"Battlestar Galactica" Cuts the Cheese. That's a Good Thing.

I was a child of "Star Wars." That's pretty obvious with an Epinions moniker like "JediKermit." And even when I was a pup, I could see that "Battlestar Galactica" was just a "Star Wars" ripoff. My next door neighbor Greg liked the tv show a lot though, so I was roped into playing Starbuck to his Apollo, and we'd go chasing after Cylons. So I knew the show by default (and bullying) but never really liked it.

Nearly 30 years later, I'm loving "Battlestar Galactica." I just picked up the miniseries which kicked off the new television series on the Sci Fi channel, and I'm hooked.

The basic premise of the series is unchanged from its old school roots: bad robot guys named Cylons wipe out 12 human space colonies. The survivors from the colonies join a convoy led by a "Battlestar" (a really big spaceship), and strike out to find their mythical homeworld, "Earth." This time, the Cylons are robots indistinguishable from humans, and have spies among us. There are other Cylon soldiers who look like an updated version of the clunky 70's robots, but most of them look just like us. Only some of them are exponentially hotter.

The original series served this premise well, and was led by Lorne Green's moralizing Commander Adama, and the young heroes had catchy names like Starbuck, Apollo, and Boomer. There was a Muppety robot dog, Daggit, and the ragtag group of ships were basically the same stock footage every time you saw them.

The new version has updated the special effects, the acting, the drama, and racheted up the paranoia and tension to an unbelieveable level. What was once a cult show seems accessible to all, and I found myself loving it from the opening minutes of the show.

Commander Adama is now played by James Edward Olmos, a veteran leader estranged from his family and ready to retire the Battlestar Galactica and hang up his own uniform when the Cylons attack. We've seen this world-weariness before, but Olmos does a fantastic job with it.

His son, played by Jamie Bamber, is one of the heroes of the series, and his Apollo is much more alive and enjoyable than the 70's version was.

Starbuck, the character played by Dirk Benedict back in the day, is now the very hot and very funny Katee Sackhoff. Headstrong, a gambler, and a heck of a pilot, her run-ins with the command officers are enjoyable and believeable for the character, and are more "Maverick" than Benedict could ever pull off.

A new intriguing character is the President of the Twelve Colonies, played by Mary McDonnell. She was the Secretary of Education when the Cylons wiped out the capital city, and her promotion to president as the highest ranking survivor is one that the military finds hard to swallow. Her strength and dignity in her unwanted but necessary office was one of the more powerful parts of this miniseries.

There are many other memorable characters here--the Cylon beauty who's tormenting a traitorous scientist with a conscience...a Cylon who doesn't know she's a Cylon...you also get to know the "below decks" people--the enlisted men and others who might not play a big heroic part in the saga, but who are indispensable to the quest.

This miniseries hooked me. I'll be checking out the first season DVDs next. If you're a fan of science fiction in general, and want to see something new and yet something relevant to our country's current situation...check out "Battlestar Galactica." They've cut the cheese. In the best of ways.