Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

The direct to DVD movie Battlestar Galactica: The Plan is awful. It’s so bad I can’t understand why it got made.

In the early seasons of the mostly excellent reimagining of the space odyssey TV show Battlestar Galactica, it was purported that the Cylons, the robotic enemies of humanity, had a plan. As it gradually became more and more apparent that the writers were making things up as they went along and that they didn’t have a plan for the show themselves, it likewise became apparent that the Cylons did not, in fact, have a plan.

This DVD movie, its synopsis claims, attempts to retrospectively show just what that Cylon plan was. But the Cylons’ attempt at a plan in this movie is almost as disjointed and stupid as the movie itself.

The movie starts with a sequence depicting the Cylons nuking the human Twelve Colonies. This is an impressive display of visual effects. It features spaceships and things blowing up. Sadly, it does not show spaceships blowing up.

But then the movie has shot its load. The movie then cuts between humanoid Cylons infiltrating the human survivors on Caprica, one of the Colonies, and Cylons infiltrating the fleet of refugee spaceships that was the focus of the TV show. Apparently the Cylons in the fleet want to blow up the fleet, but aren’t very good at it. The Cylons on Caprica just sort of follow humans around while looking mischievous.

I should explain more about the plot, but there isn’t an actual plot to explain.

Every scene in this movies exists between some other scene in the TV show. Consequently, every scene looks like it belongs as a deleted scene found on a DVD. The problem is, these scenes are shown out of context of the larger story. They require viewers to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the show itself. Worse, there are some scenes taken from the show itself and shown out of context for no good reason.

Most of the scenes in this DVD feature Dean Stockwell as Cavil, the seeming leader of the Cylons. Stockwell is a talented actor, and watching him work is engaging. But not enough to make me forget that nothing his character says makes sense.

There are also boobies. For some reason, director Edward James Olmos – who is as incapable as a director as he was thrilling to watch acting as the show’s Commander Adama – felt the need to add nudity in this DVD movie when there was none in the show itself. Sadly, the tits are the only redeeming factor in this mess of a movie.

There aren’t even spaceships shooting at each other and exploding.