Battlestar Galactica – The Plan, Blu-ray (2009)
Starring: Edward James Olmos, Dean Stockwell, Michael Tricco
Studio: Universal 61110464 [Release date: 10/27/09]
Video: 1.78:1 for 16:9 1080p HD
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, DTS 5.1, DD 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, French
Extras: “Edward James Omos and The Plan,” “The Cylons of the The Plan,” The Cylon Attack,” Visual effects: The Magic Behind The Plan, Deleted scenes, Commentary track with Olmos and producer/writer Jane Espenson, Battlestar Galactica Trivia Challenge, BD Live features, D-Box encoded
Length: 1 hours 52 minutes
Rating: **** (much less if unfamiliar with the series)
This is another feature-length special using material from the award-winning sci-fi series that ran for five years and has now ended. It completely revamped an earlier pretty cheesy sci-fi series from the 70s of the same title, and dealt in creative ways with many of today’s problems and challenges. The big battle is between the Cylons and humans, the former a race of robots created by man which advanced to such a stage that they could replicate themselves to pass for humans, and decided to launch an attack to kill all humans. There were, however, human survivors of the first attack – some fought the Cylons who had taken over the human planet of Caprica, while most of the others took off in spaceships across the galaxies searching for another home planet.
The making of The Plan seems to have come up sometime after the series was underway. The idea is to fill in the story of how the Cylons planned to destroy the humans who had enslaved them, but from the Cylons’ viewpoint. Some of the scenes are repeated from the original TV series and some appear to be outtakes. This is clearly a feature intended for viewing by someone who has followed most of the five-year-long series; to the uninitiated it will seem like a hodgepodge of completely confusing scenes, in spite of the frequent titles that come up locating the time and place of scenes, such as: “35 Days Following the Attack on Caprica.”
The story line, such as it is, follows primarily two of the Cylon leaders who are clones of one another (there are 10 different models, I think). Both are passing for human priests – though religion in this world is a bit different from what we may be used to – but they are secretly attempting to destroy what remains of the human race. One is embedded as a disguised resistance fighter with the insurrectionists on Caprica, while the other is aboard the main ship, Battlestar Galactica. The feature both opens and closes with the two, who have been found out, being executed by being blown out into space. A recurring theme concerns some of the secret Cylons being around humans so much that they begin to admire them, and in a couple cases commit suicide rather than carry out more destruction on the orders of the Cylon leaders. Except that it’s not really suicide because there’s a “resurrection ship”…oh, never mind. There’s a bit of uncalled-for nudity here and there in this feature, and a very disturbing scene of a child being killed by one of the Cylons. Stockwell is excellent as both of the priest-Cylons. I’m sure Galactica fans will love it, and I did find it more dramatic and interesting than the set of the final episodes I reviewed earlier.
– John Sunier
