Loading...Galactica Reborn
After Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ended their final season in an orgy of starship beat down and plot line concluding in ’99, there was the oft overlooked, exotically envisioned Australian import Farscape. When that was abruptly cut from the schedule, and after rallying to an epic finale in the Peacekeeper Wars due to huge fan support and my ability to control reality mentally in ’04, there was a void in good character-driven sci-fi on TV. Those horrific three months found fans eking by on reruns, or falling to watching Stargate: SG1 — a decent show based on a good movie but akin to substituting Guinness stout with Natural Lite “beer“. Then came a controversial “re-imagining” of a classic.
Ronald Moore, producer on Trek The Next Gen and DS9, gave us a new Battlestar Galactica — the current best sci-fi show on television. The original some remember as a light-hearted action space opera with a lost tribe of humanity hunted by shiny-armored cycloptic robots in recycled animation starship battles with comic relief macho sexual innuendo, feathered-hair space vixens and cute kids with cuter robotic dog sidekicks. There are some fine femmes in this new incarnation, with dozens of Cylon copies for some. Katee Sackhoff (yeah, her real name)was voted one of TV’s sexiest stars – somehow. The new alcoholic, slutty, reincarnated and tormented Starbuck IS doable, but Tricia Helfer and Grace Park – once you go Cylon … Come for the space tail, but be warned: this is NOT your creepy uncle’s Galactica.
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The Cylons are now human looking and infiltrate humanity’s colony planets to cause a NUCLEAR holocaust! A few dozen trader and cruise ships plus the only remaining Battlestar — damn near a museum piece — are able to limp away with less than fifty thousand left of our species! Over four seasons hope is clutched at only to have its fingers crushed by a metal fits over and over. They stay ahead of the Cylon, but infiltrators exist — some main characters discover they aren’t human! The flagship of the fleet thought lost is found, commanded by a war-obsessed tyrantess. A new planet is colonized in a safe nebula; the Cylons find it and enslave humanity! Overall, ten thousand more are lost, and this is the LAST SEASON they’re making! THAT’S FUCKED!
It’s not just about the kill counts though or the fancy CGI space battles – with no sound and realistic zero-gee physics, FINALLY — it‘s about how these people survive all this and the personal crisis that abound. Admiral Adama trying to protect the last survivors while still respecting democracy and what‘s right and dealing with a growing love for a dying president. President Roslin’s continuing battle with cancer and growing tightening of executive power in the midst of visions of her own and humanity‘s destiny. Gaius Baltar‘s terror at being found a traitor, rise to power, fall TO grace and epiphany of his divine role as link between human and Cylon. Even the Cylons are wondering about whether their destiny is as machines or people with the division of belief causing a civil war.
You don’t have to be a sci-fi geek to enjoy this epic saga, just human … or Cylon.
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