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The Law and Politics of Battlestar Galactica
privacyprof writes "Fans of the show Battlestar Galactica might be interested in our interview with writers and producers Ron Moore and David Eick. Three law professors at the blog Concurring Opinions have an hour-long interview with Moore and Eick about the legal, political, moral, and economic issues raised by the show. The interview is available in audio files; alternatively, people can read a transcript of the interview (Part I) and (Parts II and III). Part I examines the lawyers and trials in the show, how torture is depicted, as well as how the humans must balance civil liberties and security. Part II examines politics and commerce. It explores how the cylon attack affected the humans' political system, and it examines how commerce works in the fleet. Part III examines issues related to cylons, such as the humans' treatment of cylons, how robots should be treated by the law, how the cylons govern themselves politically."
Yes, a little offtopic but if you're going to talk
about politics and law, why not religion too, right?
The image is slick...
Battlestar Galactica Last Supper
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What I'd like to see is more details of how and why the Cylons broke free of Human control in the first place. Not what they did afterwards. How did the 12 Colonies screw up so badly with their robots from the beginning?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Including, of course, the principle that "there are limits on everything"?
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The producers are very much interested in not having BSG be a one-sided 'humans uber alles' series. I take it you're in the middle of the second season, where Cain's Six is being tortured and gangraped on the Pegasus. As the series continues, a lot of human decisions come back to the haunt them, and the Cylon perspective is explored.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
moderation in everything... including moderation ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
So what is the significance of when the Cylons occupy the new home planet in season 2.5 (or 3?), and the humans are carrying out suicide bombings and other such guerilla tactics? It seems as if the Cylons are actually the big governmental organization and the humans are the terrorists...
I mean yeah they're the enemy but they're obviously intelligent and sentient and they're not even given basic human rights.
The humans on BSG are deeply religious and believe that humanity is defined by a Gods-given soul, which a man-made machine cannot have - it's a pretty major part of the show, if a little unsubtle. Goes along with the whole theme of the cylons having a more "evolved" religion than the humans (by our Western standards, of course, where monotheism > highly ritualistic polytheism).
Of course, the cylons did also exterminate the human race, some people would hold a grudge.
sic transit gloria mundi
is that the only character that follows clear moral principles is karl "helo" agathon; every other character on the show has obvious flaws
Isn't that the classic tragic flaw? Uncompromising goodness usually ends badly for the hero.
(sidenote for non-classics geeks: his name is a nod to this too, agathos means "good" in Greek, often in the sense of "noble" or "virtuous")
sic transit gloria mundi
I stopped watching the series after it stopped being about running away from the hoard of robots trying to murder everyone. I'm not terribly interested in complicated relationships. That's what soap operas are for.
Briefly in the early part of the series, things started running out. Simple commodities like whiskey and playing cards. I was upset when that issue disappeared. A random assortment of military and civilian vessels might be well stocked, but they certainly would not have a full assortment of manufacturing capabilities. Especially for specialized good like pharmaceuticals. They eventually addressed a shortage of antibiotics, and the development of a black market. But realistically. They would be able to produce no antibiotics at all.
And really. Why would a passenger vessel capable of hopping between stars in the blink of an eye have manufacturing centers? Or fuel refineries? Or food production capabilities.
I was hoping to see Cloud Nine, the dome greenhouse like ship be converted into agricultural land.
I know these issues aren't nearly as exciting as -getting into bed with your imaginary genocidal robot-
Think about it though. The main goals following some sort of catastrophe like this would be.
1.Stability: Stop whatever killed everyone from still doing so. Stop the panic. Get people working together instead of looting from each other.
2.Preserving technology, infrastructure and supplies. If you've got something that works, you can't replace it. Do whatever you can to keep it working.
3.Rebuilding infrastructure. Need to grow food to live once the supplies run out. Can we built farming workers? No. Can we build tractors? No. Can we build shovels? Yes. Start from there, and learn what we need to make it work.
4.(optional) Preserving knowledge. After everyone's farming, hunting, gathering, or whatever is needed to stay alive. We realize that we still know how to make all sorts of advanced technology, even if we don't have a large enough society to make use of it. It would be valuable to archive all the knowledge so that it is accessible after the last battery runs out of juice.
just my thoughts...
I'm on the opposite side of you in the question of how Cylons should be treated. They have proven themselves an existential threat to the human race, and they should be exterminated without pity or mercy. I was frustrated by the one episode (much later than where you apparently are) when they decide not to release a biological weapon that could wipe out the Cylons all at once. I'd press that button in a heartbeat, and I think any leader responsible for the safety of the human race would do the same.
Still, it's a good reflection on the series writers that they are able to evoke such complex and powerful quandries.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
You should go back and watch Star Trek TNG, learn some starfleet ideals. Picard was absolutely right not to return Hugh with a disease to exterminate the Borg. Yes they were a threat to the human race, but genocide is never an acceptable solution. Would you wipe out a species to ensure your own survival? Murder? Starfleet wouldn't, and neither would I.. these are ideals worth dying for.
Any part of the reaction in excess of what was proportional to the provocation was the "unprovoked" part.
Killing the pilot (assuming it really was a human and not a Cylon ruse), maybe even bombing the base he (allegedly) launched from might have been considered provoked. Nuking billions of people on twelve planets was unprovoked.
If someone calls you an asshole and you whip out a gun and blow them away, no jury is going to be very sympathetic to the viewpoint that you were provoked, and the prosecutor will make a good case for first-degree murder and were just looking for an excuse to pull the trigger (why else were you carrying the gun in the first place?).
Of course, all this presupposes that it wasn't just a Cylon version of the Gleiwitz incident that Nazi Germany used as an excuse to invade Poland.
-- Alastair
Most humans on BSG (at least the ones the show centers around) only show a token devotion to their Gods (if at all).
Some do, but I got the impression that's not very indicative of their society as a whole.
Baltar is an atheist (at least at the start) as is Adama (he thinks Earth is a myth)
Baltar is The Scientist archetype, so of course he's an atheist, it's the setup for his whole "unlikely prophet" arc (not terribly original, but it's a thing). At least I got the impression that his atheism was somewhat uncommon by their standards. Adama doesn't believe in prophecy (or even just that particular prophecy), I don't believe he was ever actually presented as not believing the whole Lords of Kobol thing (I could be wrong, I can't recall anything specific one way or the other).
Rosalind is a believer but is not above using religious posturing for her own political ends.
So? Her actions are entirely informed by prophecy at this point, doesn't get any more religious than that.
My main point was that their society, as a whole, is shown to be far more religious than ours. For one thing, they clearly have a state-endorsed (or enforced?) religion that informs much of their politics. The educated elite might be pretty secularized, but aren't they always?
I believe there's an intentional parallel with western secular 'Christians' and extremist Muslims.
I think that's pretty tenuous (and kinda simplistic if that was the actual intention). For one thing, the cylons' devotion is constantly contrasted with the ritual (and superstition) of the human practices. If the intention is for "us" - predominantly Christian Westerners - to identify with the BSG humans, then why have them be "stuck" in polytheism (there's actually hints of "monolatry" to it, kinda akin to later Roman cultic worship), while the cylons develop theistically along lines very similar to our own culture? And it's not like large segments of Western society aren't every bit as religious as any Muslim - religious belief and fanatical "extremism" aren't exactly the same thing.
Basically what I mean is, is it just a coincidence that the cylons have a more developed, and nuanced, theosophy than the humans?
For that matter, the vast majority of the BSG humans wouldn't have a problem exterminating the cylons on religious grounds (according to their religion the cylons aren't sentient). While the cylons, ostensibly, are only hunting the humans because they perceive them as a threat. In fact, it's the overtly religious models that seem to come by some misgivings about exterminating the whole species.
Actually, I guess when I say "the cylons" I pretty much mean "the Sixes", I don't believe the others were shown to embrace those views quite as wholeheartedly. But still, while they are deeply religious, I wouldn't say their religion is shown as fundamentalist.
I guess I'm just hoping it's a little more complex than "fundamentalism == extremism == bad", cause, I mean, duh...
sic transit gloria mundi
True story: back during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I had lunch with a well educated, mild-mannered, drug and gun running mujehaddin working in India. When he found out I wasn't going to be a customer, he relaxed and we talked religion. He asserted that there were more Buddhists than any other religion. I scoffed and began quoting the other statistics in this thread, but he replied:
"Few christians are actually christian, and few muslims are actually muslim... but most buddhists are actually buddhist."
Damn those pesky terrorists
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Yes, but the cylons had also been in human space for a long time. If Tigh is indeed a cylon and has been in the military for most of his life, the cylons have been in human territory for at least that long.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
A lot of people complain about shows getting preachy and derailing the quality of the entertainment to make some sort of moral statement. Some people consider any amount of preaching derailment, no matter the quality. I don't mind preaching but I do hate it when that sort of thing knocks the show off the rails. Derailment comes in the form of making people out of character, contorting the internal logic of the show to bring the issue up, and knocking the flow of the overall series off the tracks.
Galactica has been guilty of all of those. I gave up when they decided to do the whole Iraq occupation thing. For starters, settling on a planet makes no sense when your enemy is space-borne and can hunt you down. That violates sound military doctrine in the context of the show. Second, how do you apply terror tactics against an enemy who is effectively immortal? While somewhat cheesy and seemingly a wasted effort, suicide bomber Cylons make sense in that they are immortal and will come back after they die. It would still seem more sensible for them to conduct a larger sabotage given how far they've infiltrated into the Colonial military. But for humans to suicide attack Cylons? Again, it's one thing if you're talking about a Viper pilot pressing home an attack against a basestar. Losing a capital ship should hurt, they don't grow on trees, and such a move could provide the opening for the Galactica to escape a sticky situation. But strapping on a dynamite vest and walking into a Cylon bar? "Bugger, I got blown up. Well, let me crawl out of this tank, put on something slutty and we can resume at some other bar."
None of that made any context within the confines of the show, the writers just wanted to do something they saw in the headlines. Yawn. Might as well throw in stem cell research, teen pregnancy, female genital mutilation, and rants about Vista.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I don't know whether they are hippies or not, but they did display something that could even be seen as borderline stupidity or naivety regarding such a strong theme of bare survival of the last remains of a human kind.
Nobody seems to notice a simple fact: there were 12bn people at the beginning of the show, and in couple of minutes after that they were down to mere 40+ thousand. It's about 0.0004 percent - it's not even a statistical error, it's a rounding error! And it's the second war with Cylons who very effectively showed to all that they are into exterminating the human species. You cannot make peace treaties with somebody who annihilated your entire species - you fight until one side does not exist anymore. Period.
The normal thing any government would do in situations far, far, far, far, far... better than that is to implement marshal law through and through. And here we have some idiots who are trying to still stick to the 'ole democracy principles' like it's some scholarly issue?! The workers' strike? At the only facility that produces fuel for all the ships, including fighters (in other words, the most important element in human survival there)? Facilities like this are part of the military in such conditions - the workers there are effectively soldiers under command in war - disobeying orders in wartime situations by the soldiers usually ends up by putting ringleaders against the wall in front of the firing squad, if not all of them. And soldier ('Halo' Agathon) who intentionally sabotages the activity that would bring the ultimate victory in this war of annihilation, even it could be seen as genocidal by some, is not a brave and moral individual - he is a traitor of his own species, and should be punished as any traitor in war was before him! Human rights and morals in situations like that are voluntarily resigned because they can (and usually do) prevent the system to function optimally! It's not about way of life, or this or that religion or political idea prevailing, it's about bare survival of an entire species!
After all, there's an old saying: if democracy works, why doesn't military implement it within its own ranks...
That's real life. BSG isn't even a good description of reality in fictional universe. I don't dispute that authors of the show wanted to raise some genuine questions, but they did it in a totally wrong setup, which only made these questions less genuine and more artificial, and whole show barely watchable.