It’s been my mission the past year or so to seek out the cool, geeky things that I have inadvertently passed over. It’s what brought me to watch all seven seasons of Buffy last fall, because enough of my friends had seen it and liked it that I thought I should give it a shot, and I ended up loving it. It’s what brought me now to check out the 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica, which some of my friends swear by but I was never willing to pay $60 a season to watch. I had never seen the original ‘70s series, so I knew nothing about it.
From the moment that I started the miniseries pilot, I was hooked. Here was space opera at its finest — very little in the way of disbelief-suspending technology or crazy alien races. No, Battlestar Galactica quickly showed that it was about people and how they respond to crisis. The Cylons destroy the 12 colonies in an attack reminiscent of our well-known historical tragedies — Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 terror attacks — establishing early on that everything in the show has changed. Many of the episodes deal with the similar struggle for survival — the Cylon fleet attacking every 33 minutes in “33” (and the difficult choices that had to be made), running out of water in “Water” and “Bastille Day,” running out of food in “The Passage” (and seeing some of the pilots desperately lap up crumbs on the table), constant infighting and political maneuvering. We are constantly reminded that the stakes were high and even the smallest push could tear apart the fleet. This is compounded by the fact that the Cylons now resemble humans, leading to no small amount of paranoia. The show never lacks for dramatic emphasis.
It’s a good element of the show that the Battlestar Galactica and its crew are far from the best and brightest, and they must constantly make do with what they have. Most of the heroes are reluctant, and only end up on the front lines by necessity: Captain Adama is close to retirement; Laura Roslin has a positive cancer diagnosis and is 43rd in the line of succession for the presidency; Starbuck mostly joined the military because her mother had been in it; Boomer and Tyrol had been planning to drum out and get married; Cally only joined to get money to go to dental school. These are characters who are believable because they’re just like us. For the most part, their goals aren’t giant, epic things, they’re just trying to make it through another day, and that’s what makes the show relatable on a human level — they have thoughts and feelings about each other, religion, politics, domestic life, their friends, just like you or me.
I really enjoyed Battlestar Galactica. Was the show perfect? No. Did it occasionally have episodes that were a little too off? Yes. Was the ending absolutely perfect? No. But I did love it for its mix of human drama and sci-fi action. If I had to pick, I would say Gaius Baltar would be my favorite character — a consistent pragmatist despite everything that’s going on around him, and really funny to boot. I really appreciate that nobody in Battlestar Galactica is really 100% good or 100% evil — pretty much my requirements for a good TV show — and Baltar perfectly exemplifies that idea.
Similarly, I must call out the great writing on the “Pegasus” and “New Caprica” arcs. The “Pegasus” arc (“Pegasus” and “Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 & 2”) really drove home for me the difficulty of having to make the difficult moral decisions that the Battlestar Galactica made by showcasing another Battlestar that survived the battle, the Pegasus, that replaced its hope for humanity with a consuming need for power and revenge against the Cylons. It’s not hard to see how Adama could have gone the same way if he hadn’t had people like Lee, Tigh, and Roslin there to humanize him. “There but for the grace of God,” indeed.
I also applaud the “New Caprica” arc for being bold enough to take the show in a brand new direction. The Battlestar Galactica finds a new, habitable planet that is hidden from the Cylons, and after much hand-wringing, decides to colonize. The show then fast-forwards a year, giving many of the characters new lives just before the Cylons find New Caprica and take over. Many of the old Galactica crew start an insurrection utilizing terror attacks and suicide bombers against the Cylon occupiers until they can be rescued. Kudos to the show for being willing to completely change direction and put the characters in a new, different situation for a while, which is something that a dramatic show should do, as well as tying in modern relevance (to the war in Iraq) that makes me feel uneasy both about suicide bombing and the main characters willing to pull it off. It’s a gamble that I think paid off for the show in a big way, as the shadow of New Caprica hangs over the remainder of the show.
Battlestar Galactica has, like Buffy, gone from “that show I’ve been meaning to watch” to “one of my favorite shows ever.” It’s a fascinating universe and a compelling character study, and one that I’m glad to have experienced even though I can never again unironically enjoy the song ‘All Along the Watchtower.’”
Now to see where it all began with Caprica.
Benton Sartore has been reading comic books off and on since his age was in single digits, and playing RPGs since college. His bookshelf is now full of 1960s Marvel Comics, Batman trades, and Star Wars comics, and he's been known to DM Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and Serenity. He's most proud of his DVD collection — Joss Whedon is his master now.
Benton is also an acting editor at In Genre. 
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