Battlestar Galactica Miniseries: Part 2 Rewatch
March 6, 2020 12:50 PM - Season 1, Episode 2 - Subscribe
The second part of the two-part three hour miniseries that launched the Battlestar Galactica reboot.
Looking back, I think the entire success of the show is basically thanks to the quality of the miniseries and the first episode, 33. There are certainly other peaks but it's mostly a long, slow decline from this high water mark. Pretty much the inverse of Star Trek, which generally gets better as each series progresses.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:44 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:44 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]
I watched the miniseries when it originally came out and then the series. My friends and I would hash out the new episode each week on LiveJournal.
Only a few of us actually made it to the end of the series and I think we'd all agree with Mr.Encyclopedia that the miniseries and "33" were the high points of the show. I would also throw in "Water" and most of the first season. Things were still clicking.
As far as part 2 here, it has its highs, but also its lows. The part where Apollo advises Roslin that they need to leave immediately and they're going to have to leave a bunch of people behind... The slow countdown as people curse those who get to jump away...
The action on the Ragnar station drags though. Of course Adama once is going to get separated from the others to go walkabout with Leoben so they can have a face to face confrontation. But things get going again with the debate on what to do next and the final decision to jump away.
Everyone is great. I have to give special credit to Dr. Baltar. James Callis in the miniseries pulled off the role brilliantly and my brother and I always watch it with a little sadness that Baltar would lose that edge he had.
The end where Adama gives his speech and then makes the deal with Roslin is a good way of wrapping things up.
The miniseries as a whole offers so much promise.
posted by Fukiyama at 7:47 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
Only a few of us actually made it to the end of the series and I think we'd all agree with Mr.Encyclopedia that the miniseries and "33" were the high points of the show. I would also throw in "Water" and most of the first season. Things were still clicking.
As far as part 2 here, it has its highs, but also its lows. The part where Apollo advises Roslin that they need to leave immediately and they're going to have to leave a bunch of people behind... The slow countdown as people curse those who get to jump away...
The action on the Ragnar station drags though. Of course Adama once is going to get separated from the others to go walkabout with Leoben so they can have a face to face confrontation. But things get going again with the debate on what to do next and the final decision to jump away.
Everyone is great. I have to give special credit to Dr. Baltar. James Callis in the miniseries pulled off the role brilliantly and my brother and I always watch it with a little sadness that Baltar would lose that edge he had.
The end where Adama gives his speech and then makes the deal with Roslin is a good way of wrapping things up.
The miniseries as a whole offers so much promise.
posted by Fukiyama at 7:47 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]
I keep thinking that if this were remade with the same general characters today we would have a much more diverse cast
Even at the time I thought it was sort of weird that they'd taken two prominent characters played by black men in the original, Boomer and Tigh, and recast them with a white man and an Asian woman so there were suddenly no black men in prominent roles and the only black woman played a relatively minor role. In some ways the new cast was more diverse than the original, but in other ways it was a step back.
In hindsight this series serves as perhaps the ultimate example of a show that started off strong and then sputtered. I don't think it ever got awful, but it lost its way badly enough that that's kind of the stuff that lingers in the memory. Moore was a very talented writer but he just was not a show runner. Heroes fell farther, and these days people are so bitter about how it turned out that nobody even talks about when that show was actually good. A lot of people love to hate on Lost too, which I thought had a great last season even if some of the stuff in the series finale got wacky even by Lost standards. It seems like it was the age of genre shows launching with a lot of promise and then ultimately leaving fans very, very crabby.
Several of the actresses on this show got briefly involved with the NXIVM cult, and Nicki Clyne (Callie) allegedly left the show to become one of the higher-ups. It was a depressing, lurid tabloid story, with women being lured in with talk of empowerment only to end up being kept prisoner, used as sex slaves and literally branded. It wasn't something I would've followed normally, but I got sucked in by the bizarre involvement of actors from BSG, Smallville, etc. Last I heard Clyne had avoided jail time but she was waiting tables someplace. Grace Park was also involved in the organization in some capacity, although I think she's supposed to have dropped out before things got too insane. I think Helfer and Sackoff may have been members for a time too, but I'm not sure about that. Again, it was sold as a big female empowerment thing in Hollywood and it attracted a lot of actresses... before it was exposed as a misogynist cult. It's a very weird, grim footnote for a classic show.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:13 PM on March 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Even at the time I thought it was sort of weird that they'd taken two prominent characters played by black men in the original, Boomer and Tigh, and recast them with a white man and an Asian woman so there were suddenly no black men in prominent roles and the only black woman played a relatively minor role. In some ways the new cast was more diverse than the original, but in other ways it was a step back.
In hindsight this series serves as perhaps the ultimate example of a show that started off strong and then sputtered. I don't think it ever got awful, but it lost its way badly enough that that's kind of the stuff that lingers in the memory. Moore was a very talented writer but he just was not a show runner. Heroes fell farther, and these days people are so bitter about how it turned out that nobody even talks about when that show was actually good. A lot of people love to hate on Lost too, which I thought had a great last season even if some of the stuff in the series finale got wacky even by Lost standards. It seems like it was the age of genre shows launching with a lot of promise and then ultimately leaving fans very, very crabby.
Several of the actresses on this show got briefly involved with the NXIVM cult, and Nicki Clyne (Callie) allegedly left the show to become one of the higher-ups. It was a depressing, lurid tabloid story, with women being lured in with talk of empowerment only to end up being kept prisoner, used as sex slaves and literally branded. It wasn't something I would've followed normally, but I got sucked in by the bizarre involvement of actors from BSG, Smallville, etc. Last I heard Clyne had avoided jail time but she was waiting tables someplace. Grace Park was also involved in the organization in some capacity, although I think she's supposed to have dropped out before things got too insane. I think Helfer and Sackoff may have been members for a time too, but I'm not sure about that. Again, it was sold as a big female empowerment thing in Hollywood and it attracted a lot of actresses... before it was exposed as a misogynist cult. It's a very weird, grim footnote for a classic show.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:13 PM on March 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
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I had forgotten how early we found out that Boomer was a Cylon. I watched this show during its original run and remember not really that much about it so it's practically a First Watch for me, but I remember some other key details, I guess.
I really enjoyed this miniseries. So much promise. I keep thinking that if this were remade with the same general characters today we would have a much more diverse cast and Starbuck would almost certainly be a gay character. I was surprised to remember she wasn't!
posted by urbanlenny at 12:53 PM on March 6, 2020