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Basic Facts:

Episodes: 1
Runtime: 180 min.
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Premiered: 2003

Format:

Mini series

Genres:

Action, Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi

Created By:

Glen A. Larson, Ronald D. Moore

Actors:

Aaron Douglas, Alessandro Juliani, Edward James Olmos, Grace Park, James Callis, Jamie Bamber, Kandyse McClure, Katee Sackhoff, Mary McDonnell, Michael Hogan, Paul Campbell, Tahmoh Penikett, Tricia Helfer

Made In:

Canada, UK, USA

Premiered at:

SyFy

Orig­i­nal Bat­tlestar Galac­tica was made in 1978 and from that time has become one of the cult SciFi shows. But, I didn’t really liked the orig­i­nal, so I wasn’t sure about the remake. But, as it turns out, new BSG is so much dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nal series. The basics are the same, but the exe­cu­tion, visual styles and atmos­phere are changed, and much improved in my opin­ion. And it starts with the 4 hour movie known as a Miniseries.

For those who are not famil­iar with the BSG, Galac­tica is the name of the ship, a bat­tlestar in the fleet of human 12 colonies, liv­ing on 12 plan­ets. Years back they have cre­ated a race of sen­tient robots that rebelled and waged the war with the colonies. The war ended with the truce, and Cylons left the colonies. 40 years after the war, Cyclons are back to anni­hi­late the human race. And that’s when this minis­eries actu­ally begins.

Char­ac­ters

Series has a really big cast. On one side you have a mil­i­tary on the Galac­tica with Com­man­der Adama (Edward James Olmos) and his son Appolo (Jamie Bam­ber), ship’s XO Colonel Tigh (Michael Hogan) and Star­buck (Katee Sack­hoff, and this is the biggest cast­ing change from the orig­i­nal, where Star­buck was a man), you have civil­ian and polit­i­cal lead­er­ship let by Laura Roslin (Mary McDon­nell) and finally Cylons (beau­ti­ful Tri­cia Helfer). Adding a human part to Cylons, and new mod­els that actu­ally look like humans was one of the biggest changes from the orig­i­nal. Some of the will be dis­cov­ered dur­ing the minis­eries but not all of them.

Writ­ing

New BSG is much darker than orig­i­nal, writ­ers took much more seri­ously holo­caust of human­ity. Main sto­ry­line is mixed with the mythol­ogy of the 12 colonies. Minis­eries has some ele­ments of the deeper char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, but since this is only intro­duc­tion to the series, that wasn’t the main task.

Tri­cia Helfer as Six

Pro­duc­tion and visuals

Series is a coop­er­a­tion of USA, Canada and UK and is shoot mainly in Canada. And it’s done extremely well. All ships and all inter­nal equip­ment looks very real and believ­able and that adds much to real­ism they tried to make. Space bat­tles are unlike any­thing seen so far on TV and with almost doc­u­men­tary style of film­ing you will be drawn in every bat­tle. Music is also excel­lent, and adds to the dark feel of the show.

Con­clu­sion

This is only the begin­ning to now an epic series and is a must see. You don’t need to be sci-​fi fan to enjoy BSG, because it offers so much more.