Battlestar Galactica, Reimagined Series

It's easy to play the curmudgeonly critic who hates everything besides sitting in a dark room staring at a blank wall. It's a simple matter to fill these commentaries with pop culture jokes and the occasional scatological wisecrack when you have little respect for the subject material. Today, however, I have to play the optimist. I'm forced to contradict my own screeds against serialized fiction and repackaging existing stories. I also have to account for the many, many mistakes made during the series because despite all of that, I still loved Battlestar Galactica.

And I like to think I hold myself to a higher standard, so I can't just say, "Yeah, it had problems, but it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside."

I truly think Battlestar is the best science fiction television series of its generation. Now before you ask, I have not seen Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Special Victims Unit or anything other than the original movie. I am aware that they are extremely popular among their devotees, but it's just not my flavor of Kool-Aid. And do we really need another story about humanity discovering the toys left behind by ancient, mysteriously vanished benevolent builder aliens?

Yes, yes. I was really into Firefly as well, but we can't just assume it would have continued to be great because it died so young. Come on, if it had lasted as many seasons as Angel or Buffy, that's more than enough time for it to spiral into Joss Whedon's trademark convoluted madness. They never should have trusted Fox, anyway.

Star Trek is not so cut and dry. However, the later series, which is to say, those that could more accurately be considered part of Battlestar's generation, are the weakest. Although it is tempting to take a rose-tinted look back since J. J. Abrams is poised to murder the franchise once and for all, that would not be honest.

In a way, I think Battlestar is as much a response to Star Trek as it is to its original incarnation. Star Trek attempts to imagine us at our best. Humanity is brought back from the brink of devastation by an outside force and actually learns from the experience. They try, even if they don't always succeed, to use technology and influence responsibly. They are the honorable and compassionate people we wish we could be. No matter how jaded I become as I get older, there will always be a part of me yearning for that future, impossibly bright and heartbreakingly distant.

Battlestar Galactica is about human nature as well, but it's nowhere near as confident. I'm inclined to agree that when and if we get spaceships and travel to other stars, we will still be the same violent, petty, conniving douchebags we are now.

It's part of what makes Battlestar so gripping, even when the plot has gone momentarily off the rails. The characters have emotions and motivations that we can recognize, even if their situation is extreme and unfamiliar. So often these grand space operas leave the human element behind as if only one-dimensional characters can break the speed of light. It's a spaceship than can wink out of existence and reappear light-years away, but inside it's gunmetal gray and manually operated doors that make a satisfying clank when they close. It's clear that a lot of thought went into this aspect of the show. Galactica initially escapes destruction because its systems are outdated. The characters communicate using handsets with coiled cords and garbled radio messages. They use bullets and missiles and flight suits. This aesthetic serves the show well, highlighting its unique approach. The alien and the familiar together.

In fact, when Battlestar Galactica gets it wrong, it's usually when things become a little too familiar. Science fiction is about imagining the future in order to make observations about the present, but the best SF does it with subtlety and style. Parts of the finale have this problem, but it was the New Caprica debacle that really made me cringe. They stretched and strained plotlines and characters in order to jump up and down and say, "Ooh, ooh! Look at us, We're topical!" I certainly would have advised against doing this at all, but they could have at least made their allegory a little more complex. These episodes were so bad, they had to be the result of either incompetence or contempt for their audience. Either way, they let CNN's coverage of the Iraq War write half of the scripts, and I was glad when it finally ended.

The whole exercise was pointless, anyway. They had more than enough time to address their pet theme of studying social structures in a states of extreme turmoil. This was the hook responsible for getting me on board at the outset. I found the relationship between the civilian government and the military chain of command the most compelling thing about the show. They had to gauge their commitment to their way of life next to their chances for survival. It's this kind of thinking that SF is all about. It's not just, "wouldn't it be cool if...?" but "what does this do to their society?"

It makes me wonder why the weird, not really explained, kind of tacked-on spiritual stuff needed to be there at all. They had a mostly believable "religion = science + a long time" sort of thing going on until the last season when everything went crazy and I don't think they got away with it. Characters have visions, characters disappear and reappear. Explanations were not given, but I think we all trusted that they were pending. Notoriously, the song All Along the Watchtower popped up as a plot device. It coincided with revelations about Earth and cylons and it seemed a little out there, but I assumed it would all make sense eventually. Instead, they hemmed and hawed and gave a couple of half-hearted attempts, but nothing felt convincing.

In the end, in lieu of an explanation for all that, we got a ridiculous and completely redundant scene in which some sort of higher power is mentioned by characters who may or may not exist and then... What? Roll credits? Are you kidding me?

It's clear the writers had their hands in too many pies, and I'll tell you why. The moment Laura Roslin wrote the number of survivors on the whiteboard in Colonial One, they were declaring loudly that the show was going to be about mortality. Indeed, this is a major theme throughout the show and is executed well. The few surviving humans cling to life in the black void fighting enemies who have the ability to resurrect. It was an emotional tool that I for one responded to, but it's hard to take it seriously with all the wishy-washy supernatural stuff going on as well. They tried to hedge their bets by tacking on a bunch of weird shit assuming at least some of it will end up being deep and moving.

It's a shame they felt the need to do that because all that death and danger creates some seriously tense action to go with the existentialism. Until they felt the need to undermine it in the later seasons, it was one of the show's biggest assets. There is an attack. Some escape, some stay and fight. Some lives are risked to try and save the species as a whole. When they're doing it right, it puts you on the edge of your seat because it's crystal clear just what is at stake every time they launch Vipers.

Speaking as the kind of mega-nerd who doodled space ships on his notebooks in school when he should have been paying attention, I like to think about Battlestar Galactica in terms of the titular vessel herself. She's solid, built with the understanding that she was going to get shot at. A lot. Her armor was pocked and scorched and falling off in places from all the damage she sustained, but by the end she was still intact, if just barely. The series was assaulted by ham-fisted and unnecessary allegory, a flippant and ultimately confusing approach to the supernatural, scheduling weirdness and a writer's strike, but I feel it was constructed well enough to survive.

I do not regret being on board.