I’ve heard in a number of places about what a great show Battlestar Galactica is, so I finally rented the pilot mini-series last weekend. Gail and I have been
watching it over the last couple of days (and we’re not done yet), and I’m
very impressed. We both remember watching the original show back in the late ’70s;
it only played for one season (1978 — thanks Wikipedia),
but we both remember Starbuck, Apollo, Commander
Adama, and Boxie (annoying little kid and his weird robot dog), plus the Cylons
(with the cool red light bouncing back and forth across their face). The new
series is different but cool — Starbuck and Boomer are now female
characters (though Starbuck is still a cocky bastard; that I remember
from the original series), and some Cylons are human-looking, and the special
effects are obviously better. There are a few familiaries in the show — the
scientist Dr. Baltar looks and sounds a lot like Dr. Julian Bashir from Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine, and Colonel Tigh used to be on Cold Squad, a cop show set in
Vancouver that we used to watch. Also, one of the early scenes on Caprica is
shot at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver; I visited there when I was living
in Redmond back in ’91.

Now all I need to do is find someone who owns the first season on DVD and
borrow it! I could probably find them on the internet and download them, but
that would be illegal. Then again, if I were to download them, watch them once,
and then erase the files, how would that be different from borrowing the DVD
from someone?