Looking to get into Battlestar Galactica?

[Koshundheit]

The show is more than ten years old by the time of this writing. What I find rude is people's obsession with "avoiding spoilers" and calling others out for "spoiling", when we are talking about events that happened in the past.

Again, this thread is specifically about someone wanting to get into a show they've never watched. That's a different situation than pretty much any other topic here. Chuck points out when one of his reviews is going to spoil things in future works from time to time, despite the fact the works are just as old. It isn't an obsession. It is simple human courtesy, when you know you're talking to an audience that includes people who haven't seen the work. Not only has OP not seen the show, but others who haven't seen the show yet may also be drawn to the thread for advice for how to get into the show -- not to read spoilers.

[Philistine]

If you want to get into nBSG, I suggest you start with the pilot miniseries. It's seriously great.

The series itself starts to deviate from that pretty quickly - it was both too expensive and too implausible (and too hard to write) to have big space battles every week, so they leaned hard into the "Soap Opera In Space" aspects. And yes, sometimes that meant characters apparently overlooking natural, reasonable courses of action in favor of ramping up the drama. But overall, they managed to keep a solid core of fans hooked for a season or two, or even four. And of course... nBSG took Voyager's premise and ran with it, where Voyager itself ran from it.

[Yukaphile]

So the modern series is a reboot?

[Admiral X]

Yes. You didn't know that?

[Yukaphile]

I've never watched it. Well, now I do.

What's some of the backstory? I know, very, very little.

[Admiral X]

Should just be able to pick it up from the pilot miniseries.

[Yukaphile]

Why start there? I'm rewatching Classic Who as a starting point because it's part of the same canon. I'd planned to start with the original seventies show.

What are the differences?

[Admiral X]

Almost everything except for the names. The old series was going more for Star Wars, and nuBSG was going more for "modern day, but with space ships and FTL travel." There are references here and there, like turning the theme song of the old show into the Colonial national anthem, but that's about all you might get out of having watched the original first.

[Yukaphile]

So Modern BSG is basically... darker? Because I hear Ron Moore was one of the writers, and my thoughts went to DS9, instantly.

[Admiral X]

Yeah. Dude, seriously, just watch the pilot miniseries. Dip your toes in, and if you like it, go for season 1.