Sunday, November 11, 2012

Review of Battlestar Gallactic:Blood and Chrome

A version of this post appeared on my R.B. Davidson web-site.

The new web series, Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome, is fracking awesome.

Debuting on Friday, November 10th on YouTube’s Machinima channel, the prequel’s first two ten-minute episodes dives immediately into the life of young pilot William Adama, who later becomes Admiral Bill Adama as fans of the excellent Battlestar Galactica know him.

The series opens at the height of the Cylon’s first War with the colonies where we meet Adama as he completes his Viper training and ships out to join the fight. His first assignment is on the Battlestar Galactica when it part of a relatively new fleet of warships.

A 1 minute trailer for those too busy for a 10 minute episode.

Throwing Adama directly into the war provides the show with an amazingly fast pace that keeps the action moving without sacrificing character development. Adama’s first mission in the war is supposed to be a milk run, a safe and routine cargo transport with orders to avoid enemy contact. This goes quickly wrong and lands Adama, his reluctant copilot, and a woman with secret orders from the Admiralty in the middle of a very important and dangerous secret mission.

Blood and Chrome is smartly written with a production quality rivaling those of major movies. The Galactica feels like an enormous ship in a major war filled with soldiers tired of fighting. The young Adama’s gung-ho ready-for-war enthusiasm is well-balanced by combat veterans that do their jobs with weary resignation and appropriate caution.

The web series is designed so that, should it prove popular, it can be re-edited into a movie that would be shown on SyFy in early 2013. No announcements have been made of turning Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome into a cable t.v. series like the original BattleStar Galactica. However it is clear this new show has a real possibility of developing into a long running, high-quality series. If you like epic science fiction, I heartily recommend Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome.

Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome episode 1. Nothing phantom about this menace.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome episode 2.