Battlestar Galactica: The Next Generation

BY BERT EHRMANN

The new "Battlestar Galactica" mini-series premiering on the Sci Fi Channel this weekend could be one of the greatest sci-fi mini series ever grace the television airwaves. Period. It's nice to see a show that could have turned out bad instead exceed expectations. And I didn't even mind that Starbuck was a girl!

It's "Battlestar Galactica" the classic series meets "Saving Private Ryan" meets "Space: Above and Beyond" meets the shock that was "The Day After."

This remake is to the original 1970's version of the series as "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is to the original Star Trek series. They share the same overall plot and character-types but that's where the similarities end.

The new series is drawn in a much more realistic manner. The characters are believable and not too over the top. Characters act as normal people would in those same situations. There's really no chest pumping "Let's go kick some Cylon butt." It's more along the lines of "We're getting our asses kicked out here. If we don't run away as fast as we can we die." Simple as that.

Ships full of people, pre rag-tag, are left behind unable to keep up with the faster ones during a Cylon attack. Their captains scream into the radio for help as the other ships jump away. Thousands are left to die so that many more may live. Tough decisions that would haunt anyone's soul are made over and over again.

Best of all the plot is excellent. Yes, I know usually sci-fi shows are plotless. But this show is really an exception. There's really a plot here, not some loose collection of stories smushed between long action sequences as standard operating procedures for almost all other sci-fi out there.

The overall story mirrors that of the original. Humanity is threatened with extinction when evil machines, the Cylons, come pouring out of the deep space destroying everything in their path. The same characters are present too, sometimes in name alone. There's a Commander Adama and both Apollo and Starbuck are present. However, that's where the similarities end. In this new version Adama and his son Apollo are at odds, not really getting along as fathers and sons sometimes do. And Starbuck's a girl. (Dirk Bennedict would be rolling over in his grave if he would only cooperate and die.)

When I heard of the gender changes, Boomer's a girl too, I was a bit suspicious of the series over-all. Why change the characters? At first guess I thought it was to bring in the young male viewers with some female flesh. I was wrong. After seeing the show I suspect that the reason the characters were changes was to shake up the viewers perceptions of what the character's motivations are. It's difficult to figure out what a character's going to do when everything about them is different when compaired to their counterpart of before.

There is the standard sexy Star Trek "7 of 9" character in the show with her almost popping out of her costume. The Battlestar version of 7 of 9 is called "Number 6" and is an advanced Cylon in the form of a woman. She differs from her Star Trek counterpart in that her character's interesting and well developed. At times she's real "flesh and blood" and others only visible to Dr. Baltar who inadvertently sold out the humans to the Cylons. (He did it all for the nookie.) It's funny that she almost haunts him. Taunting him at every turn only visible to him and no one else.

There seems to be four types of Cylons in the series. Ones that look human to the naked eye and all but the most advanced sensors. Ones that look like the Cylons from the original series. (We never get to see them in action but they are mentioned as still being around.) An advanced warrior that looks like a cross between the original warrior and a "Destroyer Droid" from Star Wars. And the Cylon raider ships that are themselves Cylons. Unfortunately there's no "Imperious Leader" in the new series and the Cylon ships don't attack in threes. But there is "God." "Number 6" refers to "God" as a sort of super-intelligence in charge of the Cylons.

This time, instead of Cylon attackers swooping down on the human cities and blasting them with lasers (Richard Hatch was EXCELLENT in those scenes in the original series) the new Cylons attack cities with nuclear weapons. Many, many, many nuclear weapons. We see these weapons detonate on the cities from space, from a distance on the ground, and from ground zero. All the bases of seeing the devastating effects of nuclear war are covered.

If there's one thing that the Cylons seem to have in quantity it's high yield nuclear weapons. If they're not obliterating cities with them then they're using using them in anti-starship warfare.

In one of the most gut wrenching sequences in the series, we watch a television broadcast as a reporter, on location in a city's rubble, talks with an anchorwoman in studio after the first waves of Cylon attacks. We see a flash of light on the screen and the anchorwoman covers her face as her side of the screen turns to static. A beat later as the reporter in the field is knocked aside by the wind and debris from the same nuclear detonation. Yikes!

The only weak points, and these are few and small between, is the acting of Edward James Olmos. I can't really see him as a leader. He varies between being over the top and playing the role campy. "Forget about me, load the bullets onto the Galactica." "Bullets?!" Is that a military term used in loading ordinance onto a ship? (Still, I'm really reaching here for any negative. There are one hundred positives for every negative. And Olmos isn't HORRIBLE in the role…)

Originally I was suspicious about the series. Not that I had any qualms about remaking the original series as, lets face it, it wasn't that good story-wise to anyone older than twelve. I just wondered why anyone would WANT to remake it. (I don't see producers lined up to remake "Space: 1999.") I think what the filmmakers did was the right thing to do. They took the core of what was "Battlestar Galactica" and reinvented it for a new generation of viewers. In this case they really hit a home run. A+, four stars, thumbs up, and a must-see.

My only concern over "Battlestar Galactica" is that it will be picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel and turn into a sort of "planet of the week" series. You know the kind; "Battlestar Galactica: The Wagon Train to the Stars." Week after week we stop at various planets along the way to finding Earth. Just the sort of thing that the original series did and failed at miserably.

My guess, though, is that the creators of the new series will stick to their guns and do something original with a series of the week. And amaze us week after week. 12/04/2003