Throughout its run, the series was often reviewed as "the best show on television". It has earned critical acclaim from Time Magazine, The National Review, Rolling Stone,[33][34] Newsday, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly[35] and many others. The series drew critical acclaim from its first season. Diane Werts of Newsday wrote: "You can look at this saga any way you want - as political drama, religious debate, psychological suspenser, sci-fi adventure, deep metaphor or just plain fun - and it's scintillating from every angle."[36] Robert Bianco of USA Today commented: "Driven by violence and rage, Galactica is perhaps the darkest space opera American TV has ever produced. In Galactica's future, humans are on the run, and if external enemies don't get us, internal divisions will... You'll understand them [the characters], their conflicts and their desires, because they're recognizable humans in all their glorious complexity. And that's what makes Galactica a great TV series."[37] Peter Suder of National Review stated that the series is "arguably the most potent, dramatically vibrant series on television. ...t packs the power of a gut punch on screen. For that, much credit is due to the immensely compelling cast of characters... Battlestar Galactica burns with a combustive mixture of political turmoil and human drama that is as achingly real and relevant as anything on television.[38] Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly wrote that the show "has distinguished itself as one of television's very best dramas — on a par with 24, The Wire, and Lost — because it so utterly transcends both its genre and its source material. ...[The] series' sophisticated stories have also attracted a distinctively new breed of fan, one who's not necessarily a sci-fi buff."[39]
