Battlestar Galactica - The Plan
When fans of Battlestar Galactica were given a chance to see the pilot for the show’s spinoff, Caprica, on DVD months ahead of the new series’ premiere, it seemed like marketing win-win: excitement for the new show could build among the fans even before regular episodes were ready for airing.
Taking a similar approach for the Galactica TV movie The Plan might backfire, however; by the time the movie airs on the SyFy Channel, fan discontent will have circulated far and wide.
It’s not that The Plan is a bad movie, necessarily; it’s more that in terms of the series’ tone and quality, the new movie feels like something of a misstep. The idea is to show the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica from the Cylons’ point of view; it’s an exciting concept, but the end result feels smaller than the idea, and so it’s something of a letdown.
The Plan focuses mainly on Brother Cavil (Dean Stockwell), the Cylon model who seems to be forever unhappy about something: the Cylon plan to kill humans, the Cylon ambition to become human, the biological design of the new-generation Cylons that copy human physiology along with its limitations.
Or rather, the movie focuses on two Cavils: one copy is in the fleet, trying to correct for the unforeseen circumstance of a surviving warship shepherding a civilian convoy through the galaxy by plotting the Galactica’s destruction. The other is among human survivors on Caprica, right along with pro athlete Sam Anders (Michael Trucco)--himself revealed later on as one of the original five humanoid Cylons.
The movie, written by Jane Espenson and directed by series star Edward James Olmos, is faithful to the series in a detail-oriented way that is designed to appeal to fans. But nit-pickers will (and have) zero in on the holes that linger in the story, the threads still left dangling that The Plan does not address, and the entirely new facets of the story that are introduced, such as the Cylon Simon (Rick Worthy) having a human family with which he is reunited in the surviving civilian fleet.
There are pluses, however: the movie, while clearly shot on a limited budget, does integrate footage from original episodes and new material in a mostly seamless manner (once in a while, the actors are clearly older than they were in the original footage). The story expands on what we know about the colonies, and we even see some of the different planets and cities around the humans’ home solar system. Best of all, perhaps, is seeing how undercover "sleeper" agent Boomer (Grace Park) interacts with "fleet Cavil," fully knowing who and what she is in scenes where she suggests acts of sabotage to him.
The DVD’s special features are standard enough: deleted scenes, audio commentary with Espenson and Olmos, and several featurettes that examine the CGI work behind the special effects, Edward James Olmos in the director’s chair, and "The Cylon Attack" (mostly concerning a scene in which Caprica survivors strike back).
The benefit of the movie is to tell us, long at last, what "the plan" the Cylons had in mind was all about; as the darkly wisecracking Cavil puts it, to kill all the humans and live happily ever after. The twist in the plan is the nub of the series--namely, the survival of Galactica and the remnants of human civilization the ship takes along with it to a new home. Some disappointed fans have already offered the criticism that "The Plan" proves there never was a plan for the show on the part of its creators, but the point here is perhaps more subtle than that: in times of war, as in all of life, plans are subject to change, and things seldom work out as initially envisioned.
