A Brief Book Review: The Battlestar Galactica Trilogy.

Actually, this isn’t a true “trilogy.” It’s more like “Omnibus edition of the only three licensed books that were ever released.”

I needed a BSG fix, and someone got me this for my birthday, so I read through it. Interesting, but hardly essential. The three books in this omnibus edition are:
* The Cylons’ Secret, by Craig Shaw Gardner
* Sagittarius Is Bleeding, by Peter David
* Unity, by Steven Harper

The best of the three is Peter David’s Sagittarius is Bleeding. Peter David is a sometimes hack writer, but he is the best hack writer out there. His Buffy comics have been great (his Spike vs. Dracula comic series is absolutely brilliant), and while his Star Trek books are hit and miss, he shows his strengths here. David’s best at getting the “voice” right for each of the characters, as well as mixing in bits of continuity and fan pleasing moments. Of course, he also indirectly reveals some of the limitations of the series here as well. David has the voices of all the characters down solid (from Baltar’s disjointed and erudite patter to Admiral Adama’s terse but forceful command style) – all except Lee “Apollo” Adama. And so it hit me – David couldn’t get Lee’s voice because Lee had no unique voice in the series. It’s no wonder he bounced from situation to situation as the plot demanded, because he was an empty cipher of a character. So David was wise to barely use Apollo at all in his story. He also provides a reasonable explanation for the question of “whatever happened to Boxey?” (you remember him from the Mini-series and one episode of the first season, right? No? Oh, well). He also introduces a little Norse mythology to the series and does so in a way that easily fits into the series overall without actually impacting the arc.

The other two are hardly worth reading, unless you really need a Galactica fix. All of the books have continuity problems (though usually brought on by developments in the show after the books were originally published separately), but the first and third have serious characterization problems. The first one takes place several years before the series starts, so some of the issues can be forgiven, though the late revelation (in the TV series) of Tigh as a Cylon makes the ending of this one way too problematical for an easy fix (since the ending relies on a meeting with someone Tigh knew during the Cylon wars).

The third one, Unity, is an interesting read if you ever wondered what it would be like if BSG had been shown on the CW network rather than Sci-Fi (or SyFy). It also suffers from the “instant cure” problem (the disease attacks the brain, but after the cure is administered, people immediately recover with no lasting damage) and all the characters have the same voice, rather than their own unique voices.  However,  it does provide a reasonable idea for why Baltar so suddenly became a religious figure during the last season, so it has one saving grace.

Well, the whole thing was an interesting read. Peter David’s contribution was worth it.

Now, what they really need is David to write a book that discusses a growing underground Luddite movement among the fleet during the last half of the last season. He could make that work, and it might make the final episode’s final minutes make some sort of sense.