Battlestar Galactica: Warhawk by Richard Hatch: I Wanted This Book To Be So Good!

After reading and not liking the first Battlestar Galactica novel Richard Hatch (not the Survivor, the actor) penned with co-author Chris Golden, I saw him at a science-fiction convention where he promised to fix all of the little inconsistencies that had surfaced in that first novel. 

I really wanted this book to be good. You see, at the time, Richard Hatch was the best hope for a Battlestar Galactica revival. The trailer I had seen had dazzled me and I was hoping that he's learned from his mistakes with the first novel to improve with the second. 

He hadn't. 

The main problem that both novels reflected was the fact that neither Hatch nor Golden bothered to ever go back and rewatch the original series before sitting down to write. Instead, they seem to rely on Hatch's sketchy memory of events from 20 years ago. 

As general science-fiction novels, these would not be as bad. In fact, if Hatch and Golden had just written a series of science fiction book, they probably would've held up just fine. The problems come when they use characters that fans of the series got to know and love, then have them behave in ways that come across as totally out-of-character. 

The original series was about the destruction of thirteen planets and the survivors' decision to leave their planetary system in a fleet of starships to search for the mythical planet Earth. 

There were so many characters that fans grew to know and love. In the last novel, Starbuck disappeared for most of the novel. The cynic in me said that this is because Hatch always felt that his character of Apollo was overshadowed by Starbuck in the series and wanted to eliminate any chance for that in the novels. 

In the new novel, Warhawk, it is the supposed love of Apollo's life, Sheba who disappears for much of the novel. This is a woman he has supposedly loved for twenty years, and yet he hardly thinks about her disappearance throughout the novel. At one point, we are told that Apollo is sure she is all right... 

First of all, the Sheba we knew in the series was very strong and independent (some say a bit whiny as well). I don't see her being the type of person to wait twenty years while someone hedged on whether he wanted to be married. I also don't see how after having a relationship with someone for that length of time, you can go on about your life as business-as-usual once that person has disappeared. Even if Apollo didn't believe her to be dead, then he should have been doing a whole lot more to find out what happened to her. 

The title Warhawk refers to the discovery of Sheba's father, the legendary Commander Cain. He was long believed to be dead, but in the novel he is found being the leader of a prolific society that is preparing to do battle with the Cylons - the enemy of all humanity. The depiction of the character of Cain is probably the best one and the one that most closely resembles what we knew from the series. I guess Lloyd Bridges' portrayal made a lasting impression. 

Apollo must make decisions about what the fleet must do with regard to the Cylons, Cain, and the truce they are trying to forge with other alien species. The politicking in the background as this is going on makes many of those involved come off as complete idiots while Apollo appears to be the only one who can possibly save the fleet. 

The telepathy and psychokinesis angles are good and would've worked, had it not been for two factors. In the original series episode War of the Gods when Apollo's father, Adama (now deceased), demonstrates some of this ability, he makes it clear that they were not well understood in the original Thirteen Colonies and had only been explored superficially. Here, Apollo and Athena manage to use them as if they are old pros. 

The other factor boils down to something that was brought up in the first novel, that somehow those of Pure Kobollian descent were better than others in the fleet. Many fans of Battlestar Galactica rejected this idea sine it seems way too reminiscent of the super-race Nazis once talked about. 

There are other nit-picks as well. The time units are off from what has become the accepted norm. While at the beginning of the series there were some conflicts in the use of these, by the end you had a pretty good idea of how the Galactican time unites compared to our own. Rarely are they used correctly or even consistently in this novel. 

Omega, in the original series, is almost the same age as Apollo, maybe five years older. Here, Hatch refers to him as the tall, elderly officer. 

All that needed to be done was one viewing of the Battlestar Galactica episodes. Either Hatch or Golden should have done this, and I put more responsibility on Golden since he is the experienced author (his works include an X-Men trilogy). 

Hatch is developing his own series at this time titled The Great War of Magellan. I will be interested to see this series as I think he will do fine with something that has no history to it. 

Battlestar Galactica: Armageddon by Richard Hatch (No, Not the Survivor Guy)

I have loved this series since the beginning, and I was one of the outraged viewers who wrote ABC way back when, protesting the cancellation of a top-20 series. 

So when Richard Hatch (who portrayed Apollo in the original series run) announced he was coming out with a series of books and attempting to revive the franchise, I was excited and happy. 

I desperately wanted to like this book. 

Armageddon starts out promising. It is eighteen years after the series has ended. (Galactica 1980 is ignored - THANK GOD!) Commander Adama is on his deathbed. All of the characters who are so familiar to us from the series are there - Starbuck, Apollo, Athena, Cassiopeia, Boomer, Tigh and Sheba. 

The only problem is, they're not acting the way we would expect the characters from the series to act. 

I don't want to speculate on motivations here. I met Richard Hatch (who co-authored the book with Christopher Golden) at a convention and he seemed truly enthused about the project and genuinely interested in reviving the franchise. 

The major shortcoming, is that I don't think either of them sat down and rewatched the episodes before writing this book, and instead relied on memories of the storyline from almost twenty years before. 

In the very beginning of the book, Starbuck is presumed dead after a recon patrol goes bad. So there's no Starbuck for most of the book. Starbuck was the most popular character on the show. 

However, we get to hear him talked about often enough, usually in the conversations of Athena (Apollo's sister and a former girlfriend of Starbuck) and Cassiopeia (Starbuck's girlfriend on the series, and mother to his daughter Dalton here). I found their conversations to be flat and without any real insight. It was more as if the conversations were there just for our benefit of knowing what had happened over the last eighteen years. 

The character of Starbuck and Cassiopeia's daughter Dalton was also a hard character for me. I desperately wanted to like her, but Hatch and Golden often painted her with such recklessness and carelessness that I couldn't help but feel angry at her. She is said to have graduated faster than any cadet ever from their Academy, and yet her immaturity is so blatant that I can't imagine anyone allowing someone like her to be a part of a defensive patrol. 

Hatch delves into an area I don't like as well with his Pure Kobollian lineage. Only they are allowed to command and such. This smacks of the beginnings of nazi-ism and is another frustrating point in this book. There are other problems with the general descriptions in this book that go against what we know from the series (such as describing all of the black characters as being from the planet Leonid, while Boomer had indicated in the series that he was from Caprica). 

Sheba, who we were getting hints at being Apollo's love interest as the series wound down its one and only season, is almost completely neglected in this book. 

Rigel a definite female in the series is described as being male here in the book. 

Apollo's adopted son Boxey is in the book as well, and goes by the name of Troy now (the only homage to Galactica 1980). Again, it was a character of the next generation who I really wanted to like and had mixed feelings about. 

Apollo seems to be written almost as larger-than-life. He is vying with his sister Athena for the command of the Galactica throughout the book. There is no real battle - no sneakiness or underhanded politics going on between them, it is just a debate who is more qualified to lead. 

One of the few really interesting highlights of the book is an alien species Hatch calls The Sky. I really liked them and look forward to knowing more about them later on. There is a good general storyline about the Cylons developing a new weapon and Apollo and Starbuck ending up getting help from a very unlikely source in their quest to destroy it. 

This book had a lot of potential - it being the first novel in a long time based on this television show. There were a lot of fans very hungry and hoping it would be better than it was. Unfortunately, the co-writers did not do a good job of getting their facts straight before giving us this effort. They might have been better off just starting from scratch with a science fiction book not based on anything ever written or televised before. 

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