"Battlestar Galactica vs. Battlestar Galactica" Part 1 Battlestar Galactica: BSG vs. BSG #1 Dynamite Entertainment Writer: Peter David Artist: Johnny Desjardins Colorist: Mohan Letterer: Taylor Exposito Colors by Natalia Marques Cover A by John Cassaday & Laura Martin Published: 2018

Narrowly escaping the Cylons after having destroyed two basestars, Commander Cain and the crew of the Pegasus intercept a distress signal from an uninhabitable planet.

Read the story summary at the Battlestar Wiki

Notes from the BSG chronology

This issue opens in the BSG70 universe, immediately after the events of "The Living Legend" Part 2. However, later issues imply the story takes place some time after "War of the Gods" Part 2 and possibly even after "The Hand of God", sometime after Baltar was marooned on a habitable planet (instead of spending his life on the prison barge) in exchange for his assistance in the latter episode.

Didja Know?

Battlestar Galactica: BSG vs. BSG was a 6-issue mini-series published by Dynamite Entertainment in 2018.

    This mini-series is a holy mess and though I usually bend over backward to find excuses to fold each BSG story into the larger chronology, this one falls into the sidebar status of the two Galactica 1980 versions (the TV series and the Dynamite reboot comic book mini-series).
   This series starts with artist Johnny Desjardins for the first three issues and then artist Edu Menna for the last three. Both artists make their share of mistakes in mixing up characters, ships, and uniforms from the two BSG series, but Menna really loses control of it; I doubt Menna had seen either series before being hired, nor does it seem he did any significant research to get depictions right. For both artists, even when character depictions are "correct", they are often hard to identify by sight. Writer Peter David should have had the characters referring to each other by name so we would know who was who!
   Speaking of the writing, it is also not up to Peter David's usual standard. The dialog feels rushed and stilted. Also, I was hoping for a better explanation of how the two human fleets could possibly meet; though a trans-universal storyline works fairly well with the space-fantasy framework of BSG70, it doesn't work with the more grounded science-fiction of BSG2000. There are also several continuity gaffes with the TV chronology within both universes.
   There are so many discrepancies that, as I was reading the series, I began to assume that we would find out in the final issue that it was all a dream/hallucination/Cylon projection...something. Alas, at the series end, we're left with the impression that we are supposed to somehow accept it as "real" for both universes.

Characters appearing or mentioned in this issue

BSG70-Lt. Tyr
BSG70-Commander Cain
BSG70-Sheba
BSG70-Commander Adama
BSG70-Iollas
BSG70-Kali
BSG70-Kali's mate (unnamed, in flashback only, deceased)
BSG70-Starbuck
BSG70-Apollo
BSG70-Colonel Tigh
BSG2000-Admiral Adama

Didja Notice? 

Page 1 opens the story with the slightly longer version of the classic BSG70 preamble sequence ("There are those who believe...") used at the beginning of the 3-hour pilot episode "Saga of a Star World" (see PopApostle's "Annihilation" study).

The page 1 splash page is presumably meant to depict the destruction of one of the two Cylon basestars destroyed by Pegasus near the end of "The Living Legend" Part 2, but the basestar depicted here is of the BSG2000 style, not BSG70!

This issue introduces the character of Tyr to the BSG70 universe. In the BSG2000 universe, Tyr was a character who appeared in the novel Sagittarius Is Bleeding, written by the same author as this mini-series, Peter David.

On page 3, Commander Cain records a letter to his daughter Sheba, saying it has been nearly two sectares since they became separated (at the end of "The Living Legend" Part 2). The later novel Rebellion (by Richard Hatch and Alan Rodgers) implies that the term "sectare" is the equivalent of a day.

This issue introduces Iollas as the X.O. of the BSG70 Pegasus. In the 2-part "The Living Legend" story, Cain's X.O. was Colonel Tolan. In BSG2000, the X.O. under Admiral Helena Cain was, first, Colonel Jurgen Belzen, then Colonel Jack Fisk.

On page 8, Commander Cain confides to Iollas that he was considering resigning and turning the Pegasus over to him. But the distress call they've just received from an alien woman on a nearby planet has him intrigued enough to lead a landing party there. He remarks, "Looks like I picked the wrong day to give up command." His statement is an in-joke to the 1980 comedy film Airplane! in which actor Lloyd Bridges (who also played Cain in "The Living Legend" episodes) goes through the entire film making variations of "Looks like I picked the wrong week to..." statements (such as "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking" and "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.")

On page 9, Cain and two marines take a shuttle to the planet where the distress call originated. The shuttle they fly in looks nothing like the traditional Colonial shuttles seen in the TV series.

On page 17, Sheba records a letter to her father, revealing she wasn't really planning to stay in the service, wanting to do planetary research, look for alien life, maybe even have kids.