A Pause to Watch: Battlestar Galactica
My wife and I stayed up late into the night to finish the final five episodes of Battlestar Galactica. We weren’t disappointed. I don’t wish to give away spoilers here, and believe you me, I’ll be analyzing the series in depth and detail in the coming weeks, but for now I can safely say that it’s the finest work of television storytelling I’ve yet seen. Its moral and dramatic seriousness equals that of, say, Band of Brothers, while its mythology rivals if not surpasses those mythologies crafted by Joss Whedon. Those of you familiar with the original Battlestar should know there’s nothing campy about this reinterpretation. It’s deadly serious about its subject matter.
Yes, the show has outstanding acting, writing, direction, music, and all the other qualities of good television production, but these alone are not why the show fraking rocks. BSG believably and dramatically addresses the political, social, legal, cultural, religious and economic ramifications of the human race being suddenly reduced from billions people to around 50,000 souls. How, in such a world, would the remnants of a civilian government continue to work with (and against!) the remains of the military leadership? BSG explores that. Would people continue to do the jobs they did before the cataclysm, even though payment is no longer a factor and most of the work is no longer necessary? BSG delves into that as well.
Then there’s the show’s treatment of religion. Never seen a more thoughtful, nuanced, and rousing depiction of it on the screen. I loved how the enemy robotic cylons are typically monotheists, believers in the One True God, while the humans are in general pagan polytheists. I loved how among the cylons and the humans we find believers and unbelievers, agnostics, people of religious hope and despair, political opportunists who use religion to serve their ends, and that some of these opportunists are actually believers! I loved the reversals and the conversions and the sudden falls into utter despondency that occur when changes of circumstance or earth-shattering revelations prompt the characters to stay steadfast in their beliefs or collapse into hopelessness. And I loved the mystery of it, the traces and hints, and the resolutions that conceal as much as they reveal about the possibility of the divine.
As this post is spoiler-free (sort of), I won’t post any clips, but here are a few tracks from the exceptional soundtrack by Bear McCreary. Fans of Bob Dylan will recognize the melody of the second video.
Comments are closed.
We just finished BSG a couple months back. Incredible stuff. Katee Sackoff is an out-of-this-world talent.
She did a fabulous job. Great range.
One of my favorite shows of all time. Admiral Cain is one of the best villains in the history of television.
I refer to her as Admiral Rumsfeld, though that’s probably unfair.
Rumsfield is like a cartoonish super-villian. Admiral Cain seems like a full, fleshed out human.
I enjoyed the first couple of seasons, but it seems like it went off the rails midway through (a common problem for shows that are supposed to have a single overarching storyline).
Really? I thought the plot maintained a solid continuity throughout. Not like, say, The X-Files.
So what was the Cylons’ plan?
*Spoilers*
At first, the seven planned the destruction of the colonies and all their inhabitants. They pursued the fleet concerned that the remnants of the human race would someday seek revenge, but then the cylons also became interested in finding earth and also with experimenting with human/cyclon reproduction.
Their plan, such as it was, began to unravel when Caprica (one of the 6′s), along with Boomer and another model, urged subjugation rather than annihilation. Their time with the humans suggested to them that perhaps the human race did deserve to survive.
Then Xena Warrior Princess, despite her programming, began to inquire into the final five, which we later learned had created the seven. That caused further division and eventually lead to the civil war.
We also later learn of the actions of Dean Stockwell regarding the final five and the memories of the seven.
To the extend that the cylons acted as one, they had a coherent plan, but as each model developed individuality, the plan (“and they have a plan”) became many plans, so to speak.
Kyle,
That’s not a plan. It’s just one damn thing after another. The creators even had to invent a cockimamy reason for how there were only twelve cylon models when there were actually thirteen. There was no plan, they were just making it up as they went along.
Blackadder,
Now you seem to be talking about the plan of the show’s creators, which, from what I understand, was more of a vague idea of where they wanted to go than a skeletal structure of the series. For example, when they began the Helo-Athena plot line in the first season, they didn’t know where it would end up. The birth of the human/cylon child wasn’t conceived initially.
Anyhow, while I prefer to write stories knowing the major plot points, I have no trouble with those who want to make things up as they go along.
And how is Starbuck the [Spoiler] of [Spoiler]?
Daughter of Daniel?
No, the Harbringer, actually.
But here’s something to consider, if you listen to the commentary track for that episode and the next one, you’ll see that the executive producer never meant for an association between her father and Daniel to be drawn.
I haven’t listened to the producer commentary, but the juxtaposition they made (unintentionally, it seems) with revelations about the missing Daniel and Kara’s father’s sudden absence (combined with his teaching her Bob Dylan) gave me that impression. I’d categorize it as a possible interpretation, one supported by the text, even if it wasn’t the intention of the show’s creators.
Regarding Kara being the harbinger of death, I took it to be metaphorical for not an actual death, but the end of one thing and the transition to/birth of another. Again, I don’t know what the writers intended, but I suspect she was never meant to be an omen for the end of the human race.
Another possibility: as she had died and been apparently resurrected, harbinger of death could also mean harbinger who comes from beyond death. In other words, death would describe her, not what she would be bringing.
I think that’s a stretch with the Harbringer of Death Kyle. If its not a stretch, then its lousy payoff, especially because it was put out there after she came back.
Explainable? I guess. Bad television? Probably.
The payoff is the fun of speculation. In the end, what we are left with is not the answer, but a series of events that may or may not give meaning to the description. I much prefer this kind of payoff to receiving the answer that has the unfortunate affect of tempering the mystery and wonder.
And if I thought that kind of thing was at work here, I might agree Kyle.
I guess I’m a bit more of an intentionalist.
Yes, my favorite. Half-past season 4 now. A treasure (but I wish they would skip the sex scenes).
My wife and I recently finished watching the series on Netflix, and all I can say is “Wow!” It’s an amazing series that isn’t afraid to explore controversial moral issue without becoming moralistic. I agree that it’s the best bit of television to come about in a long while, even though it is old. We’ve only had cable for perhaps 2 years out of our twenty year marriage, so anything we haven’t seen before is “new”. Gotta love the access that the internet has created.
I think that it was real life and real issues on a grander, epic scale. Our culture has a real dearth of epic storytelling, and BSG really filled that niche.