Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

I had mixed feelings about the concept of The Plan before I saw it: Olmos spoke a lot about The Plan at a panel at '09 Wizard World Convention in Philadelphia. He was very excited about the project and led us to believe that we would be presented an intimate look at an extended Cylon plot that ran concurrently with the series as a whole.

He did not deliver.

First, the movie is at least 40% Archive Footage (taken from Season 1 and Season 2). The scenes are woven in as helpful "reminders". These "reminders" help connect events from the show to their extended explanations in "The Plan". Truthfully, the archive footage is abrupt and unnecessary. Fans would easily be able to connect "The Plan"'s events.

The story of this movie lacks the provocative and thought-inspiring nature that BSG is so respected for. The writing is poor and the events play out in rather unspectacular way.

The only thing that saves this movie is the strong performances by Dean Cain, Tricia Helfer, and Callum Keith Rennie. Though the writing is not up to normal standards, these actors' mastery over their characters is readily apparent in this flimsy companion piece.

Overall, watch "The Plan", it's not very long and has a few interesting moments (spread far out in the film). More importantly, if you're interested in Brother Cavil, this is a great way to get some perspective on the bitter Cylon "leader." You need to disconnect your brain a little bit at some points (like seeing 7 Cylons hiding in plain sight on Galactica), and if you can, you can enjoy the bits of BSG-goodness hidden in the film.

After a very disappointing final episode of the series that answered and revealed naught, the plan finally digs deeper into the motivations and questions that a created construct has about it's creator and what it means to develop into an evolved human prototype. From my estimation the plan is both the beginning and the definitive ending of this exotic and brutally honest space opera. It brings full circle the entire series. The fact that it is pieced together like an elaborate jigsaw puzzle is apropos in my mind.

The eternal recurrence, that this has all happened before, this is a complex morality tale that both satisfies and justifies many unanswered questions that I had, it places its brand upon the entire series and I can now breath a sigh of relief that this was truly one of the best dramas in television. No longer a hurried, convenient open exit, the end is now the beginning and so we must continue to wonder and to speculate on what the idea of humanity really means.

As someone who enjoys Battlestar Galactica a good deal, I wanted to like The Plan. But other than the decent looking sets and costumes and the better than average acting I didn't care overall for the movie. The writing is not as clever and often doesn't flow very naturally, while the story is not only dull with a lot of it being clumsily incorporated stock footage and overlong filler but with the fact that I didn't get anything new from it I just didn't see the point. The characters are not as interesting either, in fact I found their personalities bland and underdeveloped on the whole.

Overall, not absolutely terrible but pointless and nothing interesting or new. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Whilst 'The Plan' well made and not terrible, we find out a couple of new things but the idea and story isn't nearly as good as it should be. The script fails to ignite and there is understandably a lot of reused footage. The acting is good, especially from Dean Stockwell who really holds the story together. The special effects are good but there are no big battles, the score is subtle most of the time, occasionally the camera is a bit to unsteady but that is just a personal thing. Editing is OK, not really exciting. I didn't hate any part of it but it didn't excite me at all either. A bit disappointing really.

Really I would say that this film is for Battlestar Gallactica completists. Hopefully Battlestar will do a film explaining all the stuff they didn't bother to explain about Star Buck but somehow I doubt that will happen.

Where the people you meet are important to you only because they were already important to you Which pretty much sets it apart from the other movie versions of BSG each of which managed to both carry the story and at the same time be a self-standing movie for newbies.

The pace is slow. A fly crawling up a drape makes better progress.

If you watch the whole thing (and many will not) you will be haunted by the notion that the producers saw this as an easy payday and a chance to reuse footage from earlier episodes.

Maybe. Maybe not.

The rating I gave tells the tale. Dean Stockwell gives the performance of his life. There is a scene at the 1:40 mark involving Stockwell, a small boy, an apple and a knife. It is mesmerizing Which is more than I can say of the movie