Only The BeGinning

I recently watched the 2003 Battlestar Galactica pilot. It was called a miniseries then, but the three hours of screen-time were clearly designed to set up a series. It's got to be one of the best openings any sci-fi series has ever had. (Better than Lost, which came not much later.  But Lost improved upon its pilot.)

It took what had been a fairly minor, even silly series and creates a look and tone that's remarkable.  The ships and cities are a mix of the familiar and the strange, a reimagined world that can have a realistic and still futuristic story (though the octagonal paper is sort of silly).

It's quite a plot.  The Cylons are figures in the past, from a war that's barely remembered.  But now they're back, planning to--and almost succeeding in--destroying the human race.  The best idea the series has is they're skinjobs--they look like and can blend into the human population.  They've already infiltrated and have used human technology to blow up most of the human population.  Now what's left (50,000 people out of billions) have to make quick and tough decisions just to stay alive.  They have to fight or run, neither of which they have much practice in.

There are plenty of surprises along the way, including the first few humanoid Cylons (of 12 models) revealed. In fact, the final shock comes at the end, where the Cylons come to save their compatriot Doral (who may have seemed to be falsely charged, but is a Cylon) and we find out one of the models is Boomer.

We see the genesis of the main characters, but most of them spring forth full-blown here.  Commander Adama and Laura Roslyn are both forced to rise to the challenge, even as we see they'll be fighting for control.  Gaius Baltar, who always thinks first of himself, is already stuck in a situation where he has to hide what he knows and also may be going crazy (try to think of a reimagined Lost In Space where you take Dr. Smith seriously).  Starbuck and Apollo have their relationship, and Starbuck is talented but feisty while Apollo has to follow his own path.  And so on.  Even Dualla and Billy (who looks about twelve) have something going on.

By the end of the pilot, they've set up the basic situation, where a relentless, shadowy, powerful force is going after the humans, humans who have a small advantage (they can use FTL to hide) and now a mission--seeking "Earth." The series will deal with big issues like law, terrorism, war, religion and so on.  Not always that well.  The show lasted 75 episodes and it's hard to keep up the tension all the way through. So it took some chances, which didn't all pay off.  Grounding the show and starting again midway through stalled the momentum and it never fully returned.  Normalizing the Cylons, showing a lot from their point of view, and having them regularly interact with the humans, removed a lot of the mystery and excitement.  And, both looking back and watching the pilot, the whole ending, with the Final Five, Hera, in-head Six and so on, doesn't really work.  It seems grafted on, something to create new tension but not organic to the series.

Maybe it would have been better if the producers--along with the Cylons--had a plan, and knew the whole arc from the start.  They could have done a series with 25 or 50 episodes, and we'd have a classic series on par with the pilot.  But even if the show weakened as it went along, it was a fine achievement.  No matter where they went, it would have been hard to pay off satisfactorily such a great set-up.