Battlestar Galactica
Imagine waking up each morning with the fear that today will be the day humanity goes extinct. Imagine never seeing the sun, real grass, mountains, the ocean or open space ever again. Imagine living in cramped quarters — always running low on crucial supplies — while almost complete strangers make decisions for all of humanity. Then add the presence of an enemy that might look like your friend, or even the suspicion that your friend was an enemy the whole time and you didn’t know it until some lever was switched.
This is the plot for Battlestar Galactica, the Syfy network drama that ran for four seasons from 2004 to 2009. The human race — previously living on 12 planets collectively called the Twelve Colonies of Kobol — has been all but destroyed by their own creation. Artificially intelligent robots called Cylons are determined to wipe out their creators, and all of humanity is packed in on a few ships, hoping to find a planet to live on somewhere in space. People watch in dull horror as the count of people left alive continues to drop.
Battlestar Galactica, as the name might suggest, is a remake of a quite cheesy sci-fi show from the ’70s, created in the wake of Star Wars’ success. The new show has the barest of similarities to the original series — both feature the last remnants of humanity fleeing from artificially intelligent robots called Cylons, both have similarly named characters and both have motifs of Greco-Roman mythology, but other than these surface elements, the newer BSG is an entirely different project.
It shed cheesiness for a gritty realism, delving into the harsh realities that would happen if all of humanity had to survive on a small fleet of ships. If the species is dying, should we outlaw abortion? How should the government function? Since we’re in a perpetual state of war, is it always martial law? Does anyone have any freedom to do what they want for a living if everyone is put to work in a particular function of the ship’s upkeep? All of these and more are addressed throughout the show’s four seasons, and none are easily answered.
The specter of 9/11 and the war on terror hover over the entire series. The enemies of humanity can look just like humans and lurk into crowds, strapping bombs to themselves. The government tightens security and restricts civil liberties in the name of defense. Religious conflict drives the opposing forces to more desperate violent acts.
The beginning of season three brings these comparisons into full force, with an occupation of New Caprica under the grounds of “bettering them” and spreading their religion. The show grows in nuance, as even the Cylons are eventually revealed to be quite human as well, feeling doubt, guilt, anger and love.
Most of the time, BSG struck a great balance between these weighty themes of despair and real-world issues and the action and fun of a great sci-fi series. TV special effects that are still impressive today, many tense space battles and the drama staple of people yelling angrily at each other all coalesce around genuinely fantastic characters.
None of them are perfect — all are dealing with immense stress and loss throughout the entire series. They’re selfish, drunken, angry liars most of the time, but we grow to love them all the same. The show’s writers continually elevated smaller characters to greater importance, some redeeming themselves and others turning to evil after being overcome with the strain of a never-ending retreat in the bleakness of space.
I keep coming back to the excellent score by Bear McCreary, full of sitars, martial drums and the occasional bagpipe. Each character has their own subtle theme that’s often twisted into differing forms as the situation requires. There’s nothing quite like one of BSG’s space battles, with the silence of space punctuated by pounding drums and the whooping cries of the pilots.
The best track in the whole series’ soundtrack is a reinterpretation of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” — it’s haunting and epic, and serves as the triumphant score to the end of the best episode in the series, forever connecting that song with the show for me, and I expect many others. Even the theme song manages to convey the immense sense of loss that pervades every aspect of the show, no matter if it’s not sung in English.
Like Lost and other similar “mystery” shows, the eventual end of BSG wasn’t exactly what people expected, bringing in elements of magic and spirituality to a supposedly sci-fi show. Regardless, BSG is still one of my favorite shows of all time, even considering the many excellent shows that have aired since. Some of the best TV characters ever created, powerful acting, a brilliant score, difficult examination of real-world issues and an imaginative alternate universe without a hint of aliens — BSG deserves its reputation as one of the best shows ever, and, in my opinion, the best sci-fi show ever.
So say we all.
