Battlestar Galactica: The Plan: Michael Hogan and Edward James Olmos

The plan for The Plan — a new direct-to-DVD BSG movie — is sound: show the human–Cylon war through the eyes of the machines. The saga kicks off promisingly as we see extensive footage of the evil robots carrying out their destruction of Caprica. But much like the Cylons’ plans for total human eradication, this Plan also eventually goes awry. Instead of sticking with the Caprica cataclysm, the movie tries to cram in two seasons’ worth of BSG story into just two hours. While fans may enjoy seeing backstory on pivotal events like Boomer’s (Grace Park) assassination attempt on Adama (Edward James Olmos, who also directs), the whole thing ends up feeling more like a thrown together collection of deleted scenes and alternate takes — making the inclusion of actual deleted scenes in the EXTRAS a bit superfluous.

This collectors’ box-set of six videos assembles the main force saga of Glen Larson’s lively space opera into a dozen TV movies. In the wake of Star Wars, this show (the pilot episodes were condensed into a feature and granted theatrical release outside USA) was seen as a lavishly produced and wholly original small screen adventure. Sadly, that time has long since passed.

Today, BattleStar Galactica survives only on nostalgic values of its era’s SF boom. Over 20 years later, the show pales to insignificance when compared to the delights of Babylon 5 or Star Trek Voyager. However, let’s not focus on its defects because, unsophisticated though it undoubtedly is, ‘Galactica maintains a certain appeal to those children of all ages that returned for multiple screenings of Star Wars. It has a simplistic charm that harks back to the giddy days of genre pulp entertainments such as This Island Earth, Invaders From Mars, and Flash Gordon. Much was written, back when this show first launched, about the significant debt it owed to technologies developed for Star Wars. Space dogfights between courageous rocket pilots and robotic Cylon raiders (in craft resembling flying saucers) were created by John Dykstra, who established his reputation working for George Lucas. In addition, the studios’ legal dispute between 20th Century Fox and Larson, over alleged similarities between Galactica and Star Wars, garnered almost as much public attention as the series itself. Larson’s defence claimed that his show could be interpreted as a retelling of the biblical tale of Moses leading refugees to the Promised Land – and never mind that it borrowed freely from any number of other sci-fi adventures, or populist genres.

Problems with Galactica included weak characters and unimaginative plots, and yet something about its larger themes – searching for the lost planet Earth, a wandering journey to a new home, did spark the interest of TV viewers previously uninterested in SF. The obvious sincerity of Lorne Greene’s performance as the leader, Adama, was another factor in the show’s early popularity as good family entertainment, as parents and older viewers may have remembered Greene as patriarchal rancher, Ben Cartwright, from famed western series Bonanza. Observers also noted that the usual ‘wagon train to the stars’ description of Galactica was, in fact, a cross-genre scenario that Gene Roddenberry had toyed with for the original Star Trek. All this helped to cement the programme’s high frontier set-up (taken to logical extremes in certain episodes) and fulfilled the potential of such a concept for an SF serial at the same time.

Here’s a run down of the 90-minute movies in this box set. The ‘Pilot’ film comprises the Saga Of A Star World opening episodes, establishing Adama’s family conflicts with son Apollo (Richard Hatch) and daughter Athena (Maren Jensen), and political strife against decadent officials and oily senators (played by Ray Milland and Wilfred Hyde White). In particular, there’s evil Baltar (John Colicos) a recurring villain in the series who betrays the 12 human colony planets to the Cylons during negotiations for peace. When the war is over, Adama musters his “rag-tag fleet” and leads the survivors into unknown space. Along the way, they discover a casino planet were visitors are being abducted and fed to the larvae of giant bug-like aliens in Galactica’s only memorable use of genuine SF tropes. The kiddie factor intrudes when ship engineers build a robot dog to replace a sad little boy’s lost pet. Both boy (Noah Hathaway) and dog became regulars in the series ensuring its appeal to a young audience.

Lost Planet Of The Gods was the first of several two-part adventures, and to its credit, did try to continue the story-arc begun by the Pilot film introducing female fighter pilots, much to the chagrin and grief of Apollo when his new bride Serena (Jane Seymour) is killed, leaving redhead Athena (Jensen) to carry the show’s glamour girl quotient.
The Gun On Ice Planet Zero is bravura space opera, mixing The Guns Of Navarone with The Dirty Dozen, as a hastily assembled strike team are sent from Galactica to sabotage a mighty Cylon space cannon. The guest stars included Roy (The Invaders) Thinnes, James (The Andromeda Strain) Olsen, Christine (The Groundstar Conspiracy) Belford and, as if one wasn’t enough, multiple clones of Britt Ekland. Adult themes of militarism and slavery were more or less sacrificed on the altar of lightweight action entertainment but this was, arguably, the show’s best outing.

In The Living Legend (aka: Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack, when released in the cinemas), aged star Lloyd Bridges plays swaggering warmonger Cain, commander of a lost battlestar, the Pegasus, who attempts to use the Galactica in his reckless attacks upon Cylon outposts. This two-parter features a daring commando raid and introduces series’ regular, Sheba, Cain’s pilot daughter, played by Anne Lockhart. Due to its cinema release as a sequel feature, MG: TCA was broadcast at the end of the series’ first run.

After these early double-episode cliffhangers, Galactica quickly lost its way. War Of The Gods has our intrepid heroes finding a mysterious psychic (Patrick Macnee) who demonstrates powers that could defeat the Cylons. Predictably, he’s not who or what he seems. A crystalline city-ship in space is just one inexplicably transcendental element in this weird yet unsatisfactory adventure, which features outtakes from Silent Running of the geodesic domed forestry, supposedly part of Adama’s fleet. Greetings From Earth is a standard tale of the cryo-ship with a lost-in-space family onboard variety. It has nowhere to go, story-wise, and takes a long time getting there. Experiment In Terra is an offbeat episode descending from the lofty pun of its title to deliver Apollo into the afterlife where those angel beings from the crystal future heaven of WOTG, send him on a ludicrous political mission. Melody (Flash Gordon) Anderson guests, but you may hardly notice.

All the remaining single episodes have been edited into disappointing feature-length yarns. Curse Of The Cylons comprises Fire In Space (stealing from such disaster movies as The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure), with a space walk sequence and factory interiors lending credibility to Galactica as a labyrinthine mothership, and The Magnificent Warriors (embarrassingly awful wild west township besieged by pig-men). Murder In Space offers a double-dose of Starbuck (Dirk Benedict) in episodes Murder On The Rising Star and The Young Lords, as our hot-dog hero faces criminal charges, before he’s castaway on a planet to meet Audrey Landers. Roguish Starbuck is also central to Space Casanova, pairing Take The Celestra (he tries to keep three ladies happy) with The Long Patrol (oddball prison break tale where the inmates serve time for crimes of their forefathers). Phantom In Space spotlights Apollo in The Lost Warrior (he tries on the mantle of Shane in a western homage) and The Hand Of God (Apollo and Starbuck pilot a captured enemy spacecraft into an attack on a Cylon base ship – the same trick was pivotal to Earth’s victory against aliens in the later Independence Day). Finally, The Man With Nine Lives (Fred Astaire slums as a conman sought by ugly alien thugs) and cheesy hostage drama, Baltar’s Escape, are combined in Space Prisoner.

A sequel series, Galactica 1980, set 30 years after – when Adama’s fleet have located Earth, was produced, but this did not appear on UK screens until 1984. It was mercilessly rubbished by TV critics and ignored by fans, and lasted for a mere 10 episodes.

Let’s Download Battlestar Galactica Episodes

Air date: 1/6/2006
Teleplay by Michael Rymer
Story by Anne Cofell Saunders
Directed by Michael Rymer

Much like “Scattered” was the logical but — by design — non-definitive continuation of “Kobol’s Last Gleaming,” then so is “Resurrection Ship, Part 1” the logical and non-definitive continuation of “Pegasus.” As a middle chapter that contains no resolution, it’s not completely satisfying, but I suppose that’s not its job. Its job is to provide more setup, ask more questions, and end with more suspense. It does that. How it will all play out is a question for another day, but what’s notable about this episode is how it puts new weights on its characters.

Scaled back in this show is the grand melodrama and epic tone apparent in “Pegasus.” In its place is sensible characterization and a few new plot revelations.

It may not come as a huge surprise that Adama’s and Cain’s alert fighters, launched at the end of “Pegasus,” do not open fire on each other as we resume the story. Instead they fly about, nearly ramming into each other as the pilots play a breakneck-speed game of chicken while awaiting orders. Meanwhile, Starbuck — who has taken the stealth Blackbird without authorization — jumps into the middle of the Cylon fleet and photographs a mysterious and previously unseen Cylon vessel, which looks like something out of the video game Doom. Kudos to the CG model designers for coming up with something that looks truly ominous and different.

Cain and Adama call off the hostilities long enough to examine this new intelligence. They meet on Colonial One to hash out a (temporary) agreement to put aside their differences. Cain postpones Helo’s and Tyrol’s executions, but the agreement between Adama and Cain isn’t a friendly one, and Cain hates the idea of having to discuss the finer points of military authority to President Roslin. “We’re at war,” she says angrily. “We don’t have the luxury of academic debate.” Cain’s mission of survival at all costs has blinded her to what her unflinching hardness has cost her people in their humanity.

Is Cain crazy? No. She is, however, quite amoral, and very accustomed to getting what she wants and not having her authority challenged. (She built that authority on the threat of severe consequences, like shooting her XO in front of her own crew, as explained by Colonel Fisk in “Pegasus.”) There’s an intriguing scene where Cain calls Starbuck into her cabin for taking the Blackbird on an unauthorized mission. The mission had a positive net effect, so rather than castigating Starbuck, Cain praises her for having guts, and promotes her to Pegasus CAG. You get the sense that Cain sees a little of herself in Kara and perhaps is tapping her as a protege. You also get the sense that if Kara’s recon mission had gone south and resulted in something negative, she would’ve been immediately thrown in the brig.

So just what is this mysterious Cylon vessel, then? Baltar’s interrogation sessions with Pegasus‘ prisoner copy of Six might provide the answer. What’s crucial about the Baltar/Six scenes is that they are not about Baltar getting information, but about the complicated (and often imagined) relationship between these two characters, and about this shattered woman who has been beaten, abused, raped, and tortured. “I want to die,” she says.

Death for the Cylons is typically not feared, because the consciousness of a dead Cylon is simply transferred into another body, where it can resume its life. That concept takes on a new dimension here; we learn that the process for “Cylon resurrection” requires being within a certain vicinity of the Cylon homeworld — which the pursuing Cylon fleet currently is not. Instead, the mystery vessel is actually their “resurrection ship,” which contains the necessary apparatus to recycle dead Cylons’ memories into new bodies. Destroy that ship, and the game radically changes.

The interesting twist here is that this broken and tortured shell of Six does not simply want to die and wake up in another body, but wants to die and be actually gone. Apparently her ordeal on the Pegasus has been more than she cares to take with her into a new body. So Six gives Baltar the information about the resurrection ship out of the purely self-interested motive of wanting to die. What does this say about the Cylons and their loyalty to their own race? Has this particular Cylon simply been through so much pain that she no longer cares about anything but dying?

Kara and Lee devise a battle plan to take on the Cylon fleet and destroy the resurrection ship. Meanwhile, under all this, the tensions between Adama and Cain are very much alive. We learn still more alarming things about Cain when the question arises as to the fate of the Pegasus‘ civilian fleet. There’s another ominous scene of Tigh and Fisk drinking and sharing stories, where Fisk reveals that Cain ordered the civilian ships stripped for supplies and the useful members of their crews drafted into the military while their families were held at gunpoint. When there was resistance, the families were actually shot. Fisk does not punctuate this story with a manic, just-kidding laugh. We’re way past that point.

Roslin suspects that it’s only a matter of time before Cain stages a power play to take Adama out. In one of the show’s more surprising moments, she tells Adama, “We have to kill her.” It’s a moment arrived at by way of logical conclusions reached because of the lack of available options: Certainly Cain does not share Adama’s and Roslin’s world view, in which certain values must outweigh rampant militarism, and only by eschewing that world view long enough to take Cain out can those values survive. “How did you get so bloody-minded?” Adama asks Roslin. It’s a good question — one which I suspect has an equally good answer, steeped in simple pragmatism. We must preserve our way of life.

Other characters have their own personal crises. Helo and Tyrol are sitting in the brig awaiting execution, and their conversations turn to what landed them there — their need to protect Sharon. They don’t regret that decision, but I like that they both take a hard look at this messed-up relationship. Tyrol wants to extricate himself from the whole affair. Helo also has serious second thoughts (”I’m in love with someone who isn’t even a woman”) but can’t deny the truth of his feelings.

The episode cliffhangs us with Adama and Cain plotting coups against each other with their most trusted officers. Adama puts Kara on a mission to shoot Cain in the head when he gives the order after the attack on the Cylon fleet. Cain does the same, putting Fisk in a position to take marines into Galactica’s CIC to “terminate Adama’s command.” For Kara, this will have severe personal consequences. Not only might she die, but she’s been recruited to carry out an assassination of Adama’s superior officer — someone that she shows signs of developing a certain level of respect for. Can she do something like that?

To quote Adama from earlier in the show: “Has the whole world gone mad?” Yes, perhaps it has. But it hasn’t gone mad without some very extreme reasons. It could be rightly said that the world came to an end first, then went mad.

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan