Battlestar Galactica

Investigating Flesh, Spirit and Steel

Roz Kaveney, Jennifer Stoy, Roz Kaveney, Jennifer Stoy

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780857731098
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

"The West Wing" or "Generation Kill" in Space? A show about God-fearing sex-obsessed robots? Or a complex meditation on fate, dreaming and eternal recurrence? Of all recent television science fiction series, the reimagined "Battlestar Galactica" is the most highly praised and consistently inventive and intelligent. Where the original show was a straightforward space opera, the new one is rich, strange and above all unpredictable. This book covers the new "Battlestar Galactica" from beginning to end, covering all of the show's principal themes from the depiction of sexuality in an era of artificial people and downloaded memories to what it means to be a member of a military organization when the stakes are not victory or defeat but survival. Like all the best shows about the future or the past - we are never sure when all this is supposed to be happening - "Battlestar Galactica" is a series about the present; chapters here cover its depiction of the post-9.11 world and such issues as abortion and worker's rights.
This definitive book on the full new "Battlestar Galactica" also includes an interview with Jane Espenson, co-executive producer of the show's last seasons and writer/director of the "Battlestar Galactica" prequel film "The Plan", with a complete episode guide.

Of Great Zeitgeist and Bad Faith

An Introduction to Battlestar Galactica

Jennifer Stoy

Introducing a television series as critically influential as the reimagined Battlestar Galactica (BSG) in the space of ten thousand words is a troublesome undertaking. What, after all, does one focus on? The typical accolades given to a quality television series – stories, acting, production values, directing? Does one move away from the textual to focus instead on the media-historical moment that turned Battlestar Galactica into a science fiction television series that transcended the usual mainstream critics’ supercilious disregard for science fiction, or its place in television as a watershed series that presaged a dramatic rise in standards for American basic cable drama? And to add yet another layer to the enterprise, what if the series’ second half went dramatically quite wrong in the eyes of only some critics but not others?

This last problem is my own particular one; when I agreed to co-edit this volume, BSG was in its third season and, despite occasional troublesome wobbles (the interminable romantic quadrangle between Lee Adama, Kara ‘Starbuck’ Thrace, Anastasia ‘Dee’ Dualla, and Samuel Anders), the show appeared to remain close to its strong base as an allegory of the bleak sociopolitical moment following 9/11. Flashing forward two years, rather like in ‘Lay Down Your Burdens (Part Two)’ (2.20), and I find myself evaluating a Peabody Award-winning television series, a series with such cachet that the United Nations asked members of the production team to speak with them on a panel1 – and ultimately finding it lacking in critical ways.

I do not even deny that the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica were a relevation during a period when genre television was otherwise at a nadir; they brought the art of political commentary back to television science fiction in a way that had been missing for years. In particular, Ronald D. Moore and David Eick’s choice to pay higher-quality actors – namely Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell – to play their leads, rather than spending their limited budget on special effects, and their insistence on aiming to be part of a ‘quality’ television tradition like The West Wing or The Shield rather than the science fiction tradition that their remake of a corny 1970s Star Wars knock-off fitted into more naturally, had a powerful effect on the media landscape, especially in the realm of American basic cable television. Suddenly, Oscar-calibre actresses over forty, such as Holly Hunter and Glenn Close, populate the basic cable landscape and are awarded for their choices with Emmy nominations, and Matthew Weiner’s low-rated high-concept series (Mad Men) about advertising executives in the 1960s on channels that no one inside or outside the United States have ever heard of win Best Drama Emmys, partially because Moore and Eick refused to conform to what a Battlestar Galactica remake should look like.

As an example of what Moore and Eick’s BSG does look like, consider the episode ‘Downloaded’ (2.18), my favourite episode of the series. ‘Downloaded’ reintroduces us to the Number Six we last saw in the miniseries, seducing Baltar for information on Colonial defences, betraying him and protecting him at the cost of her life. While her image and many of her mannerism are preserved in the Head Six2 throughout the show’s narrative, in ‘Downloaded’ we learn that the physical Six, now known as Caprica Six, is resurrected after the original attacks on the Twelve Colonies, and that she is now a haunted robot femme fatale. Her previous zeal for the Cylon genocides has dissolved and, like Baltar, she is constantly visited by a version of her lost love, whom she believes to be dead. Similar to Head Six, Head Baltar is constantly manipulating and reassuring Caprica Six for reasons that are unclear. Far from being the cliché of the sexy yet deadly female robot shown in so many of the show’s promotional material, Caprica Six gains a pathos and humanity far beyond her origins, as a fully realized character.

Later in the episode, Caprica Six meets another Cylon who has grown disillusioned with genocide – the Eight the viewer knows as Boomer/Sharon Valerii. After a traumatic conflict between the two human-sympathizing Cylons, the terrorist human resistance still on Caprica, and the genocidal representative of Cylon leadership, D’Anna Biers/Three, the two women decide to create a political countermovement to end the war between human and Cylon – a rare note of hope in a series that is known for its grim darkness. Even in lighting, where the alliance between Boomer and Caprica is marked by clasped hands and the sudden influx of bright sunshine,3 ‘Downloaded’ ends on a bright note and gives even partial critics like myself much to cheer about.

First, the narrative focus in the episode is on female characters, a well-known rarity in all science fiction and an especial rarity in televisual sci-fi. In this case, even the secondary plot of ‘Downloaded’ is focused on women; the Eight we later come to know as Athena gives birth to her hybrid child, Hera. Hera is promptly kidnapped and given to another woman to raise by Laura Roslin, who chooses not to involve Bill Adama in this transaction at all, instead relying on her female aide, Tory Foster, for the occasion; further, she asserts her power over the male doctor involved by ordering him to tell Athena that the child has died. While Roslin is usually more subtle in her machinations, her use of power is not unusual in her character arc and is presented in an ambivalent, complicated manner that is usually reserved for male leaders.

Another point in the episode’s favour is the way the women’s concerns are broad, rather than narrow. Motherhood and relationships to men are certainly a concern in the episode. However, the primary focus is on the relationships between the various women – particularly Boomer and Caprica Six and their disenchantment with Cylon eliminationist ideology, as well as their dislike of the bullying D’Anna Biers – and the ethical dilemmas engendered by these interactions. The episode is not undermined by the weaknesses of later seasons, where female interest in anything besides various forms of motherhood and men is a rarity.

Writing and acting are also first rate; the actresses, especially the excellent Tricia Helfer, are given free rein to showcase their characters’ depth. Mary McDonnell gets a rare chance to show off Roslin without Adama about, though – as always – Roslin is almost never permitted to be the primary character that many of the other female characters are allowed to be. ‘Downloaded’ also has strong writing that takes a standard tactic of science fiction television – the point of view shift episode – and applies it with remarkable strength. Rather than break away from the Cylons when a human – in this case, Sam Anders – enters the narrative, the primary action stays with Boomer and Caprica Six. Their ethical choices and relationship remain what the audience is supposed to focus upon, even when a more typical protagonist enters the scene. Cylon motivation becomes more complex, and is somewhat poignant in light of the showrunners’ decision to make the Cavil-model responsible for duping the Cylons into genocide in Season Four.

Episodes such as ‘Downloaded’ also crystallize why so many critics adored Battlestar Galactica. When you compare it to the two episodes of Grey’s Anatomy nominated for Best Writing in a Dramatic Series in 2006 by the Emmy Awards, ‘Downloaded’ was robbed of the mainstream acclaim it deserved. One should note, though, that BSG did garner two Emmy writing nominations during its run, one in 2007 for ‘Occupation/Precipice’ (3.01/02) and ‘Six of One’ (4.02), so it would be inaccurate to say that the show completely missed mainstream attention.

However, I cannot pretend that ‘Downloaded’ is what the series always was; in rewatching the entire series, I counted at least eight episodes where drunken actions were a plot driver, and the occasional plot hole from early seasons reminds us that Moore and Eick perhaps did not plot the full arc of their series meticulously – or even with the occasional backward glance to avoid embarrassing themselves. For example, Baltar tests the final Cylon, Ellen Tigh, with his working Cylon detector in ‘Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down’ (1.09). He informs the audience via a conversation with Head Six that he’ll never tell anyone the true results of the test, but his later wild scrambling to discover if he is a Cylon and the identities of the Final Five then become incomprehensible and lead one to assume that the test was negative. We know the Cylon detector works: it has previously identified Boomer as a Cylon. How are we then to explain Baltar’s actions? If he was aware that Ellen Tigh was a Cylon – which he should have been – why didn’t the man seek her out during the Cylon occupation of New Caprica? Or mention to D’Anna that he knew at least one of the Final Five during their frantic search for the Five in Season Three when he was so desperate to discover if he himself were Cylon?

The most likely answer is that the writers forgot the episode, and anyway the ambiguous results allowed them to retcon an explanation – for example, that the Final Five had genetic makeups different from the other seven models that would not be detectable. Still, it is a useful example of the writerly sloppiness that marks so much of the later BSG and will have a significant impact upon the show’s legacy.

But, putting various episodes against each other and pointing out the increased carelessness in later seasons is not precisely the introduction that should be written, either. As with many other television shows since the mainstream popularity of the internet, critical comment from professional critics and from everyday viewers have become increasingly part of the creative process for television. Among genre television shows in particular, this dialogue can literally make or break a show. In 2009, for example, two shows with ‘louder’ fanbases – NBC’s Chuck and Fox’s Dollhouse – were renewed by their respective networks, as compared to similar low-rated niche shows such as Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, or Life. Both network presidents claimed that these fanbases were important to their decisions, with NBC’s Ben Silverman saying of Chuck, ‘the demand for Chuck that came out of the online community, the critical press and our advertising base made us have to pick up that show’ (Sepinwall); to ignore the audience and the critics in the case of Battlestar Galactica is to ignore information crucial to understanding the show as it unfolded.

Hence, I feel that three most important things to cover in this introduction to Battlestar Galactica are: the genuine accomplishments of the series, the increasingly large failings of the series in its second half, and also how the critics and the audience shaped the perception of the series in a way that contributed to the troubles that the show had in its second half. In making such serious charges against a series widely (and rightly) viewed as a watershed for television science fiction, spending a lengthy section of my introduction overviewing the series would be unhelpful; my overview to the series’ plots can thus be found in the appendix Episode Guide.

Battlestar Galactica: Its Triumphs

A typical moment of triumph for Battlestar Galactica in the press happened in 2006, when fellow Peabody Award recipient Matt Stone of South Park spent his part of the acceptance speech ‘praising’ the creative team of BSG, saying, ‘I think Trey and I will always be grateful to the Peabody Awards for introducing us to Battlestar Galactica’ (Woodson). Indeed, coming after the second season as it did, Stone’s praises were the icing on two creatively strong seasons of science fiction television that had earned the title of Best Television Show of 2005 from Time magazine, with critic James Poniewozik saying, ‘Most of you probably think this entry has got to be a joke. The rest of you have actually watched the show.’

What was it about the series’ run through 2005 that earned such plaudit...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Contributors
• Of Great Zeitgeist and Bad Faith
• Adama and (Mitochondrial) Eve
• Frak Me
• Disco Galactica
• The Military Organism
• Real-imagining Terror in Battlestar Galactica
• Butch Girls, Brittle Boys and Sexy, Sexless Cylons
• Sci-Fi Ghettos
• The Luxury of Being Simply Human
• Interrogating Galactica
• On the End, Decline and Fall of Television Shows
• Appendix