Battlestar Galactica Premier Thoughts

Well I got round to watching the US premier of Sci Fi Channel's new Battlestar Galactica series and color me impressed. I had enjoyed the original mini-series when it played, but wasn't sure how that would translate into a regular series format.

Turns out that it translates remarkably well. The Battlestar Galactica series maintains the same sense of gritty warlike realism that the mini-series has and is clearly trying to stay as far away from traditional space-opera as possible. Even in the space battle scenes the focus is not on flash and lasers.

Sci Fi Channel decided to premier the series by taking the first two stand alone episodes and squishing them together. I'm not sure if that was really such a great idea, but never mind. The first episode 33 had great potential, but squandered some of it. It wasn't bad, and I felt that it was aiming high, it just missed a little. Too much time was spent in Baltar's head with the sexy Cylon. The second episode, Water, was the stronger of the two and from the look of things, while the episodes are stand alone, there's also plenty of carry over from one to the next, which is great.

There are already a vast array of potential plot elements for the writers to play with here. Be it Baltar and his petty selfishness, Boomer being a Cylon, Apollo's relationship with Commander Adama or many other relatively untouched elements. Right now the feeling is of a larger story very slowly unfolding. What that story is I really don't know yet, but I'm curious enough already to want to stay and find out.

My biggest criticism of the show right now is that I'm having trouble really identifying some of the characters. Part of the problem is simply that this carries right on from the mini-series and its been a year since I saw that, but also some of the characters just haven't had much screen time. When they appear, I can't remember their name or exactly who they are in relation to everyone else.

Thats a problem that will hopefully be addressed quickly. I'd rather not have every story revolve around Baltar, who honestly seems a little dull right now.