REVIEWS! Universal Donor Has an Opinion About Everything

UNIVERSAL DONOR

REVIEWS THE WORLD

- opinions formed while-u-wait! -


		television
	Battlestar Galactica If you've ever seen Stargate SG-1 or Stargate: Atlantis, you would think that the Sci-Fi channel's original shows are crap: badly acted, cheaply shot, written to strict and unimaginative formula. You'd be right. The shows are popular with Science Fiction Geek (SFGs) who don't use normal standards to judge stuff. The most important things to a SFG are (in no particular order): Internal consistency, the illusion of scientific rigor, exclusionary content that plays to SFG ego (e.g. unexplained military acronyms); cool-looking computer shit; a hero cool enough to identify with; western-style action sequences. In exchange for these elements, SFGs are totally willing to sacrifice quality in characterization, plot, emotion, etc. But as you may have heard, the "reimagined" Battlestar Galactica is really fucking good. Generally, what what's good about BG is its narrative complexity and depth, i.e. it actually considers what would happen if the remainder of the human race numbered 50,000, was floating through space in a random and accidental "fleet" of civilian spaceships and one Battlestar (a space version of an aircraft carrier), and was constantly on the run from a species of robots determined to kill every last human. (Of course the robots are indistinguishable from humans, a sci-fi trope essential since Philip K. Dick revolutionized the genre.) The show considers the political, legal, and economical ramifications of such a scenario (Who is in charge of the fleet? Should abortion still be legal when the survival of the species is in doubt? What is the basis for an economy in this context; does money still have value? Is the death penalty a valid punishment for any crime?) It deals with these subjects like the complicated adult issues they are, and the answers are never simple, and often unpleasant. Just as importantly, the characters and the relationships between them are treated with the same depth and attention to detail. Everybody is suffering from the effects of post-apocalyptic trauma and loss, and they are all running for their lives. Various characters have richly complicated histories with each other, but they never descend to the level of soap opera. People are realistically flawed, nobody is perfect and nobody is wholly evil either; even the genocidal Cylons are treated sympathetically -- you just need to hear their side of the story! As if that weren't enough, add the best Sci-Fi effects and space-fight sequences ever made for television. They are thrilling, clever, original, and horrifying. A lot of good guys die, many ignobly. The physics feel righter than ever; I'll often see something and think "yeah, that's how that should look," not even knowing how other shows' depictions of space flight have bothered me over the years. The space scenes have almost no sound, just the muted pulsing of Galactica's big guns. I could go on. But suffice it to say that if you hate science fiction, this suffers from none of the things you hate about science fiction. And if you like one-hour dramas, this is still one of the best-written shows on television. This isn't impossible, HBO's Deadwood proved that contemporary genre shows could be as serious as anything else on the screen. To understand Galactica's accomplishment, imagine Deadwood with a really well-executed, thrilling, horse-mounted gunfight every ohter episode, in addition to all its current charms. Yee-hah!
		: . . . . : . .8.5. :
	3/30/2006 • link •

1 comments:

Tammy said...: Various characters have richly complicated histories with each other, but they never descend to the level of soap opera.

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with you there. When that Cylon chick who doesn't know she's a Cylon gets pregnant? And then it turns out that there are multiples of her? And that two different guys from the fleet are in love with different versions of the same Cylon template? And then they get all jealous and fight each other over her? That's more than a little soap opera-ish right there.

(I was not born a nerd. I am a nerd by marriage.); 4/09/2006 1:50 AM