Woman to woman: Battlestar Galactica is out of this world
Several male friends, having heard of my newfound obsession with Battlestar Galactica, have implored me to put in a good word for the show to their girlfriends and wives. My guess is that these pals have been spending too much time tuning in solo to the Sci Fi Channel, and it’s reminding them of their single days. Well fellas, while I’d be honored to act as the official female spokesperson for BSG, I should tell you that some of the brightest and most discerning broads in the biz have already praised the show to the gods, and you should definitely send those two reviews to your girl (perhaps with a link to this photo). That should pique her interest.
But because you can't say enough good things about BSG, and because it really can be a hard sell, I'll add my two cents.
Ladies, I know exactly what you're thinking, because I was thinking it, too. "Battlestar" and "Galactica" have to be two of the geekiest words in the English language (right up there with "Star" and "Trek"). To a lot of us, outer space is lame, and books, movies and television shows about outer space just don't hold any appeal. When people (mostly male people) first tried to get me to watch BSG, I imagined actors with bad haircuts and polyester spacesuits fighting off stiff-limbed RoboCops in the neon-green glow of their pseudo-futuristic computer consoles, and I claimed I was too busy re-watching Season Two of "Lost" to get involved with another television show. I nearly wrote BSG off forever after I heard a dorky loser on "Veronica Mars" use the word "frack," which, it was then explained to me, was the preferred curse word aboard the Battlestar. I hate catch phrases almost as much as I hate outer space, so I was convinced I would absolutely despise this show.
My guy friends (and especially, my boyfriend) tried everything they could think of to get me to watch Battlestar Galactica. They raved about the "kick-ass battle scenes!" and "incredible writing!," and when those didn't work, they tried to lure me with the more highbrow "sly commentary on our government, Abu Ghraib and the Iraq war!" and "female president!" But I couldn't get past the spaceship. Excuse me, the battleship.
Even now, it's kind of hard for me to accept that I'm such an passionate fan. The other day, I was trying to explain the show to a girlfriend while riding on the subway, and I became acutely aware of my voice saying things like, "See, there are these robots that have evolved to the point where they look and feel JUST LIKE HUMANS, and they're called Cylons, and the Cylons want to wipe out the entire human race..." Did I just say "Cylons"? Just frackin' shoot me!
While I'll admit that the female president certainly sounded cool, what finally got me was the description of another female character. I was at a party at the end of last year, and one of the guests was raving about BSG. He (of course it was a he) must have made it his New Year's resolution to convince me to watch the show, and he started telling me about Starbuck. In the 1970's original, this guy explained, Starbuck was a hot-shot pilot who smoked fancy cigars and slept with anything that walked (his words, not mine). In the Sci Fi version, Starbuck is still a cigar-chomping bad-ass who has a way with planes and with the opposite sex... but he is now a she. I like female role models. I like formidably awesome chicks. But most of all, I like free stuff, so when I was sent home from the party with a complete DVD set of Season One (courtesy of the party hosts), I figured I could I owed it to everyone to at least make it through the first episode. This was before I knew that the first few episodes were actually part of a three-hour introductory miniseries -- but still, I was hooked from the opening bars of the theme song.
This is important, because music is one of the many, many things that makes BSG so great, and it's something that my male friends never said a peep about. The music is a surprisingly otherworldly mix of Far Eastern string instruments, horns, and pounding drums -- not exactly what you'd expect for a futuristic show set in outer space. It can be hauntingly beautiful or primal and aggressive, and it perfectly underscores the wide range of emotions that this show evokes.
That's another thing that was curiously absent from the evangelizing: BSG is emotionally complex. In the first season (the only one I've seen so far), BSG takes the boilerplate sci-fi plot and makes us think about how it would actually feel to be the last humans alive, to have lost our homes, family and way of life, to be exiled in the vast, unfeeling void of outer space. One would imagine this would totally suck, but most space shows (from "Star Wars" to "Independence Day" to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") gloss over the emotional aspect of this situation, focusing instead on the cool battles and the sexy (female) aliens.
By contrast, in one of the very first episodes of BSG, when a new president is chosen to rule over the remaining 50,000 humans, it's not because she's smarter or tougher or more popular than her opponents, it's because the 30-odd government employees ahead of her in line for the job have perished. And when President Laura Roslin is sworn in, she doesn't look righteous, or fierce, or triumphant. She looks sad yet dully determined. You can see that it is not a thrill for her to govern over the last remaining humans alive; it's an enormous and overwhelming responsibility.
(By the way: you find out almost immediately that this wise, wonderful new president is dying of cancer. Whaaa?! Doesn't that make you want to watch?!)
Even the Cylons are incredibly deep and complicated -- they're much more than stock villains. They may have circuit boards for brains and battery packs for hearts, but they also (interestingly enough) have souls. Or at least, they believe they do. These robots are spiritual, and can wax quite eloquently about God and His plans (the humans in the show believe in a pantheon of gods). Some are deeply ambivalent about their relationships with each other, and with the human enemy. In fact, the Cylons are much more like real people than the flesh-and-blood characters on, say, "Three and a Half Men."
And then there's the way that BSG deals with gender. The president is a woman, the ship's ballsiest fighter pilot is a woman, the crafty head Cylon is a woman, and dozens of other smart, highly competent women fill out the ranks on both sides as pilots, technicians, engineers and communications specialists. On the Battlestar, officers refer to their superiors as "Sir," regardless of gender. In this alternate universe, women have finally achieved true equality. It's too bad there are only a couple thousand of them left to appreciate it.
Of course, there are also those amazing battle scenes that we've heard so much about, and I must admit, they're grip-your-chair and hold-your-breath exciting. This show is lightyears ahead of anything else on TV in terms of action and visual pyrotechnics.
But that's not why I've been canceling plans with friends and staying up until 3am to watch yet another episode of BSG. The show really cares about its characters, and so do I. I've cried, shouted, ranted, raved, and accidentally punched my cat while engrossed in the emotional trials and tribulations of the crew of the Battlestar. This was a bit of a surprise to me, as none of my male friends told me about the intense human drama of this show. Not a single one of them advised me to have tissues on hand when tuning in to Season One, or warned me that I might develop several serious same-sex and opposite-sex crushes (although one of my prescient female friends did).
And that's why I feel obligated to pass all of this on to you. It's a great show. Trust me.