If You Don’t Watch Battlestar Galactica, You Probably Won’t Get into Heaven

The greatest television series I’ve ever watched in terms of balancing entertainment and depth is Neon Genesis Evangelion. It's been my personal standard for serial television for about five years now surpassing Buffy the Vampire Slayer (barely), ‘24’ and I guess Dragonball Z (which one day I swear I will write a book on). What I love about NGE is its use of the ‘end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it’ scenario to examine what it means to be human from a metaphysical and sociological point-of-view. Battlestar Galactica picks up that thread and expands upon it in such a way that I’d say it’s required viewing for every man, woman and child in the developed world.

In summary, BG is about the last survivors of the human race (about 50,000) trying to rebuild human society and evade a race of robots known as Cylons (seemingly) bent on their destruction. I’ve just finished watching the first season and before it was over I was putting the second season in my Netflix queue. So many tantalizing plotlines, so many fully-realized characters. Who can resist that? One of the oft-repeated lines in the show so far has been, “this has all happened before and it will happen again.” Indeed. Nothing that happens on the show plot-wise is all that original: robots rebel against their creators; an unorthodox pilot and her by-the-book captain bump heads; an estranged father and son reconnect—you’ve seen it all before, but probably not done this well. The principal cast of Edward James Olmos’s Commander Adama; Jamie Bamber’s Lee Adama; Mary McDonell’s President Roslin; Katee Sackhoff’s Starbuck and James Callis’s Dr. Baltar is one of the strongest troops of players I’ve ever watched. They start off following the archetypal blueprint each is drawn from: tough-as-nails commander, sensitive but tough and formidable politician, reckless pilot, etc. Suprisingly, each of them is fleshed-out and given room to breathe so that even late into the first season, they’d do things that genuinely surprised me. One of my favorite scenes thus far is when Starbuck reluctantly admits to a horrible error in judgment years ago that ended up costing the life of Commander Adama’s son, Zack. After her revelation I’d expected him to hug her like a father, but instead he tells her to get out of his sight while she can still walk. Later after she gets stranded after an unexpected Cylon run-in, he expends the resources of the entire fleet to rescue her. His anguish and paternal love for her permeated every frame of film in that episode. I kept thinking, “Wow, tell me he won an Emmy or an Oscar or even a freaking ESPy for this. The supporting cast is all aces, too. I found myself caring what happened to every character. There isn’t a weak spot to be found.

The reason I mention the acting is because it needs to be that strong in order to pull off some of the things it tries to do. (You can’t have a character yell out: “He wiped out my entire civilization!” and be taken seriously unless they can do it with complete conviction.) This brings me to the primary antagonists: the Cylons. The Cylons are such an interesting group of villains. They are depicted not so much as heartless killers as religious zealots. They continually talk about ‘the one God’ who has designed this elaborate plan that both the Cylons and human race are a part of. They espouse monotheism while the humans are shown repeatedly to be (at least nominally) polytheistic (worshipping what appear to be Roman and Greek gods interestingly enough). Why this is or what this means, I have no idea but it sure is fascinating. What is equally interesting is that the writers seem to be giving equal weight to both religious vantage points. Things will happen within the BG universe that seem to support the Cylons’ beliefs and then something will happen that supports the humans’ beliefs. I can’t wait to see where they go with this.

It is also fascinating to watch the surviving humans try to re-establish a stable society complete with a functioning government and rigorously disciplined military. On a certain level it seems absurd that they would hold elections complete with televised debates and pundits while being doggedly pursued through the galaxy. Yet, it seems completely plausible and I guess, human.

Then you have the Cylons who look and feel like humans in every sense. I’m still not sure what they are trying to accomplish. They are clearly toying with the humans, but to what end it’s impossible to tell. I guess I’ll find out in a couple of days when season two arrives.

The show has the potential to be one of the best ever if they can keep up the writing and character development. It manages to have the right level of soap-opera interpersonal drama, political intrigue and philosophical musings to keep me completely hooked like a rat on the coke-lever. Good job, guys!

P.S. - BG is also a sci-fi show for people who don’t really care for sci-fi. Other than the setting, there isn’t much science on the show. They rely on technology which in some ways is antiquated compared to what we have now. The architecture of the ship and the way everything looks reminds me of Cameron’s Aliens. Things look clunky and mechanical and wholly believable. So don't worry about getting bogged down with a lot of techno-jargon if that's not your bag, man.