Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome [Blu-Ray]

Originally, Blood & Chrome was conceived as a videogame narrative, taking the tagged on, and mostly unnecessary, backstory of William Adama and turning it into a full aerial dogfight shoot 'em up. Then, when Syfy read the cut scene scripts and saw some potential in the basic story, the idea of making it into a feature-length animated film came about, which then turned into the filming of a pilot. Presumably, this second spin-off of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica franchise would be successful because of its basic simplicity. Caprica was dismissed by a mostly male audience for being too cerebral and thematically contrary to populist ideals, even though it was one of the more fascinating Sci-Fi series, alongside the similarly complex Virtuality, to make it onto film. Blood & Chrome is a little more rudimentary and accessible, which is good for the casual viewer keen on broad, reassuring tropes and scenarios, but it leaves much to be desired for those that preferred the more metaphysical aspects of the Battlestar Galactica universe. Where community living and conflicting ideology in the building of a government drove, in part, the original series, while the idea of sentience, being and evolution with the advent of digital technology made up Caprica, Blood & Chrome concerns itself with the nature of war. Much like a particularly crappy variation on Starship Troopers, only without the hilariously biting subversion, it starts with Adama (Luke Pasqualino), a cocky young pilot fresh out of school, jumping into a base camp during the first Cylon war, certain he's going to leap out of the gate and single-handedly defeat the enemy. Amidst the co-gender showers and generic reiterations of knowing condescension ("be patient, fighting isn't exactly what you think it's going to be") there's some mumbling about the nature of war ("we don't know why they hate us, but they do, so we have no choice but to fight") that implies survival is a narrow-minded, self-defeating cycle of will, glibly reiterating the assertions of Schopenhauer. Eventually, theory is put into practice when Adama agrees to take computer scientist Dr. Becca Kelly (Lili Bordán) on a mission to find an active signal in Cylon territory. Acting as the survivalist voice of practicality is Adama's weathered co-pilot, Coker Fasjovik (Ben Cotton), whose constant warnings work in opposition to Adama's enthusiasm and idealism. Unfortunately, only Cotton demonstrates any acting abilities and charisma, which leaves this battle, and its bland writing and progression, to flounder with little zest. There's an interesting play on the nature of insurrection, which takes an unintentionally amusing Aristotelian turn, but it comes long after the formulaic development and rote, uninteresting dialogue has killed any potential appeal. It's easy to see why this show was never picked up and instead came out via webisodes. A "Visual Effects" supplement is included with the Blu-Ray, which talks about the limited budget and extensive CGI. It gives a bit of context on why everything is so ugly.