"Space Minutes!"

  Season 1, Episode 1 - '33'

DISCLAIMER: This episode was viewed by John and Aaron before the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Back in 2003 or 2004 , after the brilliant job Ronald D Moore and his team did with the mini-series I welcomed the news that it had been commissioned as a full TV series. It was respectful to the original and felt ‘current’ and ‘relevant’ without losing the core of the original (last of Humanity/rag-tag fleet on the run from ‘robots’ while looking for Earth).

The mini-series was shown in the U.S. first in December 2003. Obviously, they couldn’t make the series to air straight after. Unexpectedly, the series was first broadcast in the U.K. on satellite channel Sky One, thanks to them co-funding the series with the Sci-Fi Channel. This was unusual back in 2004 and I thought it was a great ‘frak you’ to the U.S. because the series premiered in this country, as usually U.K. broadcasters used to show American TV shows months or even YEARS after their US screenings (a similar thing happened back in the 1990’s with Channel 4 showing the last few episodes of Babylon 5 Season 2 months before the U.S.) Thankfully, these days it’s either the day after or the same week. I remember reading at the time that Ronald D Moore had asked U.S. fans to be patient and not torrent the U.K. screenings! We got it in October 2004 and the States saw it in January 2005.

So there I was, in front of my TV ready and hoping the series could keep up the quality of the mini-series…

As Aaron and I sat down with our bowl of popcorn and beverage of choice (him: Irn Bru, me: Pepsi Max) to watch the first episode of the series proper of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. I had to warn him of a ‘for those wanting to avoid the football score – look away now’ moment at the beginning of each episode in a ‘This Episode’ homage to Space: 1999 (probably the only good thing about that series!). Aaron dutifully covered his eyes until the ‘dum-dumily-dum’ music ran over this montage of exciting clips. I think that they are mild spoilers, but when I originally watched the first season on Sky 1 I remember doing the same, after a few episodes and had to ask my Mum to tell me when it was over.

As the DVD loads, we are confronted with one of the WORST screen menus either of us have seen. Badly photoshopped together characters, with the logo and a random explosion. It’s just a still image and there isn’t even any music. It’s obvious that Playback weren’t that interested or aware of BSG’s popularity when they put together Season 1. This reminds me of an infamous DVD menu for the series Space: Above and Beyond that has an image of the Babylon 5 space station! At least it’s a ‘special feature’ having a menu, there are still DVDs/Blu-rays to this day without any form of menu!

The one where: The Cylon’s catch-up with the Fleet every 33 minutes. And Helo didn’t die when he stayed behind on Caprica.

Best moments:

·         JOHN: Seeing that close up of Helo’s radiation drugs reminded me of a similar case of anti-radiation drugs from the Doctor Who story ‘The Daleks,.’ when William Hartnell fluffs his line and calls them “Anti-radiation gloves.”

·     Tigh: “Yes, we're tired. Yes, there is no relief. Yes, the Cylons keep coming after us time after time after time. And yes, we are still expected to do our jobs!”

 We both enjoyed the tension and the anguish from Lee and Kara when they have to ‘shoot down’ the Olympic Carrier. One problem we had with it, and maybe it’s us being picky, but we never see if anyone is still onboard. We, the viewer see the ship, and it’s windows but no one’s there. The dialogue from Lee and Kara implies they’ve seen faces at the windows. After reading up on this episode, it turns out the producers decided to edit out shots of the innocent passengers to give some ambiguity to Lee’s decision.

·         Aaron likes Roslin’s whiteboard with the number of survivors, but feels it a bit ‘low-tech.’

Thoughts:

·         Aaron thinks that Head-Six is a figment of Baltar’s imagination.

·         Why does Helo accept so easily that ‘Boomer’ came back for him?

·         It’s great to see Helo again – but he wasn’t supposed to last beyond the Miniseries, so he gets his own mini-adventure on Caprica. Aaron hopes he gets to catch-up with the Fleet at some point soon.

·         JOHN: One thing that hadn’t occurred to me until re-watching this episode was that the Colonials have hours and minutes that are exactly like those of Earth. The clock showing the minutes 5 to 60 instead of 1 to 12 could just be because it’s a clock on a military vessel and clocks on Caprica (and other Colony’s show 1 to 12?) The clock with a hand-written label with ‘33’ written on it is a great idea.

 

JOHN: Using ‘Earth minutes’ fits perfectly with Ronald D Moore’s aim to make the series more down-to-Earth and accessible to casual viewers. As much I liked the world-building of the original series of them calling things like ‘Yarens’ ‘Centons’ etc it’d just be laughable in a modern series and would take the viewer out of the drama.

With that in mind, does this mean that Caprica (as the Capitol Planet) has a rotation of 24 hours a day?

AARON: I guess Moore’s decision to use days, hours and minutes like on Earth is to add to the prophecy of Earth being the 13^th Colony. It makes sense that the 13^th Colony would find a planet similar to the 12 Colonies.

Cylon-Occupied Caprica:  In the spirit of a drinking game, we noticed that the caption appeared on screen stating this is ‘Cylon-Occupied Caprica’ every time we had a scene with Helo, (starting on his 6^th day on Caprica) we decided to keep a count of them.

So for this episode we counted the number of ‘CoC’s’ as:  1

Total in the series so far: 1

NEXT TIME: ‘Water’

Thanks to Kevin Hiley for the Captrica Experiment logo and Amy Isles for drawing the C.o.C. tally.

Battlestar Galactica: The Mini-Series

The Caprica Experiment – The Prequel!

A number of years ago a couple of friends and I were talking at work about what acclaimed TV shows/films we hadn’t seen but wanted to. Some of the replies, ‘The Usual Suspects’ (from me – I’ve seen now, though), ‘Babylon 5’, ‘Fringe’ ‘Crime Traveller’ (only kidding, no one said that…) and the re-imagined 'Battlestar Galactica'. This last one was an admission from Aaron Small. He went on to explain that he’d bought the DVDs but not got round to watching them (not even a snippet of the mini-series).

A few weeks later a film night was arranged with myself, Aaron Small and Dan Barnes (who was also part of that conversation). We gathered to watch two of my favourite films that the others hadn’t seen, namely Peter Jackson’s first feature film, ‘Bad Taste’ and Ed Wood Jr’s ‘masterpiece’ ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space.’ (That’s a subject for a different blog!) Anyway, the night was a success with lots of sarky comments at the films.

Shortly after that we decided to do it again but watch something that was ‘good’ – that was to be the re-imagined 'Battlestar Galactica'. Perhaps even make it a regular thing and watch the whole four seasons. Dan had only watched the first season and for various reasons hadn’t carried on or got back to it. Both Dan and I wanted Aaron to experience the brilliance of the series’ writing/performances. I had watched the whole series 3 years before in a month-and-a-half-marathon with my wife Amy, so  I too wanted to share the brilliance of the complete series with my two friends. (And see what I’d remembered… or forgotten!)

I was slightly worried and excited at the same time when I heard that they were going to ‘re-imagine’ 'Battlestar Galactica'. Like most people my age (mid-40’s) in this country I had grown up watching the original series and 'Galactica' 1980 on ITV in the mid-80’s and then repeated in the 90’s on BBC2.

I had fond memories and a nostalgic love of it and could ignore the campier aspects of the series like Boxey, Muffitt 2, and Space Disco sets/costumes etc.

I did have hope though that Ronald D. Moore was behind it, who had written some of the best 'ST: TNG' and 'Deep Space Nine' episodes. This was a chance for him to show a civilisation-ending event in a ‘modern’ or ‘realistic’ approach which the original series never could (mind, it was still a bleak scenario back then, but the character’s couldn’t react like real people to the apocalypse as much).

So there was less chance of being camp. One other major change was changing the gender of Starbuck and Boomer. This made as most of the main pilots from the original were all male (yes, there was Sheba, played by Anne Lockhart but she wasn’t a major character like the pilot duo of Starbuck and Apollo). Changing Boomer, too made sense with the balancing of the main characters. Plus, the role of female combat pilots had increased since 1979.

Naturally, a lot of fans were opposed to the idea of Starbuck being ‘a woman.’ I was prepared to give her a chance.

I first watched the Mini-Series with my friends Andrew Crines and Kevin Hiley on DVD, shortly after the U.S. broadcast. It had got amazing viewing figures and feedback in the States, which meant there was a chance it would become a TV series. The three of us had grown up watching the original and were impressed with the look of the Mini-Series and how it was ‘realistic’ but still accessible and ‘felt like’ Battlestar Galatica.

Fast-forward a few years, Aaron, Dan and I us enjoyed the mini-series immensely. Aaron was glad that he’d finally been able to unwrap the seal on his DVD boxset!

Plans were made to arrange further evenings to continue with the series, but alas ‘real life’ got in the way and they never happened.

Over the next year or so, the three of us took redundancy from our employers, Dan moved away. But we stayed in touch. However, for practical reasons when I suggested to Aaron that he and I continued with 'BSG' on our own (with Dan’s blessing) it had to fit around my new job, my children’s bed time and his college course. This time I wanted to record Aaron’s reactions and thoughts to the enveloping story of 'BSG' against my half-remembered views from my marathon. I felt enough time had passed for myself to have forgotten certain scenes or shots or even plot-twists to enjoy a second time round.

That’s where the idea for this blog come into existence. I’d seen and read others detailing their viewings of series to newcomers and putting their experiences online and I’d enjoyed reading their new experiences (most notably ‘Wife in Space’ with the author watching all of the 'Doctor Who' Classic Series with his non-fan wife).

To keep the impetus going we decided to carry-on where we left-off and begin this blog from the first episode of the TV series ’33.’ We privately re-watched the mini-series in our own time to jog our memories of what had previously happened.

Which means this first blog post is a summary rather than a commentary on the events on the mini-series. As our blogs/reviews continue we will contrast my memories and changed opinions (if any) versus Aaron’s newcomer’s surprises and guesses (however wild and inaccurate!) as to what could happen next or how things could develop for the characters.

Oh, a SPOILER WARNING… I’ve approached writing this blog on the assumption that anyone reading this will either have, like me watched the series already or like Aaron will have watched the episode(s) before we post the write-up. We’ll give people a heads-up to what the next blog will cover to give you time to catch up. This approach will allow us to discuss in fine detail what happens to CENSORED or how CENSORED ends up CENSORED.

Battlestar Galactica – The Mini-Series (2003)

Please note that I won’t be spending a lot of time with a synopsis that’s scene-by-scene of the episodes, giving just an overview of the story and will refer to specific scenes where our discussions lead to.

The 12 Colonies have had 40 years of peace after the war with the Cylons (as it says in the opening info dump). We’re introduced to Tricia Helfer as a new kind of Cylon that definitely haven’t seen before…

Q & A with Aaron:

John Isles: What was your favourite moment(s)?

Aaron Small: The space station blowing up at the beginning. ‘Boom!’ You can’t get a much bigger beginning. It easily establishes what the Cylons are up to. (continues) I also like the way the card game between Starbuck and Col. Tigh shows the tension and dislike between the characters that could be a great set up for future stories when the TV series starts.

JI: Who’s your favourite character?

AS: Chief Tyrol. I like the way that he’s a funny, smart, working class man. It shows the events from all walks of life.

JI: Yeah, the Original BSG featured only the officer class/military, even Tyrol is part of the military he’s not an officer and party to the big decisions.

Caprica Six whilst walking through the market on Caprica asks if she can hold a baby. She seems fascinated by it. She comments on how fragile it’s neck feels. When the baby’s mother is distracted, she snaps it’s neck.

JI: How do you feel about Six snapping the baby’s neck? I like to think that even though the scene is deliberately ambiguous, that she does it as an act or mercy because she knows what’s going to happen and doesn’t want the child to suffer from a nuclear war.

AS: I can’t make my mind up. It looks like she’s doing it to show her power over life and death. But you’re right it could be either way. That’s clever writing already.

Other highlights:

We both liked the ‘Colonial March’ played onscreen at the decommissioning ceremony is the original BSG’s theme tune. Clever way to work it in with it being respectful, but fun also (the Galactica is being retired as it’s the oldest Battlestar left in the fleet). In fact, they used this in the original series too when there was an award ceremony in the episode Take the Celestra.

It’s also nice to see the original Cylon’s (on display), next to the original series Viper.

AS: I like how they can’t use the 2^nd launch bay because it’s been turned into a Gift Shop. Nice touch of humour.

JI: One thing that has changed since I originally watched this back in 2003 was that I wasn’t a parent. Seeing it now, the scene where Laura Roslin meets the orphan girl on the Agro-ship. I empathised more with the little girl this time. Especially, when the surviving civilian ships had to leave behind the ones that were with FTL (Faster than Light) drives, and the girl was going to be left behind to die.

AS: Great ingenuity from Starbuck when she ‘crashes’ her Viper into Apollo’s to enable them both to get back to the Galactica.

Edward James Olmos earns his fee in the scene that’s a funeral for the Colonies. Motivating them and giving hope with a lie about ‘Earth.’ Without bashing or comparing this re-imaging against the Original series this is another masterstroke about making it ‘realistic.’ It’s something that fits better with this post-9-11 world we live in. Something that I know will resonate throughout the rest of the series.

Also, it gave the world one of the series most iconic quotes, “So say we all.” Which I believe Olmos improvised.

Another point hinted at, but never explicitly apparent in the Original Series is one of needing children to carry on the Human Race. In that they knew that other’s survived a few possible worlds inhabited by people who left the 12 Colonies a long time ago and of course, the ‘13^th Tribe – Earth.’ This time round as far as they are concerned they are THE LAST of Humanity.

Which leads me to comment on Laura Roslin telling Commander Adama that they have to ‘start breeding’ or the Human Race will die out.

I’m sure there are other things, which we’ll bring up during our viewing of the following seasons…

For now, “So say we all!”

NEXT TIME: Episode 1 – ‘Space Minutes!’ (A.K.A. ‘33’)