This miniseries from 2003 is the beginning of the first season, I’m not sure if they knew it’d be picked up or not but if you decide to get into this show on Netflix, get the 2003 miniseries first. I have no experience with the original show from the late 70s. I dragged my feet on this one, but heard there was a lot of hype about it. I never got into Babylon 5, and the some of Star Treks were cool. I was into Deep Space 9 when they were using the Defiant, but couldn’t really call myself a Trekkie.

That being said, this 3 hour disc is pretty good. It’s about 50 years later and the original ship is the one holdover, and we’re introduced to relatives of (and references to) the original characters. The Galactica is set to be decommissioned, soon to be a museum with parts of it already being converted to gift shops. The ship has old school technology for its (and our) day (non networked computer mainframe and corded telephones).

During or right after the ceremony out in space, the home world gets destroyed by the Cylons, the revamped antagonistic former shiny stormtroopers. They hadn’t been around for a while and come back with a vengeance (new model Cylons look more like “robots” and newer model ones like humans). The Galactica’s antiquity saves it. The ship’s Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) and company realize they’re on their own for the most part with a ship not remotely stocked up for war.

Plenty of good space dogfights with shaky cam cinematography like what I saw in Firefly (didn’t catch the series but dug the movie) but I guess BG had it first. The writing’s good, the characters are interesting, lots of drama on that there ship. The BIG REVEAL at the end made me push up the rest of the episodes higher on my queue. I’d give it *****