Battlestar Galactica - An Objective Assessment (Part #1)

Tuesday, March 22, 2005 5:18 PM

Introduction: I recently concluded my viewing of the revamped Battlestar Galactica and felt compelled to add my personal observations about the show, including its characters, presentation, and story. I am certain that many of these points have been covered at length by a plethora (Si, El Guapo, you have a plethora...) of other sources and, from this, I make no claim of sole propriety over the opinions stated below. I do claim that my comments originated from my own brain and are based on personal viewing experiences, so I apologize now if they resemble another's work in any way, shape or form.

I would like to point out that I am attempting to keep this post SPOILER FREE (caps make readers pay attention more) to the best of my abilities, so I ask those who have been through the series to not ruin it for anyone else. Most of the references I do make are based off of the 3hr movie, which I consider fair game since it is basically bait to draw the viewer into the series. So, without further ado, on with the review.

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I would like to begin by first going over Battlestar's several faults. This may not be the best way to introduce the show, but I would like to point out now that, despite these objections, I still consider the series well worth watching and am eagerly anticipating the second season.

Age: This may be a minor consideration to most people but it is a major annoyance to me. You see, almost everyone (on the military side, at least) is in their 20's or early 30's. The commander and his XO are both the world-weary veterans you would expect, but nearly everybody else looks barely old enough to drink, let alone fight for the future of humanity. The show's creators make some attempt to explain this, but even their supposedly senior NCO is only in his early 30's! I find it hard to believe that this ship couldn't rate at least one grizzled vet to help run the day to day operations.

Understand, I don't mind so much that the pilots are young...since that is the way things are...but with the myriad of personal they use to service the fighters, as well as run the ship, you would think they could have come up with at least a few more spots to stick in a 40+ year old here and there. I believe the writers noticed this problem and created the ship's doctor to help balance out the age scale (the character is wonderful, btw), but it doesn't go far enough to fix the problem.

Race: I realize that this can be a tender subject for most people, but I assure you that my intentions are pure. Like most sci-fi shows, Battlestar seems to lean toward caucasians as the primary casting genotype. Several key examples exist where the show diverged from this standard, but a vast, vast majority of the faces you see are white. Now, don't get me wrong, the people they chose to play the main characters are, for the most part, very well selected. My complaint centers around all those superfluous faces you see around the ship. Those other pilots in the ready room who probably have names, but aren't yet important enough for the viewer to know. The scores of mechanics, technicians, and support personal you see running around the the hangers and milling in the background of every scene. Is there some unwritten rule that says 99% of those people HAVE to be white? Understand, I am not asking for a complete overhaul, but how about seeing a little more racial variety here and there?

Movie: Battlestar began as a 3hr movie created to set up the series. This movie is, in short, weak. It is so weak, in fact, that I almost gave up on the show altogether after watching it. Several months passed after my viewing of it before I even bothered starting on the series. Fortunately, it is the weekly episodes that save Battlestar. It seems that the writing for the series itself jumped in quality by several orders of magnitude over that of the movie. There are several reasons why this may have happened, not the very least of which being the time constraints a movie faces with not only introducing the characters, but the en

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