Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome Blu-ray Review

The webseries turned TV-Movie turned webseries turned TV-movie turned Blu-ray.

Ron Moore and David Eick’s Battlestar Galactica was such an amazing show that any spinoffs of it are going to have a lot to live up to. BSG was sci-fi at its best – using its otherworldly setting to tell very human stories that deeply resonated emotionally and touched upon current events without feeling preachy.

The latest spinoff project, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, had a long journey to reach viewers. It was first intended as a webseries, then reconceived as a TV-Movie pilot for an ongoing series, only for Syfy to pass on it. Afer sitting on the shelf for quite awhile, it finally debuted a couple of months ago… as webisodes, amusingly, and is at last airing as a full-length standalone TV-Movie on Syfy on Sunday, February 10th, before its Blu-ray release on February 19th.

I watched the first three or four webisodes when they debuted, but disliked seeing an ongoing story cutting off so frequently mid-scene – and knowing it was going to air on Syfy soon made it easier to wait to see the whole thing. But truth be told, Blood & Chrome, unfortunately, wasn’t grabbing me enough to have to see what happened next…

Caprica was an attempt at a BSG prequel/spinoff with a very different vibe and setting from the series that begat it, but with that show a commercial failure, Blood & Chrome goes in a very different direction. Caprica was mostly planet-bound and soap opera in its approach. Blood & Chrome is a war story, taking the BSG story back into space and featuring a lot of action and human vs. Cylon combat.

The story focuses on William Adama (Luke Pasqualino) as a very green, just out of training pilot assigned to, yes, the Battlestar Galactica. Eager to fight as a Viper pilot, Adama is upset when he is instead made a Raptor pilot, sent with co-pilot Coker (Ben Cotton) to transport scientist Dr. Becca Kelly (Lili Bordan) on what he considers to be a “milk run.” But Dr. Kelly is more important than she appears, with a top secret mission that could prove to be a crucial turning point in the ongoing war against the Cylons.

With Caprica’s failure, perhaps it’s understandable Syfy and Eick (Moore did not take part in Blood & Chrome) would push hard in the opposite direction here. But Blood & Chrome often feels like a hollow version of Battlestar. Yes, that show had awesome combat scenes, but it also delved into far more cerebral territory and also, quite notably, spiritual territory, often represented by the robotic Cylons, no less. Caprica got better and better as it progressed (ending with a run of excellent episodes) but also announced from the start it was delving into some heady space, involving the idea what constitutes a soul and how much a virtual version of someone could recapture who they truly were.

Blood & Chrome is about the war, which is fine and something, in theory, many of us were excited to see play out… but it is notably lacking in those deeper aspects that made Battlestar so special. It’s got much more of a Star Wars vibe — including its trio of the young, energetic guy, the older cynical guy and the headstrong gal on a mission of her own –- down to its structure, which is very old school serial, as Adama, Coker and Kelly encounter one obstacle after another, from enemy ships to a serpent-like creature. Star Wars is awesome, but the Ron Moore version of Battlestar Galactica was an incredibly different animal, despite the original 1970s BSG being created in Star Wars’ shadow. The attempt to turn one into the other (this is the same continuity as Moore’s series after all) feels odd.

What’s notably lacking is much in the way of nuanced character building, except in a cursory manner. This is especially prominent with some of the characters Adama and Coker encounter, who are given huge moments played with a lot of drama — including loyal soldiers willing to go down with their ship or a guy who has an emotional whirlwind learning about the son he never knew he had — with almost no time establishing them beforehand to give what is happening any weight.

Unfortunately, the man at the center of it all remains at arm’s length as well. If you’re a BSG fan, of course, you’ll care that this is William Fraking Adama, but little onscreen helps invest us in him beyond the modicum of seeing him show off his pilot skills and attempt to bond with the crusty Coker and the guarded Kelly. It also doesn’t help that it is extremely difficult to see Pasqualino as playing the same character Edward James Olmos played. Yes, obviously the idea is this is a young, callow Adama with a lot to learn and that we’d see him toughen up as the series (had it been ordered) continued. But Pasqualino doesn’t look like, sound like or carry himself like Olmos and it seems impossible to chart this specific kid becoming that man.

Until the very end of the TV-movie, Blood & Chrome also stays very rooted with the human side of things, not delving into the Cylon’s POV. There are a couple of tidbits in the final moments that hint at future stories that would have gone back into the Cylon story more, but this introduction to BSG: B&C is much more about military missions and little else, lacking much of what made Moore’s series feel so fully formed.

I feel like I’ve harped on Blood & Chrome more than I meant to. It’s not bad and has some fun action scenes (I really liked the visuals in an aerial battle through the clouds in one sequence), and while the budget was clearly an issue when it came to the FX on the green screen shot production, the show has a nice visual style. However, it’s worth noting the FX do vary considerably, from fairly strong to rather blatantly fake, depending on the moment and scene.

In the “small things count” category, it was nice to see the big possible romance in the story between the young Adama and the clearly older, widowed Dr. Kelly, given it’s usually only when the genders are reversed that such a thing is played so casually. Also, Cotton does solid work as Coker, adding tinges of poignancy to the character throughout. John Pyper-Ferguson also has fun as a soldier our trio encounter on an ice planet, while also managing to achieve the cool trivia of having appeared in different roles in Battlestar Galactica, Caprica and now Blood & Chrome.

Along with some nice nods to Caprica early on (Graystone Industries and the Ha’la’tha are both referenced), Battlestar fans will likely enjoy the last act of Blood & Chrome the most. Not only is it when the Cylon side of things get touched upon in a bigger way, but it also, in other areas, opens the door to circumstances not being as clear cut as they seem when it comes to fighting a war, as the idea of propaganda and selling something in a very skewed way is evoked. While the movie overall is just okay, those final moments do hint that perhaps the ongoing series, had it occurred, could have gone to more interesting places.

The Blood & Chrome Blu-ray features a decent transfer. There is a grainy, “You are there” look that is purposeful (and in line with Battlestar), but there is little doubt this show, with it’s strange back and forth from webseries to TV-Movie and back again, was relatively low-budget despite its ambition. That being said, the transfer itself is solid with strong colors and shading. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 is very good, nicely displaying another strong score by Bear McCreary and all the requisite Cylon and Galactica sound FX.

The extras are fairly minimal, though better than they appear at a glance. The only behind-the-scenes inclusion is a featurette focused on the visual FX, but it’s actually longer than you’d expect at 23 minutes, including interviews with Eick and other producers, along with the FX team. It delves into the conception of Blood & Chrome and spotlights all the work that went into the green screen production. While a commentary or more story-oriented discussion would have been great, this at least does get into the nitty gritty of production on the project.

The only other special feature are deleted scenes, but there are actually a ton of them, running the better part of a half hour. Some are inconsequential moments, but there are several – mostly taken out from the opening portion of the movie – that would have been highly appreciated if they’d been kept in, better building who Adama and Coker are before the action begins. The vast majority of the deleted scenes were never finished, so you can see the green screen surrounding the cast, making the difference between those scenes and the finished project more impressive and notable.

The Blu-ray is the “unrated” version. While essentially the same as what is airing on TV, it features a bit more footage, including, yep, one pair of bare breasts during a co-ed shower scene onboard Galactica and a bit more harsh language.

Having finally seen Blood & Chrome, I can’t say I’m horribly upset it didn’t get picked up to series (and I still miss Caprica!). However, there are moments though that reminded me of how much I loved this world and that I wouldn’t mind if somehow we do return to it again at some point.

Super-sized Smartphones: How Big is Too Big?

Here’s a fun fact: the average width of a human male hand is around 7.4 inches, and the average female hand is just under that at 7 inches. Turn your hand sideways and envision the space between your thumb and your pinky. Can you imagine a phone nearly that big? Well, whether you want it or not, odds are that it’ll be coming your way within the next year.

CES 2013 was an epicenter for the big smartphone. A majority of these mobile products were still at the big-but-not-crazy-big size of around 5 inches, such as Sony’s new Xperia Z — about one and a half inches bigger than the classic iPhone (and an inch bigger than the iPhone 5). Others, like Lenovo’s IdeaPhone K900 ventured into the new and still-bigger 5.5” territory, just an inch and a half smaller than popular tablets like the Nexus 7. But none made a splash quite like Huawei’s Ascend Mate, showing off its flashy 6-inch screen and taking the crown for the biggest smartphone on the market. People gushed over the phone’s huge screen, nearly the size of an iPad mini, and hailed 2013 as the era of the big smartphone.

It’s important to keep in mind that there’s a difference between a mega smartphone and the so-called “phablet” concepts seen in the Galaxy Note II, which incorporates a stylus and extra media apps to give a more tablet experience. The Huawei Ascend Mate doesn’t incorporate any of a phablet’s bells and whistles, such as photo editing software or word processing tools. Also, the Ascend Mate is actually bigger than the Galaxy Note II in absolutely every dimension, effectively blowing the phablet’s size out of the water while remaining every respect exactly the same as much smaller and sleeker phone models.

The phablet/big phone contrast really highlights the core problem of such a large smartphone: when you buy (and use) one, you aren’t getting any extra features except a larger phone. There are no special OS adjustments or noticeable resolution differences when interacting with a bigger phone, so the only benefit lies in the major screen. It’s even more of a challenge when considering the hardware limitations of such a large phone: a bigger screen means a bigger battery, and a bigger battery means more weight to add to that hefty size. It’s not only two to three times larger than the average smartphone (which ranges between 3.5 and 4.5 inches), but has the potential to be that much heavier to boot.

And, though it’s debatable that bigger is necessarily better in the smartphone world, the rise of bigger and bigger phones is inevitable. Why? Because big phones are making a profit. Chalk this up to the mounting success of the Note II — which, despite its “phablet” monniker managed to sell 5 million units in just two months and maintains steady sales both in the U.S. and phone hotbeds like Korea. It’s no wonder that phone hardware companies are trying to jump on that bandwagon, but we’re fast approaching the 6.5-inch barrier, where Amazon’s best-selling classic Kindle  resides.

Are we destined for a continuum of similar-looking and similar-functioning technologies that don’t provide more beyond their relative size? Only time will tell, but it’s prudent to warm up your hands the meantime for the bigger future.

by Lauren Hockenson

The Alien Saga in 5 Minutes

Zombie Studios Unveils Unreal Engine 4 Game: Daylight

Zombie Studios has announced Daylight, a new horror game built on Unreal Engine 4. The announcement came from the DICE summit in Vegas tonight, as Zombie finally provided details on the project it first teased in december.

Daylight is a horror game featuring a procedurally-generated environment. With only the light of a cell phone to guide them, players will navigate the halls of a dark building as a woman who’s just woken up. Every experience will be different as rooms are randomly generated, and players will only learn about the game’s story via clues they discover as they explore.

At DICE, IGN had a chance to speak with Zombie creative director and studio head Jared Gerritzen as well as Jessica Chobot, who wrote the game. The pair explained what players can expect, plus the motivations behind the project.

“The player doesn’t have a name,” Gerritzen told IGN. “We don’t give any backstory on the player. She literally just wakes up and you need to find your way through, but there’s a lot of story elements. The way the story unfolds is we have all these elements where you can pick up documents and case files, but also your phone gets possessed and it plays recordings from the past. So there’s so many different elements we’re able to use that allow players to get all this information, but the way that we’re going to do it it’s programmatically, procedurally given to the player. So I’ll play it and I’ll get the first bits to understand what’s going on, but from that point on everything will be in different successions.”

“There’s a lot of different types of horror. There’s hack-and-slash. It’s not like that,” Chobot said. “It’s all very subtle. It’s all very implied and it kind of leaves the player to their own devices.”

A playthrough of Daylight is only meant to take around 25 or 30 minutes, but the idea is for players to replay it multiple times in order to find all of the story elements.

“Different players will have a totally different experience,” Gerritzen said. “You’re essentially a rat in a cage, but the cage is an asylum and it’s scary as hell. You need to find your way out, and each time you do it it’s completely different.”

“We have so much content story-wise that it hopefully, whether the person manages to succeed to the end or not, will be an experience that they want to capture more of the story so they have to go back and replay, because each time you might be getting different story elements,” Chobot elaborated. “And over the course of that time, depending on how long you decide to play and what you find, it opens up the concept of the world a little more, the backstory, what your involvement is in it, how you find yourself here and whatnot. So instead of finding the same item over and over again and saying ‘I’m not going to bother reading this piece of paper because I’ve seen it a thousand times,’ it’s different every time.”

Players will be armed with a cell phone that offers a compass and various tools they can use to navigate the asylum. “You don’t have combat. You don’t have a gun. You don’t have anything. You literally have to run away when a Phantom is attacking you, and those things are really interesting,” Gerritzen explained. “The phone itself has multiple features. It’s kind of like a character. It’ll get possessed occasionally and play recordings and stuff like that. And when a Phantom’s around it’ll start to glitch out because it’s just like a psychic ability. And hopefully you won’t get lost, but if you do, you can flip [the phone] to a different mode that doesn’t put out as much light. It puts out a UV light that lets you actually see your footprints, so if I get lost I’ve got essentially bread crumbs that I can follow back.”

“And then you’re able to find emergency kits that have flares or glowsticks,” he continued. “The flares will scare off all Phantoms, but it’s also very violent and it’s very bright and it drags shadows around. Because everything’s fully dynamic lighting, and so it’s very scary just to use. And then the other emergency kit thing is a glowstick, and that’ll have a much bigger light. It’s also kind of like the phone where you can see your footprints, but also you’ll see messages written on the walls and you’ll see other story elements. And then the phone itself will also go to a video mode that will show me elements like clues or story bits that I can pick up and interact with.”

Daylight will be released via Steam, as Valve has allowed Zombie to circumvent the Steam Greenlight process. The game will cost $20 or less and will be released some time in 2013.

Watch the video on YouTube:

Gerritzen explained that Zombie will be taking an episodic approach to future Daylight content. “After we release Daylight, it’s going to be considered Chapter 1,” he said. “And Chapter 2 and more chapters will come out, and each chapter will not be a reboot or anything. It’ll just be more systems that get added to the bucket and more story elements and all that.”

by Andrew Goldfarb