BSG Sitrep

I admit it. I finally gave in and did it. I started watching Battlestar Galactica.

“What took so long?” you’re probably wondering. “You like sci-fi and will watch any kind of quality TV, so why are you just starting BSG now? Every critic and film media creator can do nothing but sing its praises, and the fanboys think it’s the second coming!” Well, up to this point I’d deliberately avoided the show. Living in Canada, I don’t receive the US Sci-Fi channel and its Canadian equivalent, Space, didn’t start airing it until much later. Even then I wasn’t enthused. My knowledge of the property was based primarily on the ‘70s original: a cheesy, low budget Star Wars knockoff. By the time I’d heard enough good things about the new version to make me think it might be worth my time, it was already too far into the series and I didn’t feel like investing the time it would take to get caught up. So I avoided it. Until two weeks ago.

I’ve been working in Louisiana, and there’s not a lot to do here. After the first five weeks here, I ran out of things to do. So, desperate for something to do, I went down to Blockbuster and rented the miniseries. After that, I was hooked.

At this point, I’ve completed the first two seasons, and decided to record my thoughts on the series so far. This is mostly because, again, I’m bored. I’m out of rented discs and I’m not going back to the store until tomorrow. So here it is.

My first comment has to do with the reaction to the series. When it first came out there was a lot of talk about how it was redefining the sci-fi genre. I have to say that statement is completely wrong. It’s not the next evolution of sci-fi, it’s actually a step back to classic sci-fi. It’s sci-fi that is a metaphor, allowing the viewer to examine themselves through the filter of the story. Yes, it’s different from most sci-fi we see now, the dumbed down action movie in space/the future, but it’s not a new concept, just one that had gone out of style, and it's return is certainly welcome. BSG is also routinely hailed as one of the greatest television series ever. This is something that I can’t yet agree with. I will definitely agree that there have been some fantastic hours of TV, but I think that more is required for a great series. The show has to have an engaging, ongoing arc, and it needs have something to say about us as a society. At this point, BSG doesn’t have that. Again, remember, I’m only at the end of season 2 and there’s certainly the potential for that arc to develop in the seasons I haven’t made it to, we just haven’t really seen it yet.

What do I like about the show? As I said , it has a lot of truly great episodes. It also raises a lot of intriguing moral and ethical questions and challenges a lot of “truths” a lot of us take for granted. It’s shot with a grit and intensity that make it very easy to become engaged in the stories. Finally, it has very well-developed, believable characters.

My reactions to those characters are something that I find a little puzzling. There is no other show, film, or book that I have ever experienced where my engagement with the characters was so highly gendered. In most other instances, the characters I react most strongly to, whether positively or negatively, are fairly evenly balanced between male and female. In Battlestar, that’s not the case. In this show, the characters I react to are exclusively female. This is even stranger given the fact that I am male and, typically, viewers react most strongly to those of their own gender.

My favourite character is Cassie, the mechanic. She hasn’t had a lot to do so far, but I find her to be a really interesting, strong character. The same can be said of Dee, the communications officer. Finally, I also really like Starbuck. This one is less surprising, since she’s more or less the primary character of the series, so all viewers have to be able to connect to her. What’s interesting here, though, is that although I’m interested in her character I know for a fact that, were she real, I would not be able to get along with her, probably not even for an hour. But I still care about and am interested in her character. That’s the mark of great character writing.

The characters that I hate the most are also all female. It’s important to define “hate” here. I don’t mean that I dislike the fact that the character exists within the universe, but that I dislike the characters themselves. President Laura Rosland is self-involved and short-sighted, even though she thinks she’s looking to the future. Everything about the Viper pilot "Kat" bothers me. Colonel Tigh’s wife is manipulative and power hungry, the epitome of the gold digging trophy wife. Sharron has a superiority complex so great she is blinded to even the possibility that she might be wrong. My dislike of her character may also be slightly fuelled by my feelings about the actress who portrays her. I think she’s about the only weak link in BSG’s cast. She really doesn’t seem to be able to act at all, delivering flat performances every time. Again, though, the fact that I have such strong reactions to these characters means that they are being very well written.

Are the male characters, then, written more poorly? No, I don’t think so. I really can’t explain why I don’t react as strongly in this case. It’s something that I’ll be working through in the coming weeks as I continue catching up with the series. What I can say, at this point, is that Battlestar Galactica is a very strong series and one which I would recommend to any fan of good TV. I’ll be sure to write a follow-up to this piece when I finish the series. Hopefully by then I’ll have some more insight into my reactions to these characters.

Sleep well,

DTE

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Songs of the Moment:

Metric – Help, I’m Alive Acoustic; The Main Drag – Love During Wartime; Treble Charger – Red

Music while I wrote:

Paramore – All We Know Is Falling