I watched the Battlestar Galactica miniseries this weekend. Very very good. Surprisingly so. I was worried about the semi-retro look of the technology but the story explains it very well and the rest of it looks great too. Ships, cities, costumes, new-look cylons are all very well created and don’t have the feel of tv. The “face” of the cylons interceptors doesn’t do it for me though.
The space battles are some of the best I’ve seen and are way more “realistic” than most, love the whole inertia but no gravity thing and how it shows up on the ships’ movements. The whole missile, counter measure, nukes and everything related to weapons also feels right and reminded me a lot of the way battles are described in the Night’s Dawn trilogy. Ships and submarines are often (always?) used as the basis for space battles and although they used it here they still managed to make it feel like space. I even liked the kind of tribal music always playing during battles.
As in most movies they managed to fit in a crazy “too much” moment, in this case the Starbuck move at the end which I could have done without. Just a little detail but it was the only “oh come on, gimme a f*cking break!” moment so it had more impact, to me, than it would normally have. That there’s only one is pretty good though.
They also fit in a pretty good amount of character development and really set up the whole universe very well. Should be interesting to see how all of it evolves… if it’s picked up to be an actual series.
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I was ready for it to be as cheesy as “V” but they surprised me – 99% cheese-free. Aside from some of the core premises, places, ship designs and character names, *everything* about the miniseries is different from the original and thus it should be viewed in that light.
It really did seem more like a submarine movie at times – they had realistic physics, they called for “firing solutions” on enemy ships, etc – and Edward James Olmos doing a great Jurgen Prochnow :)
You actually cared about the characters. There was as surprising lack of Expository Dialogue and Gratuitous Character Introductions. Bad things happened to good people, little children and *babies,* dammit!
They understood how to convey horror through what you don’t see as much as what you do: instead of T2-style cities-in-slow-mo-destruction, it all happens in the distance, seen from space or over the mountains, making it even eerier. Your own imagination makes it worse.
I disagree about the Cylon ships – that was a tip of the hat to the droid fighters from SW: Ep 1, a logical move – why have a robot pilot a ship when they can *be* the ship?
Space battles were great – “shaky camera moves and zooms” reminiscent of B5 at times, but they got the details right, down to little reaction thrusters on the Vipers, etc.
Apollo should’ve been played by Tom Cruise, though: I was waiting for the foot-stamping “I want the TRUTH!” speech.
“why have a robot pilot a ship when they can *be* the ship” Oh I agree completely, it’s not the concept I don’t like, it’s the fact the former cockpit looks like a big cylon face. Eeesh.
I saw this thing last night (finally) and yeah, I was impressed, surprising given that the original was, to be honest, not that good.
It left me with a lot of intriguing questions Does Adama really believe in Earth? Is Boomer really a sleeper agent – unaware that she’s Cylon? And how I was fooled thing the whole time thinking the other Cylon was Tigh (but maybe he is after all – DUN-DUN-DUNH!!!). How screwed up is Baltar? How hot is Starbuck? And will the series be able to reach its obvious conclusion and have the fleet reach Earth? And in what time period? The present, past, future, or 1980?
More episodes coming. Bring it on. I think the void left by Firefly has been filled.
And I liked the Cylon-faced ships but hopefully future episodes will give us Original Recipe Cylons.
I agree, we don’t need a load of new episodes just a few good ones.
Not sure I felt much of a void after Firefly though, it was pretty good but I didn’t miss it all that much. So far BG is much better, me thinks the cowboy angle was played out wayyy too much in Firefly.