4 February 2004

When Is A Battlestar Not A Battlestar

For those of you who aren't familiar with the original series I should probably give a little background. The premise is simple. Many millennia ago human colonists from the planet Kobol founded the Twelve Colonies, where they lived in peace for centuries until they had the misfortune of encountering a race called the Cylons. The Cylons determined that humanity was a vermin that must be exterminated and set about doing just that. The war lasted for a thousand years, and in the end it was the Cylons who called for armistice. The call for armistice was just a ploy to lure the colonial fleet into a trap from which it couldn't escape while the Cylon forces attacked and destroyed the Colonies.

The movie that began the original series chronicled the false peace, the exodus of survivors from the Colonies under the protection of the Galactica, the last surviving Battlestar, and the search for food, water, and fuel for their long journey to the legendary thirteenth colony on Earth. This movie spawned two series, each of which lasted for a single season. The first series, simply titled Battlestar Galactica, was by far the most popular of the two and chronicled the rag tag fleet's journey through the abyss and their search for Earth. The second series, Battlestar 1980, chronicled the discovery of Earth and the integration of the Colonial population into Earth society.

The original series aired back in the seventies, and it was pretty cheesy and campy even for that era. However, it wasn't any more cheesy or campy than a lot of other things that were on at the time. As examples, I offer the original Batman series and the A-Team. Some of the stories were first-rate, while others left more than a little to be desired. The morality of the human survivors was straight out of Mormon belief. The acting is best described as typical for the seventies, somewhat over done in places. And there were moments in the series that pretty much required you to suspend your disbelief, as some things that just couldn't possibly happen seemed to happen with frightening regularity.

Personally, even with all of its faults, I like the original series. I wasn't a huge fan, but if it happens to be on Television on a day when I have the luxury of watching then I will happily sit down and watch.

The new movie is best described as interesting. Most of the original premise has been preserved. The concept of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol remains the same, as does the use of Battlestars, which are pretty much fighter carriers, as the backbone of the Colonial Fleet. There are a couple of changes, though. The origin of the Cylons was never really discussed, or even alluded to, in the original series. In this movie they come out and tell us in the opening scenes that Cylons were created by Man to make life easier on the Colonies. But the Cylons decided one day to turn against their human masters. A bitter war was fought, and in the end an armistice was declared. The Cylons left the Colonies for deep space to found a civilization of their own.

The new movie focuses almost entirely on the fall of the Colonies and the Exodus of the Survivors. In the original movie the Cylons were able to use a human merchant named Baltar as the instrument of the Colonies' fall. This time around Baltar is Gaius Baltar, a civilian scientist working on computer systems for the Ministry of Defense. The Cylons use the CNP Navigation Program he has just supplied the fleet with to infect the fleet with a computer virus that makes the ships susceptible to Cylon commands. And here's another twist that wasn't in the original movie; Commander Adama, the Master of the Galactica, is about to retire and the Galactica herself is being decommissioned and turned into a museum.

Activity aboard the Galactica is a lot closer to what you would see on a traditional aircraft carrier than what we saw in the original movie. Officers and enlisted personnel salute when they pass the Commander in the corridors. Flight deck operations are very much reminiscent of traditional aircraft carrier operations. A Landing Signal Officer directs recovery operations for the fighter squadrons. Incoming pilots have to declare their actions and call the ball. The fighters are launched through tubes using a catapult system, and we even get to see some of the mechanics of the catapult.

While I question some of the things they have done with the character, I can't argue the fact that the acting is a lot better this time around. So are the special effects. The action sequences during the starfighter battles leave something to be desired, I think, but then you can't have everything.

I was prepared to either like or hate the new movie, but for some strange reason I find myself feeling somewhat ambivalent about it. I find that I'm treating it much the same way as I would the Highlander TV series, which is vastly different from the original movies. What I mean by that is I look at it as a totally separate world with a similar history, but it's not the original world. When I do this, I find myself caring less and less about the differences between the two movies, and that's when I like the new one more and more. If you are a fan of the original, and you can't make that kind of mental leap, then you're probably going to despise the new movie.

Overall, I rather like the new movie, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they plan to do with a series. I think that it's a foregone conclusion that there is going to be a series, for you don't commission and film a 4-hour mini-series unless you intend to go ahead with a series.