I got sucked into watching the first part of the series last night, and was surprised at how entertaining it was.
It's pretty grim, the story was about a massive cylon sneak attack that ends up nuking a bunch of colonies out in space. So tons of effective looking cgi nuke shots. Plus there was a random baby killing, which was a bit out of place dark, but dark nonetheless.
The style's pretty nifty. It's really retro. People in civilian clothes wear freaky late-60's/early 70's style suits. The tech is all very weirdly retro. People use printouts all over the place, and the printouts have tractor feed lines on them. It's very much like old depictions of computers shooting out punch cards for the actors to "read," except that BG's cards have text as opposed to holes.
The space action's pretty realistic in terms of physics. Yes, there's sound in space, but there's not a lot. It feels like a conscious decision. Also, ships move according to physics - they have momentum, and tons of tiny little thrusters all over their bodies to orient them properly. Projectile weapons are used, primarily nuclear missiles and guns. That's a cool choice, avoiding laser beams and such.
One very nice detail about the missiles...in one scene, a cylon ship (which, to be honest, is somewhat hokey in design - it has a big cylon head on it) shoots a couple dozen missles, and they all leave vapor trails and arc prettily like missles always do in anime.
The most interesting aspect about the effects is that they're shot in Attack of the Clones-style faux verite. That is, the shots are all primarily cgi, but there's simulated camera movement intended to give the feel of a handheld photographer following the action. So there are zooms, random shakiness, shots where the camera quickly pans just behind the action as if a cameraman is catching up with the action. I loved this stuff in Attack of the Clones, and I'm glad to see it have an impact.
Another nice touch - radio communications are very warped and garbly as in Star Wars (the *real* first one, which is called the fourth one).
Now, the story and writing isn't fucking awesome, but the show has personality, and personality goes a long fucking way. I'll probably write more about BG after I see the second one, but I wanted to get something up to encourage people to at least check it out, it's worth checking out.
Posted by mattb at December 09, 2003 05:31 PM