Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome

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Battlestar Galactica Blood and Chrome
By Hervé St-Louis
February 9, 2013 - 17:12

Studios: Universal Cable Productions
Writer(s): David Eick, Glen A. Larson, Michael Taylor, Bradley Thompson, David Weddle
$37.99 US
Starring: Luke Pasqualino, Ben Cotton, Jill Teed
Directed by: Jonas Pate
Produced by: David Eick, Jonas Pate, Michael Taylor
Running Time: 97 Minutes
Release Date: February 19, 2013
Distributors: Universal Studios

Years before the Cylons betrayed the armistice with the humans from the twelve colonies, they waged war. Young pilot William Adama has been attached to the mighty Galactica. He is one of the best pilots from his academy. But when assigned to a run of the mill mission with a demoralized co-pilot and a computer engineer with a secret, Adama may have to rise to the challenge and stop the escalating war between the Cylons and humans.

“We still hate you” is the one quote that I remember from this direct to video compilation of the prequel to the rebooted version of Battlestar Galactica that played as a series of ten episodes on the Web in the fall 2012 before being collected into this one compilation. This series has been years in the making, with many hopefuls hoping this pilot would revive Battlestar Galactica as a regular television series and might ignite some fervour in possible upcoming films on the franchise. Being completely new to this series, I didn’t know what to expect.

“We still hate you” might have been the ending quote from this pilot but it wasn’t the thrust of the story. A game of cat and mouse, aircraft dog fights in space between humans and enigmatic androids were the real point of the story. Because I totally lack any background in things Battlestar Galactica, I know that I didn’t clue in to half of the references and the inserted by the show’s creators. Hence, I didn’t really enjoy myself as it was a serviceable story where the predictable young prodigy had to prove that he was more than a pilot trained with virtual reality displays and could also think quickly.

The purpose of this pilot was to explore the possibility of a prequel to Battlestar Galactica based on a young Adama during his formative years, before he became the trustworthy commander of the last human fleet in the universe. To symbolise the prequel effect, the visual feature an eerie overexposed flash lighting that replace a visual effect such as sepia colouring. The visual effects related to the spaceships and sets were of course cool, as most of the original set used by the crew of the television series has been dismantled. The crew working on this pilot had to reconstruct much of the old material digitally. It’s a lot of work. Let’s just hope it’s enough to revive the franchise.

Rating: 7/10