How did the new “B-Star G” peeps spin straw into gold? How did they
make the human beings as interesting (if not more so) than the fucking Cylons?
Like all great art, they simply held a mirror up to our culture. “Galactica” V.2
is an allegory for 9/11 and the War on Terror viewed from both sides. It offers
a far more complex view of two opposite ideologies in juxtaposition to one
another, presenting neither side as particularly evil – just terrifying.
Extremely well done Science Fiction has always been most powerfully effective
when it lays out humanity naked and shows us ourselves, warts and all. Whether
it’s “Planet of the Apes”, “Star Trek”, or almost anything by Phillip K. Dick,
the best sci-fi isn’t simply laser-beam driven shoot-‘em-ups between good guys
and bad guys; it’s the abyss we look into and see someone awfully, sometimes
painfully familiar looking back from.What Sci-Fi does best is allow the author
to comment on what it’s like to be a human being – the shame, the miracle, the
sacrifice, the desire, the grand heights, and the abject lows. And if an author
can accomplish this in stealth mode – be entertaining while not calling
attention to his or her loftier goals – so much the better.
This gives an insight into how representation can be shown on screen. Kevin Smith clearly thinks that the reason it has succeeded is by showing us a part of ourselves that goes unnoticed, or is often ignored to give a vision of perfection. He says sci-fi succeeds (but this can be worked to most dramas) when we watch it and we see something scarily familiar to our real lives being shown to us. Battlestar Galactica especially is full of 'imperfect' people, strangely it is somewhat a rarity on TV (and even more so in TV sci-fi) to have the characters as gritty and realistic with flaws and all.
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