I've only seen a short segment of one episode of the original series, so I can't speak for that, but this new show is damn great.
Of course, I can't really call it "new" as it's been around for about 4 years now. I guess this blog is living up to its name.
Anyway, I just finished every episode/miniseries/movie that has been put out for this reimaginging so far (except the webisodes), with BSG: Razor being the last bit. Almost every moment of it all was excellent. However, there were a few episodes of filler that I could have done without; but hey, I'm not complaining. It's a great show.
I actually saw the first few episodes a few years ago; it might actually have been 2004. I just remembered having seen them before when I started watching a few weeks ago. Back then I didn't think it was that great. This was probably because I hadn't seen the miniseries from 2003 beforehand and was confused. The miniseries sets up the story for the whole thing and the show starts up pretty much right after the miniseries stops; not really the greatest move, but it seems to have worked anyway, as this is one of the most popular sci-fi shows around.
The great thing about it is the realism. The cheese level is extremely low, unlike the Stargate and Star Trek shows. The CGI is top notch and the camera work hearkens back to the hand-cam-like style of Firefly. The characters are wonderful. The story is better. The use of historical religions is very cool, and I think it makes the story at least twice as good.
The only thing other than the filler that I can fault the show for is the fact that this Colonial civilization that supposedly split with Earth thousands of years ago is still so similar to ours, down to the legal systems and computer hardware. I saw the President waving what looked like a Logitech mouse around once. I suppose it might add to the believability, but I don't think it's all that necessary. There should be a little more variation.
Of course there might be an explanation for this in Season 4, which starts up April 4th. It will reportedly be the final season, so a lot of questions should be answered. I suppose they might leave some to the upcoming series Caprica though. Definitely looking forward to that.
3 comments:
yes! battlestar! battlestar is my absolute favorite, and i think my favorite sci-fi show ever. firefly offers some strict competition, but BSG is impressive as all hell.
the filler episodes: the original intent (on the side of the director and co.) was for it to be complete and total coherent narrative (as it was for seasons 1 through half of the third), but at the onset, the producer said that it was too coherent, and as such, it might turn off new viewers who don't know the characters and the mythos they're walking in to. so, if we make some episodes as character studies, it'll bolster ratings and bring in new viewers. so, the crew wrote in the "character study episodes" into the last half of season 3, and when the ratings dipped (as the director said they would), they went back to their superior narrative method.
and now you know.
you can download season 4 (legally, i mean) them from amazon's unbox service as they are released.
But downloading illegally is so much easier!
easier? probably not. cheaper? probably yes.
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