The final season of Battlestar Galactica is here with an ending that makes you wonder, huge plot twists and a definite must see for anyone who is a fan or have ever seen any of the previous series.
Film making 23/25
Cinematography 24/25
Audio 23/25
Bonus Features 25/25
Total 95/100
Battlestar Galactica fans can rejoice as the end is in sight, or actually here but you do get a final dose and plenty of twists and turns right up to the end. Battlestar Galactic Season 4.5 of the reimagined series final makes it fond farewell but not quite totally goodbye.
Battlestar Galactica season 4 was cut in half due to the writers’ strike in America so we have two parts to season 4, Season 4.0 and Season 4.5. Breaking Season 4 into two parts makes more sense as the series really has a lot of breaks and disjointed times like a movie in the mix between season 3 and 4 that continues the plotline but does not require watching it to understand what is going on.
Battlestar Galactica the reimaged series started in 2004 with the four seasons of the show and finally the last episode just airing recently. The show does a good job of showing the struggle that man faces when confronted with his own extinction and so much more.
What really makes much more sense and timely political points is the struggles that characters face that are a mirror to our own struggles politically in our country. The show actually dares to talk openly about things our country and others around the world are facing in a post 9/11 world, but enough of the political meanderings and on to the good stuff.
Battlestar Galactica follows a rag tag fugitive fleet as they race to outwit and out run the Cylon beings they created, Cylons are a robot race that end up creating some humanoid robots that replicate humans. The main themes of Cylons first pursuing and killing off as many humans as they can and then some of the Cylons breaking off from the main group add to my confusion.
There is now a group of Cylons that look like people and can be resurrected after being killed and remember everything that happened to them before. This group of twelve humanoid Cylons are split between helping the humans survive and trying to survive themselves as a pure race.
I’m not sure how all this has comes about as I have not seen any, and I mean none, of the previous episodes of this show before. I have watched when I was much younger some of the original series back in the 70’s but that was a long time ago and that series was only a primer to this one.
Battlestar Galactica the reimagined series is a great show even though I have not seen any of the previous episodes and while watching the season 4.5 discs I have understood more and more of the show. I have had to watch the “What The Frak is Going On With Battlestar Galactica”, a short and quick primer and synopsis of the show that is fantastic in itself but also a quick help for anyone missing out on previous episodes.
I have also had to read up on the series to get a few unanswered questions about this and that with the series so I could understand a bit more but after the first disc I was fully up to speed and enjoying the show. The writers do not wait till the end of a show to throw in big surprises with this and that like a major star shooting herself in the head in the first episode of Season 4.5.
The show continues with some surprises and major themes but the character interaction is more what this show is about to give you plenty of drama as well as the science fiction action. Battlestar Galactica has plenty of both character development and science fiction action with the CGI animation that’s really good in the space shots with the ships.
The show is really well done and Season 4.5 really has the show strutting its stuff as the characters are well established and the actors are really doing well with their parts. The battle ship Galactica is falling apart as they come close to the end of their journey and the season ends with a really final ending.
The final episode puts everything in place and answers enough questions to satisfy the fans but how they go about ending the series may not make everyone happy. I will not go into further detail but will let fans and newcomers find out for themselves about the final days of the Battlestar Galactica and the series.
The Blu-ray edition of Season 4.5 contains plenty of extras for fans and newcomers alike and is in pristine high definition with really well done video and audio. The video is not the perfect video as it is a bit grainy for many of the scenes but in spots it suddenly comes into vivid full high definition to really highlight things.
The show is intentionally left with colors that are once bright and vivid as well as dark and shadowy with really good skin color and even tones throughout when appropriate. In some scenes you have the dark, inky black of deep recesses of the Galactica when shooting in crawl spaces and interior shots of the ship.
Other scenes include vivid bright color and little to no grain for things like memory flash backs of the Cylons as they think back to their original lives before the wars. Don’t even ask about this original lives stuff as I do not fully understand it but to highlight the fact that they are remembering they use clear video and well defined colors to show looking back.
The show has a great video and it looks fantastic with the occasional space shots and action in space or the flying scenes in the ships. The series is really well done and the creator Ronald Moore got his wish to create a perfect looking epic space saga.
The audio is also great in English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with subtitles in English, Spanish and French and the standard bonus content in English Dolby 2.0. The audio is great and you get full surround sound that is fantastic with really good bass and full use of front, center and rear channels.
The audio is very well done and about the best as I have ever heard on any Blu-ray disc for a great entertaining experience even if I don’t fully understand the storyline. Extra content includes the “What The Frak is Going On With Battlestar Galactica”, deleted scenes, several making of features and pod casts for each and every episode by Ronald Moore and others.
The bonus content gets a full five stars in my book as you could not get more but this is a fully developed and well liked show so I really would not expect much less. Three hours of extras and all the rest including three U Control tracks, 45 minutes of deleted scenes and a preview of the upcoming movie The Plan is enough if not more than enough.
The show is great, hands down one of the best science fiction series I have seen and I have only seen the tail end of it. If this is what the rest of the show is all about I really can’t wait to get the full series and enjoy filling in all those missing parts.
Battlestar Galactica comes to a close, but with more to come in the movie The Plan, which is also a must see for science fiction fans.
