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| Battlestar Galactica | | (And When Low-Budget Sci-Fi Becomes High Art) | | 01 June 2006 | | While we enjoyed the first series of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica enough to buy the DVD and wave it in front of all our friends, our inner jury remained 'out' on the biggest question of all - was it better than Babylon 5? The climax of BSG Season II, which finished last month on SKY, has left us in no doubt - it is better than B5 - and the episode Downloaded is the finest piece of dramatic art we have ever seen.
Like Babylon 5 (and in contrast to Star Trek) a significant component of Battlestar Galactica is the on-going story arc, which draws you in to an emotional relationships with the characters and storylines. Downloaded was a pivotal moment in this - so much so, that we finished the episode in a state of shock, and afterwards quite literally cried ourselves to sleep. It was, quite simply, one of those things that takes your soul apart piece by piece, and then rebuilds it in ways you never knew existed.
And yet, ironically, this was an episode that so nearly didn't get made at all. The producers had run out of money, and were considering spinning-together a "clips" show to make-up the season. In the end, they conceived a low-budget alternative - an episode that would be set on terra firma with no elaborate space-battles or futuristic sets - just writers writing and actors acting. This is not to suggest that it wasn't beautifully shot and produced - it was both, and the evocation of a familiar world, made alien by nuclear holocaust, was both haunting and (as it should be) ever-so-slightly disturbing.
But, in the end, what so moved us were just exactly these simple things - the voices and the faces of the characters for whom we managed to suspend disbelief so completely; and way the plot-line was not so much twisted, as shattered and re-forged. It might not have had space-battles... or laser-torpedoes... and nobody traveled through time to rescue the girl... but it was art. |
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The point is we are all connected... through love... through loneliness... through one lamentable lapse in judgment!
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