‘Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome’ Is Still Derivative, Still Really Fun

Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome is a two-hour TV movie coming early next year… but it’s also being aired as a webseries, meaning we get to see it in ten-minute chunks, every week.

We saw the demo reel that leaked along with everyone else, and found it derivative, but fun. And so far, that holds true.

Being a prequel, it’s all about Bill Adama’s first day on the job where, being as he’s the cocky hotshot, he immediately spends most of his time getting slapped down hard by everybody from his coworker to his CO to his love interest.

In terms of plotting, it doesn’t break any sort of new ground, so far. But we’re twenty minutes into a ninety-minute story, and the movie, to its credit, knows it’s not being revolutionary plotwise. Adama learning the hard way is both funny and zippy, and the show gets to the action fairly quickly. Coker in particular is fairly hilarious as the guy who really does not want to be there.

There are a few choices that may annoy people. One, the lens flare is in effect something fierce, and the choice to use digital sets sometimes doesn’t entirely work. Similarly, instead of avoiding profanity, they’ve chosen to have it fit into the dialogue and cover it with locker slams or wrench drops. Don’t worry, “Frak” is still in full effect.

Finally, and this is purely nitpick territory, how the hell did he get the callsign “Husker” when Luke Pasqualino has absolutely zero gravel in his voice? Otherwise, Pasqualino is a good choice: He plays the annoying arrogant guy pretty well, and makes a good straight-man to, well, pretty much the entire cast.

Is it up to its father series, and the prequel series Caprica, both of which were very much about the texture and political conflicts? Honestly, that’s a hard call, twenty minutes in. And it seems a bit unfair to treat a two-hour movie as if it has to hold up to a hundred episodes of television.

It does its best to keep to that texture while still serving as an action series; while we only get glimpses into the larger world, there’s a lot here for fans. It’ll be interesting to see where the movie goes from here.

Speaking of which! Here are the first two episodes: