So what happens when you put all of Battlestar Galactica into one box? Awesomeness, that’s what. The box in question is the Blu Ray edition of Battlestar Galactica the Complete Series; all 4 seasons, the Mini Series and TV film Razor in one box. And my friends, what a box it is! Feast your eyes on all of its glory below:

The show itself is a difficult beast, bearing a name that puts many folk off of even watching it in the first place whilst living on a TV channel in the US that many don’t give the light of day. It hasn’t really been marketed well to pull in new viewers and suffers immediately with the stigma that gets attached to so many other remakes of older shows or movies due to a proven track record of failing to deliver time and time again.

But all of that aside, once you get past all of these initial negative barriers to entry, you uncover a beauty of a show, unlike many others – written to an assumed intelligent audience. A show that never compromises on telling the story, going to places that most TV wouldn’t dare and not trying to listen to what the fans want in favour of giving them what they didn’t know that they needed. It’s a drama about humanity in a Sci-Fi setting. Oh and kick-ass robots.

So what exactly is Battlestar Galactica? At its core, it’s a story of what happens when you push people to their limits, time and time again. It’s about what happens when society and life as we know it is pulled away from underneath us and the lengths that we would go to just to survive, rebuild and move on. It’s a really dark mirror being held up on our own society and beliefs and asks the questions ‘what does it mean to be human?’ and ‘why do we deserve to survive?’. The show serves as a fantastic debate as to where we are going as a society, and to comment on our own pursuit of and attitude towards technology as well as the consequences that come with it.

There are 12 colonies of man, society is at a point in technology just past that of our own and we develop the Cylons: robots with AI, designed to make human life easier and act as a slave race to the population of the colonies. 40 + years ago, the Cylons rose up against their human oppressors and a huge war ensues with huge casualties on either side. An armistice is eventually formed and the Cylons leave Colonial space to go their own way.

Present day, and the Cylons return to avenge (having evolved themselves to look human), wipe out all the colonies leaving just a few civilian ships and one last Battlestar, the Galactica to flee heading into uncharted space looking for safe haven – the mythical planet Earth. The story from here on out is about what happens to these people when being chased relentlessly by the Cylons with diminishing food and resources with absolutely no light at the end of the tunnel. How do these people react? How would you react? It raises questions throughout and sparks a lot of debate.

If you didn’t see it yet picking up this set is most definitely the best way to go about it, covering the entire show from beginning to spectacular end. For those who have seen it, you get to watch it again in great HD quality but also get some extended episodes, a ton of extra content (and I really mean a ton) including every single podcast recorded for the show, deleted scenes, many documentaries, a look a the upcoming film ‘The Plan’, features on the music of the show, concept art and sketches and a pretty cool Cylon figure for your desk too!

The quality of the image transfer is great and far better than the HD broadcast on TV. The audio too has been mixed and mastered with great care, coming alive much more so than any other time before. As with the creation of the show itself, there has been a great deal of care in the production of the Blu Rays. My only gripe with the set is the casing that the discs are kept in, which is card rather than plastic. A slight oddity is that there isn’t an episode listing for each disc but it’s a minor oversight in the grand scheme of things. You may notice that the image quality isn’t crystal clear like other Blu Ray but that’s the way it was intended to be seen, dirty, noisy and dark. You get a little message pop-up at the start of each disc reminding you of the artistic direction and vision for the show. The mini series, whilst still looking great isn’t quite as high quality as the rest of the show as it was shot on different film. It still needs to be pointed out that this show looks phenomenal on Blu Ray.

Overall I think that they have done a great job with the box and aside from a few minor oddities it’s well worth the asking price. (I paid about $250 from Best Buy).

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Tags: battlestar galactica, blu-ray

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 7:22 am and is filed under DVD/BluRay, TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.