Rating: 
Summary: On its own merit
Review: I grew up on the original series and looked foward to the remake. It's a great story that in my opinion was never fully realized. I thought the way they payed homage to the original while making it there own was a good way to play it. Edward James was the real star of the film. His considerable screen presence lent the movie magnitism and emotional depth. I'm glad to see the Sci fi channel finally lend thier special effects to something with a little meat to it. Watch it. I have not herd wether or not there is a series to follow. I'm hoping that there is.
Rating: 
Summary: Not your Father's Galactica...
Review: While the fans of the original show are screaming until they're blue in the face about this "having nothing to do with the old Galactica," I take a different view of the new version.The key to this view is realism. This is how real people would react to the end of everything they ever knew. The original Galactica was idealized people, people you can't relate to at the end of the day. These people are flawed and not at their best to begin with, but by the end, they've wiped the blood away from their noses and are standing tall. I can easily relate to that. It also doesn't hurt that they have an actor like Edward James Olmos to carry the weight of a man charged with to care for the last hope humanity has. Is it the old series? No. Is it worthwhile? Absolutely.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I admit to being a fan of the original Galactica, but I have seen re-imagined series before which were good in their own right. I watched the premiere on the SciFi Channel with hopes that it would be a good production, but I was sorely disappointed. The mini-series gets hung up on the problems of individual characters, many of whom lack depth. The overall destruction of the colonies is treated like secondary background window dressing. In many cases, I could not bring myself to feel for the characters' plights because the whole storyline played out like a staged piece instead of a realistic portrayal. I have wanted to see Galactica return to television for many years, and I wish a better job had been done with it by the writers and production team. I feel that the talents of the actors were wasted, and that's sad.
Rating:
Summary: Wha!!! Stop the endless complaining and enjoy the new one!!!
Review: Yes, let's think of the old series and remember the good guys and the bad guys and see how everything was clear cut in the arena of good and bad. The original series was great. It broke new ground and truly made for good television. The Richard Hatch novels are a great continuation of that series and have proven to be a great story. However, I think that you all would agree that we have evolved beyond a world of just good and evil. Look at our society today. There is no clear cut line between good and evil anymore. The reimagining of Battlestar Galactica was done beautifully!!!! The characters have all been reimagined to today's standards. The storyline, also revamped very, very well. I for-one would love to see this come out into a new series. Richard Hatch, I'm really sorry, I know how long you have struggled to get Battlestar back on the airwaves, however, the world of Battlestar that you shot back in the late 70's is gone. TV stories have evolved drastically. The Battlestar that you knew would not make it on today's TV..(I'm saying this having seen and LOVED the original series as well as buying all of the new novels). The new Galactica is sharp and brilliant. The characters are multidimensional. The one person who I do miss is Athena, however. Also, I would have really loved to see the Battlestar Atlantia bite it along with the other colonial battlestars instead of hearing it in a report. However, perhaps, this is the way the film makers meant to tell the tale since there was a great deal of confusion during the battle anyway. I just finished watching the series yesterday on the SCIFI channel and was greatly impressed. Give it a chance!!! Most people shot it down before it even aired, however, I have to say that coming from a lover of the original series (and I still love it), I love the new one as well and think it would make a wonderful series. Perhaps it will be able to take us where the original could not.....we shall have to wait and see where this goes. Until then....
Rating:
Summary: Very promising
Review: Have you noticed that most of the reviews give extreme ratings of either 1 star or 5 stars? Some purists can't stand the idea of change. Others see the promise of a strong new series such as StarTrek TNG. I have a real affinity for the original too. But I just finished watching the 2nd episode of the new BSG and I'm hooked. The first episode starts slow but by the 2nd episode the characters are well developed, the enemy is a complex and layered foe, and the the humans have a believable epic fight on their hands. The fascinatingly fun mental games between Dr. Baltar and Number 6 add frosting to a rich mix. I haven't seen the entire series yet, so I give the show a 4 and not a 5. Hopefully the rest of the show is as good as episode 2.
Rating:
Summary: Modernization versus nostalgia: Man, give me modernization!
Review: There are reviews here who compare this to the old BsG and, man, it's like comparing the Ford Model-T to a V6Ford Mustang. You can't compare this show with the old show and frankly the old show was campy at best, stupidly unoriginal mostly. Remember, the old BsG was meant to be a TV RIP-OFF OF STAR WARS in 1978. There were even lawsuits between studios about "hairstyles" back then concerning intellectual property (and that's using that term loosely). And to those die-hards who were offended about the remake because of "the sake of a remake" I say again the old BsG "WAS A RIP-OFF OF STAR WARS". The old show kept reusing the same John Dykstra special effects shot over and over AND OVER like the producers thought we wouldn't tell the difference. They had a damn robot dog as irritating as any current Lucasfilm CGI sidekick. And capes...(?!?!?!) This version had some depth and great acting. The special effects were great and it is a sci-fi film so you have to have a little suspension of belief to enjoy it. But I thought the storyline itself worked--there were some awkwardness like the whole the Cylons look like us now paranoia and Baltar's Cylon chip in the head hallucinations. But I'm glad someone took the original premise and made it into a pure military science fiction instead of some rip-off of a money-machine movie back in the '70's. It wasn't the best and probably hinted more at Babylon 5. But for what it was--standing alone and away from the nostalgia prejudices--it was an enjoyable indulgence in science fiction. I especially loved the frequent use of the word "frak". Glad that stuck around. Frack me.....
Rating:
Summary: As someone who's never seen the original, I liked it
Review: Quite simply, I wasn't around yet when this series first aired. I have been a scifi fan my whole life, but I never really connected with this show so never actually watched any of the original series. I knew the basic premise (bad robots beat up helpless humans), but by the time I became conscious to most scifi movies that cliche didn't exactly pull me in. So it was with a fresh, open mind that I sat down and watched this series. And, I absolutely loved it. Granted, it has its problems. One could call these people cookie-cut characters, perhaps the whole lot of them can be considered cliches. But, for me at least, it works. The actors who portray them do an excellent job conveying both the strengths and weaknesses of their characters; from Mary McDonnell's hidden anguish at having cancer, to Commander Adama's very stoic, and therefore difficult, relationship with his son. One of the more interesting characters is the genius scientist whose own indiscretions and liasons with a Cylon brought about humanity's destruction, and who doesn't seem all that guilty about it. Alongside him is the female Cylon character, whose role we never come to understand in the two-part miniseries: did she ever really exist, or was the woman he fell in love with something in his imagination only? (Yes, yes, the baby scene in the beginning not withstanding; but still, think about it - that could have been another model... Just personal conjecture.) The cinematography is really good too. Throughout the second episode, for example, you know there is a Cylon spy aboard the ship somewhere. Numerous possibilities are thrown out, the camera following them so you realize that they're there and could potentially be that threat. I also loved the way the camera seemed to auto-focus when dealing with the CG aspects; it was as if, when focussing on an object outside of space, there was a camera which zoomed quickly on, say, a ship leaving port and had an irregular quality that made it seem almost organic. I have to say, compared to a great deal of Scifi's movies, this one rates a good 5-stars. I am not a BG purist, and will never be - I simply liked the movie that I saw. It's like trying to watch a movie that has come from a book; fans of the book rarely like the movie because things have been changed or left out altogether (LOTR 2 anyone?). I was perhaps lucky in that I had no prior knowledge of the story, so could look at its merit without personal bias. I don't know if a true series is upcoming from this seeming-pilot miniseries, but it has at least one fan in myself when/if it does come about. :-)
Rating:
Summary: Different but good
Review: I liked the old series, and I like the new four hour miniseries, too. My only real complaint about the new version is that it's not enough; I want more! :) The visuals in the new version reminded me a lot of Babylon 5. I actually liked the ambiguity of the characters, more human instead of just good-or-evil. The original version had lots of hand weapon shoot-em-up action, while the new version doesn't have any of that. The space battles are more realistic. There are still plenty of things that don't make sense, for example why there are so few human-looking cylons. But I suppose you have to take a few liberties or there won't be a story :)
Rating:
Summary: Galactica for today
Review: For those 'purists' who harp on the differences between the old and new Galactica, I hate to break it to you, but we aren't in the 1970's anymore. If you want to watch the original series, then watch it on DVD! I was a big Galactica fan back in the day, but today, as an adult, I enjoyed this modern retelling as much or even more. I think they hit it right on the mark. This new interpretation is for today's audience, which lives in the shadow of 9/11 and has more sophisticated tastes when it comes to character complexity, motivation, and depth. I take my hat off to the SciFi channel, I can't wait to order the DVD, and I hope they make it a series.
Rating:
Summary: I was never so disappointed
Review: Although I never considered myself a big Battlestar Galactica fan, I was still one of those small kids who would watch the original TV series back in 1978-79, to watch Captain Apollo and Lt. Starbuck and the rest of the Galactica crew fight Cylons. I even remember having a 1979 Battlestar Galactica calender. Of course the original TV series went under because it was overbudgeted and eventually the producers had to resort to stock footage. 25 years later, the Sci-Fi Channel resurrected Battlestar Galactica as a miniseries, and I was never so disappointed in my life. This new series was set 40 years later after the original, with a new set of (to me) unknown actors all assuming names of characters we all know and love (except now Lt. Starbuck and Boomer are ladies). To me, I found this 2003 version quite boring with poor acting and unappealing actors. The battle sequence with the Cylons really disappointed me big time, because I was used to seeing the Cylons themselves in their battlecruisers. And the battle scenes really seem to slack as opposed to the original series. The only Cylons you see are "Number Six", a human looking Cylon (that seduces Baltar) played by Canadian actress and model Tricia Helfer, and a couple of the mechanical Cylons you see at the beginning of part 1 and the end of part 2. And you never see the Centurian Cylons say a word. Although the world of special effects have changed dramatically in the past 25 years and you now get to see the Colonial Vipers do stunts that they never could on the original, it simply lacks the action and appeal of the original. In other words, I found the 2003 miniseries rather unengaging. The original series at least had actors who could act, and really could play heroes and villains. And you had Lorne Greene, which everyone recognized from his role in Bonanza, and he did a great job playing Commander Adama. It's a shame that Glen Larson, the guy responsible for the far superior original series from 1978-79 was involved in this 2003 version. I even go as far as saying Galactica 1980, which is generally derided by all, is superior to this, and that's saying a lot. To me, the original 1978-79 series, in all its 1970s glories (such as Farrah Fawcet hairdos for the ladies and Star Wars-like battle sequences) is much better.
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