The first thing you’ll notice is that it takes almost as long as the Cylon war before the actual episode starts (okay, 5 minutes to be honest), the remainder being previews, themes, studio bumpers. Chop another number of minutes off for a really, really boring scene between Baltar and Lucifer. They bicker so much you’d think they were married. Eww.

This episode was more entertaining than the last. Not because of any momentous plot movement. Please, don’t be asking so much! No, this entire episode accomplishes one thing: to slam Isusa into the side of the Rag Tag Fleet. There, I just saved you 20 minutes of your life. Why she needed to be turned into Rag Tag Debris is left unexplained and leaves you scratching your head, and not in a good way. Instead of having you go “Oh, no, now how are they going to “, you’re left thinking “why did they do that???”. Not a good way to hook the audience.

Of course, the episode does give you a really nice space battle, and good use of stereo effects for it. An improvement over the previous effort.

On a technical note, the radio transmissions between colonial pilots are hard to understand. Cylon transmissions are downright impossible. I wonder if that was where were were supposed to learn why they toasted Isusa.

The episode has one cringeworthy moment: The Cylonator. Really?

Overall, we’re still looking at a whole lot of time with a whole lot of Not Much Happening. But it does have a nice battle to break things up. And there’s no question that a LOT of effort went into it. That battle scene (see how I keep (almost having) to go back to it?) certainly demonstrates it.

On to episode three! Something has to start happening soon.

As for the pacing- it was intentionally slow as Christmas in ep 1. What I was attempting to do was introduce the characters for an audience that had never seen the original BSG and set the tone of each character. And seeing how Starbuck is more than a bit of a womanizer, well I tried to work that in. That said- the pace picks up each ep (intentionally) until ep 6 where it flies at you as fast as I could get it panned in there.

As for the stereo- I think most modern day audio takes short cuts and plants people left and right in the middle of the stereo spectrum as a way of getting things produced faster and cutting corners. I strive to put people in the middle of the action and immerse you in the scene, and I am guessing you are referring to Baltar and lucifer in the throneroom-which I was try to show the height of Baltars thron itself from Lucifer’s perspective via volume (since of course in AD there are no visuals) so I’ll have to agree to disagree on that.

As for Baltar- in this version he is deeper (in my opinion mind you) than the TV show, which as you said he was VERY one dimensional, in ep 1- we are introduced to Him and Lucifer- they are set up as the guys in black hats for lack of a better term– then as the story goes on their interaction and character becomes far more evident (thanks to the VA’s they almost steal the show later on-LOL).

So pleas ebear with the pacing on ep1, and understand it was meant to be slow and as each ep gos on to pick up the pace as people not up on classiic BSG get to know the characters. That all said people have had issues with the slowness of ep1 in the past before the rest of the eps aired.

So please do keep commenting as I appreciate it, whether I agree or not on certain things, it helps hearing what people think. And let me know after listing to it in total if it works or not.

Again- thank you for the listen and I hope I have shed some light and not sounded like a snobbish creator or something-LOL

Thank you!

Bill Hollweg
~Writer, Engineer of BSG for BrokenSea.

To be honest, I found this episode to be a bit on the boring side. Some scenes run far too long. I thought the first scene with Apollo, Starbuck, Athena, etc., would never end! The pacing really needed work. Even when the alarm sounded, Starbuck kept prattling on at Adama. Galactica could have been destroyed six times before he finally left for his viper!

I was disappointed in Baltar. True, he was a one-dimensional, over-the-top character in the classic series. Here was an chance to do better. Lost opportunity.

Adama seems WAY out of character. Starbuck retains his brashness, but now is more of a jerk than a fun-loving playboy. I don’t know what to think about Boomer.

A bright spot is Isusa. She seemed to really put good emotion into her scene.

There is a nice array of sound effects. Disappointed you didn’t use the classic series claxon, but that’s just me. I won’t hold that against you.

Again, I really have to say the pacing is…well, terrible. 20 minutes in and the episode ends with one thing done: We hear Baltar wants a book. And…?

Technically speaking, again a nice use of sound effects, with only an overuse in Baltar’s chamber. All that walking and clothing rustling! My one major complaint is the problem that affects virtually every fan audio: Over-love of the stereo field. Yes, sound moves from left to right as the source moves left to right, but you have to realise that people still hear in both ears. So sounds should still play in both fields no matter what side they come from. Louder on one side than another, but the other side should still have something.

Admittedly, the cylons can be a bit hard to understand sometimes, but still they are decent if not perfect replicas.

Overall, kudos for the effort, but really needs work. I don’t know much about the story since we heard precious little of it in this episode. But the pacing is slooooooowwwwwwww. I’ll give episode two a listen, but with a lot less enthusiasm than I had when I came to episode one.