Battlestar Galactica: The one show worth getting excited about--
Battlestar Galactica 2nd Season
The second half of the second season of the new Battlestar Galactica on the Sci-Fi channel wraps up tonight. A show that if you’re not already watching, you should be. It’s the best drama on TV and may very well be the best show overall on television. However this re-imagining of Galactica put people into three distinct camps.
-Those who hate it, those who like it-love it, and those who don’t care (don’t know anything about it, dislike Sci-Fi altogether or don’t watch television). The difficult part in discussing this show is while it may be on the Sci-Fi channel and does take place in a realm usually relegated to the Sci-fi genre Galactica is far from being a typical science fiction show.
Aside from the backdrop of the story, it’s a drama. The storylines, the characters and their motivations, the show nearly in its entirety centers around the dramatic tension created by a remaining handful of human survivors desperately trying to survive against insurmountable odds, albeit self created from the typical human conceits and frailties. With a keen eye on the news of the world around us, the stories resonate with a familiar chord, as there are many parallels to our post 9/11 world in many ways.
For fans of the old show, or of classic network television science fiction many don’t like the show. They dislike a female Starbuck, the redesigned Cylons, the real human issues being dealt with, and a whole host of other issues making this entirely different from the original Battlestar Galactica. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of the old show. For the time it came from, with the sensibilities of 1970’s viewers I think the old show did a great job of being fun. The problem is while we may watch older shows with a sense of nostalgia and a great deal of understanding for their old school ways, the same show would never work today. Viewers expect more grit, more sex, more violence and more shows following longer story arcs. The continuing storyline of the old Battlestar Galactica was ahead of it’s time, and has become not only the norm but also the expectation for a show to be successful.
I could go on, on about how great this show is, and how everyone should be watching. In the next breath however, I could rail about what they screw up. (And there is a plethora of issues.)
You have to love the faults right along with what makes it great; key to any successful science fiction show. Star Trek fans love to picks apart their favorite episodes. An integral part of a genre that attempts to bring science into fiction but only with a long list of rules made by network executives, the fans and the medium of television itself. There are bound to be mistakes, misjudgments, and plain hokey crap.
This nitpicky attitude is essential to the success of a Sci-Fi show. Nothing better exemplifies this then a friend of mine who is a fan of the show. He hates the new Baltar. Not for any affection he may have had for the original character but because the way he is portrayed on this show, annoys the hell out of him. Every scene with Baltar brings as much venom to his lips as bile belching in his throat. It isn’t that he loves to hate this character, as many did with the Cigarette Smoking Man on X-files, he loathes this character. Still, he remains a faithful Galactica viewer. The show has that much going for it. Enough strong characters and fulfilling storylines to make him keep coming back for more torture. This is the mark of a fan and a good show.
Unfortunately, with the hiatus of Battlestar, there is little to keep me interested on television. Surely nothing to get excited about. At least we still have re-runs to further analyze and pick apart.
