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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clark411" data-source="post: 1260423" data-attributes="member: 4768">I'll play Devil's Advocate vs some of jdavis' comments for giggles (and because I actually enjoyed the show, and am looking forward to tomorrow's episode... no accounting for taste ^_^)I thought the first five minutes of the show were fine.  Is it silly that the Cylons bother to board?  Absolutely.  Would it have been superior in a cinematic sense if they had simply had the guy start to nap and then blow up?  Absolutely not.  It is far more appropriate, looking at the trope of the show, for the Cylons to juxtapose the cold, machine-like execution of murder via space-missiles alongside the  somewhat-primal smoochies of Cylon Slutbot Six.  If they somehow managed to negate the "Gee that's Stupid of them Factor" of blowing up their own resources while still trying to touch upon the various themes they were going for, it would have been better- but they did better leaning closer towards Entertainment value rather than Realism.Set Design didn't really strike me as a problem so much as the cinematography.  There seemed to be a good amount of potential to make clear the complexity of the bridge environment, or even do a few roaming camera shots through the halls.  The closest they pulled off was doing a moving shot or two during the non-action sequences (Adama and his speech, for instance).  Looking at another of the themes of the show, it is quite clear that the set design was intentionally crude or below what is to be expected- the Galactica is an old ship and they spend at least two exchanges making this point evident (the public relations tour guide spiels, and Adama refusing to allow networked computers onboard).  Whether this is to explain away a low set budget or not, I dunno- but I won't fault the Sci Fi channel for their efforts and struggles with budgetting- they've come a pretty long way in the Originals series.The CGI was the best that Sci Fi has done in an Original movie, and they went to a good amount of effort to make it somewhat realistic, if not pretty.  Unlike most, they kept the lens flare to a minimum and instead focused on jerky camera action that, admittedly seemed ill-fitting in relation to the camera action in the live shots.  Their attention to inertia (even bothering with it) along with the presence of attitude thrusters gave me a nice Babylon 5 flashback.  The gripe I had with it was the size of the CGI engineers that were blown out of the ship... unless I'm mistaken, they looked to be about 20-40 ft tall, in proportion to the section they were shown flying out of.While it was sad to not get scenes showing the destruction of the cities, the fleet, or the headquarters, it again seems to boil down to the plot theme of no one knowing exactly what is going on.  News comes in lil slips of paper, and via transmissions.  By not showing the entire situation, they do not allow for the viewer to see beyond the viewpoints of the main characters.  Personally, I would liked to have seen the boom boom, but I appreciate not seeing the action as well (kinda like Wolf 359 transmissions in TNG... I say, opening my Dork Sails to full).On the whole, I thought it was entertaining- if not a little conflicting.  They had FTL drives but still relied on Nuclear weaponry.  They had Artificial Intelligence that was capable of attempting to overthrow its masters and make sexy Fembots but seemed incapable of advancing technologically in a military sense despite forty years of gearing up for an armageddonish coup de grace.  Cinematics were a hodgepodge, where it was obvious the CGI guys had little to no interaction with the director beyond the basics.  The storytelling was good, and there were several themes to it that, despite being outdated (a given, given the fact that it's Battlestar Galactica), were present... which says a lot in comparison to most the shows out there.  I wasn't asking for much, but got more than I expected and will probably pick it up on DVD when it releases.(PS.. yeah the baby neck snapping was a little too much, but I suppose it is an acceptable way of showing the Cylons lack of compassion when it comes to children.  It's a pretty big deal that the Battlestar Galactica will be a warship with kids on it, and that colony ships will be endangered.  Perhaps just a blunt scene of what was to come- it's not like the nukes didn't take out a few babies along with the millions.)</blockquote>

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