Battlestar Galactica is the Future of Science Fiction

Before I begin explaining the title of this blog, I think its time for me to come out of the closet. Yes, for ten years now I've known it to be true...that's right...I'm a Star Trek fan.

I know it might be hard for my friends and family to accept, but I just don't want to hide it anymore. While most people like crime drama, I like seeing space ships shooting lasers at each other. Some people like the villains to be muslim terrorists, I prefer Romulans. There are lots of people like me out there, and I think its time for us to come screaming out of the closet and own our identity instead of running away from it...

Ok, now that I've beaten the gay-star trek analogy to death, its time to move on...

It's true I love Star Trek, but I've always loved Star Trek because of its humanity, not because of its outrageous storylines or spectacular feats of technology. I love science fiction in a more general sense for the same reason. There is no greater ironic way of examining ourselves, in detail, at the most basic level, than doing it through sci-fi. Call me crazy, call me insane, call me a trekkie, whatever, but I would challenge anyone to prove me wrong.

By the end of last year, I had become almost totally indifferent to popular science fiction. I'd seen all the Star Trek there was to see, Andromeda sucks, Stargate: SG-1 (and Stargate: Atlantis) suck worse, and new sci-fi movies were either comic-book-esque or parodied the genre right out of intellectual credibility. I know I'm pretty much alone on this, but I had thought Enterprise was about the closest thing out there to science fiction learning how to evolve and become aware of itself and understand itself. The writers were exploring new ways of producing stories, and the characters were all reasonably well developed and interesting. The captain watching college water polo, for exampe, lent the characters some real-world identification that made the story feel more alive and, more importantly, relevant.

Then I was introduced to Battlestar Galactica. Not the 1978 version starring Richard Hatch. The new one, starring Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama, Jamie Bamber as Lee Adama, Katie Sackoff as Starbuck and James Callis as Baltar. Over Christmas of last year, my brother's friend Frank gave me a stack of DVDs with the demand that I watch them all, and one of them was the Mini-Series. Now, I had heard a lot about this show being the best on television, but when people told me that I'd say "Yeah, well, no one can make good sci-fi anymore, the genre is totally over, lets just not kid ourselves anymore." Then i saw the mini-series.

To give you, the unconverted, an idea of just how awesome this show is, while I was visiting my parents over Christmas, I made them watch it. My parents hate science fiction, and hate even more that I love science fiction (I could take the gay analogy SO much farther right now, but I won't in the interest of remaining on-topic). They are now both obsessed with it. They used to love 24, now Battlestar Galactica is their number one favorite show. My roomate, also a sci-fi-hater, watched the entire series in two and a half days. Mostly, admittedly, because he has no job.

Why all this outside-the-circle interest in a show with the words "battle" "star" and "galactica" in the title? I have a theory.

Battlestar Galactica, as envisioned by Ronald D. Moore, is less of a sci-fi specticle and more of a drama set in space. Having come from Star Trek, Moore learned all the important lessons to be learned from the now 41 year old franchise, most imporant of which is that the new science fiction fan wants their show to be written in serial format. This might not sound like a big deal, but it lies at the root of how Battlestar gets away with having 10 storylines going on all at once. Star Trek was always beholden by Paramount to strive for new audiences, so even long term storylines had to be interspersed with episodes that had nothing to do with anything else in the time-line. They got better at this over the years, but even by the end of Enterprise, they still couldn't stick with a truely serial story, and it hurt them with the fan base.

Moore saw this, and designed Battlestar, I believe, to counter that mistake. Battlestar Galactica is not just serial in its writing style, but brutally so. If you miss two episodes in a row, you won't have a damn clue whats going on. But thats almost part of the fun. This is the perfect show to get into once its on DVD, because watching them all back to back makes the experience more enjoyable.

The show itself is shot with as though it were a surreal documentary, with rough camera movement and seemingly shoddy rack-focus work by the camera-person a mainstay, especially during the occasional space battle. The photography syle evolves over the course of now two and a half seasons, and by the beginning of season three, it looks so un-polished and rough that you'd think you were watching a docu-drama on A&E of something that actually happened. the incorporation of CG to this style of camera work would have you believe that the show's villains, Cylons, were realistic and dangerous. The show doesn't have to kid itself with the fake barriers of Star Trek, like the bad make-up, all-humanoid aliens, everyone knowing english (show Enterprise ALMOST got that right), laser weapons or transporters.

This is the future of science-fiction. This is the new Star Trek. This is the show Star Trek wishes it was cool enough to be. This is Star Trek for people who hate science fiction but love a good story about realistic people with realistic problems. Its not about spaceships or weird aliens. There are no aliens in Battlestar, only the Cylons, which are robots, created by humans, that rebelled and have turned against the human race. That sounds stupid right? Give it a chance, you won't be sorry. Its powerful story with spectacular writing, brilliant, TASTEFUL, special effects, excellent performances and stunning drama. Its a must see for anyone who fancies themselves as knowledgeable about good cinema/television, and a must-must see for people who aren't.

By the way, its criminally negligent on someone's part if James Callis doesn't win an Emmy for his performance in the third season. Just saying.

Rant over. Thanks to Mac for giving us all a place to rant about all moving images everywhere. Now that film school is over for some of us, we're thankful to have a new place to bitch about Hollywood's BS. Who's with me?

Cheers.