Review Detail

8.6 6 10
Overall rating
 
7.7
Audio/Video Quality
 
10.0
Audio Editing
 
9.0
Visual Editing
 
8.0
Narrative
 
4.0
Enjoyment
 
7.0
Being a huge BSG remake fan (and at first hating it when it came out because I couldn't get over all the changes in terms of characters from the original), I was looking forward to this fan edit, especially after reading all these positive reviews here. Now, I'm one of the apparently few who had no problems with the finale. There were only 4 real options:

1) earth is not found
2) earth is found in present day
3) earth is found in our ancient past
4) everyone dies.

I found 3 to be the most likely and satisfying proposition and that's what the show creators went with.

In any case, I found a LOT of problems with this edit. I even went through the trouble of comparing the two side by side (DVD and this edit).

First the positive:

most edits are seamless and I watched the 2GB mkv video version of this, not in surround sound.

Also didn't notice anything jumping out audio-wise. I liked the beginning with the translations. Well done.

Also, I think there were a few deleted scenes added to the fanedit which I appreciated (or I don't remember those scenes anymore).

Now the not-exhaustive list of the negatives, in no specific order:

1) Athena is killed? WTF? And Helo dies too? So Hera is raised by Baltar and Six (or whatever that 'real' cylon is named)? Why? Did not work for me at all.

2) "Disposition of fleet: unknown". Very unsatisfying for a viewer, I would think. That just raises more questions. This is under the category of "fan fix." After watching this, I felt like the original edit gets so much more right and the editor isn't fixing anything but mudding it up more.

3) the raptor "accidentally" shooting off nukes vs now in the fanedit it is by human intention. This seems like choosing to turn a metaphysical event into straightforward human action-taking. The meteoroid hitting the "zombie raptor" comes across as divine providence, given what is going on in the story and not "deus ex machine", in the sense that it is completely random and a cop-out. So that change didn't work for me either. And that raptor gets left behind the fan edit. More open endings instead of less.

4) The colonists land on earth and the title reads "10,000 years before the Fall of Caprica." I read through the changes the editor made. Am I missing something here? How can the colonists land on earth BEFORE the Fall of Caprica?? Caprica falls and THEN the colonists leave their 12 colonies in search of Earth. What you could maybe write is "present day earth: 10,000 years AFTER the Fall of Caprica."

5) It seems the editor tried to fix issues with the story that weren't there: in the fan edit, it seems ONLY the Galactica makes it to Earth, the rest of the fleet is bye-bye, never saw the Galactica again once it jumped into battle. Apparently the editor does not understand that after Galactica jumped to earth, she couldn't jump anymore but Adama sent a jump-capable raptor to the fleet and that raptor then guided the fleet to earth. I read the editor's change list and he apparently did not understand this point and thought there was a plot-hole where in fact there is not.

I'm sorry to be so negative. I know how much work goes into something like this. I just think this edit made things worse than better. I am definitely sticking to my original episodes.

Starbuck doesn't disappear. But the alternative is not more satisfying to me. Crying at Sam's bathtub.

Sorry.


User Review

Do you recommend this edit?
No
Format Watched
Digital
Owner's reply September 10, 2014

This review may confuse viewers because it contains spoilers filtered through a lens of the originally released ending. If you watch this ending assuming that certain events mean the same as in the original, then you will find yourself unsatisfied. Most pertinent to this reviewer's questions, the original gives us two different Earths, which miraculously both have the same constellations and indigenous homo sapiens. This edit does not.

As to the reviewer's criticisms, though, I welcome them as much as the praise from the others. The reviewer dislikes how I replaced divine providence with human intention, a happy ending for beloved characters with a painful and foreshadowed one, and a thoroughly likeable set of parents for Hera with a morally ambiguous pair. He also dislikes how in some places, instead of answering certain questions, I simply raise more.

I can safely say that all of these are exactly what I set out to do, and that they characterize what I like in my Battlestar Galactica and in my storytelling in general. I can also assure the reviewer that I am not in misunderstanding of the jump capabilities of Galactica and its raptors, and that my dates chosen were extremely deliberate--watch without assumptions from the original, and this may become clearer. The images and text for the menus in the DVD version may also be considered minor Easter eggs.

Thanks for the kind words on the audio and video editing--it's good to know that even for people who have different tastes in stories, the technical aspects still worked.

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