"Battlestar Galactica" Retro Recap: "Miniseries - Parts I & II"

Written by John Edward Betancourt

I remember quite fondly the first two nights that the new Battlestar Galactica aired on Syfy. They had been advertising it left and right and having seen the original series as a young boy, I figured I would simply check it out. I truthfully was not a fan of the original series, and that remains the same to this day because of the excess cheese factor...but a remake from Ronald D. Moore, that had my attention. 

Needless to say, the series was thrilling from the get go. We wasted no time getting into the Cylon attack and already the new show had a different feel from its predecessor and in a matter of minutes, I forgot the other incarnation of the show existed. This world was suddenly what mattered and it was a damn fascinating one at that. Every character had my attention, especially William Adama simply because I am a huge fan of Edward James Olmos but every single character jumped off the screen.  

I mean, Tigh was now a raging drunk, Starbuck was a strong and fiery woman and the Cylons...well they now looked like humans and they were utterly terrifying. Only being two years removed from the events of September 11, the attack on the Twelve Colonies felt visceral and raw only because those events were still fresh in my mind and somehow that instantly connected me to all the characters. It was quite clear an hour into this that I was witnessing television history. I had never seen anything quite like this before, and I was hooked. I didn't leave the couch for the first half of this miniseries, and I was on time for the second part. 

This was...truly some of the finest storytelling I had seen in science fiction. We were presented with a race of humans that had mastered space travel, conquered faster than light travel and none of that mattered. They were at war, they were facing extinction and there would be no technobabble here, no grand discussion of how they get out of this mess with science...they simply had to survive. The story was what mattered here over all things and that made for a wonderful two night experience, along with a painful wait for season one to get underway. 

This is a series premiere that stuck with me for a long time in fact. It was the first that I can recall addressing the horrors of our world without offering a political message or solution, and one that brought forth a brave new science fiction world. Truly, this is one of the best pilot episodes I've ever seen...and it was only the beginning for now we were on a journey with the last vestiges of humanity, desperately searching for the lost colony of their brothers and sisters on a tiny little world named Earth and it was a journey that took us to incredible places all thanks to a bold beginning that held nothing back. Until next time. 

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