`Galactica' soars as one of TV's best dramas

The Mercury News

16 February 2006

Lucy Mention:

``Galactica'' is now entering the home stretch of its second season as a weekly series; the season finale comes March 10. While this week's episode is fine -- it includes an intriguing riff on the pro-choice debate -- the installment that should grab fans comes Feb. 24. That show marks the return of Lucy Lawless (``Xena'') as D'Anna Biers, the reporter who turned out to be a Cylon leader. (Lawless has signed up to be a regular next season.)

Article

By Charlie McCollum

Every now and then, and for any number of reasons, I find myself having to catch up with certain television series. My viewing time took a particularly big hit in recent weeks, so I carved out some hours the other day to plow through episodes of a half-dozen series I had missed.

What really stood out: ``Battlestar Galactica'' (10 p.m. Friday, Sci Fi). FX's ``The Shield'' was great. ABC's ``Invasion'' had its good moments. But the episodes of ``Galactica'' were so good that it reminded me once again that it is one of the best, most dynamic shows on television.

It's hard to believe that ``Galactica'' started three years ago as a miniseries remake of a cheeseball 1970s science fiction show. The miniseries was constantly being dissed by fans of the original. There were those who thought the material on which the new version was based was so flimsy that it would never fly. There were others (traditionalists who actually thought the original was pretty good) who objected to the changes being made.

But from the moment the new ``Galactica'' swept onto Sci Fi three years ago, with Edward James Olmos in the Lorne Green role of Commander Adama and Katee Sackhoff as the newly female Starbuck, it had a visual snap and emotional punch. It kept the original story line -- a ragtag star fleet of humans fleeing some nasty robots called Cylons -- but layered on conflicts and allegories (often thinly veiled references to the war on terror) that provided real dramatic spark.

These humans are . . . well, human.

They aren't particularly nice. They have their flaws. (Adama's second-in-command is a drunk.) They can be duplicitous. (The scheming that swirls around the fleet civilian leader Laura Roslin, played by Mary McDonnell, is delightfully Machiavellian.) They have their prejudices. They are complex. (The traitorous Dr. Gaius Baltar -- James Callis -- may work with the Cylons, but he's never played as purely evil.)

On the flip side, the Cylons, who were just nasty pieces of metal in the original, sometimes look, and often act, human. Two of the more intriguing characters on TV right now are Lt. Sharon ``Boomer'' Valerii (Grace Park), who only gradually came to realize she was Cylon, and Six (Tricia Helfer), Baltar's Cylon girlfriend who suffers pangs of guilt for the destruction she has wrought on the humans.

The episode is a particularly good hour of television -- from one of television's finest dramas.

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