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I wrote the following review for the various lists I'm on:

Let me preface this by saying I am one of the biggest Battlestar Galactica fans to ever come along the pike. I started watching it from Day 1 in 1978 (I was 13 and in the eighth grade) and caught every episode. Over the years I've watched the series several more times. I even muddled through the execrable “Galactica 1980” (though I don’t consider it part of “canon”).

I approached the Science Fiction Channel’s current efforts with both anticipation and foreboding. Of late there has been a tendency for Hollywood to take a perfectly good idea from the past and completely trash it. I’d heard the hype — a female Starbuck; the Cylons weren’t robots but human-looking androids — hence my trepidation. However, I promised myself I would approach this as a stand-alone project.

As a stand-alone it almost works.

The person or persons writing the script have some familiarity with the original. They even gave one of the flight leaders the name “Tag,” an obscure reference to a pilot in the original series (“They got Bunker! They got Tag!”). A few bars from the original theme were played during the flyby at the museum dedication.

The writers did not throw away the robotic Cylons. A mock up of the original centurion was mounted in the museum that was the Galactica, and the Colonial representative in the opening scenes was looking at the specifications for the same model. The female android mentions the model still exists because it has its uses. The newer Cylons look a bit more like a cross between the killer robot in “Judge Dread” and the battle droids from Star Wars. They still have their red, scanning “eye.” The Cylon fighters are no longer manned (robotted?) but are themselves robotic — with the same scanning red eye.

There is some effort to even make the physics right, though it is still pretty much Hollywood space. The ships have directional thrusters (which show as little gas jets around the nose of the vessel). The spacecraft still maneuver like aircraft though, so I’m not sure why they even made the effort.

The biggest disappointment was the Battlestar Galactica itself. The original ship had a gorgeous, lumpy, “I mean business” look. The current version, from what I could see of it (my eyes aren’t what they used to be and the ship is on the screen for only a few seconds at a time) looks more like a flying prophylactic (“ribbed, for her pleasure”). It is much smoother (except for the aforementioned ribs) and appears to have large, clear windows covering much of its surface. I could be wrong, but I need to get a longer, better look at the ship.

The interior is also a bit of a disappointment. The original ship looked like a warship inside; pipes and conduits lined the bulkheads and it had a definite military feel to it. The new version goes more Star Trek-y in its interior decoration, with a nod to the military (the old-style Navy squawk boxes mounted on the bulkheads were a nice touch). On the plus side, the writers have some experience with the Navy, as many of the orders given and jargon used by the crew rang truer to these old salty ears than some of the stuff I’ve heard pass for bridge chatter come out of Hollywood.

I’m not sure what to make of them turning the original character’s names into call signs. “Apollo” and “Starbuck” were, for me, those character’s names. They were memorable, too. I couldn’t tell you what the characters’ “real” names are in the newer version (though they were definitely American-sounding — I think Apollo’s was “Lee” and Adama’s first name is “William”). The female Starbuck also works to an extent. She’s definitely got the original’s carefree attitude, but this one has a chip on her shoulder a mile wide. The two-hour first episode had more sex in it than an episode of the Love Boat; the folks most likely to be watching this are people like me who began watching the original series when we were younger. We want action, dammit, not love scenes.

The female Starbuck also brings up another question: are they going to have a Cassiopeia character? This was my wife’s favorite character and one of the reasons she watched the new series with me. Of course, when I explained that a “Publican” (Cassiopeia’s profession in the original series) appeared to have been the equivalent of a call girl, she became noticeably upset…

The pacing of the first episode was slow, and the regular sex play didn’t help matters any. The special effects are definitely above the SciFi Channel’s regular fare, though not up to ILM standards. The producers appear to have taken a leaf from Babylon 5’s book and invested in decent CGI for most of the space scenes.

I’ll give the first episode a B overall. Hopefully things will pick up.