Reviewed by Toby Weidmann
Stars Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Katee Sackhoff, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park
UK certification 15 | UK RRP Limited Edition DVD £119.99, Ultimate Edition DVD £134.99, Blu-ray £159.99
Produced by David Eick & Ronald D Moore | Battlestar Galactica created by Glen A Larson
When former Star Trek bod Ron Moore and Hercules producer David Eick announced they were planning on re-imagining Glen A Larson’s late 1970s hokey Star Wars rip-off, Battlestar Galactica, it’s fair to say that reaction among the sci-fi fraternity was mixed. When the casting was announced and it was revealed fave character and lovable rogue Starbuck would be female (played by Katee Sackoff), the doubters were even more vociferous in their dissent. How wrong they were…
Over the past six years, the duo’s series has been one of the most consistently brilliant TV shows on the box – even the bad episodes are pretty good. Mixing contemporary hot potato topics as terrorism, political disputes, religious differences and the human condition with a science fiction aesthetic, BSG is right up there with the best sci-fi series ever produced and fully deserves its two Emmys and numerous other awards. And now it has the home entertainment release it deserves with Universal Playback’s Limited Edition, on both DVD and, perhaps more excitingly given the show’s incredible special effects, high definition Blu-ray, as well as a Ultimate Edition tin, which essentially is the same as the limited edition except with bonus BSG books and an action figure (see Extras below for more details).
We won’t bore you too much with the show’s story – essentially the closing monologue of Larson’s original TV series sums it up best: “Fleeing from the Cylon tyranny, the last Battlestar, Galactica, leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest – for a shining planet known as Earth” – mainly because we would rather you witnessed it for yourself. Throughout its five season run (OK, so the fourth season was split into two shorter ones due to the writers’ strike, but for ease we’ll call it five), the show continued to deliver surprises and shocks galore (including one of the best season finale cliffhangers you will ever see) and all of the ensemble cast, led by Edward James Olmos’s Admiral Adama and Mary McDonnell’s President Laura Roslin, put in sterling performances.
If you have already seen BSG, then this new box set is a must-have purchase. If you haven’t yet seen it, we urge you to pick it up, sit back and enjoy the incredibly bumpy, nail-bitingly thrilling, very provocative but always engaging ride that awaits you.
EXTRAS ***** In terms of special features Universal Playback’s limited edition release isn’t short of a few. Besides the rather lovely tin box, suitably featuring a robotic Cylon head in profile, both the DVD and Blu-ray versions come with a host of bells and whistles as well as a 36-page booklet about the series. In the DVD set are a mass of deleted scenes and audio commentaries from each of the five seasons; a Battlestar Galactica The Lowdown featurette; Sky One’s trailer for the final season; an unrated version of the season five episode, A Disquiet Follows My Soul; David Eick's video blogs; a long list of featurettes (including eight behind-the-scenes docs); sketches and art from season one; seven Razor minisodes; and a sneak peek at the new spin-off series, Caprica. The Blu-ray comes with all of the above, as well as access to U-Control and BD-Live features, which allow you to access bonus material while watching an episode, such as picture in picture. Also included are an introduction by Ron Moore; another mass of behind-the-scenes featurettes; more Eick vlogs; an Are You A Cylon? personality quiz; a Colonial Military Assessment quiz; a Battlestar Galactica card game (presumably Triad, as featured in the series); an extended cut of season three ep, Unfinished Business, which has never been aired; an unrated extended version of the final season’s Islanded In A Stream Of Stars (nice pun!); the unrated, extended home video version of the final episode Daybreak; the 10 webisodes that linked seasons two and three, called The Resistance; and trailers. The Ultimate Edition DVD box set comes with exactly the same content as the limited edition set, but also includes two additional BSG books and a collectible Cylon figurine. Overall, all three are fantastic packages and any self-respecting fan should lay claim to one of these box sets as soon as possible.
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