Saturday, May 7, 2011

Battlestar Gallactica

I have finished watching reimagined BSG (2003 series) and have also finished watching The Plan.
And i liked it a lot.

BSG started after i played the board game couple of times at office (Thanks Maneesh!) Curious about the series, i started it. I am not a big fan of sci-fi genre, i find it too escapist for my taste :) (The elitist in me laughs)

But BSG is different, it is a political drama done inside a sci-fi genre. And what a wonderful premise - Humans are attacked by cylons (robot machines) and are wiped out, there are about 50K survivors on the run to look for a planet Earth to survive. It is at the question of extinction of race are bigger issues discussed - what is the meaning of justice, idealism, is it ok to loose some for greater good, what is God in all this. Things like destiny, why we survive, why we exist, purpose etc and GOD are discussed under the umbrella of this series. Also, what is the difference between a machine and a human, what is soul, what is a child, there are many questions. Many satirical references to our society, many string comments, strong suggestions along the way.

BSG in addition has very cleverly managed to solve some of the problems commonly faced by television series. For example, since fuck cannot be used, they use the word frak. If you remember the tv show Heroes, the villian was never killed, they always brought him back under some pretext, here cylons can have multiple copies, so even if you kill one, there are more, this allows them to have some great battle sequences to keep the action going yet they can keep the main cast. Also, there is no effort to explain some of the scientific tools used, they go by some assumptions and always stick to them.

Performances are also very good except the president and the Admiral. A bunch of newbies but they deliver very well. Multiple roles are very nicely handled by Grace Park and Tricia Helfer.

There are some episodes in season 2 and 3, when they are added just to maintain continuity, with very little information added but there are only few. At the end, things make sense (not all) and there is a very nice ending (unlike other series when there is no ending)

The music plays a very important role and it is very good. It is very diverse and has elements of minimalism, western classical, classic rock. Title credits include the Gayantri Mantra which is awesome. One of my fav track is Shape of Things to come. You can hear it at Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tII1DSHPU80

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0407362/

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