Battlestar Galactica is back!!!
Battlestar Galactica is one of those rare shows that actually are better than the hype! Right from the mind blowing pilot, this series is one hell of a roller coaster ride and is on route to a glorious finale in the 4th and final season that has just started two weeks ago..
The plot is - Humanity, in BSG, consists of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. A long time back, they created robot slaves called Cylons to do their work. The Cylons eventually revolted and a bloody war ensued; then an armistice was signed and the Cylons left the Twelve Colonies. The pilot begins with the Cylons nuking the twelve colonies, thus killing billions of humans and virtually annihilating human civilization. The only survivors are about 50,000 people who were in space at the time. These survivors band together along with the only surviving warship, Battlestar Galactica, under the aegis of Commander William Adama and President Laura Roslin, and over the next three seasons they set out to escape the Cylons and to find the fabled 13th Colony called Earth.
What sets this series apart form others is the way events in BSG eerily resemble events that occur on our Earth. Suicide bombers, prisoners of war, religious fundamentalists, "racial" profiling- BSG has them all. BSG is bold enough to display the war in Iraq through the prism of the resistance movement- the humans in the show settle on a planet which the Cylons later invade, occupy and govern in conjunction with a puppet government. And the humans begin an insurgency and use suicide bombers against the Cylons!
BSG is definitely better than several much hyped TV shows like Heroes, Lost, House et al. With a taut storyline, some really great actors and cool SFX, it sure rocks! BSG is a study of sorts of humanity in times of adversity- of people who become leaders and of others who fall apart. And even the Cylons are fleshed out characters- some of them even being good! But the true star of the show is James Callis who plays Dr. Gaius Baltar, a brilliant scientist whose only objective is self-preservation, who is possibly TV's most interesting villain.
IMHO, Battlestar Galactica is one of the most intelligent TV series we have had in a long time- along with Rome and Dexter. And all that remains is to see whether the survivors manage to reach Earth. Hopefully, they will. So say we all!
And frak the Cylons! :)