I saw Battlestar Galactica: The Plan for the first time just the other day. I didn’t expect much, so was pleasantly surprised by just how it all interweaves so nicely and ties up the loose ends – what happened to Miss Godfrey. To whom was Caprica6 speaking just before the attack? How much did Boomer really know about her Cylon nature? What were the Final Five doing when the attacks began and how did they get into the fleet? What sparked the withdrawal from the colonies and what started the Cylon civil war?

In amongst the satisfaction of the loose ends tied up, there is one scene that stuck with me. It is that where we finally see the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. This beautifully rendered scene (particularly the part starting at 5 minutes or so) shows in full detail how the attack unravelled in all its sobering, devastating glory.

We hear about the attacks in the miniseries but only see it from the perspective of the colony of Caprica. We see the bombs landing which doesn’t really give us the full scale of the attack. In The Plan, we witness it from the perspective of the Cylon attack fleet. What really hit the spot was the ship’s hybrid uttering “The farms of Aerolon are burning. The beaches of Canceron are burning. The plains of Leonis are burning” and so on with the images interspersing before and after the attack. I’d never thought such destruction could appear so beautifully poetic on film, but most of this comes from the delivery of the hybrid herself – offering uttering apparent gibberish mixed in with scientific jargon. The actress really makes it work here as she did in the series, a great scene all round.