Thanks to James A’s recomendation I’ve been steadily inhaling episodes of the ‘re-imagined’ Battlestar Galactica over the last couple of weeks. I’m up to number 7 or 8 in series two. It’s compelling stuff (as my ridiculous viewing schedule, of 20 odd episodes and a 3 hour mini series in two weeks will testify) but not without some serious problems.

First a quick synopsis: Humans created Cylons (anthropomorphic robots with evil glowing eyes) as slaves. The Cylons rebel and there’s a war. After much carnage a truce is negotiated and the Cylons bugger off to live on their own planet. 50ish* years later the Human space fleet is mothballed and everybody seems quite happy then the Cylons attack and pretty much wipe out the population of all 12 planets inhabited by humans only 50,000 people are left alive and they all get together and run away with the only surviving battlestar (read battle ship) the antiquated Galactica which having engaged the Cylons in the original war doesn’t have any computer networks on board which are vunerable to the Cylons h4ck1ng skillz0r. A couple more things. Some of the Cylons look human now, so no one know’s who’s a Cylon and who isn’t. One of the central characters bears a good deal of responibility for the genocide. Some of the Cylons are HOTT WOMEN. OMG!

The situation is used as a jumping off point for stories about martial law, politics and religion paranoia etc. which are much more interesting than anything managed by stuff like Babylon 5, probably the series with which Galactic shares the greatest proportion of it’s sci-fi DNA. But you will remember from when I said so above, there are problems.

These problems largely fall into two catagories.
A> Bad design (visaul and ‘world design’): The universe that the characters inhabit is a bit flaky; at heart its a basic gunmetal sci-fi setting, i.e. a battle ship in space, which is fine. The details of the society don’t hang together though; it might just be my pro-enlightenment outlook but it’s hard to see how a civilization capable of incredible feats in the arena of interstellar travel could be so deeply superstitious at all levels. The feeling of artifice is amplified by a series of aesthetic details which just don’t make any sense, why would all pieces of paper (and i mean all of them from the weightiest religious tome to the most casual post it note) be octagonal? This seems particularly odd aboard the Galactica where the rest of the design is brutally functional. The coherence of the world is undermined further by the writers poor understanding of technology esp. computer networks on which large bits of the plot rely. If you’re making sci-fi a large section of your audience is likely to be highly computer literate so it seems odd that they didn’t make the effort to get this stuff right. Don’t even get me started on the arrow of apollo possibly the clumsiest MacGuffin ever devised. Also, you need a nuclear bomb to make a Cylon detector? Why? This kind of over the top stuff is never explained satisfactorily. **

B> Stupid characters: A lot of the crew of Galactica’s problems could be resolved by fairly straightforward reasoning: In what order should you test whether people are Cylons or not? Surelty the logical course of action is to do it in heirachial order as a Cylon agent would be in a position to do more damage from a position of power and reasuring people that their leaders are not cylons would seem to be a good move in terms of morale. Mind you they don’t know whether the detector actually works or not because the tests aren’t observed by anyone expect the delusional scheming Doctor (who incidentally is a rather excellend character) and any Cylon they get their hands on tends to get blown out the airlock so I guess the point is kind of irrelevant.
Further, there’s not a great deal of discussion about the state of Cylons with regard to sentience. No one really questions or examines the Cylons claims to conciousness even though it seems pretty much key to understanding their actions and motivations. Maybe this debate is being saved for later but to me it seems like there should be someone speaking up for Cylons as concious agents rather than just ‘toasters’ right from the start. Everybody is labouring under the zombic hunch which I guess plays to the societies deep rooted mystisicm but is still a bit of a shame.

Anyway, in spite of it’s flaws it’s good stuff. Even though some of the hard questions the series raises seem to be just out of reach of the writers the fact that it can raise these questions at all is testament to the quality of the show.

Also I’m a total sucker for sci-fi, if they set Last Of The Summer Wine in space I’d probably have all the box sets.

Pictures from the awesome Dylan Meconis

*i’m guessing, i can’t remmebr but it’s something like this

** Other questions

• Why don’t the humans have any kind of night vision goggles
• Why don’t Cylons have heat vision for finding people in forests deserted cities etc. ?
• Surely some kind of EMP weapon would be effective against Cylon centurions?
• Why do they need such a large press corps for a population of less than 50,000?
• How does the economy work? Everyone seems comitted to keeping a kind of capitalist status quo in place but for what? If everything is rationed and distributed centrally what value does capital have?