A sleeker 'Battlestar Galactica' returns to TV

LOS ANGELES -- "Battlestar Galactica" is returning as a four-hour miniseries, backed by hype befitting a science fiction classic in the same galaxy as "Star Wars" or "Star Trek."\nNever mind that this classic was a campy space opera that lasted just one season.\nWhen it premiered on ABC in 1978, the special-effects dazzler was the most highly publicized new series of that season. Lorne Greene starred as Adama, the commander of a ragtag band of refugees in search of a lost planet called Earth after a band of robotic Cylons wiped out much of humankind.\nIn the new version, airing Monday and Tuesday on the Sci Fi Channel (9 p.m. EST), Edward James Olmos takes over as Adama; Jamie Bamber is his son, Apollo (originally played by Richard Hatch); and the hotheaded pilot, Starbuck, is now a woman, played by Katee Sackhoff (Dirk Benedict was the original).\nWhile the original series' thematic core remains -- the human struggle for survival - a lot has changed.\nGone is the space fantasy with the dashing caped warriors of old. Now they're handsome heroes in uniforms akin to Air Force fighter pilots. The aluminum Cylon enemies look more like humans, complete with feelings, including one with rabid sexual desires.\nAnd the quest is not for a mythical Earth -- it no longer exists.\n"It's a fine line in deciding what you want to retain and what you want to change from the original," says the miniseries' writer, Ron Moore. "But it all started with the name."\nWhat he ended up with is a saga for a post-Sept. 11 world: an array of conflicted characters forced to coexist under the threat of more deadly adversaries living among them.\n"When 9-11 happened," says Sackhoff, "I knew for the first time what it was like to feel fear - genuine fear. And had that not happened, it would have been a lot harder for me to actually play this character."\n"What science fiction should be," says Moore, "is a look at ourselves, an examination of humanity. But where we are with science fiction in television and movies, you've sort of fallen into two categories: There's this quasi-cyberpunk stuff, which is everything from 'Matrix' to 'Blade Runner.' Then there's the sort of 'Star Wars,' 'Star Trek' lush orchestral visions of the future"