One of my favorite television series of all time along with 'The Wire' and 'Breaking Bad'.
Like 'The Wire' this is a complex, Dickensian study of human nature, not afraid of asking big questions, and meticulously plotted like a great novel, so that each episode is a chapter in a much larger whole.
Just as 'The Wire' used the overly familiar cliché' world of the cop show to jump off from and shatter our preconceptions, and 'Battlestar Galactica' uses the sci-fi series, and the idea of human versus robot wars the same way.
This is thinking person's sci fi, in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke, or Isaac Asimov. It's about why we are how we are, what it means to be a human being, morality under constant pressure in times of war, fathers and sons, impossible loves, metaphors for modern and recent politics and real world situations.
My wife, far from a sci-fi fan was hooked after 3 episodes, and we tore through 5 years of shows in just a few days. It's that addicting.
The acting is all at least quite good, and some cast members are remarkable, creating characters full of depth, complexity and contradiction. The writing is terrific, allowing the characters to change and grow, but always in ways that make sense, creating seemingly inexplicable conundrums, only to find surprising, sometimes shocking – but ultimately logical and satisfying - ways to explain where they've taken us. The special effects are generally very impressive for TV, even if they're not really why you watch this show.
It also has some of the most tense episodes of television I've ever seen, and some of the season enders left me completely wrung out and blown away. I was sad to get to the last episode, just as one is sad to finish a great book.
Speaking of ending, the one serious let down for me was the very last episode. Certainly no disaster, but for perhaps the only time in the series, some of the answers felt disappointingly flat and simplistic.
But that wasn't enough to take away from the tremendous esteem with which I hold the show. One that is surely worth your time.
