DVD review: Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

by John P. Meyer

Two veterans of the critically acclaimed SyFy television series team up for a one-off, straight-to-video movie based on the events and characters fans followed avidly for four thrilling seasons. It's called Battlestar Galactica: The Plan, and it releases Tuesday on DVD and Blu-ray Hi-Def.

Director/actor Edward James Olmos (who plays Commander William Adama) and writer/producer Jane Espenson have crafted what amounts to an extended episode of the Battlestar Galactica (BG) series, which completed its network run in March of 2009.

As a long-time fan of the show, I found the 90-minute feature to be both entertaining and beautiful to look at. Its contrives to tell the entire grand space-odyssey tale in chronological fashion, through a re-envisioning of key events (some of which employ the use existing show footage) through the eyes of characters we now know to be "skin jobs" -- that is, Cylons in human form.

(We know this because we've been inveterate viewers of the Syfy series, over the course of which the characters' true lineage was slowly revealed. We're not so sure how The Plan will play to those making a first foray into the BG mythos ... though we suspect the experience may not prove nearly as satisfying.)

Primary players in the newly-filmed portions of the drama include the petulant and annoying Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell) and -- I am VERY pleased to report -- the lush, lovely, and multi-faceted character of Number Six (Tricia Helfer, looking smashing in one memorable scene wearing naught but skimpy black silk and heels).

Our story opens (and closes!) with a pair of Cavil twins (Dean Stockwell x 2) in the process of being escorted into the airlock on the main hangar deck -- preliminary to their summary ejection into the void of space. By way of execution.

It comes as no great surprise, then, that much of the succeeding tale is seen from one or another of their viewpoints.

We get a brief glimpse of key players (including Kate Vernon as Ellen Tigh; Michael Trucco as Samuel Anders; and Rekha Sharma as Tory Foster) on pre-holocaust Caprica, whose urban center looks like a sparklingly new-tech incarnation of Blade Runner Los Angeles. The planet's wooded, hilly hinterlands, meanwhile, bring to mind the forests of Endor -- or perhaps the area around Vancouver, Canada where the footage was actually filmed.

Cut to the lead Cylon Basestar orbiting around Caprica (I almost said "Earth"), which resides there undetected thanks to the perfidy committed by Dr. Gaius Baltar (James Callis), whereby his sack-mate (one of the Number Six clones) has been allowed access to the planet's security net. Commanding the Basestar is the gibberish-spouting navigator, who lounges in her bathtub delivering free verse, stream-of-consciousness commands to the fleet. Which they miraculously seem to understand.

One of these obscure directives apparently translates to "FIRE!", because pretty soon all nuclear Hell breaks loose. This gives visuals wizards Doug Drexler (CGI) and Greg Behrens (FX) a chance to stretch their destruction-dealing wings, and results in some quite spectacular footage of multiple-warhead munitions doing their independently-targeted things, not to mention a whole array of fiery, roiling mushroom clouds. Pretty impressive, if you're into that whole doomsday scenario thing.

Once confined to their spaceships (except for the rebel contingent left behind on occupied Caprica), the "skin job" characters go about their desultory planning and make a series of half-hearted attempts to wipe out the survivors of their attempted genocide. We see Leoben Conoy (Callum Keith Rennie), decked out in a nifty explosives belt, confronting Commander Adama (Olmos) and Colonel Tigh (Michael Hogan) aboard the Galactica; we see Sharon "Boomer" Valerii (Grace Park) as she surprises Adama by offering him a bullet to the center of mass instead of the handshake he was expecting.

What we come to realize (because the conversations between Cylons-in-disguise leader Brother Cavil and his various skin job minions make it clear) is that the Cylons have made their human-appearing models too damn human. As Sharon Valerii puts it: "I'm happier when I'm human. I like myself. Love myself." What incentive, then, to wipe the universal slate clean of the human race?

For those who appreciated it in the series run (and even for those who didn't), back again are the deeply philosophical speculations on life, destiny, and supernatural overlords. Resurrected also are the sorts of thinly-veiled references to historical and contemporary events in the "real world" -- such as terrorist bombings, the Holocaust, and the Oswald shooting.

In a particularly mordant bit of plotting, scripter Espenson has written in a new character: a little boy (Alex Ferris, of The Time Traveler's Wife) who wanders about the ship coming into ever-closer contact with the cynical Brother Cavil. The young fellow's eventual and unexpectedly sudden disposition does a great deal to cement our distaste for the nastiest-of-all skin jobs.

In order to justify the filmmakers' pronouncements of "uncut and uncensored" story content, a couple of sequences feature brief nudity -- though none of it involves name players.

There's a well-written end-scene conversation between the two Cavils that can't help but bring Roy Batty's Blade Runner valediction to mind. ("I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.") It makes for a surprisingly moving adios to a character (or -- um -- characters) we've come to despise.

In final analysis, Battlestar Galactica: The Plan should provide an entertaining hour-and-a-half for those with a hankering for visiting vicariously with their old Battlestar familiars. It also serves as a crafty segue to the January 2010 series premiere of Caprica, which takes us back 50 years prior to the Cylon revolt.

I wouldn't recommend seeing The Plan if you -- um -- PLAN on watching the Battlestar Galactica series and haven't yet done so: There would be so many reveals that the suspense would go right out the command bridge viewscreen. If, on the other hand, you haven't seen it and don't plan to -- then grab the DVD and share it with a friend who's a veteran battlestar trooper. He or she will have a blast explaining what's going on around mouthfuls of popcorn.

Special bonus feature of the DVD and Blu-ray disk include:

* Deleted scenes

* From Admiral to Director: Edward James Olmos and The Plan (a day-in-the-life with director and actor Edward James Olmos as he tackles this ambitious project).

* The Cylons of The Plan, featuring interviews with Dean Stockwell, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Michael Trucco, and others.

* The Cylon Attack, including behind-the-scenes on the planning and execution of one of the film's major action sequences.

* Behind The Plan, with an in-depth look at the visual effects and the role played by post-production.

* Filmmaker commentary

This feature is exclusive to the Blu-ray format:

* BD-Live provides access to exclusive content through an internet-connected player, including trailers, a trivia game, and the ability to bookmark your favorite scenes from the movie.