Fans expecting a frame-by-frame remake of the original series might be surprised by how much things have changed. Space battles are a lot more confusing and frantic, with visual effects shots adopting a cinéma-vérité style - as if we're watching a documentary being made by someone using a hand-held camera with snap zoom and over-focussed shots, not unlike to the battle scenes in Joss Whedon's short-lived space opera Firefly and Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down.

More controversial with fans, certainly, are the cast changes. Edward James Olmos's Commander Adama is a laconic, brooding man who doesn't hesitate to slug it out in a fistfight. Fan favourite Boomer (Grace Park) is no longer male African-American but female Asian. The feisty female Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) has no bones about slugging the second-in-command of the Galactica over a card game. I suspect the producers were perhaps trying too hard to make her stand out from her predecessor's namesake, but Sackhoff's Starbuck today can get away with a bit more than Dirk Benedict's did in the straitjacketed censorship of the 1970s.

In the show's secondary plot, Mary McDonnell, as Secretary of Education who has the presidency thrust upon her when everyone else above her in the line of succession is killed, rises (in the words of Lincoln) to the occasion by marshalling the rag-tag fleet of survivors and makes difficult decisions to ensure the survival of humanity. Balthar (James Callis) is no longer a barefaced traitor but a lot more complex as a character as he becomes manipulated into an unwitting pawn of the Cylons - and we follow him through that descent as this show unfolds. And as for the new Cylons - well, best if I don't give away too much here, except to say that Tricia Helfer as the leggy blonde "Number Six" has done a good job with a difficult role.

Director Michael Rymer (whose credits include turds like Queen of the Damned) does an okay job - though there's much room for improvement. Jamie Bamber, who plays Apollo, doesn't quite have the screen charisma to carry a role of such magnitude. In the two or three confrontations that Apollo has with his father Adama, Edward Olmos simply burns this newcomer to a crisp in terms of sheer acting ability, not to say screen presence.

But I'll say this - this is a new Battlestar Galactica for the 2000s, one which takes a mature approach to its political, military and societal commentary. It's definitely come a long way from being the knee-jerk Star Wars-wannabe of its time: the kids who watched it back then have now all grown up, and this remake has grown up along with them.

Sure, it pays its homage to the original show of the 70s, but this is not a bland, uninspired rehash of Glen Larson's confection of kiddies' pre-bedtime cheese. You will not find kitschy hallmarks like quasi-Egyptological emblems, groomed disco sideburns, flared robes and toaster-chrome Cylons piloting frisbee-shaped fighters who attack in huge mindless waves; you will find believable character relationships poised with dramatic potential, intense scenes of warfare and a very formidable Cylon enemy indeed.

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