Saturday, December 13, 2003
Reviewing the new Battlestar Galactica
I guess I have a responsibility to give a complete review of the new Battlestar Galactica. So here goes…
The three things I like most about the old Battlestar Galactia are the music, the cool looking Cylons, and the interaction between the characters. The new Battlestar Galactica has none of these things. I’ve already commented about the lack of orchestral accompaniment. I guess the Sci-Fi channel can’t afford the same production qualities as a major network like ABC (even ABC in 1978).
The only Cylons in the new Battlestar Galactica that get much airtime are the ones that look just like humans. We only see the Cylon robots for a few seconds, and although they have a new look that is sort of more outwardly menacing, somehow the old classic Cylons from the 1978 series had an inner menacing quality that the new Cylons lack.
Maybe the new robot Raider spacecraft make more sense, but it was so visually appealing seeing the three Cylons sitting in the cockpit, talking to each other in that raspy Cylon voice. It’s one of the things I love about the original series.
Finally, there is the complete lack of any enjoyable character interaction. The only character I find appealing in the new Battlestar Galactica is Baltar. He’s supposed to be evil, but he’s not really any worse than anyone else in the show, and therein lies the show’s problem. The people who created the new Battlestar Galactica are patting themselves on the back for creating a show with what they think are more realistic characters. Well my word for them, if they are reading this, is that in the real world there are people who are good people, who get along with their parents and their children, who have friends that they care for, and who have a sense of honor. These are the people that the old Battlestar Galactica focused on, while the new Battlestar Galatica chooses to show us as unflattering a portrayal of humanity as possible. The character interaction is the heart of the old Battlestar Galactica, and it has been ripped out in the new re-imagining.
What I hate most about the old Battlestar Galactica is the way the show completely mangles physics and science. The new Battlestar Galactica at least fixes the space physics problems. So far there is nothing that seems to outrageously violate the three dimensionality of space. Faster than light travel is explained in a way that makes more sense. (Perhaps faster than light travel isn’t possible in the real world, but without it you can’t have a story about spaceships traveling between the stars.)
After the creators of the new Battlestar Galactica did such a great job of fixing the weak science from the old series, and even explain why the fleet has a prison barge (something I’ve been wondering about for decades), they had to go and introduce a completely new absurdity. And that is the plot device that makes the Cylons look just like humans, and furthermore completely undetectable. This seems scientifically impossible to me. The human looking Cylon was affected by the part of space they were in (I forgot exactly what the explanation was). If the physiology of the biological Cylon is different enough so that it’s sensitive to certain areas of space, then it has to be different enough for the advanced technologies aboard the Galactica to detect. Right?
The new Battlestar Galactica doesn’t live up to its name. I wish they had named it something else, then it would have been a fine science fiction show that didn’t disgrace the Battlestar Galactica name. But obviously, stealing the name and some elements of the original storyline is about cashing in. The name recognition attracted the viewers, it was the best rated show on the Sci-Fi channel all of this year. And it’s easier to rewrite old stories than to make up new original stories.
We will probably see more of this new Battlestar Galactica because of its ratings. And I’m sure they will copy more storylines from the old Battlestar Galactica as well. I’ll probably watch them too.