Oct 15, 2009

[TV] Battlestar Galactica: Season 2

Battlestar Galactica: Season 2When Star Trek really hit it big, the series eventually dominated the airwaves. Let's face it - for the longest time the face of science fiction on television was Star Trek and it was odd to even consider a time without one version of the series actively airing.

Of course that eventually changed and the popularity of the show declined. That left a pretty significant void in the science fiction world. A few series came along here and there but there was nothing quite as epic as Star Trek was at its height.

Then came Ron Moore's reimagined Battlestar Galactica mini-series that inevitably got picked up as a regular TV series for the (then) SciFi Channel. It certainly got a lot of folks all excited and the reception to the first season was pretty impressive. So naturally the show was meant to continue on further given the strong support of a starved science fiction community.

The second of Battlestar Galactica picked up right after the thrilling conclusion of the first run. At the end of the first season, Adama had been shot by one of the Sharon "units" given she's actually a Cylon and naturally this threw the whole ship into chaos. That essentially becomes the main theme for the season - the increasing paranoia that anyone could be a Cylon infiltrator given the discovery that they could insert operatives that deep into the military chain of command.

Battlestar PegasusImage via Wikipedia

Later on, things get even messier when a second battlestar is discovered - the Battlestar Pegasus, under the command of the rather "assertive" Admiral Cain. Given she outranks Adama, she then takes over command of the fleet and naturally this leads to other complications.

Of course there are all the other preexisting plot threads like the search for Earth, President Roslin's fight with her cancer and lots and lots of Cylon goodness all around. Yes, it's certainly an action-packed season.

The tension throughout this season was pretty intense and kudos to the writers for crafting such a complex tale. More so, credit should just go out to everyone involved for making the show feel as real as possible - the vividness of how the show is depicted has always been a major plus point for me. And then of course there's the drums, which deserves to be tagged as a character all on its own.

Of course the addition of Admiral Cain (Michell Forbes) is an amazing character and one who was extreme enough to be interesting but not overly so to make her seem unrealistic. Naturally there's a lot of back story to be discovered behind her actions and the show naturally teases us with bits and pieces here and there in order to explain her complex history and how the Pegasus became the hard-edge ship that it was.

Existing character development remained pretty good too, more so for the slow reveals of additional Cylon models in the fleet. Every time a new Cylon was revealed, it pretty much felt like those other major points in science fiction like whenever Doctor Who goes through a regeneration or whenever the Star Trek crews encounter The Borg or something. It just has that kind of potential every time that it really makes for good entertainment, hehe.

There's a lot of good things to be said about this season despite the odd slow episode here and there. Plus the fact that the whole thing was expanded from how it was run in the previous season really helped things along as well.

Battlestar Galactica: Season 2 gets 4.5 Admiral Cain bitch fits out of a possible 5.


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