TV: Battlestar Galactica

I'm stuck in my crazy little town again today; the one way out of town that has been cleared of mudslides is now in danger of collapsing, so my fifteen minutes commute was three hours and counting this morning (and I even left an hour early!), with at least another hour and a half ahead of me, when I turned back and went home. I would've gotten to the office, probably worked three hours, and then left at 1PM to try to get a jump on the three or four hours commute back home. Which just isn't worth it. (Fortunately my boss agreed.)

Good thing I've got TiVo! And plenty of TV to write about. For example: the new version of Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi Channel.

I loved last year's mini-series, the precursor to this new continuing series. But when I recently spoke with a friend about it, he said, "Dude, they turned Starbuck into a chick!" And I had to say, in essence, "Well, you know what? I do not have any allegiance to Dirk Benedict. I have no reverence for the sanctity of the character's original depiction. It's not like they replaced Orson Welles with Pauly Shore. It's Dirk freakin' Benedict." In fact, I will go farther (and pregnant women or those with heart conditions may want to look away): the original series sucked. It sucked ass.

The only reason anybody liked it at all when it first came out was because Star Wars had debuted the year before, and fans were hungry for more science fiction, however they could get it. And even in that frenzy for more space opera, how crappy was that crappy knock-off? I'll tell you how crappy: it only lasted one season. Most people don't seem to remember that. It was cancelled after one lousy season. You know why? You know why? Because it sucked! Come on! I just said it! Stay with me, here! (The less said about the attempt to reprise it two years later, as Galactica 1980, the better.)

So yeah, a chick is playing Starbuck. And I really like her. Her name is Katee Sackhoff, and she was on a great Richard Dreyfuss show a couple years back called The Education of Max Bickford. (Although I will admit I may be alone in that opinion, since, like the original Galactica, it too was cancelled after only one season.) She's more than convincing as the charismatic, tightly wound, self-destructive Starbuck, and has an appealing tomboy-sexiness to her.

That's not nearly the only change from the original. Boomer's a chick, too. And the series is much darker in tone, with Commander Adama (a great Edward James Olmos performance) and President Laura Roslin (an equally great Mary McDonnell) having to make incredibly difficult choices to insure the survival of the human species -- such as, in the mini-series, abandoning dozens of refugee ships that couldn't keep up, or, in the new episodes, firing on one of the refugee ships that may (or may not) have been infiltrated by the Cylons.

And, oh yeah, the Cylons. They're not "chrome toasters" anymore. (Or at least, those aren't the ones we primarily see.) No, the Cylons have perfected a model that perfectly replicates a human being. Fanboy reaction: "That's worse than making Starbuck a chick! Now there are Cylon chicks!" Again I say: I could not be less concerned about the change. It's a change for the better, in my eyes. It makes for a more interesting story. The stakes are higher, the intrigue is greater. Especially considering one of the main cast members, Boomer, is a Cylon sleeper agent. Who appears to believe that she is really human, and who is fighting as strongly as possible against her subliminally programmed impulses to sabotage the Galactica.

Also interesting are the changes made to the character Baltar, who, in the original series, was an active traitor to the humans, and who was basically the leader of the Cylons (if I recall correctly). Here, Baltar is a duplicitous weasel, but mostly he's a dupe. He was having an affair with a Cylon agent, and gave her access to the planetary defenses of the human colonies (net result: the near destruction of the human race. Oops!). Now he's working with the President, while constantly scheming his way out of being discovered as the accidental key to the Cylon invasion. Also, before they parted company, the Cylon implanted a chip in his brain; now Baltar sees and hears her as if she were right there, whispering in his ear at all times. Kind of like Scorpius did to Crichton on Farscape. Only, you decide who had the better deal. Here's Scorpius:


And here's the Cylon known as "Number Six" (played by Tricia Helfer):


Tough choice.

The first two episodes of the new series have met the high standards set by the mini-series. I was wondering how they'd be able to sustain the story, now that we've moved beyond the devastation of the human colonies, and established the search for the mythical thirteenth colony, "Earth." But these episodes have successfully maintained the tension, the paranoia, the high stakes, and the interesting character arcs. And they have smartly split the action between the Galactica and the refugee ships in space, and a survivor fleeing from the chrome toaster-type Cylons on one of the old colony worlds, who has been befriended by Boomer (who is also still on the Galactica. See, there are only twelve different models of the humanoid Cylons, but there are multiple copies of each).

In short, I'm a big fan of this new Galactica in a way I never was of the old one. If you can stomach science fiction at all, it's more than worth checking out. In fact, I'd go so far as to say I can't imagine 2005 being a year in which this won't be one of my top two or three favorite new shows.