Battlestar Galactica 1978 vs BSG 2003 smackdown: Part II

No pretentiousness here, no sir...

Ronald D. Moore rebooted BSG in 2003 with a kick-ass pilot movie in two parts. They had some severe budget constraints, and couldn’t afford to even build robot cylon suits. Instead, they had to resort to CGI and using the robots sparingly. Instead, the Cylons were human androids. And rather than being the product of alien reptiles who run pizza parlour pedophilia rings, they were the rebellious product of humanity. 

The betrayal happens, same as before, except this time Baltar’s a computer programmer who undermines the Twelve Colonies defenses by accidentally introducing a virus into the defense systems. It shuts down all their advanced systems. Only the venerable old Battlestar Galactica has old fashioned manual controls, to avoid this exact scenario. It survives the intial Cylon attack, and again leads a rag tag fleet towards… Earth.

This time, Adama throws Earth out as a destination as a trope to inspire hope among the survivors, who are on the brink of despair. 

Moore once worked on an American aircraft carrier, and it shows here in the verisimilitude he conjures with all the military aspects of the show. They also try to portray space in a far more realistic manner than the original iteration, and even explored having no sound in space. Ultimately, they backed off that decision as it robbed scenes of impact, but they did emphasize logistics more than in the original program. 

Infamously, they presented every episode with the tag line, ‘and they have a plan.’ The Cylons, that is. It’s come out since that they didn’t, but David Eicke (co-creator) insisted on it. By the end of the show it was abundantly clear this was a load of horseshit. 

BSG’s first season was intense, gritty, politically nuanced, and a paradigm shifting sci-fi phenomenon. It tackled the War on Terror and other timely issues.

One episode, in which the human survivors tortured a Cylon ('Flesh and Bone'), was described by the show creators as something that will make who question who the good guys are. Seriously? The Cylons just wiped out over 12 billion or so people, and the traumatized survivors torture a Cylon infiltrator, and this is supposed to make them equivalent? I found this truly obnoxious; yes, torture is wrong, but let’s have a little perspective. Did some Holocaust survivors torture some camp guards after liberation? It’s possible, if they had the strength after being deliberately starved, but I don’t think that makes them the equivalent of the Nazis.

This was emblematic of the moral equivalence that lurked behind the show’s flashy sci-fi facade: one mustn’t judge, even in the face of genocidal enemies. It was diametrically opposed to the original show’s binary perspective. 

And yet, Moore and Eicke’s perspective has merit, in that, in politics, it’s all about compromise. There are always those who disagree and object, and you have to bring everyone (or almost everyone) along to move forward. Over the shows multiple seasons, politics were presented as a complex series of negotiations and compromises. And when one group pushed to far, another would rise in rebellion.

The 2003 Battlestar Galactica had a sleeker, more streamlined look than the original

The show was very much a repudiation of the restrictive narrative framework that Moore experienced writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Rather than feel good stories of future Utopia, here the hard realities of power politics, resource limits, and suffering were explored without limit. Instead of paragons of professionalism and virtue, the characters were complex, flawed, and deeply human. 

All of that was great. 

Far better than the original, no question.

However, by season 3 Moore had become disenchanted with the original direction and decided to rewrite several characters, turning them into Cylon infiltrators, mostly for shock value. 

I initially hated the change, but then thought, maybe he’ll do something really interesting with it.  In Moore we trust.

The midseason finale, where they found earth as a burnt out radioactive husk, would have made a fine series finale. 

But they kept going.

The ending we ultimately got threw out everything Moore and Eicke had espoused over the course of the show: the survivors unanimously agreed to throw away all their technology, fly their ships into the sun, and settle on what turned out to be the real earth, albeit in the distant past. Eventually, they would evolve into us. First, they would descend into primitivism and thousands of years of ignorance, savagery, disease, and early death. 

This is their righteous, back-to-the-trees happy ending. 

It was pathetic. 

First of all, the fleet always had a criminal element, and the idea that some of these psychopaths wouldn’t hide tech away so they could then take over and dominate the earnest, gullible pro-luddite masses is beyond belief. 

Previously, the show had always emphasized that you can’t get total agreement with large numbers (or even small numbers) of people on anything. Someone is always going to object, game the system, or find an angle that will allow them to dominate.

Second, Moore presents humans giving up all their tech to live off the land as a positive. 

Seriously? 

On an alien planet where they don’t know the plant life, what’s edible and what’s not, with a bunch of people used to living at the top of a complex, interdependent technological ecosystem of specialized workers, is insulting to the intelligence of the audience and an abandonment of the show’s earlier dedication to nuance.

The vast majority of the survivors would soon die from disease, all their knowledge would be lost, and it would take tens of thousands of years before our civilization evolved and even a small fraction of that knowledge would be regained. 

Even if you're anti-technology this seems like a very unrealistic and poorly thought out conclusion.

Rushed, limited by budget, run down by years of running a complex and largely superlative show, probably impacted the finale script. 

Who knows? 

One of the biggest mysteries of the reboot is why they wore their undershirts on the outside

Is Ron D. Moore a genius writer? Absolutely. BSG revitalized sci-fi, made it relevant and exciting and much watch TV. 

That does not mean, however, that his decisions were always flawless.

This was also during the beginning of internet culture, and plenty of viewers speculated on where the show was going. Moore wanted to keep people guessing, and according to some, altered the show's path to thwart their predictions. And yet, a properly set up show progresses logically, so some prediction is inevitably going to be correct. That shouldn’t change the show’s course. True? Not true? Hey, I read it on the internets, so...

Where the original Battlestar shone, for me, was in the big ideas: the lost survivors seeking haven on earth (very melancholic, wistful, and eerie), ruthless machines bent on exterminating organic sapients, and… controversially, the Beings of Light and good ol' Count Ibli-dibli. 

Moore’s BSG cut out the Beings of Light angle, as well as our classy count. This was one of the most fascinating elements of the original series: that higher beings with technology that could easily be mistaken for magic, existed; they even had an evil counterpart, possibly the devil himself, out to deceive and destroy the gullible. 

That really caught my imagination as a child.

Initially, Starbuck’s mysterious return in the re-imagined series hinted towards the Beings of Light, but this hope was dashed, and her return was left largely unexplored. 

The idea that civilization is cyclical was intriguing, and gave the show interesting places to go. 

Alas, it was not to be. 

For all its flaws, the cheesy 1978 version had wilder concepts than the reboot, which was more conservative and focused on verisimilitude. 

On an episode by episode basis, Moore’s version is far superior and easier to rewatch. The acting is phenomenal, the dialogue superb, the characters well rounded. 

But I miss the more intriguing elements of the 1978 version. I loved Count Iblis and his lightbulb nemeses. I quite liked the Imperious Leader, too; he was usually found squatting atop a ridiculously high plinth, which made me wonder what the heck he did up there all day, yet it was certainly iconic. When Baltar took the chair, I couldn't help but wonder how he got to the bathroom. 

I mistakenly thought the halo of mesh around the Imperious Leader's head was some kind of external neural net, but as it turns out, it was just a weird cape. 

Both shows fired my imagination, just in different ways.

Moore’s modernized iteration has influenced shows like The Expanse, and that’s a good thing. 

Battlestar Galactica 1978 vs BSG 2003: Part I

The theatre posteer for Battlestar Galactica; kind of unusual, in that we only see the back of the heroes' heads. That'd be a big no no if it was a CCP leader.

Which is better: BSG 1978 or BSG 2003? 

Most people would say this is no contest, like pitting Mark Zuckerberg against Muhammad Ali. 

Okay, Ali is dead, so The Zuck would win by default. 

But you know what I mean.

The first Battlestar is steeped in Mormon theology, as show creator Glen A. Larson grew up as a member of that faith. Larson is a bit of a controversial figure, and has been sued for ripping off The Rockford Files, and was once punched in the face by James Garner.

Garner’s an island of integrity in a sea of narcissistic Hollywood egomaniacs, so if he’s punching Larson I imagine he had his reasons. 

That said, Larson did come up with a remarkable show (among others, like Magnum: P.I.): Battlestar Galactica is totally bonkers 1978 TV: it starts out in a solar system of 12 human colonies (or twelve solar systems… the show constantly confuses solar systems with galaxies and is never clear about scale), they get wiped out when unctuous political aide Baltar betrays humanity to the Cylons at a peace treaty which turns out to be a trap. 

Munich, where the West sold out Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, looms over the narrative, and Larson jabs peaceniks repeatedly in the eye not with a finger but a rapier, depicting them as guileless fools who inevitably lead their people to total destruction. 

Gee, tell us what you really think, Larson. 

Larsy’s a Churchillian, and he rams this home with all the subtlety of a two-by-four to the face, over and over again.

The enemies of humanity, the Cylons, are the robot creations of a reptilian race, who were then destroyed by their own creation. Shades of the AI fears that are all the rage these days. Truly ahead of its time!

After the Twelve Colony Holocaust, the Galactica leads a rag tag fleet to… a gambling planet, a subterranean Los Vegas, populated by mysterious insectoids. The survivors party like it’s 1999, until it’s revealed they’re all being fattened up for the insect hosts to lay their eggs in. Shades of Alien. Again, ahead of it’s time. 

So humanity flees again, after a spectacular battle where two Viper pilots (naturally Starbuck and Apollo) fake out the Cylon command ship by pretending their multiple squadrons, getting the Cylons to then move closer to the planet, which then conveniently explodes.

The original cast was quite large (Colonel Tigh isn't even included here), and it was going to be cut back severely for Season 2, but the show got the axe anyway.

Originally, the show was meant to be a series of TV movies. The first was actually shown in Canada in the movie theatres. After that, network executives decided that rather than the planned TV movies, they’d turn it into a weekly program. 

Well, Larson hadn’t prepared for that at all. Everything then had to be rejigged, scripts hastily thrown together, and budget stretched over 24 episodes. 

This is one of the reasons why the original BSG descended into cheesy planet of the week ridiculousness (as if it wasn't already ridiculous enough) and ship bound episodes. 

There are a number that truly shine, even if they don’t always make much sense. There’s a rip off of The Guns of Navarone in spaaaaace (planets rotate, guys), the return of Admiral Cain, and the arrival of Count Iblis. 

Those are my favourites.

The dialogue across the series is often meh. That's understandable, as it was thrown together in a rush. But it means the episodes haven't aged well. There are other, even older sci-fi shows that still stand up in terms of the writing, even if the effects don’t, and are watchable to this day. 

Battlestar Galactica 1978… not so much.

Next: The 2003 reboot by Ronald D. Moore and David Eicke