Saw this article today... It is pretty biased towards Galactica, so you may want to take it with a grain of salt.
Galactica’s Science Fiction RenaissanceSeason 2 further evolves the groundbreaking series
September 28th 2005 12:38am | Posted by: Robert Falconer HNR Senior Editor
When a story unfolds over months, then years, the daily reports have a tendency to blur, especially when that story is a war. That’s the reality of today’s media. Perhaps it always has been.
Most nights, television shows you the latest battles; the block-by-block victories; the grief and the terrible images of carnage—eighteen children killed in a suicide bombing as they waited for candy and toys from American troops; the pain of those left behind.
Whether it’s war, natural disaster…or even the rape of a prisoner, it seems to be human proclivity that at some point we eventually grow complacent as the responsibilities of our daily lives once again overshadow the outside world.
But in the world of television drama, particularly where art imitates life, there exists the unique opportunity to freeze an issue…a moment…a widely held belief, and examine sides we might never have otherwise considered, all under the guise of an hour’s worth of “fictional entertainment.” And if it’s done right, you feel thoughtful without feeling bludgeoned.
You’ve probably heard it repeated ad nauseam, and it’s true: no genre is better equipped for oblique social commentary than science fiction. Tackling the thorny issues of policy and politics, war and religious extremism, life and death, it is – at its best – a way to view the microcosm of our society by journeying into the cosmos of our imaginations.
It’s like the old axiom about not seeing the forest for the trees: get back far enough, and you can more clearly see the big picture…all sides of it. Outer space is about as far back as you can get.
The original Star Trek did this in the late 1960s with its subtle and sometimes not so subtle observations on racism, the Vietnam War and other controversial topics. Yet while the series patted itself on the back for championing equality, it also too-often paraded females around in miniskirts and go-go boots.
Fortunately, many things have changed. Extraordinary as it may seem, a re-imagined series from the 1970s is turning the spotlight on the difficult issues of our 21st century, but doing so in a way that simultaneously blends in naturalistic situations and flawed, multidimensional characters. As with the best science fiction series of yesteryear, the thorny issues remain, but now they are rendered with a biting, sometimes even caustic reality devoid of operatic fantasy and decorative epaulets.
Make no mistake; this isn’t your father’s Battlestar Galactica. But it just may be the Galactica that your father will appreciate, now that he’s a little more seasoned. At the end of 40-something minutes you’ll not be greeted with a simple, turgid, “everything’s right with the world” ending. Not here.
This is science fiction for those who have lived a while and understand that the world isn’t a sugarcoated utopia, nor is it ever likely to be. Events have far-reaching consequences and human beings make mistakes…lots of mistakes.
And while fans of the old show cry bollocks and feign righteous indignation, lamenting that the new Battlestar Galactica has traded bell-bottoms for body bags, they miss the point entirely.
This isn’t lukewarm farina for the narcotized masses. Season one of the new Galactica demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that war is a truly horrendous proposition and brought the ongoing consequences into our living rooms week after week, raw and unfiltered, as the ragtag fleet fought to survive against not only the Cylons, but their own weaknesses and frailties in the shadow of Armageddon. Moreover, as the human-designed Cylons returned to wreak havoc on their creators, the series’ mythology established in unequivocal terms that we humans are too often responsible for our own destiny.
By the same token, you don’t have to sleep on a bed of nails, gargle 30-weight or pour bourbon on your cornflakes in the morning to appreciate the series. As producer David Weddle told HNR Genre Editor, Michael Hinman earlier this year, “It is not hard to write light moments in the show. One of the episodes we wrote this season is actually a very upbeat show. We don't go out of our way to make the show dark. We try to keep the show as real as we can, to proceed from the set of circumstances that our characters find themselves in and allow events to unfold much as they would in our world.”
“This often means that for every good thing that happens, there is also something painful or traumatic,” Weddle adds. “Don't you find that to be true in your life? For every achievement, there is a setback, for every gain there is also a loss. This is not dark or pessimistic, it's life. We all struggle to come to terms with that, some of us more successfully than others—just like the characters of Battlestar.”
So there is more here than merely doom and gloom. Courage, bravery – and most importantly, hope – intermix in this broth, and though season two does dip further into the well of human proclivity, it also, reassuringly, shows the tender, heroic and spiritual side of our natures, too.
Call it a balanced, unvarnished view of the human condition in the 21st century.
That said, season two opened with a bang. Leaving no quarter, no respite for the audience, episode 201, “Scattered” flung us into a world of physical and aural violence as Colonel Tigh reluctantly took command of the fleet, after the Boomer Cylon shot Adama in the chest at the end of the previous season.
The situation enabled the producers to explore the origins of Tigh’s weakness for women and drink, along with his early relationship with William Adama.
Like dominos, Adama’s recovery and Tigh’s command also set up a chain reaction of events that reverberated throughout the season, and enabled the producers to explore some weighty issues: military vs. civilian power; the accidental killing of innocents; and the necessity of trusting potential enemies in the service of the greater good.
Yet that was just the warm-up.
From there, Ron Moore, David Eick and the rest of the writing staff were diving headlong into the subject of abortion; the effects of delayed stress; the role and significance of the media; and, in a watershed moment for the series, the issue of prisoner rape in the pursuit of “intelligence,” a storyline still being hotly debated on Internet message boards at the time of this writing.
Difficult questions. Uncomfortable answers. Battlestar Galactica has elevated the anxiety of world events above most of its competitors, shows like 24, The Wire, and the presently defunct Star Trek franchise. It is the most unyieldingly post-9/11 series on television, having eschewed humanist soliloquies, putty-headed aliens and planet-of-the-week stories in favor of a context that anyone familiar with current events can grasp.
Altogether, presented as fiction, it makes for compelling television. Here, daily reports don’t blur together, wars aren’t presented as statistics on a ticker, and those who are left behind must endure the greatest pain of all: survival.
Topic: Battlestar Galactica Recording Alert for 9/23 (Read 11358 times)