Well, I saw the ad on tv last night and I remembered Mark had posted a favourable mini review of the new Battlestar Galactica series. It’s on tonight on Sky Movies 2, at 9pm unfortunately. That time conflicts with Friends and Scrubs. Then again, Scrubs is repeated on Sky 1 on Sundays and I don’t care as much about Friends any more..
Comments on part one?
How was it? First impressions are “Wow!” Parts of it brought me back to the original series. I also don’t mind at all that Starbuck is a very hot blonde!
It was strange to watch it however, and after I while I recognised the camera work – it’s like watching 24 all over again. That is, there were close up shots of characters, fast zooms in on action shots.. Works really well.
Cylons look really evil now, well, apart from the babe who goes around killing people. I thought it was really silly having the swirling red eyes on the Cylon ships, I mean, it’s theatrical, but not very practical. (or maybe I missed something? It looked like the cylon head appeared from the body of the ship?) Oh, and don’t get me started on the fact that jet engines, lasers, and explosions made sounds in space..
Considered opinion – great, but could have been better. I’ll be watching tomorrow night, or at least recording it, may be out!
Good. I’m glad you enjoyed it
Pilot episodes like this are bound to be clunky in places. If you watch the pilot for any Sci-Fi show you’ll see some awful ideas which quickly get dropped, and things get smoother as the show goes on. In that sense there’s time to develop this show as the US Sci-Fi channel (No relation to the underfunded and awfully bad UK version who just bought a license to use the name and logo), have bought 13 more episodes. If the first six do well they’ll buy a full season.
On your point about the Cylon fighter craft, remember the squadron commander said they had no cockpits, and Baltar’s blonde said there were twelve types of Cylon. To me the red “eye” was a not so subtle hint to the fact that the ship was one of those twelve types. I’d guess that the BaseStar we saw at the start is probably a Cylon too
I take your point to explosions in space, but the absence of sound ala Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey would just be disturbing for most viewers. They expect engine noise and explosions, but if you notice they tried to let the viewer know that all this was happening in space by somewhat muting the sound effects.
I didn’t actually get to see it tonight, but did they cut it at all? Did they show her kill the baby? That was a “oh my god I can’t believe they did that” moment when I saw it!
They showed her reach into the pram and then there was a little breaking sound. It was obvious what she had done. I couldn’t believe they did that too, but when she held the baby up I started to get nervous. 🙁
Donncha, you’re weird. Battlestar Gallactica was so crap.
For starters, where was the little dog? And I refuse to believe that Starbuck has turned from ever-smiling Templeton Peck into someone very closely resembling 7 of 9.
I agree with the Cylon ships. They looked like a mangled version of Kit.
And why oh why did Sky not have the good sense to cut the black-out moments for ads out. Surely their budget can stretch to an editing department?
Of course none of this is going to stop me watching the second half tonight!
I watched the second episode last night. Glued to it more like! can’t wait to see the series!