Review

For you boys and girls out there who don't know anything about Battlestar Galactica, please pull your heads from out of the dirt. Battlestar Galactica was the original Stargate and Terminator mixed in one. This show touched on the subject of Atlantis and the Egyptians; where the Human race came from and that our progenitors were in trouble.

If you can look past the datedness and the retro qualities (which actually make it cooler) of the show, there's some real magic here. The villains of this show are the Cylons, who happen to be misguided or out of control A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) and they could kick the asses out from under Dr. Who's Daleks. Anyhow, the Cylons are chasing our cousins throughout the Universe with the total annihilation of Humans in mind.

These Humans or Colonials aboard a convoy of frigates, cruisers and shuttles are in search of the 13th lost colony — EARTH. The only protection this fleet has is the Colonial Battlestar Galactica; basically your typical massive warp capable spacecraft carrier, outfitted with squadrons of single-man space fighters called Colonial Vipers (nice ships for the time period). Universal, the producers of "Battlestar Galactica," were sued by 20th Century-Fox, who contended that the series was just a little too similar to the Fox production "Star Wars." Some of the spacecraft designs where used in the Buck Rogers TV show as well.

Even the uniforms on the show were cool. To this day I would love to sport a Colonial Viper pilot uniform. As the story progresses, they touch upon a number of issues that were cutting edge in Sci-Fi television back then, cloning, emergent AI, trans-dimensional Beings perceived as Angels and Devils. This show oozed weird stuff. Totally cool show and a real bonus for fans.

The SCIFI channel remade this show into a feature length movie with the intention of turning it into a regular series for their network. I watched this premier movie and found it to be damn fine science fiction to say the least. The new series begins airing on the SCIFI channel in January 2005 and should really be a help to their already weak (in my opinion) Stargate series. As long as SCIFI follows in the tradition of the original show and creates really engaging characters then it should turn out to be just as great as this Classic.

Review by David Marini
www.everythingevangelion.com

I also recommend Andromeda, if this sounds cool to you.