While I’ve blogged briefly about the Battlestar Galactica series in a couple of posts here, I haven’t done an extended series of posts on the recently-ended TV series yet. Time magazine has described the series as “a gripping sci-fi allegory of the war on terror, complete with monotheistic religious fundamentalists, sleeper cells, civil-liberties crackdowns and even a prisoner-torture scandal”, and lists it as one of the best ever TV drama serials. Equally critical acclaim has also come from National Review, Rolling Stone, Newsday, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Chicago Tribune, and Entertainment Weekly.
I recently picked up all four seasons of the series on Blu-ray, and have started – slowly – revisiting episode by episode on evenings when we have time what is one of the best three TV drama serials I’ve seen (the other two are The West Wing, and The Sopranos).
The original series 30 years ago was a somewhat campy, mostly male-dominated telling of a grand tale set in space. Cylons, essentially robotic beings, have launched a surprise attack on human colonies in a far away galaxy. Most of the humans get wiped out, but the few survivors band together in a rag-tag fleet of civilian space ships, and led by the last of their battle cruisers – the Galactica – search for a planet that is described in their legends as the home of one colony who left thousands of years ago. And that planet’s our Earth.
The 2003 – 2009 remake retains the core concept of the original series – that it’s a tale of humans finding a new home – but a lot has been changed too. Key characters that used to be played by male actors are now played by female; a change that brought about a lot of hollering of fans of the original, but as the series played out turned out to be a sound choice. The general out lay of stories is no longer intended for young kids either. Given that the fleet of civilian ships led by the crusty old battlecruiser in a flight from species extinction, the stories in the first season are centered towards the figuring out how to survive (i.e. food, water sustenance, fuel) despite overwhelming odds. As the seasons progress, the stories become more complex as the band of humans figure out what exactly is involved in their long journey towards finding a new home.
The series is allegorical towards very current and recent incidents from our real world too. Depending on how you see each episode as it comes through, you might see commentaries on the war against terrorism, theology and fanaticism, and the human right to abortion and and enjoyment of civil liberties when your species is nearing extinction.
Continued in the next post.
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