Introducing the new Battlestar Galactica

It's been about two weeks since we borrowed the "Battlestar Galactica" revival DVD set from a friend of ours, and I'm still more than suitably impressed by how well it played out.

The original series, which starred Lorne Greene as Commander Adama, Dirk Benedict as Starbuck and Richard Hatch as Apollo, came out in 1978 after George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had launched a sci-fi revolution in American culture with "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." As sci-fi series go, the original "Battlestar Galactica" wasn't all that memorable. The plot of choice usually involved either the Cylons attacking and threatening the escaping Colonials, or a Gilligan's Island type of story where the Colonials thought they had discovered Earth and ended their quest, only to find they were wrong.

Characters were generally weak and unbelievable — Baltar was a larger-than-life evil person who had betrayed the colonies to the Cylons because he wanted to rule the survivors and had struck a deal with the Cylons to that effect. (Why he continued to work with the Cylons even after it was evident that they weren't going to honor their side was never really clear.) Starbuck was the hormone-driven womanizer, Apollo was the family man, and Adama was the all-around in-charge guy, who acted as visionary, high priest, military leader and top political official.

And if the characters lacked nuance at times, some of the show's spiritualism was just downright kooky, like that bit where the crystal city starts abducting Colonial vipers and their pilots and Starbuck meets an angel who tells him that one day he'll be a god, and all that weird stuff.

It was an odd show.

What was better about the new series? It's hard to know where to begin.

For starters, the new "Battlestar Galactica" miniseries gave us the view from the ground of the attack on the twelve colonies. The original series treated us to a tremendous space battle that began soon after the opening credits were over and we had established that Baltar had just negotiated a peace treaty between humanity and the Cylons.

Because this was a three-hour miniseries, the writers took some time to introduce us to each of the major characters and what drives them, and we got to witness the slaughter of the human population of Caprica — not by spaceships flying overhead and shooting lasers at people, but from a surprise nuclear bombardment. That's a much more accessible way to depict the genocide of the entire human species, particularly since 9-11 here in the United States and the terror attack in Spain last year, when many of us are wondering when the next shoe will drop.

The series also reimagined the Cylons. Since the war ended, the Cylons have altered their appearance so that they appear to be human, down to the blood level. They’re not shiny robots with a flashing red eye anymore; they're synthetic humans.

More than that, while the original-series Cylons were a reptilian race bent on the slaughter of humanity for reasons that never were expressed, these Cylons were created by humanity and gifted with intelligence. In other words, it's humanity's own creation attempting to destroy it — a familiar theme in science fiction but still a potent one since our penchant for advancing technology still outstrips our ability to use it by light years. Additionally, the Cylons' ability to pass among humans undetected easily lends itself to fifth column paranoia.

The big thing, though, has to be the way the series creators have reimagined the characters. Adama remains the confident military leader, but while the original Adama had a sterling relationship with his son and was able to maintain a professional rapport with no signs of favoritism or resentment, the new Adama and this Apollo have been estranged for at least two years after the death of Adama's other son, Zach.

Colonel Tigh, instead of being an exemplary executive officer, is past his time and a drunk.

Baltar is not a traitor with ambitions of power; he's just an amoral and self-serving twit who believes himself above the common burden of matters like conscience and guilt.

The Galactica itself is no longer the biggest or the best battlestar in the fleet. It's a run-down, ready-to-be-retired hulk, scheduled to be decommissioned and turned into a museum and so far past its prime that the Cylons are unable to hack into its computer system and shut it down like they do with the rest of the Colonial fleet.

The result it a sci-fi setting that is at once futuristic, with space travel and aliens, and retro, with ordnance, and a communications system that uses phone cords.

They also go rid of some of the cornier aspects of the show, like naming the planets after the Zodiac. The capital world is now called Caprica, not Capricorn. Gemini is now Geminon. Fanciful names like "Apollo" and "Starbuck" are the call signs of pilots Lee Adama and Kara Thrace.

As remakes go, this one is a keeper. I can't wait until I can borrow the first DVD set of the new series.