Mercury News hat was nettes über BSG zu schreiben:

New `Galactica' gets deeper, darker than '70s series

FOX'S `JONNY ZERO' TRANSCENDS CLICHES WITH ITS STYLE, ENERGY

By Charlie McCollum

Mercury News



When Sci Fi first announced it was making a revisionist version of ``Battlestar Galactica,'' the cheesy 1970s space opera, it caused a huge uproar among fans of the original who seemed to have forgotten just how bad the show was. Among the complaints: None of the original cast had been invited back and Starbuck, one of the main characters, was being changed from a man to a woman.

But when the new ``Galactica'' aired as a miniseries last year, it not only got good reviews (even from older fans) but also set viewership records for Sci Fi. So, inevitably, it's now back as a weekly series -- and quite a good one at that. It debuts this Friday at 9 p.m. with two episodes before assuming its regular 10 p.m. Friday time slot on Jan. 21.

As re-imagined by Ronald Moore -- a sci-fi veteran with credits that date back to ``Star Trek: The Next Generation'' -- the series is far darker, a good deal scarier and a whole lot sexier than the original. A sense of fatalism permeates all the initial episodes as the exhausted crew of the spaceship Galactica attempts to fend off the seemingly endless attacks of the Cylons, intergalactic bad guys.

The engrossing series is loaded with surprisingly strong stuff, including provocative takes on terrorism and the politics of genocide. The special effects are unexpectedly good. And the acting -- from the likes of Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama, Mary McDonnell as President Roslin and Katee Sackhoff as Starbuck -- is light-years better than in the original.

And to please older fans, Richard Hatch -- the original Apollo -- turns up in a recurring role starting in the Jan. 21 episode.

All in all, this is the best series effort yet by Sci Fi, a worthy successor to ``Farscape'' and a show that is likely to be around for a while.
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