Battlestar Galactica - The Plan

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

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

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.

First of all let me get one thing straight, this is in no way an original Battlestar Galatica story. Razor had a story that centered around a new character and told a somewhat self-contained story. This is almost the complete opposite; no relevant new characters, no truly new plot lines. This film is essentially a side story of the original two seasons. It deals with the attack on the colonies and the subsequent invasion and pursuit of Galactica from the point of view of the Cylons; not just the original 8 models but also the final five.

The main character is actually Brother Cavil, in two different forms one on Caprica and one on-board Galatica. We see that Cavil plays a crucial role in orchestrating the Cylon events on the Galactica, while his Caprica counterpart takes the role of a distant observer to the struggling band of survivors on Caprica.

What I really liked about this movie is that it kind of ties everything together. It retreads the old plot lines of the first two seasons, but knowing the revelations to take place it puts everything in a different light. It also explores the intense cruelty and duality of Cavil. Additionally, some of the plot lines that were never quite clear, begin to make sense. (How did Leobin know so much about Kara? Where Valeri's actions intentional?) There are three issue that I can foresee someone having with this. The first being, that some might feel it being a retcon of the first two seasons to connects the events of the fourth. While this might be somewhat true, I don't think it takes anything away from them, and if you liked the fourth season it adds something significant to it. The second issue is that it is a retread. We already know exactly what happens to all these characters. But I don't think that the compelling part of this is what happens so much as why it happens, and what feelings and emotions are fueling the Cylons. The third is that there are basically no space battles to be seen here. There is a great opening sequence where we get a much more in depth look at the destruction of the colonies, but for a show called Battlestar Galatica we might expect some space jockey action.

I am not a prude but I must say that after seeing the unrated DVD, there is a bit of gratuitous nudity. Not that I had a problem with it, so to say, but it felt a little out of place, like it was trying to be a little shocking. Maybe it was just trying to give us a taste of what the show would have been like on HBO, i dunno just felt a little tacked on.

Overall this is a great companion piece to the series, does not feel entirely necessary but at the same time doesn't feel like it didn't need to be in the first place.

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.