The reboot of the Battlestar Galactica series is an epic of the genre of classic science-fiction that follows the stories of the military and civilian crew of a nomadic train of space vehicles searching the galaxy for Earth after their homeworld was destroyed by the Cylons, protected by the titular warship the Battlestar Galactica.



I particularly enjoyed this series as I'm a fan of straight-down-the-line science-fiction and it measured up to my own personal expectations really well, It's a long time since I saw the original version of this show, though back in the day I was a fan of Viper pilots Starbuck and Apollo and it had inspired some childhood writing, so I bought the DVD of the old mini-film to refresh my memory of the original first.



Starbuck in the reboot is a woman, and I thought she was ably characterised by the actor Katee Sackhoff. In the original series, Starbuck and Apollo were I think fairly typical of the gung-ho action heroes of the day, and yet the rebooted Starbuck retains quite a lot of this with her attitude to authority, her recklessness, disobeying orders, acting on hunches, and so on. In fact she takes it to another level, being often wild and eccentric, punching superior officers and embarking upon personal missions without orders. At the beginning of the series Apollo is a little similar, though as time goes on as Starbuck seems to get wilder, he begins to become more considered in his actions. Their relationship in the reboot is extremely confusing, clearly they are so close they don't quite know what to make of it and swing regularly between the poles of enemies and lovers via friendship and professional colleagues.



The enemies, the Cylon centurions, still have the glowing red "Knight Rider" eye but have lost their super-shiny armour and have changed slightly in structure and stature, though in some episodes that feature flashbacks, I thought it was nice to see the old-style" Cylons had been included in their own history as the predecessors of the upgrades of the reboot. Most importantly to the plot, there are now Cylons who look exactly like humans, making it easier for them to infiltrate.



The particularly creepy thing about the "skinjob" Cylons is their apparent fascination with becoming more human, not just so as better to impersonate them, but to understand the race that originally created them and to supersede them. Of the 13 Cylon human-like models we are first introduced to model 6 "The Manipulator" but all have their distinct personality types. The older model's personalities are more aggressive in thought while the middle models are more philosophical and reflective, and the later ones able to be confused as to whether they are even Cylon or not, which leads to very interesting developments within the Cylon camp. Also the concept of the Cylon ressurection ships: Cylon models programming is transferred to an new identical model once its body is destroyed, where it is "reborn" into a new identical body in a water tank.



It's hard to talk about plots without spoilers, so I'll have to cut to the basics: some standout episodes and plot-lines revolved around the unexpected encounter with Battlestar Pegasus and its weird crew; Starbuck's capture and weird unusual experimental treatment by her Cylon captor, revealing this model of Cylon as being way too fascinated with trying to be human; and the experiment with creating a new homeworld.



Possibly the weakest episodes were among Season 3, but it was still an enjoyable watch. The only downsides were minor gripes - a bit to many resignations-and-reappointments with the motional taking-away of pips or emotional reinstatements of them. Admiral Adama's character (Edward J Olmos) was a great leader character though towards the end he responded in some unlikely ways to circumstances, and in predictable ways to others (his penchant for swiping everything off his desk in anger and knocking over the matchstick galleon he's building even gets a bit of self-parody in later episodes "do you want to know how many times I've broken that?") and the weird Scottish music that plays whenever he gets emotional is a bit irksome on occasion.



(On a slightly more practical note, I found discs insterted in the wrong order, and with the set being pretty uniform it wasn't always easy to tell). But overall I thought the whole series was just great. The theme tune and incidental music were also really good.



Oh, and I fell in love with Grace Park (who plays Boomer.) Can't be helped.