Battlestar Galactica: Humans Lost in Space

(I began watching Battlestar Galactica in 2005, one year after the series premiered on the Science Fiction channel.)

Last week Battlestar Galactica began its final run of ten episodes. BSG is a “re-imagining” of the Seventies TV series, in which the spacefaring human race is all but wiped out in a nuclear attack by the Cylon robots that were created to serve humanity. Far grittier and rawer than its progenitor, the new show has the surviving humans fleeing in a ragtag assembly of vessels led by the military “Battlestar” named Galactica. Their worlds destroyed, the humans cling to a belief in the mythical planet Earth, the home of the “13th colony”, whose location was lost thousands of years ago. Humanity’s search for Earth, all the while being pursued by murderous Cylons, is the principal driving theme.

BSG is more than Odyssey. In nearly every episode dearly held values conflict with the reality of the desperate situation. (Beloved characters die with alarming regularity as if to stress the point.) A pro-choice president denies an abortion to a young girl because humanity must reproduce if it is to survive; humans work with their mortal enemy because of the chance that Cylons will help lead them to Earth; overworked laborers go on strike, risking mankind’s survival.

As the final season begins, humans do find Earth, but it’s a dead planet destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. The first episode deals with how people react when their entire world (universe?) view is found to be false. Depression, grief, and anger all manifest themselves, and one character commits suicide. We are compelled to watch how these individuals deal with their shattered dreams: we’ve been there or fear being there.

But the heart of Battlestar Galactica is mystery. What happened to Earth? What are the origins of humans and Cylons? And from the inexplicable events that have occurred over the past four BSG years---is there an unseen hand that has guided humanity in its search, and what does it want?

One hates to invest time in serial works of fiction because there’s a chance that the author won’t complete the tale. Think how disappointed we would have been if we had never discovered the connection between Harry Potter and Voldemort or if Richard Kimble never caught up to the one-armed man.

All the episodes of BSG are in the can, and we’ll get to see the artists’ complete vision of humanity’s probably bleak future. That’s a reason for celebration. © 2009 Stephen Yuen

An example of BSG meta-humor: it's found outside the show.