Galactica II...this time it's prettier

I watched part II of the new Battlestar Galactica last night at Ed's, and will now provide my review.

The reimagined version spent much more time on the destruction of the colonies than the original, and I thought that was appropriate. These people have been in a single stroke deprived of most of their friends and family, and even their entire culture. Their existence has forever changed, and the level of social trauma would be incredible. The original glossed this over, but the remake did not. Also, the addition of faster-than-light craft helped make the logistics work better; there's no way the colonial fleet is escaping anyone by traveling at sub-light speeds. Hell, it would take weeks just to get out of our solar system at the speed of light, much less at sub-light speeds. Finally, the characters are much less black and white than their 70's counterparts, which makes them far more believable.

There are some problems, however. The quest for Earth was thrown in hastily at the end, as a ruse by Adama to give the survivors some (false) hope, which sort of vacates the driving purpose of the show, IMO. Speaking of Adama, Edward James Olmos just didn't fill the admittedly big shoes of Lorne Greene. Greene's Adama was a statesman, a scholar, and a man of wisdom; Olmos' Adama seemed merely a hard-bitten warrior. Also, there were too many pretty people on this show. Sure, the original had some cuties (Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Anne Lockhart), but the new one has these Melrose-place types who just don't seem the kind to join the military. Boomer may not have been pretty, but he was easier to take than all these thin-nosed, sculpted-cheekbone people on the new version.

All in all, I enjoyed the new version for what it was, but I doubt it can supplant the original. The original remains unsupplantable.