Battlestar Galactica fans have been awaiting the release of the The Plan for months now. It was filmed and announced long before the famed sci-fi series rolled up the carpet last March and, after the last moments of BSG aired, my fellow fans and I consoled ourselves with the loss by looking forward to this straight-to-DVD movie. Still, as excited and anxious as I was to see The Plan, it was not without reservation.

Every episode of Battlestar Galactica began with the same “once upon a time”–style opening, explaining the humans’ history with the Cylon robots, and it would always conclude with the same four-word phrase regarding the Cylons: “They have a plan.” The premise of The Plan is to go back to where the series began, with the destruction of the human race, and show it to us from the view of the Cylons, showing us their “plan.” What quickly becomes obvious is that, after their failed attempt to destroy all humanity, the Cylons really didn’t have a plan.

This is where my reservations come in. As a fan of many complex television shows, I know that limitations are good things. Budgets, production schedules, actor availabilities, all of these things combine to force the show’s creators to make choices about what they want to actually present in their show, forcing them to cut out the stuff that isn’t really necessary or that might drag down the narrative. So, the idea of deliberately going back to add in stuff that you didn’t think was worth telling us about before sounds a little fishy to me. It’s the Jaws principle: We didn’t see a lot of the robot shark because it was broken and, in the end, the film was better for it.

I am very sorry to report that my reservations seemed to be very well-founded, as The Plan is largely a big sloppy mess. It begins around where the miniseries that opened the show did, right before the destruction of the human race across the 12 colonies, and concludes at the moment the two Brother Cavils were ejected from the airlock after being discovered on Galactica in season two. In the space between, the film jumps, chronologically, to memorable points in the series’s first season and a half and gives us a little bit of where the Cylons were at that time. The plot basically runs in parallel to the action in the first two seasons of Battlestar.

There are two things you should know about The Plan. One: a good third of the movie is repurposed clips from the show that you’ve already seen if you’re a BSG fan (and if you’re not, please, I beg of you, don’t start with this, you’ll be so lost) and two, most of the beloved main characters from the series only appear in these clips, having recorded little-to-no new footage for the film (this is especially true of the human characters). It’s basically an extended “Previously on Battlestar Galactica” clip package interspersed throughout the duration of the movie.

Rather than focus on fan favorites like Adama or Starbuck or even Cylons like Six or Tigh, The Plan hitches its wagon to Dean Stockwell’s Brother Cavil. One Cavil is hiding within the fleet, orchestrating the various terrorist activities we saw carried out through the early episodes of BSG. The other Cavil is on the burned-out planet of Caprica, playing counselor to Michael Trucco’s Samuel Anders as he leads a group of humans who have survived the Cylon attacks. The journey that the two Cavils take over the course of The Plan is not uninteresting, but it is hardly robust enough to span a two-hour movie. It doesn’t bring anything especially new to the table. The Plan reinforces what episodes of BSG had already explained better before. Really, if you just rewatch the season two episode “Downloaded” and the season four episode “No Exit,” you’ll get a lot of what the producers are trying way too hard to explain here.

When he appeared at San Diego Comic-Con in July, Edward James Olmos (who directed The Plan) stated his hopes to make more movies like The Plan, to delve even further into the untold stories of BSG. Though I have much affection for the Admiral, I hope that never happens. I loved Battlestar Galactica dearly, but I think it’s time to put it to rest. The stories have been told, it’s time to let them be and not try to further mine the spaces in between for something that will only be a shadow of its predecessor.

The Plan is available for purchase on DVD Tuesday, October 27.