Random Developments

I got “addicted” to the new version of Battlestar Galactica somewhat late; I watched the miniseries on DVD a few months ago, and then ran through the whole of the first and second seasons as fast as I could (which was not that fast; I just finished season two this weekend, and I’m already four episodes behind in season 3). The rest of this post may contain spoilers to anyone who has not finished watching season 2 yet; in Australia, the last episode broadcast on Channel Ten was 2-12, “Resurrection Ship, Part 2″, with eight episodes left to the end of the season.

For those who don’t watch it: the story is basically a war between humans and intelligent robotic assistants created by them, known as cylons, who rebelled against their creators; the humans don’t live on Earth, but on twelve planets known as the “twelve colonies”, with Earth being a mythological thirteenth colony. As the miniseries starts, a truce is in effect and humans and cylons live in separate solar systems in relative peace; the cylons break the truce with a surprise attack and manage to kill almost every single human being on the twelve colonies. The few remaining ones (mostly people who were in transit between planets at the time of the attack), protected by the only remaining military ship (Battlestar Galactica) flee their solar system and are pursued. The rest of the series follows what happens next; at the end of the second season, there are just over 47,000 humans left.

One thing that is interesting about this series is that there are no “role models” among the characters; there’s not a single one of them that is not significantly flawed in some way (or, to put it in another way, the characters are human). One could say that the “villains”, the cylons, are usually more admirable than the remaining humans, but the fact that they did kill 20 billion people makes them hard to recommend as role models.

I also like the way in which the human society is not shown as “utopic”; it is depicted more realistically, with dissenters, strikers, criminals, terrorists, religious fanatics, corrupt government officials etc. One particular episode deals with the black market that comes to life across the surviving ships; other, with whether abortion should be outlawed in a society that desperately needs people to reproduce. A recurring theme is whether captured enemies should be treated as prisoners or as “equipment” (they are not human, but machines).

The second season has much less “action” that the first, but it’s much more entertaining exactly because it deals in more interesting themes. I liked all episodes (some more than others… 2-14, “Black Market”, was not particularly good in my opinion), except what happens in the season final after the text “One year later” appears on the screen. It’s not that the rest of the episode is bad… it was more the general feeling of “o how the mighty have fallen”… and the webisodes that advanced the plot before the start of season 3 keep the same feeling going.

Speaking of the final of season 2: Gaius was exactly the kind of president I would expect him to be, but I was left with a few questions (which won’t make sense to people who are not following the series):

• how come Adama (the father) accepted Gaius’s orders so readily? he was always ready to confront the former president and to go against her orders when they did not make sense militarily, but he sets out to do what Baltar tells him with no argument, even after the nuclear explosion that destroyed Cloud 9; why is that? it seemed very much out of character
• how does the cylon occupation of New Caprica fit with the message delivered by the cylon “preacher” and the apparent de-occupation of the original Caprica (and, supposedly, the other eleven colonies)?
• the original Caprica is not exactly a “nuclear wasteland”, as mentioned by the then president Rosslyn; haven’t the rescue-party members (or the rescued people, for that matter) related back about how habitable is the planet?

Maybe some of these are answered in the first episodes of the third season… time to start working on them!