New Battlestar Galactica

A few months ago, I ranted about SciFi channel’s new Battlestar Galactic miniseries, based on the things I had read on SciFi’s official BG site. I was concerned that they were going to offend fans of the show with some of the changes they made. Now that I’ve watched the show, I thought I should write some of my reactions.

I haven’t decided how I feel about the miniseries — I’m torn. As a fan of the original show, I must say that this was not the original show. But then, it wasn’t trying to be. I think that if this was the only BG I’d ever watched, I might have been able to enjoy it quite a bit more. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this one — I did.

The series was quite good. It gave much more background to the story than the original series, and made the story much more “human”. We had time to get to know the characters and their back-stories more than in the original movie.

Having said that, there are some glaring differences from the original movie — and I think watching these and mulling them over was one reason I couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the new series. Not all the changes are bad or unsettling, but I wanted to catalog them nonetheless, in order to decide if I liked them or not.

<spoilers ahead>
I liked the new cylons (though was happy to see that the machine-looking ones still had the hypnotic red eye).

I’m not sure I liked that Baltar was an unwitting accomplice to the cylons — in the original he was the picture of pure evil, a conniving human looking for power. He’s too sympathetic for my tastes now.

I don’t like that Starbuck is a woman. She’s not Starbuck. She might smoke a cigar, play poker, and punch a superior officer, but she is not Starbuck. They did try to give her a few campy, cheesy lines, but they didn’t work. She’s not Starbuck.

I think the initial conflict between Adama and Apollo is growing on me, though I’m disappointed that Zach is already dead.

I’m hopeful that Boxy will not become a major character, especially now that he’s not Apollo’s step-son.

<major spoiler>
If they had to change Starbuck into a woman, I’m not happy that they changed Boomer, too. And I don’t like that she is a cyclon sleeper agent.
</end major spoiler>

I’d certainly watch the series, if it gets picked up, but this is not your childhood BG.