[Malkyte]

THE STORY- Since the basic plot has remained the reasonably the same strong story originally created, the question here is not the story itself, but whether, was the execution of said story any good. This would include the portrayal of characters, the style, the tone and the settings presented to illustrate the story. For it is these details that make up the core, soul and spirit of any story. While the overall idea and tone of this mini had its moments, numerous inconsistencies and contradictions in the details, not to mention pacing and a few other things, kept it from being a truly good piece of work.

Many consider Steven Spielberg, to be a master storyteller. His eye for framing a story onto the screen, has created numerous classics that have inspired many to want to become filmmakers in their own right. In Saving Private Ryan, the viewer is sucked into the landing on the beaches of Normandy. The bullets whizzing by, being pulled underwater and then back up again. The viewer can nearly feel the bullets. But it feels so real that one believes they are there, trying to reach shore with all of the other soldiers. In Shindler’s List, we are moved, disgusted and in some cases ashamed, at the brutality and monstrosity and of the humanity of what took place during those times, all framed masterfully by Spielberg.

So what does that have to do with this mini? Everything! Some might say that you cannot compare the big budget movies of Spielberg to that of a made for cable movie, with perhaps a tenth of the budget. They would be right, if we were talking about the budget, but we are not. We are talking about whether the storyteller can convey the story in a convincing manner. Can they frame the story in a way that the scale and scope of the drama comes through in a convincing manner? Have they managed to show the human drama, the tragedy and the triumphs in a convincing and original manner? In that respect, the size of the budget should not matter, whether it is for the big screen or the small screen. So the question is whether this mini achieved these goals. The answer to this is a resounding, no.

Let’s start with the annihilation of the humans. There are 12 colonial worlds, with billions of people. When the attack begins, we see one world; we see some mushroom clouds, a couple of TV cameras taken out, and Baltar’s house blown away. Even in the TV camera outside, there is no one except for the reporter. Not one person roaming around in a state of panic or confusion trying to determine what is going on. There is no sense of the scale or magnitude of what is going on. The human species is about to be completely destroyed, and yet it is never truly conveyed, except through words. While words can be powerful, in a movie it is the images that create a great deal of the power. When 9/11 happened (which was supposedly the emotions trying to be reached here), I was glued in front of my TV, watching in horror, shock and sadness at the images of the towers, of the plane crashing into the tower, of the policemen and firefighters covered in dust and noticeable shaken and beaten, and the huge crowds of people walking away from the destruction. Those images conveyed the toll and the human tragedy that had transpired. There was a true sense of the devastation and we all felt it! There were more times that I can remember, where the images had me choked up. There weren’t any images even remotely presented in the mini to convey the sheer magnitude of devastation on the worlds or to the humans themselves. While I was moved and even cried during the moments of 9/11, I had absolutely no emotion to the flat, distant and improperly scaled images presented in this mini.

The Cylons. We know that they turned on their creators and disappeared into space. Why did they come back? It is obvious that they have been covertly amongst the humans for years, so why do they announce their return by blowing up the station in the beginning? The scene had absolutely no relevancy as presented. They designed their new models to look exactly like their creators, whom they apparently hate with every fiber of their being. This is a bit contradictory. They create their new models after the things they hate the most? In four hours, virtually nothing is revealed about the Cylons or their reasoning. Where are they? Where are the nukes coming from? Was there really no advanced warning of them arriving in the system? And if they did manage to shut down all computers and communications of the fleet, like they did on a smaller scale with the viper squadron, how did anyone find out that the entire fleet was destroyed? Again, there is no sense of the reason behind the unprovoked attack. Virtually no sense of who and what the Cylons now are. While these questions are not a problem for a fan of the original, where do new viewers get their answers from? These are things that should have been addressed in far more detail in this mini, for the sake of good storytelling. While I can see that the idea was to set up the viewer for the series they hope to get, they still have to tell a complete story in the mini. They didn’t achieve that. —With that said, I found the Cylons to behave far more humanlike, then the supposed real humans.

The Colonials. Except for a few, I found the humans to be clichéd melodramatic characters, mainly behaving like flat unemotional robots. A day after the entire human race is nearly wiped out, they cheer after a speech given by Adama? They have all just lost all or most of their families, yet no one is even remotely curious, horrified, shocked, hysterical about the families and loved ones they may have left behind? They are not remotely surprised, shocked or concerned that the Cylons return after forty years? Like the distant feeling of the destruction of the colonies, so was my feeling of the colonials themselves, distant, passionless and unreal. After they escape the Cylons for the moment and they are showing the different characters settle into their lives, not one is shown being reflective or emotional about what just happened to them. Not one! It’s as if they just had a bad day at the office and now they were going to rest and relax. The creators of this mini wanted us to relate to the characters of this mini as they were supposed to realistically demonstrate human emotions and their tribulations. I can honestly say, that these are not the sort of humans I am familiar with. The humans I know show far more emotion, especially in a crisis and tragedy of such magnitude. Perhaps, this was Mr. Moore’s idea of the colonials being different from Earthly humans. I found myself not caring whether they lived or died, especially the first night. In fact, there were several instances were I felt that the whole mini was just a simulation run by the Cylons to study human behavior. I felt like all the characters were programmed Cylons, which reflected their interpretations and understandings of human beings. While close, not quite what they really are. This would explain a lot of the cold and flat emotions throughout the mini.

Society and the settings. As I feared, this far away civilization looked way too much like our own. I find it incredibly hard to believe that a society that has grown up in an entirely different history and culture and is obviously far more advance then we are, would look so identical to our own, use the same exact language as our own, and wear the same exact clothes as our own. I felt like I was watching Earth in the not so distant future. Perhaps this would work fine if it was, but it is clear that this is suppose to be a far away society that considers the existence of Earth as mere legend. If you consider the differences in societies and cultures here on Earth, that have grown independently from one another and the near contrasting differences they possess, it is highly improbable that a society far removed from Earth, would be so similar. Not very realistic.

The ships themselves had problems. In certain scenes, the Galactica’s hanger seemed eerily quite. No engine humming or for that matter any kind of equipment sounds, just the crew talking. While this seems to be a bit nit picky, it all ties into the idea of realism and believability, which was the intended goal of this mini. I am very capable of suspension of disbelief. But when I am told that this is going to be realistic and true to real life, I will be expecting that. In most cases, that didn’t happen. The hanger of Colonial One was even worse. It had more of a feeling of a sound stage, with a concrete floor, then that of a hanger onboard a spaceship. – With that said, I felt that the Galactica’s command center worked well enough. It took a couple of viewings to grow on me, but it definitely worked better then I had thought when I first saw the pictures. On a slight side note, I thought it was hilarious that all the paper in this world had the corners at an angle. I suppose this was an attempt to make the Colonials different from Earth, while all it did for me is to realize just how superficially desperate that looked. Why would anyone cut off the corners of their paper? Logically, you have less space to write on, plus it probably costs more to produce such paper to begin with, due to an extra step in its production. Realistic?