Review

Part one of Battlestar Galactica's pilot was really a great episode of TV, especially for its time. Here we are beginning a story that is truly epic and very dark. An entire civilization is wiped out, minus a smattering of ships full of refugees. With their enemy in hot pursuit, where will they go and how will they survive? It's this dark premise that gives the show it's immense charm. In addition to that, the episode is complimented well with top notch (for the time) special effects and a wonderfully performed musical score.

Unfortunately, even in part one of the pilot the show starts exerting extensive plot holes and logical flaws. Among the technical problems listed in the problems section of this review, there's something just too far fetched about a society that's been at war for a thousand years being defeated so swiftly and completely. There's nothing technically wrong with that as it is presented in the story; such events really could occur, despite how unlikely it is. It's just that the military tactics used by the colonials in this episode were extraordinarily bad and you'd think a thousand years of war would make them have a better understanding of strategy. All science fiction shows require suspension of disbelief, but this is pushing it.

Case in point, the president was a moron. The Galactica's vipers are under attack early in the episode and the president orders the Galactica to ignore it? Who cares what the political situation is? When you are attacked, you defend yourself. Period. Fortunately, the show makes a pretty good point of voicing the various characters' discontent. Logical and technical problems aside, Saga of a Star World, Part 1 comes off strong. It's exciting, it's generally interesting, and it's better than most everything else made during its time.

Review

The episode started out as a fine sequel to its predecessor. Right at the beginning they tackle the issue of hoarding and greed becoming a problem in the RTF, which is done realistically and interestingly. Then they move on to the flight plan. We already know Adama wants to find Earth. But there are more immediate escape problems. I like how Apollo solves the problem thoroughly to the displeasure of his father. Their argument was well done and and ensuing minesweeping was one of the most exciting scenes of the whole series.

Unfortunately, the good in the episode largely ends there. Because once they pass the minefield, the episode degenerates into something out of a bad Star Trek episode. This isn't to say I don't like bad Star Trek episodes; I love them! But come on people. The colonials have just had their homes completely destroyed. So now they go to a casino planet, build robotic daggits, and pursue romance?

Only the tidbits and details of the latter half of this episode are redeeming. We find out where the Cylons came from and we discover that the colonial galaxy is filled with various aliens. This is all very interesting, but this episode is largely in violation of the spirit of the premise. We're examining the nature of the human condition after a catastrophic event of proportions unparalleled in times past. The show should take itself more seriously.

We do get some interesting lines here and there, especially during Adama's and Apollo's arguing. And I did like how Boomer sort of bitched about Starbuck enjoying himself at the Casino. But they were almost complete throw away lines. The mood of the episode was undoubtedly cheerful. I don't recall much cheering after the Holocaust. Do you?

Review

Aside from serving to end the trilogy, this episode is almost a complete waste of time. Cut out all the crap in part 2 and fill it with the few good things in part 3 and this trilogy would have ended up making a far better two part episode than it was as a trilogy.

The episode picks up where all the silliness in the previous one left off. Starbuck's juggling his women. Starbuck pursues business deals. The slapstick humor is just overflowing, and most of it doesn't even work. There were some good attempts at it, like Tigh's secret mission, but they were the exception rather than the rule.

There are numerous technical problems in this episode and even more plot holes; certainly more than I've listed, though admittedly some of the ones I've avoided listing could be rationalized with some creative thinking.

The battle at the end makes this episode at least watchable, and the business regarding Baltar makes the conclusion interesting. But there was way too much garbage padding in the trilogy and especially too much of it in the third part.

A small part of me is glad they blew up the casino planet, even though the science behind blowing up the planet was a bit dubious. It makes me glad because now they can never go back to it again!

Review

Here's an improvement. We're shown some material tackling relevant issues facing the RTF. The fleet must travel at the speed of its slowest member; vipers are used to scout about and do patrol. It is also implied that the colonials and the Cylons have the ability to travel at at least light speed which complicates the issue of the fleet's escape if they're unable to make full use of their speed potential.

Baltar is on their tails and has a plan to take out the fleet. Surprisingly, his plan seems competent enough; though you've got to wonder just what the hell he does all day in that throne room. It would have been far less cheesy to just depict him overseeing operational details on the bridge or control room or whatever of the Cylon Basestar. It's only the 4th episode, and it's already a cliche to always depict the Imperious Leader or Baltar as having to plot and scheme in an evil imperial throne room.

Another annoying detail: this episode is highly sexist. All viper pilots are men? All women are shuttle pilots at best? Beyond sexism, there's unprofessionalism. It is becoming evident that the Galactica is decidedly nonmilitary in its operations. But despite all this I still enjoyed the episode quite a bit. It wasn't filler and a waste of time like the latter half of Saga was. The cliffhanger wasn't too exciting though. It's pretty clear that beyond that "magnetic void" will lie the planet Kobol. But that's a small deficiency.

Review

Kobol was interesting, but I'm not sure what we got out of this. Baltar's scheming was the most alluring aspect to the episode; spending all this time on Kobol and getting nothing out of it seemed somewhat frustrating. Adama discovers something he thinks is profound only to have the Cylons destroy it before he can make any sense of it.

I'm not sure whether I'm glad to see Serena go or not. She was one of the better characters, but with the show's blatant sexism, I'm not sure I'd have enjoyed seeing her stick around further just so we could see her character abused further.

In the end, the episode seemed like another excuse to have a dogfight, but if they wanted to fill time doing dogfights, at the very least they could stop recycling material. That, and Baltar's motives and decisions never seemed quite "logical" as Lucifer would put it. All this cheesy innuendo gets in the way of the Cylons + Baltar accomplishing anything. And while it's nice to see the bad guy lose, it's frustrating to see them depicted as totally incompetent.

Review

This episode is kind of the showcase for everything that was good about BSG and everything that was bad about BSG in a single episode. This episode did many things well. For one, Redeye was fascinating. A Cylon with his memory wiped, who can be reprogrammed by the first person to respond to his statement of "by your command" certainly is a valuable resource for a planet with limited technology. Additionally, the western theme of the episode was very successful, the acting was great, and the plot flowed well.

Unfortunately, despite this episode being well done, it had all the common problems BSG perpetuated as well. First, let's talk about that planet. Why is Galactica near yet another habitable planet? It seems like they're stumbling on a new one every week! Who needs Earth when every week you find an Earth-like planet? Second, who are the people on this planet? They're not very well connected to the twelve colonies, so where did they come from? The history and culture of these people should have been developed more. Finally, it is becoming clear that a better title for BSG 1978 would be "the adventures of Apollo and Starbuck." It seems every week is an excuse to put one or both of these characters in a new dangerous situation, largely ignoring the fleet its troubles.

You should notice though that my criticisms about this episode are not particularly severe. While there are things I would have preferred to have seen or had clarified, the episode is fairly solid, moreso than the average BSG 1978 episode. But at the same time, while the episode is solid, it does not manage to live up to anything more than average by overall television standards. Sadly, "average" by television standards is actually above BSG 1978's average offering.

Review

Back to its old ways, BSG 1978 produces an episode full of plot holes and technical problems. Once again, there's a habitable planet... er... well, asteroid found. And gee, it looked like a hunk of airless rock from space to me, but what do I know. Once again the show becomes the adventures of Starbuck or Apollo with the fleet taking a backseat. Once again, we get cookie cutter scenes aboard the Cylon Basestar. Baltar and Lucifer are getting so generic now that they could probably start recycling their plotting and scheming scenes in addition to viper dogfights. The biggest error though is what I've discussed in the problems section. The writers apparently didn't know the difference between a planetary system and a galaxy, and throwing the terms around so loosely makes the episode embarrassing to watch, among other details. I concede an extra point for the nice bits of humor in the episode, however.

Review

Hey look! A mysterious moon! (Later described as an "asteroid" on the computer screen, but whatever.) It's an obvious trap, but let's dive into it even though we have nothing to gain by investigating it! The military tactics here are at an all time low, as is the writers' understanding of three dimensional space. You simply can't "squeeze" a space ship into a single course so exact as to approach a specific planet, moon, asteroid, or whatever it is within range of a planet-based weapon.

Furthermore, why was it necessary to recruit criminals for this mission? Why were the criminals constantly fighting each other? Why were Apollo, Starbuck, and Apollo even chosen for this mission in the first place? They're Viper pilots, not foot soldiers! The whole damn thing just reeks of being poorly thought out from the beginning. But aside from that, the episode was actually a pleasure to watch. Even though some of the special effects were recycled, most of them were edited (mostly to add atmosphere) making them feel nicely fresh. They could have done a better job on a few of the visual effects though, particularly the freezing atmosphere in which you can't see anybody's breath. ;)

Overall, not too bad. And fortunately, Baltar's and Lucifer's single scene, while still pretty cliched, was far less so this time around.

Review

Part 2 wastes a lot of time. Having the clones and their creator added little to the story; the Viper dogfights got especially repetitive, mostly thanks to Baltar's erratic and poor strategy. The basic idea behind this story was to depict a mission to destroy a Cylon weapon so the RTF can escape the Cylons and live for another week. But we end up with lots of side stories. There's the clones and the cloner's responsibility for his work. There's Baltar and the Cylons internally conflicting, there's Starbuck trying to save his lost comrade (and his pursuit of clone women), there's the issue of the prisoners wanting their freedom, and of course the main plot. Most of these ideas are good ones, but without the right recipe, the souffle flops.

Review

And BSG 1978 chalks up an episode full of cliche and silliness. I was really looking forward to this episode. I couldn't wait to see how the RTF solved its food shortage problem, but the serious survival issue became a silly romance with a touch of generic western sheriff nonsense. That, and... ANOTHER habitable planet. WTF? Who needs Earth when every planet in every planetary system seems to be habitable? In any case, I concede an extra point for giving us a chance to see Adama get more to do, showing us some neat shots of the argo ships, and the episode at least trying to tackle a real issue that the fleet is facing. Plus, as ridiculous as the episode is, it is somewhat cute if you try not to take it too seriously, despite the seriousness of the issue.

Review

On yet another habitable planet, the adventures of Starbuck and/or Apollo continue. This week, Starbuck gets to lead an army of children against a Cylon-occupied castle. Meanwhile, the bad guys reinforce their incompetence by engaging in endless bickering, shortly before one of their occupied territories is overrun by a ridiculously small army of children. An extra point for making an (admittedly half-assed) attempt at doing character development on Baltar and his Cylon allies.

Review

This is easily the best episode of BSG 1978. The implications of the survival of another Battlestar are milked for all they're worth here.

Cain wants to go on a new offensive, but Adama wants to play it safe. This eventually leads to Cain turning insubordinate, forcing Adama to relieve him of his command. Throughout the episode, you want to side with Cain. Or at least I wanted to. I wanted to see The Galactica and Pegasus conquer Gamoray and solve their supply problem. But just when you start to hate Adama for relieving Cain, three Cylon Basestars attack. Adama was right.

Baltar finally gets some real action here. It seems his long term strategy was to wait for the RTF's resources to run dry so he could attack in full force. But just when Baltar's victory is so close that he can taste it, the Pegasus shows up in his fighter cockpit window leaving us with the best cliffhanger ever done on BSG 1978.

Review

Part two, while strong compared to most BSG 1978 episodes, is weak compared to its predecessor. This episode revisits the BSG 1978 cliche in which a new habitable planet must be in each new episode and some dangerous mission must be performed there.

Unfortunately here Cain is depicted as a foolish war monger, determined to strike back at the Cylons at all costs. Any number of better strategies could have been concocted for this episode to preserve both the Battlestars and make Cain a regular cast member. But sadly, in 1978, reset button syndrome affected a great many TV shows. At least we get to keep Sheba around.

But I get the feeling there was pressure to eliminate the Pegasus from the story because the show is named Battlestar Galactica, not Battlestar Pegasus. A silly reason to hinder the story and a mistake repeated in many science fiction shows. Most notably, Star Trek Voyager repeated this mistake with the Equinox.

As annoying as it is to lose the Pegasus, the episode was still a pretty decent ride, way above BSG 1978's average. And Cain's noble sacrifice was fitting, if overall a poor decision for the show in the long run.

Review

Many insults are thrown at this episode, but I tend to disagree. Yes, Fire in Space is shamelessly derivative. Yes, there are a few issues with the science in the episode. And yes, the military tactics are questionable once again. But really, these are problems fairly common to every episode of BSG 1978. So with that in mind I'd like to point out that the drama and tension level in this episode is unusually high quality. And the use of the characters was absolutely excellent.

First, let's talk about the plot. It's not stated directly, but why do you think the Cylons are going on this suicide mission? Maybe it's because the Pegasus blew up their Basestars and have no place to land? Now that's what I call excellent continuity. Next, let's talk characters. A lot of neglected characters get important roles in this story, such as Tigh, Athena, Boomer, and Sheba. This breathes a lot of life into the plot, as you don't have to watch the same two or three characters for the entire hour.

There wasn't much spectacle in the episode, no really great moments and no really memorable scenes. But overall the episode is far more watchable than most BSG 1978 episodes, and it'd be on my list of recommended episodes for people wanting to sample the best. The episode may be average at best, but it flows much better than the most of the others. I liked it.

Review

Another habitable planet, but fortunately not one with a human civilization. What we have here this week on BSG 1978 is something completely original. Count Iblis is obviously some sort of alien, or a more evolved human. But the limits of his power and his exact motives are left unclear. Personally, I thought this episode seemed to drag. It was a decent ride, but there's a great deal of repetitive concepts thrown around. Iblis spends a lot of time sweeping Sheba off her feet and manipulating people and it got a bit redundant after a while. Perhaps War of the Gods might have been more effective as a single episode?

Review

This episode is fascinating. We learn a lot about the nature of the Galactica universe here. For example, we learn that humans in this universe live longer than in the real world and they have latent telekinetic and telepathic abilities. We also learn that humans are on an evolutionary path in which they will begin to refine the power of the mind to the point of living to thousands of yahrens and having godlike powers. This episode implies that all it will take to accomplish this is for the human race to spread across the galaxy... to find Earth and bear new colonies elsewhere from it.

Even more interesting are the unfortunately vague implications of Count Iblis having some sort of connection to the Cylon leader. Is he / was he the Cylon Imperious Leader? Or more likely was he responsible for the destruction of the race that created the Cylons? Did he interfere with the Cylons from 1000 yahrens ago? Did he program the various Imperious Leaders? We're not given this answer, and it's really a shame too. Because it would give far more meaning to the whole story.

Overall, a pretty good episode. But it would have been much better as a single episode instead of two, with more time spent showing us some more details about the various religious philosophy thrown around, the history of these beings, and less time spent on Iblis being evil.

Review

An interesting look at civilian life in the fleet, and the Nomen were also a nice idea, but the episode seems to drag. We do get one nice tidbit in that this con artist really does turn out to be Starbuck's father, so the episode isn't a complete waste of time; I thought it was kind of nice that in the end Demitri decided it was best not to tell Starbuck the truth fearing Starbuck really will give up on the military to play catch up with the old man.

Review

Quite a bit of mud gets thrown at this episode, but I'm more forgiving. Murder on the Rising Star, while having nothing much at all to do with Galactica's preferred subject matter, is an interesting diversion. A "who did it" murder mystery that's decently executed. The beginning is especially captivating, with the fighting during the Triad game and the mounting evidence against Starbuck; I really believed he had killed him for a while. The ending, however, was fairly weak. While still just as fun to watch, I just simply cannot get over the sheer convenience of events, which leaves me with the impression that this episode wasn't at all thought through very well.

Review

Cheesy drama, but amusing in a juvenile way. Somehow, the main plot of this episode has more taste than other similar attempts. Particularly fun to watch is the Council of Twelve being outwitted by Adama. Though one could say that only barely makes up for the silliness which caused the situation in the first place. I find it hard to believe people could act so irrationally and stupid in the face of an unknown group of aliens.

Another nice thing about this episode is we don't stumble on yet another habitable plant of the week. However, the treatment of these new "alien" humans that are not related to the Colonials in any way could have been done in a better way. There are technical problems and plot holes spread about their interactions with the Colonials; I get the feeling the author of this story wanted to rush through the whole first contact thing.

Some other things which make this episode lose points are areas where it is decidedly lacking in taste. Specifically, what's the deal with Athena in this episode? Is she a viper pilot or a kindergarten teacher? The whole classroom scene reeked to me of overt sexism. It's as if they had nothing for her to do, so they conjured up something stereotypically feminine to pass some time. Also, what's the deal with the Eastern Alliance people being a bunch of space Nazis? Listen up American TV! Bad tradition! It didn't work on Star Trek, so don't do it on BSG!

If less time was spent on silliness in this episode and more time spent on showing us what the realities of a first contact would really be like, it would have been worth more points.

Review

This episode is difficult to take seriously. Once again we have yet another habitable planet. Though, this isn't so bad as this time it serves more of a purpose than usual, and it isn't random. The sleeper ship was coming here all along. What this episode does do is serve as a proper introduction to what Terra and the Eastern Alliance are all about, which was the expected conclusion to the previous episode's setup. But this continued story is told with even more silliness than its predacessor.

This episode is possibly the best evidence that the creators of BSG 1978 wanted to market this as a kids show. Something light hearted and not meant to be taken seriously. I suppose there isn't anything wrong with that, but with such dramatic potential in the premise, I still feel that episodes like this one are not true to the spirit of the premise. Episodes like this one make the survival of humanity after the destruction of the 12 colonies seem like fun and games. And that's just sad.

Review

This episode brings up an interesting issue of whether or not Adama should be allowed to exert martial law over the fleet. Sadly the issue is not explored particularly well because the council is consistently depicted as completely incompetent. Even Adama's "overseer" appointed in this episode is somewhat dense, and the whole point of her character was to show that the council isn't a bunch of idiots!

What I do like about this episode is its continuity. There is continuity with "War of the Gods" regarding Baltar's imprisonment. There is coninuity with "The Man with Nine Lives" regarding the Nomen. And there is continuity with "Greetings from Earth" regarding the Eastern Alliance captured soldiers and their ship. This episode serves to tie up loose threads from those episodes, or rather to compliment them. During a time when few science fiction shows understood the concept of episodic continuity or plot arcs, I do appreciate this attention to detail.

But in the end, what could have been a fascinating look at government in the RTF degenerates into a silly hostage situation resulting in the ludicrously easy escape of the bad guys. As if the writers could not think of any good reason to keep them around, so it's time to get rid of them!

Review

So what is Terra? It is remarkably like Earth, but it is definitely not Earth, according to John. This episode would have been far more interesting if more time had been spent exploring the Terran civilization and showing the audience why it isn't really Earth. Instead, we're supposed to take John's word for it. Saving Terra from nuclear war was an interesting idea for a story, and involving the beings from "War of the Gods" was a clever and welcome continuity connection, but "Experiment in Terra" fails to measure up to its own profound intentions by not staying true to the prior material. Frankly, I have the same problem with this story that I had with "Lost Planet of the Gods." It leaves you feeling empty, when it should have been far more significant to the overall storyline of Galactica.

Review

Bad science and poor timing ruins an otherwise viable episode. It makes little sense that by now, this mutiny hasn't already taken place. Furthermore, it makes no sense for a the fleet to be constantly exhausting fuel in order to maintain speed. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an external force. There's no external stopping force in space. Finally, how quickly a shuttle can be completely lost from the fleet hardly seems realistic. Conversely, the swift magical upgrades performed on the shuttle's sensors seemed equally unlikely. Sadly, the plot hinges on these weaknesses and the episode is hard to take seriously because of it.

Review

This episode would have well been worth a full nine points if it weren't for some nitpicking about some technical problems, including the Cylons themselves. They're far too easily fooled here by Apollo and Starbuck. One wonders, and I've mentioned this before, why the Cylons provide atmospheres aboard Basestars full of nothing but machines which don't require such provisions. Furthermore, Apollo and Starbuck encountered far too little resistance, and the Cylon Basestar's sensors were far too easily taken out. No redundancy? Finally, there's more technical trash regarding Galactica having traveled inter-galaxy. (Not inter-stellar.)

However, unlike many, many prior BSG 1978 episodes, the technical problems do not bring down the plot. Very easily the Cylons could have been outwitted by some other plot device, or hell, even not at all. The Galactica barely makes any use whatsoever of their surprise attack on the Basestar anyway as the Cylons very quickly figure out what's going on and retaliate, making for a spectacular space battle.

As an episode of BSG 1978, this episode shines. Elements of continuity from nearly all prior material is put into good use here, and the "let's stop running, turn around, and punch them in the nose" factor makes for an exciting change of pace. I grade the episode purely on these grounds, for as a finale to the series, this episode is less adequate. I am fairly sympathetic to the writers here for not taking Galactica directly to Earth in the season finale, as it's a far more complicated story than they had time to tell. Maybe the whole Terra storyline should have been abandoned and Galactica should have reached Earth instead of Terra, so the complexity of finding Earth could be explored in sufficient detail. But in the end, it's better to leave the show open ended than to totally conclude it poorly. A rushed "they found Earth!" episode at the end of the series would have been a bad thing.

When Star Trek TOS was canceled, it ended similarly to this series. Just another episode. I find the lack of closure supremely annoying, but faced with the alternative of something rushed and worse, I must once again say, what we got was pretty damn good considering the circumstances.

And so BSG 1978 goes out with a bang. This canceled series gives us one of its best outings, showing us just how good it could have become. A few more episodes like The Living Legend, Part 1, Saga of a Star World, Part 1, and this one, and a few less episodes like Greetings from Earth, Part 2, The Long Patrol, The Magnificent Warriors, The Young Lords, and Take the Celestra and BSG 1978 may well have lasted more than one season.