here's a post I made about the BSG series vs BSG miniseries, I'm putting it all into spoiler mode so someone doesn't get POed at me.
The Battlestar Galactica miniseries is a rape of science fiction. Very few shows, Sci-Fi or not, survive one raping (in Galactica's case, Galactica 1980), fewer survive long enough to get raped a second time (Battlestar Galactica miniseries on Sci-Fi). I only hope that this monumental failure serves as a lesson to for those retards that want to reshape an established series, in any form, to thier own design, that it will end in failure.
Lets start at the beginning:
Battlestar Galactica HAD a promising future. It was 1979, and, for lack of a better description, was going to be the first "Babylon 5". BSG (what I will refer to as Battlestar Galactica from this point on) had the foundations for a great story-line. The twelve colonies of Cobal (the REAL human homeworld) were at war. They had 12 battlestars, or a combonation of a battleship and carrier, and each were the top of the line ship. However the Cylon empire (later on these dudes) had far more ships and quickly overwhelmed all but two of the Battlestars. The Galactica, and the few surviving ships that were rescued go looking for the 13th tribe of Cobal, or in other words, Earth. They find Cobal, and confirm that a 13th tribe exists, just in time for the Cylons to bomb the place to dust. The second Battlestar - Pegasus (I believe), is found, and ends up engaging 2 Cylon basestars, and is presumed destroyed.
The origin of the Cylons were that a reptilian race designed and built the first mechanical Cylons, who then destroyed them and assumed thier name.
Please note that this happens over the course of a whole season, so not all this happens in the opening episode.
Well, I'll list what I DO like about the mini-series: (so far)
The Cylon "warriors" look like something that is designed for battle.
The Cylon "fighters" are designed far better, instead of a machine being piloted by machines (much less three), it is just one machine.
What I don't like:
Moore's complete raping of the time line.
Starbuck is not a woman.
Boomer is a big black man, not a short asian chick.
The Battlestar Galactica IS A FLAGSHIP, not some 50 year old crap heap.
Cylons aren't sexy blonde women, and as such, thier spines would not glow red during sex.
The Cylons were not built by humans.
If you're going to make a ship of the line (AKA Battleships/Carriers/HUGE WARSHIPS) you make thier computers harder than hell to access from the outside SO YOUR ENTIRE FLEET OF 120 BATTLESTARS AREN'T DESTROYED WITHOUT CAUSING ONE CYLON CASUALTY.
Secondly, I have a quote from this weeks "TV Guide":
"...But Moore hopes a new generation of sci-fi lovers will be blown away by the shows numerous sex scenes and it's state-of-the-art special effects.
Sex and Anger just might work..."
This shows how degraded Sci-fi producers see thier core audiences, as nothing but sex hungry explosion mongers. Unfortuneately the writers, producers, and directors all missed the main idea of the original BSG wasn't sex and anger, it was hope, something that sex and anger can never replace, onscreen or otherwise.
I can continue this list on forever, but the main idea is, what was shown tonight WAS NOT BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. It would have been fine if Moore changed the name of the ship to something else, changed the names of the big bad guys, and changed the names of the primary characters, I wouldn't nearly feel like an institution of Sci-Fi was being helplessly raped a second time. However, it is, and it was.
The part of Baltar is completely screwed up:
He was a very powerful corrupt POLITICIAN, not a computer programmer.
He wasn't seduced by a woman/machine, he was seduced by POWER that the cylons offered him.
For a time in the original series he even worked with the cylons on thier basestars, and was eventually captured by the Battlestar Galactica and put onto the prison ship following after the Galactica.
Oh, and not to ruin it for those of you who want to watch it:
One of the main characters is a Cylon, who either does a really good job of hiding it, or is a moron. This is not an original concept as seen by:
Star Trek: DS9 - The security cheif who went maverick
Star Trek: DS9 - The shapeshifter who looked like Bashir
Babylon 5: Garabaldi after he was kidnapped by the psicorps
Space: Above and Beyond: The "senator" in the last episode having information that the Chigs existed and invaded thier space
Matrix: Cypher
Secondly, Adama, as well as the rest of the crew and ships KNEW Earth existed, he didn't have to lie about it to "give people something worth living for". That was just lame.
It's just sad to see such a promising premise fall into such cliched Sci-Fi.
In short, the miniseries killed my inner child.
