Battlestar Galactica - Series 1 - Complete (DVD)

After a massive Cylon attack on the 12 major colonies of man. Humanities last chance for survival rests in the hands of one Commander Adama and the last of the colonial fleet's battlestars the "Galactica".

"Battlestar Galactica" is a reimaging of the original series from the late 1970's, early 80's by Ronald D Moore and David Eick. Unlike most of the other sci-fi style programs and films we see today it has a much ...
...itself around just a few main characters with everyone else just making up the background, but brings the lives of all the crew and survivors of the attack into the foreground.

The shows main plotline is that of survival of the human race which then turns into a quest to find the mythical 13th colony of man on a small planet called Earth. The first series leads straight on from the pilot miniseries and right from the offset shows just ... more

After a massive Cylon attack on the 12 major colonies of man. Humanities last chance for survival rests in the hands of one Commander Adama and the last of the colonial fleet's battlestars the "Galactica".

"Battlestar Galactica" is a reimaging of the original series from the late 1970's, early 80's by Ronald D Moore and David Eick. Unlike most of the other sci-fi style programs and films we see today it has a much dirtier and grittier look. Also the show doesn't just centre itself around just a few main characters with everyone else just making up the background, but brings the lives of all the crew and survivors of the attack into the foreground.

The shows main plotline is that of survival of the human race which then turns into a quest to find the mythical 13th colony of man on a small planet called Earth. The first series leads straight on from the pilot miniseries and right from the offset shows just how much darker it is than the original series.

The main characters in the series are
Commander Adama played by Edward James Olmos
President Laura Roslin played by Mary McDonnell
Kara "Starbuck" Thrace played by Katee Sackhoff
Lee "Apollo" Adama played by Jamie Bamber
Dr. Gaius Baltar played by James Callis
Cylon Number Six played by Tricia Helfer
Cylon Model Eight/ Sharon "Boomer" Valleri played by Grace Park
As I stated earlier the whole show does not revolve around just a few characters so there is a massive cast listing for this show which you can find at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Battlestar_Galactica_characters

Religion seems to play a big part in the overall lives of both the humans and cylons. The human have a polytheists belief (worship many gods similar to the ancient Greeks) and the cylons have a monotheist belief system (worship one god similar to most modern religions i.e. Christianity.) This really helps in the show in giving the two sides a much more rounded background as to why they do and act in certain ways.
Warning spoilers ahead
As with any review about a TV show or film it is very difficult to not spoil it for those who have not watched it already, however I will try to keep as much of the details of plotlines out as possible.

Each episode of the series runs in tandem between two main plot locations "Galactica and the fleet" and"Caprica" (home world to many of the fleets survivors).
The story line on Caprica centres around Karl "Helo" Agathon and one of the cylon number 8 models. This story line revolves around the cylons attempts at producing a human-cylon baby and their efforts towards this including trying to get the two characters to fall in love.

The story line of the fleet mainly consists of their continued efforts to escape the cylons that are tracking them and other needs of the fleet such shortages in fuel, water and even mutiny. As the series carries on other cylons within the fleet make themselves present and eventually leave the series with a very climatic cliff-hanger style ending.

All though the series takes an awful lot of ideas and concepts from the original series it has been vastly updated and the background of not only the characters has been fleshed out much more, but the whole history and concepts of both the human and cylon races are far more detailed than seen usually in other sci-fi shows.

A good majority of the show is filmed with a documentary style feel to it so the cameras movement really makes you feel like you as a viewer are more involved in what is actually happening in the show. As far as effects are concerned they certainly went whole hog with this one everything from the space battles to the massively overhauled cylon look is top notch and would not be out of place in many of the top Hollywood sci-fi flicks of today.
The show does include many violent and mildly bloody scenes; there are also a number of sexual based scenes within the show as well so I wouldn't recommend this to a younger audience.

Despite its differences to the original series the two programmes to have one common factor between them which is actor Richard Hatch who fans of the original will remember as "Apollo". In the new version he takes the part of Tom Zarek the former terrorists and now political leader for one of the colonies of man.

Overall I really enjoyed the first series of this superb sci-fi show and it did lead me to collecting all the episodes for each series on DVD. The only problem now is the fact that I have to wait until next year for the conclusion of the fourth series. 

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