Review: Blood and Chrome

The webisodes have finished. We have now seen the fullness of the backdoor pilot to the new Battlestar Galactica spin-off, Blood and Chrome.

I don’t even know where to begin. Words like “appalling,” “train wreck,” and “unnecessary” come to mind, but none of them seem to do justice.

I have only two good things to say about this show, so I guess I’ll just get them out of the way first.

The first is that I feel Battlestar Galactica already jumped the shark pretty thoroughly in the fourth season, so Blood and Chrome can’t really ruin my fond memories of the show. That’s already been done.

The second is that Bear McCreary is still one of the best soundtrack composers around. Blood and Chrome is almost worth watching for the music alone. Almost.

The rest of the show is utter dreck.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Luke Pasqualino is horrifically miscast as William Adama. This pretty boy is not even remotely reminiscent of the gravitas of the Old Man. That kid from Caprica was more of a badass than this guy.

The rest of the cast is little better. Coker actually feels like he belongs in the Battlestar Galactica universe, but his writing near the end got increasingly erratic until it was almost impossible to take him seriously as a character.

Dr. Obligatory Eye-Candy never seemed to display a lot of personality, and her character was overall badly underdeveloped. I’ve heard some people say the actress isn’t very good, but I’m more inclined to blame the writers. I don’t see how she could have made her lines interesting.

The plot is nonexistent. It’s just a spree of explosions and gunfights and people randomly acting crazy just for the sake of drama. It’s everything that was wrong about Battlestar Galactica and none of what was right.

They seem to have simply tried to dump a lot of pew pew on the viewer in the hopes it would distract us from the fact that nothing is actually happening most of the time.

We learn nothing of relevance about the Cylon War or Adama’s character. I’ve got nothing against prequels when they actually add to the universe they take place in, but this was just a blatant attempt to milk a dry teat.

Say what you will about Caprica, but at least it expanded the mythos. For all its mistakes, we learned a lot about the origins of the Cylons and the society of the Twelve Colonies, and it had the potential to do much more if it had continued.

Moving on…

The virtual sets are inconsistent. Some look okay, but the ice planet looked so fake I could have seen more realistic snow effects by logging into World of Warcraft and flying to Dragonblight.

Cylon snow snakes. Cylon snow snakes. I just… I don’t even… Why?

At best, the show feels like an ill-planned fan film. Only the flashy special effects give any indication that this is a professional production.

I could go on and on. It’s not worth my time or effort. Not since JJ Abrams got his hands on Star Trek has a franchise been so thoroughly abused.

Overall rating: 2/10 Please, Syfy. Let it die.