Adama and Tigh, Starbuck and Apollo, Baltar and his Cylon counterpart. Hallmarks of the show, like jumping away from a Cylon attack or Roslin and Adama’s rocky relationship as civilian vs military leader, are well laid here and easy to grasp.
The side characters come in and out as needed, shining for just the right amount of time. What will become immediately apparent as you watch the first season is how many small details, like Starbuck’s prayer or Chief Tyrol’s deck hands (covering for his relationship with Boomer) will be used for larger story lines later without feeling stretched.
Visuals Age and Pacing
The shots of when Galactica docks at Ragnar Anchorage still hold up as one of the best visual moments within the series. It provides a simple, cool aesthetic for the final action set piece of the miniseries, showing a distinct change as they head deeper into space. This isn’t a spoiler, but pay attention whenever the show gives us memorable space shots or markers like this. May be an indicator of significance on their journey… just saying.
With every show that starts to show its age, I always try to give as much grace as possible. That said, there are some hallmarks established in the mini-series such as the camera work and visual quality that have begun to work against it. The tight, close camera angles that kept the documentary style that they looked for at the time seem dated when compared to the wide sweeping shots of action in Star Trek: Discovery or the sizzle that we get to enjoy from newcomers Altered Carbon and The Expanse.
CGI was done by Zoic Studios, the same company that handled Firefly during it’s short run and their ship creations have aged fairly well. The only piece that continues to look bad in hindsight are the CGI Cylon centurions. While it helps you feel like they are truly robots (and not humans wearing a costume), it’s very apparent with HD TVs and up-scaling that what you’re looking at is something fake.
The pacing, compared to modern TV shows, is considerably slow. That’s not always a bad thing, but if I could have made a small change, I would have probably condensed the mini-series down. I find this specific criticism a bit humorous (given what I said on the original series).
Easter Eggs and Errors
Biggest one to catch happens early on, right before the camera pans down to Laura Roslin’s doctor visit where she learns about her cancer. The shot through the ceiling windows gives us a glimpse of the Serenity from the Fox show Firefly.
Like I said earlier, hallmark moments like FTL jumps would get cleaned up in the season, but there’s a key mistake in the first jump. The landing pods on the left and right of Galactica typically close for every jump but remained open for the first official jump.
Small Gripes
The Cylons blowing up the DMZ/armistice station never made much sense to me and still doesn’t over a decade later. I mean surely they jammed the station so that the colonies didn’t find out what happened (there’s a subtle note from Gaeta in the show that communications have been lost) but it feels more like sizzle for sizzle’s sake.
Conclusion
After a decade from it’s original airing, the BSG miniseries lays groundwork for the masterful work that Moore and Eick would become known for during this series. While a select number of areas haven’t aged gracefully, the miniseries is still a fantastic example of a backdoor pilot and how they can be used to jump start a new series.
Score: 9/10
Next episode: “33”
About Author
