Battlestar Galactica Season 4 and Sucker Punch

I am watching BSG season 4 right now . . . about half way through it. It's o.k., but the story is stretched pretty thin. The lawyer character introduced from season 3 is really the only interesting character left, though Tom Zarek and Rosselin are interesting on occasion. I also hate how Apollo is portrayed as being naive for looking for a democratic solution to problems. Typical Hollywood love of dictatorial regimes, which Rosselin's certainly is.
Sucker Punch looks like an interesting movie, but I heard that the reviews are not good. Still, five cute Elvish-like girls kicking German butt is bound to appeal to the best (and worst) in us. Let me know if you like or hate Snyder's latest contribution to film (or as the snots at my school call it, 'the visual medium').

Buck Rogers and A.I.

Buck Rogers approach to A.I. is somewhat different from that of the original Battlestar Galactica. The original Battlestar took a very negative view of A.I., seeing it as uncreative and unimaginative. To a certain extent, Buck Rogers shares that predilection, as Buck is always warning Wilma about not relying on computer technology, as it is too "predictable". There is also a good deal of senseless android killing in the series. But the higher forms of A.I., like doctor Theopolis, rule Earth benevolently, where human beings can't. Twiki, like C-3P0, shows human emotions. While he is a silly robot, at least he doesn't follow in the killer robot tradition of Terminator. To me, anti-A.I. prejudice is not necessarily a laughing matter. Series like the old BSG have molded public perceptions of A.I., telling us that such creatures will always be somehow "less than" human. But how will we really know? Who's to say that if we create A.I., it won't be more than us, something deeper, with sensitivity to art, love, compassion. Twiki, whatever his limitations, is in some ways infinitely preferable than the Terminator\Agent Smith\Skinjob stereotype of A.I. that now dominates contemporary society.

Will the new Battlestar Galactica be Remembered

I am closing in on the Fourth Season of the New Battlestar Galactica, and I am wondering what the long term impact of the series will be on televised science fiction. An article here argues that BSG still deals with relevant issues. I am a little less sure of that myself, to be honest. Terrorism, while a pressing political issue, has always varied in the amount of press coverage it received. It was "in" in the seventies and the 2000's. But will it be so forever? I think the new BSG broke new grounds in character development and provided some more radicalized political characters, such as Tom Zarek. But compared to Blake's 7 or Babylon 5, it wasn't particularly daring for its time period. Both Blakes 7 and Babylon 5 dealt with terrorists, and sympathized with them far more than BSG did. Both Blake and Captain Sherdian were in a sense terrorists themselves. I don't think that BSG is a genre shifting show in the way that the original Star Trek, Blake's 7, STNG, and Babylon 5 were. Worse, it did not stop the decay of the genre that has been occurring since the advent of reality television. Today, outside of Caprica and the new Doctor Who (and sundry spinoffs), there is very little in the way of good science fiction. Ten years ago, we had a nearly fully functional Sci-fi channel, that ran series like Farscape and the new Outer Limits (relatively decent), as well as Andromeda, which was at least decent for a few seasons. There was Firefly and Dark Angel and a host of inventive programs coming out in the wake of the digital revolution created by the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars franchises. Now, there's literally nothing out there. BSG wasn't the first of a new breed. I fear it may be television science fiction's swan song.

Why is BSG's 3rd season so bad?

I've been watching the 3rd season of the new BSG in bits and pieces, and I have to say, it sucks. I've heard that the writers were forced by SCI-FI to write the series episodically in season 3, instead of with a story arc. I don't know if that's true (I suspect it is), but I know that the series loses a lot of its power after the first four or five episodes of season 3. There's still potential there, but I wonder if I'll be disappointed by season 4 (no spoilers, please!). I think season 3 of BSG is to season 5 of Babylon 5 what bad cheese is to bad yogurt (o.k., sucky analogy). And I can't keep track of all the people hopping in the sack with one another in season 3. It's a little offputting. I don't care about the sex, but even most highschoolers don't go through partners that quickly!

Battlestar Galactica and Mormon Population Genetics

I watched Glenn Beck today, mainly to get mad, and had to suffer through a very covert one hour infomercial for Mormon population genetics, clothed in an argument against Manifest Destiny (a doctrine, coincidentally, that Mormons very readily believed in). In case you are one of the four or five people who doesn't know this, Mormonism is considered increasingly suspect in scientific circles because the accuracy of one of its central claims - that Native Americans are really lost tribes of Jews - has been called into considerable question. I don't want to come off as a fanatic anti-Mormon. I'm hardly an expert on the church, and my main problems with it aren't factual but deal with the over-abundance of clerical power at the top of the church hierarchy, shamefully used to lessen doctrinal dissent through a very active process of excommunication. But watching Beck made me think of the BSG series, particularly the old ones. Glenn Larson was a devout Mormon and Mormon theology infuses the old Battlestar Galactica. In a very real sense, the old BSG serves as a apologia for Mormon views on the Lost Tribes. The series tries to make plausible the idea that current humans (the Lost Tribe) are really the descendants of the 12 colonies (get it - the 12 tribes of Israel). In the new series, the sacred scriptures, including the Book of Pythia (the Book of Mormon) point out that the myths of the lost tribe are true, and therefore many characters, including Laura Rosselin, put their faith in these scriptures, despite the questionable lack of evidence for God's existence in the universe. While BSG never confronts the whole genetics issue in the series - WAY TOO CONTROVERSIAL - it is interesting how BSG tended to culturally pilfer other cultures (Egypt in particular - again significant) in its quest to prove a basis for a Mormon-friendly sci-fi series. That cultural voyeurism, the willingness to steal from other cultures what is not yours to take, has been a sad byproduct of Mormon theology, from the well meaning but very offensive posthumous baptizing of Holocaust victims to the trivialization of Native American culture. That the BSG series continue that tradition does not speak well for either BSG or Mormonism.

Filed under: science fiction, Battlestar Galactica, population genetics, Mormonism, Holocaust victims

Babylon 5 on religion

Babylon 5 was one of the most interesting series in its treatment of religion. Brother Theo promoted a relatively promising view of Catholicism that acknowledged its ambiguity. G'kar became an exalted spiritual leader. I found the Minbarri's complex notions of religion to be one of the first realistic portrayals of how an advanced alien culture might view religious experience (G'kar himself eventually comes to this view). The episode "Parliament of Dreams" realistically portrays a multicultural religious movement. About the only thing missing from Babylon 5 is a realistic treatment of evangelical religion and Islam. I would argue that historically these two religious movements have faired rather badly at the hands of sci-fi television writers. Fundamentalism in particular, was a target for derision by the writers of STNG and DS9 (anyone remember when Vedek Winn goes "creationist wacko" on Keiko Obrien). Islam, meanwhile, has never been adequately shown in any sci-fi series. Indeed, in sci-fi television, the assumption seems to be that only Christianity (Catholicism and an occasional liberal Protestant) and Judaism exist. Examples of detailed analyses of other religions are rather scare. The Doctor Who episode "Kinda" explores some Buddhist themes, and Star Trek Voyager condescendingly dealt with Native American religion, but overall most sci-fi characters are Christian, secular, New Age, or (on rare occassion) Jewish in outlook. Surely there's enough complexity in the world to now deal with religions other than the traditional ones America has gifted us with. And I also think we need more nuanced treatments of sci-fi fundamentalism, not Stargate SG-1 and DS9, but the reboot of Battlestar Galactica and the excellent Dune miniseries

The collapse of TV Sci-Fi

Excellent article on television science fiction that basically reaches the same conclusion that I have: the golden age of TV-sci fi is over. Nowdays, the genre is dominated almost exclusively by the Sci-fi Channel, a network not known for its propensity for risk. Television science fiction is instead dominated by cheap knock off series, like Stargate Atlantis, quasi-sci Fi like Heroes and Lost, and the occassional gem, like the new Battlestar Galactica. The space opera, as it stands, is practically dead. The last genuine human-alien space opera is now six years old (Enterprise) and the last great space opera (Farscape) even older. So, fans, I suspect it will be a while before we get another five year story arc, if ever.