Can the New Battlestar Galactica Compete with the Original?

For a fan of the original series, the new Battlestar Galactica carried by the Sci-Fi network can be difficult to learn to like. Many changes seemed to have been made for the sake of being politically correct, and the Cylons, soulless automatons in the original have become humans and a metaphor for the current war on terror.

Glen A. Larson works on the new show as well, but how could he let out a show so contrary in spirit to the original? Gone is the black-and-white space opera of the original, replaced with dubious shades of gray. Starback, the male swashbuckling viper pilot gets replaced by an annoyingly arrogant women whose only common with the original is a love for gambling and cigars. Boomer instead of being a black male, becomes a female Asian. Oh, did I mention that she's a Cylon now?

What sets the new series apart from its predecessor is that the writing - and the acting in some cases - is vastly superior to the original. The innocence may be gone but we get to see the psychological impact of being the last survivors of attempted genocide.

Those who watched the late 70s television offering may be surprised that the new Gaius Baltar makes his home aboard the Galactica and it is not know that he is the one who gave the Cylons the access codes they needed to bypass the defense system of the colonies. What the show does not make clear is whether he's going slowly mad from guilt or the Cylons really left an implant in his mind to carry out their plans. Both the old and the new Baltar are contemptible in their role as villains, but the newer one merits more sympathy than the old.

The writers in the show questioned whether or not torture should be used when the lives of many were on the question. The results of the episode were inconclusive and the Cylon Starbuck interrogates get thrown out of an airlock by the President of the Colonies, probably because the Cylon's intent was to sow suspicion among the surviving colonists by accusing Adama of not being truly human.