The first episode of the new Galactica promises a show that will utterly eclipse the original. It’s dramatically gripping and well-produced– but will it last?
Galactica
“33″
Cast and Crew:
Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama
Mary McDonnell as President Laura Roslin
Katee Sackhoff as Kara “Starbuck” Thrace
Jamie Bamber as Lee “Apollo” Adama
James Callis as Dr. Gaius Baltar
Tricia Helfer as Number 6
Grace Park as Sharon “Boomer” Valerii
Michael Hogan as Col. Tigh
Writer: Ronald D. Moore
Director: Michael Rymer
Plot:
The crew of the Galactica become dangerously exhausted as the Cylons attack every 33 minutes, and they suspect a traitor may be giving away their position. Meanwhile, a soldier left behind struggles to survive on Caprica.
High Points:
1. The conflict over the Olympia is about something, and its outcome remains genuinely in doubt. The protagonists don’t know if they are making the correct decision. They know they may be sacrificing innocent people. And we know that Gaius Baltar’s motives in this matter are not pure.
2. Gaius Baltar’s crossed dialogue, when he talks to the President and Number Six simultaneously.
3. Overall, the show creates a sense that we’re actually watching a society in crisis. The characters behave in a plausible manner. Compare this with the relative comfort of Deep Space 9’s Dominion War, or this week’s episode of Enterprise, wherein an engineer simply gets handed the flagship: no one apparently studied his plans in advance, he receives minimal monitoring, and his support staff consists of one other engineer. I can’t imagine that happening in real life, and I can’t see it occuring on Galactica.
Low Point:
I saw few things I would identify as serious weaknesses. I do see some potential problems:
1. Gaius Baltar would indeed be a man under stress. He handed his people over to the Cylons. He has a Cylon presence in his brain. Like everyone else, he suffers from sleep-deprivation. All of this is good–- but I found his histrionic performance started to grate after awhile, and I’m not certain I would want to see too much of it every week. At the same time, his personal story is interesting, so it needs to be developed.
2. An individual story can focus on any sort of people it wants, if it can get our interest, and Galactica certainly had mine. A long-running series, however, needs people we genuinely like, relate to, can be charmed by. I suspect Lee and Kara will get that role, and we need to see more of them. They have a fundamentally interesting relationship. In this episode, I found nobody too personally engaging– but it’s only the first episode.
The Scores:
Originality: 3/6. Galactica revises an already derivative series from the 1970s, though it takes the concept in a fresh direction. Space wars are also old news– though I’ve never seen one handled this well on television before.
Effects: 6/6 The space-battles look impressive, and the space-jump resembles written SF more than anything I’ve seen in the visual media.
Story: 6/6 The ep makes use of its speculative technology– in this case, the space-jumps– as a key plot element, and the writer didn’t shy away from giving the characters difficult decisions.
Acting: 5/6.
Emotional Response: 5/6 Few shows can maintain the level of intensity I felt in “33.” At present, I don’t care enough about the characters, but that may come with time.
Production: 6/6 The show is well-produced. I personally like the use of shoulder-mounted cameras, though I know that (a) using shaky cameras to convey a sense of realism has become a cliché and (b)some people find the effect nauseating.
Overall: 6/6
In total, “33″ receives 37/42
Additional Comments:
1. I find the look of the series fascinating. The original Battlestar Galactica channelled Chariots of the Gods through Glen A. Larson’s Mormon beliefs and added a twist of ‘70s glitz. The look, appropriately, was equal parts George Lucas space opera and Cecil B. DeMille Bible epic, with characters sporting pseudo-Egyptian duds, futuristic weapons, and Studio 54 hair. It has campy appeal, but it’s hard to take seriously. The new Galactica went, thankfully, in another direction entirely. Rather than resembling the mythic founders of ancient civilizations, these people and their world look a lot like us, as if they inhabit the twenty-first century of postwar predictions, the previous century with the addition of deep-space flight, lasers, and cybernetics.
2. As a premise for a season, Galactica is great. It’s a little more difficult to know at this point if it can last at this intensity for multiple seasons, particularly given the potential for a war/pursuit series to become repetitive. I hope Galactica receives the seasons to prove that it can work.
Also, can we get this show its own Category Icon?
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Okay, so
I’ve been watching this in the UK on Sky One. ‘33′ as the first episode in the series kicks off quite as it means to go on. I doubt you will be disappointed with how it continues.
I would also recommend not being worried about Gaius. I consider his performance to be extremely well done, he never goes too far over the edge. Not that he doesn’t go over the edge, but when he does it’s always appropriate. ‘33′ was an excellent way to kick off the series, but don’t worry that it’s going to slow down or slacken off. It doesn’t.
Solution a little contrived, but good overall
The one big problem I had with the episode is how they finally figured out which ship was the beacon. It smacked of a Deus Ex Machina, basing it off luck more than the reasoning abilities of the humans. Either that, or the Cylons get anxious after a while as well – is there something special about the number of jumps they made before “stuff” happened?
Overall, though, pretty good. They’re doing a credible job keeping it serious, without descending to camp, and they should be commended for it. I never thought I’d be watching it, but I’m eagerly awaiting next week’s ep.
Re: Solution a little contrived, but good overall
On the mechanical side I would say that 280 sustained FTL jumps was becoming hard on the equipment as the Galactica was staying behind longer to cover those ships needing repairs.
On the other hand, the Deus Ex Machina seems to be exactly what the writers were looking for. On that ship was a scientist which had information about a Cylon traiter (probably Baltar) and Six either manipulated Gaius within the situation or God manipulated the situation to get Gaius to ‘repent’. Or it was all just coincidence. One of the more interesting situations in the series is that the Cylons are religiously devout but it’s the humans who have lost faith.
Cylons, religious fanatics or Wrath of God? Just one more layer to speculate about.
Re: Solution a little contrived, but good overall
The Cylons believe in one God – the Humans have a pantheon.
I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what parallels could be drawn from that knowledge.
Re: Solution a little contrived, but good overall
Actually, at the moment it’s hard to figure out the Colonial religious structure. They often refer to the Lords of Cobol which would imply a pantheon but they have also spoken of God in the singular. No one has yet spoken of a Lord of Cobol by name so I don’t think the references to God are to be implied as to a specific Lord. Maybe the Lords are a form of ancester worship layered onto a monotheism or they’re seen as saints or prophets. Perhaps they’re regarded as a human link to the divine like Mary and Christ.
I know the old series was filtered through Mormon beliefs but that doesn’t mean the new series is reading off the same theology texts.
Re: Solution a little contrived, but good overall
From the funeral scene (in the pilot/mini), it sounds like Cobol was the name of their/our original homeworld. So the Lords of Cobol are ancestors of a sort, at least conceptually. I think they represent the original leaders or progenitors that first settled the colonies. No word on what happened to the homeworld, however.
Either that or they’re a society that worships programmers (and rightly so! ;-)
I loved this…
I must say that this has been one of not the best produced shows in a long long time. I feel that they are drawing you into the environment before narrowing in on the specific characters. Watching the show is like being a kid in a candy shop, which way first, you just want to draw in everything at once, so who should you focus on. Even without the in depth character development, I find that I’m still brought up to date with the main characters. With the addition of the mini-series and seeing things here and there you have a good grasp of who’s who and what is the underlining reasons for people’s actions. From Baltar’s fear of being found out for being a trator to the tension between Starbuck and Tigh. In fact I think it’s more of a plot development that we haven’t had a chance to focus on a single character, it gives you the feeling of impatience and anxiety that the characters felt.
hmmm Can you tell I really liked it. ;)
Adding my voice to the chorus…
I liked the “mini-series” and the two episodes friday night. They were all quite good on their own and together show a great deal of potiential for good sci-fi to come. I didn’t even realize that there was a new Enterprise friday, until it was mentioned here on b42, such was my state of mind looking forward to Galactica.
One complaintish comment. I would prefer for Baltar to lose the over-antsy style and get a f-ing grip.
Now on to some speculation (I’m not looking for those of you who have seen more episodes to give anything away and if you haven’t seen through “Water” stuff I say may be spoilage). The Cylons have shown clear signs of being non-unified with regards to how they treat individual humans. One interpretation is that they are somewhat innocently following their impluses when it comes to the humans they personally know and to which they have emotional attachment. Maybe they each want, or will eventually want, a pet human or two.
More about Baltar, he should ditch the psycho-robot chick for a real girl, Starbuck if possible, as quick as possible. A bird in the hand is worth any number of untrustable robot girls. That a super smart person wouldn’t at least bring up that line of thinking is silly.
About the Olympia. It did seem a little too convenient for the plot. But if we take it apart from that, it shows that the Cylons might have been getting impatient with the chase. Maybe they were about to fall behind on the 33 minute cycle. Or the Cylons giving chase know that they have a mole on the Galactica (although the state of inter-Cylon communication is very much in doubt), so losing their mole on the Olympia wouldn’t be that big a deal to them, and thus the “load it with nukes” strategy may have been a reasonable gamble for them.
One nice point I haven’t seen mentioned was the actual number for the number of people in the fleet (if they stick to the numbers they will score one over Voyager). When the Pres. had to go below 50k, such an obvious but good pull at human heartstrings. I’m so glad to see the writers didn’t miss this angle. Maybe they will also give us whole episodes that focus on some other ship in the fleet and their loss. It would help us get more attached to the fleet as a whole to see more than just two ships.
Also seeing Baltar talk about the logistics of running the fleet was great. So many good angles to keep going. I hope the show can do it.
Re: Adding my voice to the chorus…
One possible explanation for the Olympia situation: the Cylons may have been only gradually taking over the ship and/or preparing the nuclear gambleo, and it therefore took several jumps before they were ready to attempt that particular strike. It’s not the greatest strategy, in that you lose your tracking device if it doesn’t work, but humans have attempted more bizarre strategies in actual wars. How many times has one side received an edge because the other did something (think Hitler invading the Soviet Union– though I can think of other examples a lot closer to home) that in retrospect looks like a really bad move.
Great Stuff
I’ll just echo the positive sentiments of everyone else. This certainly kicked off the regular series in grand fashion.
I must say, though, that the two things I most look forward to are a) the development of Boomer’s storyline (more on that when we talk about “Water”) and b) the seemingly inevitable hints that have to be dropped indicating that Earth is a real place, along with the equally inevitable discovery by the masses that Adama never had real info about the place.
While I’ve slipped out of regularly watching SG:1 and Atlantis (still haven’t replaced my PVR – holding out for a new satellite setup with HD), adding BG to “SciFi Friday” expands my regular TV watching by an hour per week (I’m up to five now – hopefully it doesn’t get too out of control again). There’s just no way I can justify missing this series as it happens.
Re: Great Stuff
Just for grins, what’s everyone watching/taping? I’m watching a lot more TV than I have in a while.
Here’s my list, semi-ordered by day:
Re: Great Stuff
Here’s mine:
whoa that’s a lot of tv, It doesn’t help either that I’ve got a