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Battlestar Galactica by Jeffrey A. Carver
01/04/2006 . Source: Tomas L. Martin 
pub: TOR/SciFi Channel. 318 page enlarged paperback. Price: $14.95 (US), $19.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-765-30904-1. Buy from Amazon US - Buy from Amazon UK
nb: US titles may only be available from Amazon US, and UK titles from Amazon UK. check out website: www.tor.com, www.scifi.com and www.starrigger.net
When I first saw the mini-series beginning the new version of 'Battlestar Galactica', I was amazed. Here was a SF show I could relate to with big, expansive battles and tense character-based plots. It boasts a cast of fantastically acted morally-ambiguous characters who had to make really hard choices to do what they thought was right at the time but wasn't always actually the right thing.
I think it's a very brave show to be using so much of what some people would call 'mainstream drama' aspects into a Science Fiction show. In many ways this reincarnation of the 70s show is more like literary SF than anything that's been on TV before. 'Star Trek', 'Stargate', 'Farscape' and the like all had their merits but they had a definite camp edge to them. A sense that all these aliens in funny masks, unlikely technologies and convoluted plots weren't actually real.
'Battlestar Galactica' owes far more to things like Joe Haldeman's 'The Forever War' or Orson Scott Card's 'Ender's Game' than to these other series. The story arcs are consistent, continuing over many episodes or series to give a much better sense of continuity and a gritty, realistic feel similar to many thrillers. A riveting stand-off between Galactica marines and dissenting but not necessarily wrong civilians is a common thread, giving the show a post 9/11 message that military force, even well-meaning, is not always the answer.
Jeffrey A. Carver's novelisation of the first three hours of the show is faithful to the source material and still holds a lot of interest to a watcher of the show because of that. It details the events of the initial SF mini-series in which the robotic Cylons return after 40 years to destroy the twelve homeworlds of the human race, using a computer virus and a traitor to disable most of the military before they can respond.
The Battlestar Galactica, an ageing vessel about to be decommissioned commanded by an officer about to retire, William Adama, is the only major ship to survive the Cylon onslaught, saved by its ancient circuitry from the original Cylon war. The crew is young and inexperienced and full of misfits like the rebellious pilot Starbuck and the commander's own son, Lee, who hasn't forgiven his father for the death of his brother.
Add in the last surviving member of the government, the education minister Laura Roslin, who is at loggerheads with Adama over the future of the fifty thousand survivors for political intrigue. The fact that enemy Cylons have twelve human models and no-one (even the reader) knows who they are and you have a lot of conflict and tension to describe.
Carver does his job adequately and transcribes the mini-series' events well. But for me there isn't really much point to the tie-in. The chapters are exact replicas of their television counterparts and add very little in the way of artistic additions. There weren't any points where I, as a watcher of the show, learnt anything new and as a result it bored me a little.
There's nothing particularly wrong with this adaptation of one of the best series of recent times. However, it's nothing compared to its source material. I suggest you watch the mini-series again rather than read what is little more than a prose transcription of something which is far more exciting in the medium for which it was designed.
Tomas L. Martin
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