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The first season of “Battlestar Galatica” receives an early roll out courtesy of Best Buy and Universal. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this set comes pretty much bare bones compared to the official US release that will appear in September. I’m lost as to what Universal’s strategy is here; do they want to tick off fans of the series? Best Buy may find itself in the middle of a consumer war zone as well; fans that purchase this thinking that the regular version (which Best Buy will carry as well by the way but NOT until September) will be the same will be returning this in droves finding an excuse for not keeping the item. Regardless of the outcome of this bizarre battle between Best Buy and other reailers, this release of the UK version of “Battlestar Galatica” will certainly polarize fans of the series. ***

The first season of “Battlestar Galatica” finds the ship losing some of the ragtag fleet as they continue to retreat in the onslaught of the Cylon invading force. Earth has now been overrun with both the humanized models of the Cylons as well as the robot variety killing people at will. The President (Mary McDonnell) continues to lose her fight against breast cancer when the only physician that could have treated her is missing on the Olympic Carrier transport and the crew of the Galatica are frazzled substituting stimulants for sleep and using hope to prop up their exhaustion. There’s a chance that the Olympic Carrier has been infiltrated by Cylon agents. Adama (Edward James Olmos) has his team of fighter pilots run alongside the Olympic Carrier escorting it because of his suspicions. Meanwhile, Helo (Tahmoh Penikett) who stayed behind on Earth voluntarily so that more civilians could be transported to Galatica’s fleet is captured by the Cylons and seduced into being an unwitting participant in a nefarious plan. It’s a strong season continuing to build on the mini-series that relaunched this franchise for a 21st century audience. ---

This is where you separate the wheat from the chaff. The UK reformatted released has deleted scenes and no featurettes. The official US release will have featurettes. Depending upon how important featurettes are to you (and production design sketches, drawings, etc.), you may want to hold off on purchasing this set. On the other hand, you will get the boxed set nearly three months before the official release of the set in the US. There’s an extra disc included that has some great behind-the-scenes footage for the feature film “Serenity” (which is the big screen sequel to the cancelled TV series “Firefly”). The deleted scenes might be enough to purchase this set but they appear on the US “official” release of the series. The UK version reportedly had no chapters for each episode but this set does (although there aren’t any images illustrating what’s in each chapter). The static menu design does mean that there’s more room for a sharper image but there’s no guarantee that you’ll see a huge improvement in image quality. The most striking difference for fans is the fact that the second season has a different theme song than the first season will on the US release set. That’s because the UK received the series much later than in the US. The US set will also have the mini-series as pat of the set which will, again, create bad will among Galatica fans as they will feel like they’ve been double dipped yet again. The artwork for the UK version is superior to the artwork for the US release but that’s all cosmetic. ---