Battlestar Galactica - Series 3 - Complete (Box Set) (DVD)

...This is a very different Battlestar Galactica to any of the seasons we have seen before with much of the action taking place on New Caprica, as the colonists have named their new home. Lee Adama is woefully out of shape on board the Pegasus after considering the Cylons to be no longer a menace and this is one of the few lighter moments in an opening that feels threatening, dark and full of hopelessness and despair for what remains for humanity.
...different forms of imprisonment and though the Cylons claim to be benevolent, it is very hard not to suspect that they have an alternate agenda. The truth is, the Cylons are trying to better understand humanity in order to become closer to their one true God; it is just a shame then that their methods are intrinsically flawed. You cannot, after all, continually beat a dog around the head and expect it to do your will without some retalliation in ... more

Firstly you need to watch the mini-series (available on one disc) and seasons 1 and 2 if you're gonna have any idea whats going down. This is not a show you can just "dip" into... Secondly, just because you watched this in the seventies or the repeats in the eighties (the original show plus Buck Rogers were everywhere back then) doesn't mean you can just pick this up. This is an all new show, a re-imagining if you will, which blows away anything else sci-fi related you may have seen before. Because this is not just a sci-fi show- its story arcs, plots and subtext go way beyond all that!! This is also very much a commentary on civilisation in general and what it means to be human...

Speech over now lets recap...

Gauis Baltar, at the end of season 2, had stole the presidential elections from Laura Roslin and decided that the survivors of the Cylon attack on Caprica would settle on a new planet they'd discovered- supposedly hidden from the all evil machines by atmospheric cloud cover. Unfortunately events Baltar had unintentionally set in place going way back to season 1, resulted in the Cylons finding the fleet almost a year later. At which point Baltar surrendered on behalf of the human race. New Caprica was now under dictatorship rule by the Cylons; with Galactica and her sister ship Pegasus forced to flee because most of their crew had settled on the planetary surface...

This is a very different Battlestar Galactica to any of the seasons we have seen before with much of the action taking place on New Caprica, as the colonists have named their new home. Lee Adama is woefully out of shape on board the Pegasus after considering the Cylons to be no longer a menace and this is one of the few lighter moments in an opening that feels threatening, dark and full of hopelessness and despair for what remains for humanity.

Kara Thrace and Colonel Tigh both face different forms of imprisonment and though the Cylons claim to be benevolent, it is very hard not to suspect that they have an alternate agenda. The truth is, the Cylons are trying to better understand humanity in order to become closer to their one true God; it is just a shame then that their methods are intrinsically flawed. You cannot, after all, continually beat a dog around the head and expect it to do your will without some retalliation in response.

And that is what happens. Tigh, released from imprisonment through the influence of his wife, begins a human resistance movement and what follows is a frightening and often very realistic series of malica attacks that very much seem alleogories of what has been happening in Iraq!!! Suicide bombers have been featured in the show before (the Cylons resorted to this tactic in early attacks upon Galactica again in season one) but never before in a sci-fi show have we seen the before and after effects of what happens when the bomber is one of your friends; and what happens when innocent people are classed as collateral damage!!

This is grim, gritty sci-fi with a message and the message is that maybe it's not all that hot all of a sudden to be a human!! Capable of all the evil a human being can do!!

When the colonists eventually resume their quest for Earth, the season starts to lighten a little but, still, throughout the show are elements of darkness and glimpses of an all-too-real-at-times reality thats not that far from our own. Long-standing members of the show are no longer safe as the threat from the Cylons becomes ever more complicated and deadly and though some of the season has recieved criticism for it's character-developing "filler" episodes at times (the whole Lee Adama- Starbuck story arc continues to be unresolved and, slowly, begins to grate and get on your frakking tits after a while, enough of the sexual tension already), personally I think this is the strongest season yet!!!

There are shocks, there are twists (though none so big as that at the season's climax which features a very significant rendition of "All along the watchtower" - thats all I'm saying) and overall, this season proves why again and again this show is becoming the BIG DADDY of sci-fi!!

Next season (the fourth) is the last and will see the conclusion of all the loose ends left unresolved so far being tied up but rumours of a spin-off set before this show and possibly featuring old-skool Cylon Centurions, continues to be an unconfirmed rumour with the latest news being that a pilot has been commissioned. Whether or not that takes off or can be as much of a runawayu success as this has been remains to be seen. Whatever, the descision to kill the show off at its natural conclusion rather than continuing on for another seven series is a brave one and one which I think demands the writers and directors of this show deserve some respect! Moore and Eick have promised that the Galactica will reach Earth (something the original series never managed if you discount the awful Galactica 1980 which fans dismiss as not cannon), though what they will find there is anyone's guess.

And of course, only having seen 7 models of the twelve human Cylon models so far, we still have the identities of the final 5 to discover...or do we.....?

All you can be sure of is that if this season is anything to go by, Galactica's swan song is gonna be a dooooozy!!!!!!!!!!

Summary: This is probably the best sci-fi show thats not sci-fi ever ever made!!!!!! FACT!!!!!!!!!! 

...less