Last Thoughts on Galactica

I have now viewed the original Battlestar Galactica in its entirety. I have come to the conclusion that, though much of it was hit-or-miss, I can see why it gained a cult following. It was originally planned as a miniseries, and that shows. I think this probably would have been better, especially knowing in hindsight that it would last only a year. This also seems to explain the prevalence of two-part story arcs. Were the miniseries carried through, we'd have been left with more of the good ("Saga of a Star World", "The Living Legend") than the embarrassing filler episodes like "Fire in Space" and "The Lost Warrior". 

The series didn't always know what it wanted to be tonally. The early ones especially straddle this weird line between serious science-fiction and children's television. The writing got better as the show went on, though this also meant the Cylons got pushed further to the background. It bothers me that so much of that story was left unexplored. I very much want to know what the Empire thinks of Baltar's actions! The villain was never Baltar. He was just a cog in the machine. Sometimes the show seemed to forget that. There are elements that would have worked better in miniseries than for a full run. Boxey doesn't work when you have to have him there all the time. The move to series also meant Jane Seymour leaving the show, which was detrimental in that it came so early. 

The quest for Earth has no resolution. I sincerely wish they had just made it out to be Terra. Then the show would have built to a close and that would have been that. A happy ending. I wonder if this was the original intent in the miniseries version. We could have had a big final battle where the Eastern Alliance and the Cylons are overthrown, and all humans can live together reunited in peace. Looking back, I'm sad we were ever introduced to the Terrans since it ended up being one big stinking red herring.

It was good to see the evolution of the visuals as well. In the early ones, the show would get boring. There was way too much flying around in Vipers not doing anything interesting. Often every other shot would be of someone's thumb on a joystick. We don't need to see him hit "Fire" every time he fires! It was like watching your friend play video games. The show evolved away from that and got more exciting and interesting when they learned to trim out the dead air. This did not solve the one major flaw of every episode however: they would build up so much, that each one would have some quick five minute resolution that often left me confused. This seems to have necessitated the Adama narration, to remind us of what was or wasn't resolved the last time. Stories resolved so suddenly that the balance often felt off. This may be a symptom of having to adjust to an "episodic" style from a miniseries. Though toward the series' end, they started leaving behind the "self-contained" writing style to some extent.

One of the great missed opportunites of the show was in alien life. The most successful were the Ovians in the pilot. After that, we generally only met humans. This undercut the conceit of the series, that the fleet were the LAST of the humans in that system. At times, like "The Lost Patrol", this is played reasonably well. But there should have been much more alien life to interact with. The angel beings appear human (or at least like Kryptonian muslims) and even the Borellian nomen are "human" they say. The pilot left me with hope for lots if interaction, like on Star Trek, but we got just humans vs. robots. And then the robots went away.

The show is no masterpiece by any means. But the things I remember liking about it in book form are there. If you can look past the dated elements (and this is easier to do when you watch big chunks of it at a time), it mostly works. Despite the unfinished nature, perhaps its best it ended when it did. I do like shows like this to have endings. I'm glad Voyager gets home. I'm sad the Jupiter II never did (at least not permanently). I'm sad Sam Beckett never makes it home again. I'm glad the castaways finally got off Gilligan's Island, but disappointed that they went back to watch a basketball game between some robots and the Harlem Globetrotters. So I'm sad that there's no finality about the Galactia reaching Earth, but maybe the show would have gotten weaker over time and its issues more pronounced. It may be this unfinished nature that leads people to want to remake it; do it again and give it an ending. Frack Galactica? Maybe not. But I'll take with me the best bits, and never mind the felgercarb.

(...why did that cute comm officer disappear? I wonder if she was in anything else...)