Battlestar Galactica ‘Blood And Chrome’ Debuts; Machinima Expects It “To Do Extremely Well”

Earlier this week, Machinima announced that the long-awaited Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome prequel series had finally found a home on  Machinima Prime. The YouTube Original Channel has released the first two episodes of the series, and as with previous SyFy Digital productions, they are of extremely high quality.

A Machinima rep explained the process by which the gaming network gained distribution rights for Blood and Chrome. “The series came up after a marketing discussion with Syfy about their current series and a simultaneous discussion with UCP about how to partner together on big opportunities. Battlestar came up as a perfect opportunity.” The series is being released 2-3 episodes at a time; therefore, the entirety of Blood and Chrome will be released over the course of four weeks, or one week shorter than the schedule over which Machinima released Halo: Forward Unto Dawn.

The first episode features a young William Adama, played by Luke Pasqualino (Skins) getting his initial orders as a pilot in the First Cylon War and meeting his co-pilot, Lieutenant Coker. Both Adama and Coker fit into generic action movie stereotypes; Adama is young, brash, and cocky, with none of the authoritarian gravitas that his older self exhibited in Syfy’s main Battlestar Galactica series. Coker, meanwhile, is cynical, war-weary, and unpolished. The duo forms a classic buddy cop team

that I’m sure will lead to plenty of conflict in future episodes.

People should flock to Blood and Chrome for its high-quality visuals, which are of TV caliber. As someone who has never seen Battlestar Galactica in his life (I know, I know), I was stunned by the amazing vision with which the series’ world was constructed. It’s possible to consider Forward Unto Dawn as a landmark series in terms of production values, but I found Blood and Chrome to be equally impressive.

Machinima seems to agree with me, as they have high hopes for the series. “Machinima really understands how to drive viewership for long form premium content on YouTube.” the network’s rep explained. “We’re expecting the series to do extremely well. Battlestar is a global franchise, and judging by the reaction to the trailer so far it’s fans around the world are very excited at the prospect of the series being on Machinima Prime.” If you haven’t yet, be sure to watch Blood and Chrome. Even if you’re not an obsessive Battlestar Galactica fan, you will like what you see.