Battlestar Galactica's Last Days

bowman9991 writes "If your country was invaded and occupied by a foreign power, would you blow yourself up to fight back? If someone pointed a gun at your head and threatened to pull the trigger if you refused to sign a document you knew would lead to a hundred deaths (and you signed!), would that make you ultimately responsible? Does superior technology give you the moral right to impose your will on a technologically inferior culture? You wouldn't expect a mainstream television show to tackle such philosophically loaded questions, certainly not a show based on cheesy science fiction from the '70s, but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape. The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again. SFFMedia illustrates how Battlestar Galactica exposes the moral dilemmas, outrages, and questionable believes of the present as effectively (but more entertainingly) than any documentary or news program. It's not hard to see parallels in the CIA and US military's use of interrogation techniques in Bush's War on Terror, the effects of labeling one race as 'the enemy,' the crackdown on free speech, or the use of suicide bombers in Iraq."

Comments

First Post!

[XPeter]

My superior technology gives me the moral right to impose my will on a technologically inferior culture called Slashdot!

Re:First Post!

[FuzzyHead]

Only if you can keep your server from being slashdotted will we consider your technology superior. ;)

Tackle?

[fm6]

BSG doesn't so much tackle moral questions as sort of run past them.

Re:Tackle?

[AKAImBatman]

I have to agree. One of the more frustrating aspects of the show is that the characters very rarely grow a sufficiently large backbone to Do the Right Thing(TM). And then it's pretty much only because they're forced to do so. Using a corporate environment as an analog, my company would have bitten the dust long ago if every employee kept secrets like they do in BSG. The fact that the Cylons didn't manage to wipe them out in the first season is purely an artifact of it being fiction.

Of course, there are plenty of situations where the secrets would be justified. e.g. If you know you're a cylon, do you really want to expose that amongst a ship full of cylon-haters? But some of the stuff is just plain ridiculous. Take Baltar as an example. By keeping his involvement with the destruction of the colonies a secret, he's basically accepting responsibility for his actions. Yet his character never accepts responsibility for his actions! A real individual like that would have carefully controlled the release of that information, being careful to spin it as something out of his control. Blame the cylons. Blame the dead government. Blame everybody, but make sure that it's not something that can come back and bite you in the ass.

I still like many aspects of the show, but the characterizations just get weird sometimes. And as you said, they end up blowing by the moral quandaries rather than taking the Star Trek approach of tackling them head-on.

Re:Tackle?

[elrous0]

Yeah, that's called "realism." People in real life often rarely grow sufficiently large backbones to "do the right thing" either, particularly when they're threatened and running for their lives.

And, as for secrets, is there any one of us who doesn't carry a TON of those around with them? Do you wake up every day and tell your wife that she's become a fat, bitter shrew and that you don't want to be married to her anymore because you want to go find a cute younger woman who isn't a fat, bitter shrew? Do you tell your kids that you're disappointed that they're not as smart or handsome as you'd hoped they'd be? Do you tell your boss he's a fucking idiot and that you think you could do a better job than him? Do you tell you mother that you don't want to visit her or call her because you're too different from her now to have anything to talk about? Do you tell yourself that you're not the hero of the story, just another loser in a world full of losers?

...I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?

Re:Tackle?

[kannibal_klown]

I wouldn't say they run past them. There were a few where they dedicated the whole episode to a moral question and how some really had no perfect solution.

Others had entire seasons (or the entire story) to deal with: the occupation, what is "alive", is mass-deception OK, etc.

The conditions and rebellion on New Caprica were done well (which lasted 1/2 a season) and "Baltar becoming a cult-like leader of a monotheistic religion" has played out pretty well.

Other small 1-episode shots that were done well:

The forced medication episode was another:

• What happens when the beliefs of a few, risk the lives of the whole?
• A group of people contracted a disease that was easily treatable, but refused medicine on religious grounds.
• So the disease spread like wildfire amongst them, while exposing the rest of the fleet.
• With medicine a scarce resource like in the show you'd want to stop an outbreak before it got out of control, which they made impossible.

The whole "inherited jobs" and "labor issue on the refinery ship" was one that stood out.

• With so few people available it became a big question of who worka which job
• Travel between the specialized ships (mining, refinery, fuel, etc) was limited. People just "lived" there, raised a family, and showed them the trade on the ship.
• Would new people get trained? Or would it just turn into a cast system? Would anyone without the last name Adama ever run the fleet?
• And even the sympathetic protagonist's seemingly ideal solution was flawed. People got roped into jobs they weren't fit for.
• Should working with farm machinery for a summer abroad qualify you into working on dangerous machinery at the refinery?

Treating the black and grey markets was interesting.

• In the context of the show, the black market kept the fleet running.
• They weren't trying to make the survivors seem like a close-knit extended family like the original series: you didn't get something for nothing.
• But then you look at the darker aspects of the market and you have to wonder where you draw the line. What is going too far? Should it exist at all?

How do you treat POWs

Re:Tackle?

[Yvanhoe]

Exactly. On one hand I am grateful to BSG for showing the general public that science fiction is not just about lightsabers and klingons, on the other hand, I would do the same observation as for the Matrix movie(s) : the questions, the ideas that seem so new to people who discover them on video-screens have been there in SF books for many, many years. BSG is deeper than most SF shows out there but it is still incredibly shallow when compared to the books that inspired its ideas more than 30 years ago.

SF literature is a field where some philosophical questions are asked that can not be asked in any other context. And compared to recent books, the moral dilemmas of BSG are quite laughably easy to solve.

Re:Tackle?

[nine-times]

One of the more frustrating aspects of the show is that the characters very rarely grow a sufficiently large backbone to Do the Right Thing(TM). And then it's pretty much only because they're forced to do so.

So you're saying it's realistic?

A real individual like that would have carefully controlled the release of that information, being careful to spin it as something out of his control.

Now that seems unrealistic to me-- a world where people take on their problems, admit their mistakes (even with spin), and avoid having their past actions bite them in the ass.

I like that BSG *doesn't* necessarily wrap everything up in a neat little package. Everyone sees a problem, nobody can agree on what to do about it, time passes, nothing gets done, and then it ends up blowing up in everyone's face later down the line. Or not. Sometimes that stuff just passes by and never gets resolved. That sounds much more like the world we live in, rather than having some all-wise character give you a moral to the story at the end of each episode.

Re:Tackle?

[Bemopolis]

Take Baltar as an example. By keeping his involvement with the destruction of the colonies a secret, he's basically accepting responsibility for his actions. Yet his character never accepts responsibility for his actions! A real individual like that would have carefully controlled the release of that information, being careful to spin it as something out of his control.

Ttrapped in space with the remains of humanity, each of which has suffered a devastating loss, has easy access to guns, and is looking for someone to blame. Saying "I did it" and hoping no one offs you before you get to "...but".

BRILLIANT PLAN, GENIUS.

Re:Tackle?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, I told my wife that she had become a bitter, fat shrew, but then I could not tell the kids I was disappointed in them because she took them. She got the house in the divorce, so I moved in with my Mom. Things were a little tense when I told her that I did not want to be there because we had nothing in common, but that did not last long. When I told my boss that he was an ass, I got fired, and when I was unable to pay the court appointed alimony, I was sent to prison, so there was no need for me to see her anymore. I still continue to tell the truth and not keep secrets hidden, that is why I will honestly say that my cellmate, Mark, has the biggest dick I have ever seen and it hurts, but I would still not change anything.

Re:Tackle?

[Hork_Monkey]

I think someone needs a nap.

Re:Tackle?

[AKAImBatman]

The closest they came to tackling moral quandries was Picard looking distressed for his "I'm going to ignore the prime directive" monologues.

You do realize that TOS was under heavy fire from the CBS news agency because of their sci-fi commentary on the Vietnam war?

Star Trek asked all kinds of questions. Do we have a right to arm the locals to fight back against Klingon oppression? Should we fight the Klingons for having turned a peaceful people into pawns in their war? Does Kirk have the right to take vengeance on a dictator who is repentant of his ways? Do we have a right to kill off the indigenous population so that we can mine the materials we need? Would you kill someone you love if it meant saving billions of people and making the future a better place? Is it acceptable for mixed races to fall in love?

Star Trek was very much the BSG of its day. It asked all the hard questions that were on people's minds at the time. The difference is that it didn't let the abyss stare back at you. It exposed these problems as an agent of change rather than suggesting helplessness.

The Next Generation did continue the tradition with many hard questions. (e.g. Who Watches the Watchers, The Survivors, The Host, The Outcast, The High Ground, etc.) However, the questions were framed in the softer, more tolerant culture of the time. Now we're coming back around to hard questions which BSG raises. But the show does nothing to look those questions in the eye. It simply treats them as there and moves on. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Tackle?

[Wonko the Sane]

Don't forget about the projected Japanese death toll in the event of a land invasion.

We'll never really know for sure, of course, but dropping those two bombs probably saved lives on both sides.

Besides all the people involved in that decision are dead. Maybe we can move on now?

Re:Tackle?

[EvanED]

But they didn't really tackle any moral quandries.

"Who Watches the Watchers"? "First Contact" (the TNG episode, not movie)? "The Drumhead"? "The Defector"? "The Offspring"? "The Wounded"? "The Quality of Life"? "Tapestry"? "The Pegasus"? Many undergrad Artificial Intelligence classes routinely show "The Measure of a Man" to discuss sentience in manufactured beings. Hell, I've heard that the Naval Academy has shown "The First Duty" to incoming cadets as discussion about the honor code.

All of these episodes naturally could spawn discussions of a similar caliber to those mentioned in the summary for this /. article. A couple (particularly "First Contact" and those dealing with machine rights, which is admittedly many) aren't really applicable to the world today, but that's why we have an imagination. And only one of them is about Prime Directive violations, and it's one that Picard didn't cause. Hell, watch The Drumhead, from 1991, and tell me that that doesn't have eerie parallels to our terror hunt.

Re:Tackle?

[Austerity Empowers]

The show isn't a series of morality plays, it's to make you think about what's right. It's more social commentary, "this is how it is", not "how it should be". Right and wrong is a complicated issue, made easier for us viewers because we have (somewhat) perfect knowledge.

I believe that in general though, you're right, characters display less backbone than we, the audience would like them to. And I believe that's the point. We are unpassionate observers, watching two warring factions go at it. The more we watch, the less we necessarily have empathy for either side. The more clearly we see where this is headed. After the last episode, would you accept a Disney ending?

More importantly, are the times when characters actually do the right thing. Some characters do the right thing more often than not, on both sides. Sometimes the right thing had dire consequences, involving deaths of many people. How many people, your people, would you kill for the right thing? Would you lie to your people to unify them, to ensure their (brief) survival? What is the quest for earth if not a metaphor for our new president?

Baltar is, mostly, our example of the true self-serving egotist. He's even making a religion out of it. He's not all bad, he sometimes does the right thing, he certainly tries to think the right thoughts. But he is impossibly weak. Yet I think at some level we all identify with him. We hate what he does, but we understand why he does it. We'd like to think we'd do differently. Baltar, IMO, is ultimately dominated by his cowardice, not his intellect. He knows where he stands on the jedi-sith scale, but he's too much of a coward to take control of himself. This internal battle was fought out earlier on, with his "head six".

The show is pretty bleak, I think precisely for the reasons you cite for not liking the characters. Unlike Star Trek, the moral quandaries and decisions made persist and are affecting the outcome. They're absolutely not blown by, they're resolved one way or another. All the what-if's that were decided on in past episodes have forced them down the path they're on now, a path that has caused a lot of pain and suffering, more than what could have been if characters had acted differently.

Re:Tackle?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Somebody tends to speak up in nearly any situation. Whether anyone listens to them or not is another matter, but very few secrets are maintained. Yet everyone in BSG has the necessary personality traits to keep even the smallest of secrets. That's realistic?

I dunno, it took me about 3 seconds to come up with a counter-example - without too much spoilage - a certain person discovered they were a cylon and ultimately confessed it to Adama. Sure it took that person a couple of episodes to decide what they were going to do about their self-discovery, but deliberating over such an enormous and self-destructive revelation seems pretty realistic too me.

Same with the example of Baltar's situation. ... Then when Roselin "remembered" him being with the six, no one (including Roselin) would have been able to find personal fault there.

That's a terrible example, you are arguing about human nature - for which there are no cut and dried rules - and you are using foreknowledge that he would even be found out. It is just as reasonable to say that he chose to gamble that he would never be found out, considering just how few surviors there were AND just how few political survivors there were (wasn't roselyn like 47th in line for the presidency?) it seems like a plenty reasonable gamble to me.

Re:Tackle?

[rthille]

I wonder, given that we had two bombs that we were pretty sure would work, if we had dropped the first just off Tokyo (ok, not "just", but within sight, but far enough away to spare most of the population) on a lightly populated island or something, if Japan would have surrendered, or was destroying a city or two necessary?

Regardless, your points all still stand.

Re:Tackle?

[jedidiah]

I always love to see people with an axe to grind against the United
States so eager to so utterly trivialize the Japanese. They are not
a people to be trifled with, especially in war. All of this historical
revisionist nonsense about how they were all ready to give in is so
disrespectful to them individually and as a separate and independent
culture and nation.

The Germans didn't give in so easily. They were fighting street to
street all the way to Berlin even when all that was left were old
men and boys. Why should we expect any less of the Japanese?

You're like some fundie that selectively chooses what part of scripture they will acknowledge.

Re:Tackle?

[adamjgp]

5. US military is widely celebrated as a bunch of extraordinary cowards who go to war only after being convinced that they will kill their enemies without endangering themselves. Said bunch of cowards always acts surprised and terrified when their invincible warriors end up dead or captured, and proclaims that it only happens because their enemies are immoral war criminals.

The victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory. - Sun Tzu

Re:Tackle?

[AKAImBatman]

a certain person discovered they were a cylon and ultimately confessed it to Adama.

Only when the situation became dire enough. Which I actually thought was a pretty decent part of the show. However, before he did that he managed to get a six pregnant and all but give away the fact that he was a cylon. Furthermore, why did he give away the others? I was waiting for him to turn himself in (seemed like the situation was going to force it sooner or later), but I saw no reason why he'd need to reveal the identity of everyone else.

you are arguing about human nature - for which there are no cut and dried rules

Certainly. However, there's one thing that's certain. In any human population, traits will be far more varied than we see in BSG. While their personalities are different, their approaches to handling tough situations seem to be almost universal. Given the opportunity, nearly every person on the show makes the wrong decision. That's simply not realistic.

It is just as reasonable to say that he chose to gamble that he would never be found out, considering just how few surviors there were AND just how few political survivors there were (wasn't roselyn like 47th in line for the presidency?) it seems like a plenty reasonable gamble to me.

And yet he was found out. And STILL didn't start controlling information. When a six shows up and says that you sabotaged the colonies, it's probably a pretty damn good time to say, "She's a cylon!" Not only will it help get you out of conviction, but it will give you a nice out for future recriminations. (Like what happened with Roslyn later on.) Sure, he'd take a hit in the public eye, but he knew that Adama and the President needed him. That meant that he could have rebuilt after such a setback. Instead he rots in a cell and waits for a sentence of execution, all while the power of his trump card wanes.

Of course, you might say "well, that's a stupid idea." But consider how it would have played out for a moment. You don't just jump up and accuse someone at the table. He would have pulled Adama aside and told him that he watched this lady die during the attack on Cobol. Which can only mean that she's actually a cylon and thus must be the spy that sabotaged the defense computers. At best, it's his word against hers. They would have both been thrown in detention, and the falsified evidence would have eventually come to light. Baltar would now be blame free, and Adama would have a Cylon captive. Win-win for Baltar.

Instead, the show played up various metaphysical questions to no real purpose. I can tell you that if I'm on death row, worrying about the metaphysical meaning of my navel is not my first concern. I'd swing back to reality and start playing on the trust relationships I'd developed (however thin) until I can find a solution in my favor. Especially in a situation where the opponent has such a weak hand. (i.e. She's definitely a Cylon AND Baltar knows that her evidence is falsified.)

Baltar displays this sort of political acumen elsewhere in the series. Why did he fail so badly in this situation? He didn't even try. That's what really blows my mind.

Re:Tackle?

[nine-times]

Star Trek asked all kinds of questions. Do we have a right to arm the locals to fight back against Klingon oppression?...

I agree, but I think Star Trek sometimes suffered from giving answers that were a little too pat. "Do we have a right to kill off the indigenous population so that we can mine the materials we need? " Well, it turns out the answer is "no". That's nice. "Is it acceptable for mixed races to fall in love?" The answer is "yes". Great.

I think it's the mark of much better writing when BSG makes the audience answer these questions with something like, "I want to say 'no', but I'm afraid I feel like I have to say 'yes'. Does that make me a horrible human being?" Maybe it's a matter of opinion, as well as what you're looking for out of a show.

Re:Tackle?

[Walkingshark]

I've thought a lot about this situation, and on reflection I think the way it went down was probably (as horrible as this sounds) a best-case. Nuclear weapon technology was coming. The soviets were going to have it eventually, we got to it first and we dropped the only two we had.

If we hadn't done that, imagine how many might have been mass produced by the WW2 industrial war machine. Now imagine a world where no example existed of how incredibly mind blowingly horrible these weapons are. Imagine an exchange of dozens or even hundreds of these weapons launched by clueless political idiots who had no idea what they were playing with.

Those victims in Japan are heroes on the stage of history. Their deaths, and the suffering of the survivors, is all that stood between the humanity and the long winter.

Or at least, thats how I look at it.

Re:Tackle?

[karstux]

5. US military is widely celebrated as a bunch of extraordinary cowards who go to war only after being convinced that they will kill their enemies without endangering themselves.

Everything else aside: This is not cowardice, but the only responsible course of action for a military. If you fight an enemy "fairly", you'll end up with equal casualties on both sides, thus abusing the soldier's trust in their superiors. In war, you don't fight fairly, you minimize your own losses. It's not pretty, but a moral necessity.

Re:Tackle?

[dat cwazy wabbit]

"Same with the example of Baltar's situation. He screwed up, but he didn't screw up badly."

Are we watching the same show? He leaked classified information to the blonde he was banging and she used it to kill billions of people. Has anyone ever screwed up worse than this? Ever?

Re:Tackle?

[Xveers]

Except the Japanese were putting out some negotiations via the russians to try to negotiate a peace settlement by early '44. By that point they had recognized that should everything continue, they were going to lose. Their negotiations were meant to save face at home by presenting a story about how they "hadn't really been totally defeated". The main sticking point was that they wanted to keep their current political structure, emperor and all. The main allies (The US especially) wanted an unconditional surrender. Hence the war continuing onwards. Just because you're looking to surrender dosen't make you a spineless weenie. There is such a thing as recognizing when you're completely overmatched and needing to cut a deal...

Re:Tackle?

[Alex Belits]

Oh yes, Georgia.

The microscopic mountainous country that, with some guidance of US, managed to alienate not one but three of its provinces (all three unrelated and not particularly friendly to each other) to the extent that they had to actively seek secession. Then, after years of a stalemate, Georgia government decides that the only way to fix the problem is to fire rockets at residential areas of one of those provinces' capital. All the while the same ethnicity in a similar province in Russia does not have a slightest problem with being a part of the larger country.

US propaganda tried to show you a different picture of what happened before the war there, didn't it?

NATO expands to countries that want to ensure that have nothing to fear from other NATO countries, and support if they get involved into a conflict with non-NATO countries.

None of those countries had a chance to enter into any armed conflict since the end of WWII, and certainly aren't going to have such a chance now (being mostly surrounded by EU members or having a border with something obviously peaceful like Russia or Ukraine). Georgia had conflicts, and that was the reason why it was not allowed into NATO. Speak about only getting something you don't need.

There is a reason that much of the expanding NATO is doing, invovled adding former members of the Warsaw Pact.

Yes, and the reason is, US wants to feed its military contractors and control foreign governments.

However, I do not argue that the US military-industrial complex has used NATO to expand. But That does not mean that NATO was not important, or does not still play an important role.

It doesn't.

However the fact that NATO never accomplished anything other than feeding said complex and involving foreign countries in various failures of US foreign policy, very much does mean it.

Re:Tackle?

[Cowmonaut]

Mod this guy Insightful or Underrated whichever is more Karma. I find few people that seem to actually understand what politically was happening in WW2. Most people are just interested in the fighting and military tech.

The Cylons have a Plan

[russlar]

The writers don't know what it is.

Re:The Cylons have a Plan

[_xeno_]

Man, I wish that were a joke, but it just isn't. The series producers have admitted that the whole "and they have a plan" thing was added "because it seemed cool."

In fact, if you listen to the episode commentary, quite a bit of things were done "because it seemed cool." Boomer being a Cylon? "Because it seemed cool." The whole thing with the second Sharon and Helo on Caprica? "Because it seemed cool."

The writers have never had a real plan and have been playing the entire thing mostly by ear. And it shows: the "and they have a plan" thing has just vanished. What is that plan? Did they give up on it? Why didn't they finish wiping out the human race? (Problems with Cylons procreating, apparently?) What's the deal with the human/Cylon hybrids (versus the Basestar/humanoid Cylon hybrid)?

I will give them credit, though. They've managed to take the identities of the Final Five Cylons in the most recent episode and make them make sense. Sure, not everything is explained yet, and there are remaining questions, but at least the idea that they're Cylons doesn't seem completely implausible any more.

Hopefully they'll find a way to tackle some of the dangling threads and finally figure out what the Cylon's plan was. Because they sure don't appear to have had a plan in the series so far.

Oh come on.

[Hatta]

The final fourth season is nearly over, and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.

I'm sure it's a good show, but get real here. Television will be pretty much the same after BSG than it was before BSG.

Re:Battlestar analogies

[Anonymous Coward]

If my country were invaded and occupied by a foreign power, I would ensure that I obey the cease-fires and give peace a chance, and not hide like a coward amongst my own women and children as I target the enemy's women and children.

Collaborator.

It's not as good as it was

[Cthefuture]

In the beginning I really liked the show. It had a good mix of action, technology and drama. However, the last few seasons have been fairly "meh" for me because it has turned almost completely into a soap opera. Don't get me wrong, the soap opera stuff is OK but now there very little of the original mix that attracted me in the first place. It's just not the same show that it started out as.

Is this...

[MikeDirnt69]

Is this an article or an add? I'm not quite sure...

Another dilemma

[mseeger]

Hi,

BG (season 4.5) exposes another more significant dilemma for me: Imagine you're a resident of a third world country (e.g. Germany or UK) and even capable and willing to pay for your favorite TV series. Would you wait months or years for it to acess it legaly or just download it immediately from the asinus electronicus? What if your wife is even more anxious to see it than you? Having a gun put against you head can not be compared to the pressure applied to one in such a case.

Hard choices :-)

Yours, Martin

Re:Another dilemma

[notnAP]

Any nation whose citizens do not have readily available access to BSG is, IMHO, a third world nation.

Re:Another dilemma

[mseeger]

My education is sufficent to use irony by exaggeration :-).

Re:Another dilemma

[YourExperiment]

Imagine you received a first world education

Imagine a whooshing sound, just above your head...

How is This New to SciFi?

[CheshireCatCO]

but if you've watched Battlestar Galactica since it was re-imagined in 2003, there has been no escape.

That's... hyperbolic. I haven't seen an episode of the fourth season yet, nor do I plan to. I just lost interest when I started feeling like the writers didn't know where they were really heading.

So I'm clearly... well, not hostile, but indifferent... to the show, but it should be noted that this "story" is nonsense. SciFi shows have been doing this for, literally, decades. Tackling moral issues of the day was the point of The Twlight Zone and Star Trek (TOS). More recently, Babylon 5 earned a pretty solid reputation for discussing (and very definitely not answering) moral conundra. Even Deep Space Nine (where BSG producer Ron Moore once worked) did a pretty good job with the same thing.

So I suppose if your point is "BSG continues the tradition", then fine. But the tone of the summary and article very much make it sound like this is revolutionary.

No way!

[Trojan35]

Next thing you know, they'll be a non sci-fi show about these very issues. It might even get decent ratings!

Re:Battlestar analogies

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, ain't it funny how peoples consiousnesses react to ambiguous stories.

hat's off to BSG for getting us to actually think and pointing out the conclusion jumpers.

I was skeptical back in 2003

[elrous0]

I was a kid when the original BSG was on in the late 70's, and so remember it fondly (I can still remember how sad I and other kids were when they cancelled it). And when I heard they were bringing it back as a miniseries, I was skeptical to say the least. My first thought was "Jesus, can't Hollywood come up with ANYTHING original anymore?" and my second thought (after hearing that Starbuck and Boomer would be female) was "Oh great, and they've made it politically correct too, even better." At that point, I vowed I would never waste my time on it.

Then a funny thing happened. I was flipping around and caught a bit of the miniseries, a way into the first night (just after the nukes hit). It was the scene where Helo and Boomer put down on Caprica for repairs and are faced with a mob fleeing for their lives. It was one of the most powerful and dramatic scenes I had ever seen on television. The contrast with the original, where the colonials seemed to forget that their entire civilization had been wiped out almost immediately after it happened, was just stunning. And the obvious connection to 9-11 was immediate and visceral (I don't think this series could have been made before 9-11, certainly not with this kind of gritty realism).

From that point on, I wasn't a skeptic.

And just when I thought I had seen the best it could offer, along comes the first season and it somehow managed to get even BETTER. The premiere episode of that season ("33") was absolutely brilliant, "Hand of God" was touching and dramatic, and "Kobol's Last Gleaming" bordered on an almost mystical experience (the opening to that two-parter has to be the harshest montage to ever grace a television screen).

Now, the series has had its ups and downs since then. They've never again equalled the quality of the miniseries and first season, IMHO (though individual episodes like "Flight of the Phoenix" have come close). But even at its worst, this is still the best thing on television.

This skeptic will miss you greatly. Nothing else even comes close.

Re:Battlestar analogies

[iluvcapra]

Sure, I'd sign the cease-fire, even though it would lead to 100 deaths because the Islamic savages don't abide by treaties and cease-fires anyway. I wouldn't be responsible for the other side breaking the pact.

I think the operative comparison would be to Jewish collaborators throughout occupied Europe in WW2, who were forced, sometimes at gunpoint, sometimes with mere words, to compile lists of people to be shipped for "resettlement," form police forces of their own people to round them up, etc.

It's not about being technologically inferior, it's about being culturally inferior. Grow up kids, quit kicking Israel in the shins! If the islamic savages choose to behave like deviant youth then the only thing they will understand is a spanking.

Yes, everybody knows that all you need to do is "teach people a lesson," and if only the "shin-kickers" would get out of the way, the little peoples of the Earth would learn their lesson faster. After all, it worked for Germany in 1914 when the inferior and decadent cultures of France and Russia dared to oppose them, or Austria when immature Serbia tried to oppose them, or France when the barbaric Algerians opposed them, or England when the Mesopotamian Arabs and Afghans opposed them, and on and on. The "lesson" is that "uncultured" people probably have as much a right to live as anyone else, and the only "lesson" you teach from the barrel of a gun is that gun-barrels are for teaching lessons.

This troll is an imperialist, of a hundred-year-old vintage, but the ideas STILL have remarkable currency and need to be deconstructed, as BSG does.

Re:Al Jazeera

[MadCow42]

>> The ad that Slashdot is choosing to serve with this story is for Al Jazeera. Am I the only one that thinks that's kind of funny?

Funny in what way? Al Jazeera is a normal, reputable news source in the Middle East. It's no more (and no less) a propaganda or terrorism hub than USA Today, Fox News or the New York Times. Just because it's in the Middle East doesn't make it "evil".

Go read it some time... it'll give you a good balance to offset the propaganda you're being spoon fed daily here.

MadCow.

the inheritor of star trek

[goombah99]

In case no one noticed, is the topic post simply forgetting Star Trek. It to "ran past" the issues but it did present them. It should not be neccessary to recite examples but it seems like it is required.

Hmmm a man who's half black feels he has the moral right to enslave a man who is half white.

An integrated crew, and even a miscegenating kiss?

A prime directive that , to rephrase it a lot, basically said other cultural values are equal valid as your own technologically advance society, hung out before the audience every week.

The futility of doomesday logic?

Even the trouble with tribbles had a message that Russians and Americans still have common desires and interests.

On the otherhand this was what early science fiction was about. Long before Andy Warhol and crew got the idea of decontextualization as the means to seeing things as they are, science fiction was mainly about seeing what happens when you transplant a cultural norm into a different society, usually by means of a technological story telling device.

it was not all techno whiz larry niven (who later on also started contemplative sci fi with the Mote in gods eye) or space opera flash gordon.

think about flowers for algernon, or the canticle for lebowitz, the lathe of heaven, farenheight 451.... Or for you young kids, Ghost in the shell.

Star trek was designed to grab the flash gordon audience and show them a short 1 hour play about moral issues under heavy syrup.

Galactica is in this tradition, not in the tradition of "Buck rogers" or star wars.

Er, really?

[Knara]

I could never get into this series, and (as evidenced by many a post here) even people who used to be into it eventually fell away due to the Lost effect (the realization that the writers didn't have a pre-planned plot arc). To me, it always felt like "what if the FX channel did a 'Babylon 5'-esque series while re-using a 70's franchise?"

I don't think this is as influential a series (or event) as TFA (or the poster) claims it to be.

I think I know what the problem is....

[wpiman]

Poor product placements. No doubt the reason this show is being canceled.

You've got to be kidding...

[cmdahler]

when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again.

This is just about the most ridiculous thing I've seen on Slashdot in a very long time. If one were to poll the public on this subject, I'm quite sure a substantial number of people wouldn't have ever heard of the SciFi channel to begin with, let alone have a clue that there's some obscure show called BSG on there or be able to remotely describe what the show is about. Nor would they give a flying rat's ass. The Sopranos, now that's a show that had a measurable impact on TV. Regardless of the quality of the show, BSG is going to fade right back into the obscurity from whence it came, with only mom's-basement-dwelling geeks remembering the first thing about it.

really?

[gandhi_2]

who says sci-fi is too preachy?

Oh, and Muslim isn't a race, fucktard.

Re:Some easy answers to those questions.

[Jherico]

My objective is not to die for my country/planet but to make the other bastard die for his.

Sure, if you're a soldier fighting in a standard 'symmetric' war. On the other hand, the kill ratio in Iraq for coalition forces is 100:1 (1 coalition soldier dead for every 100 enemy combatants). Numbers like that make suicide bombing start to look pretty appealing.

Galactica stopped being entertaining months ago

[roc97007]

Episode 4.11 was more depressing than, I dunno, being at work. Seriously, this is entertainment?

Re:There was a season 3?

[Captain Splendid]

I love you idiots whining about how it got too soapy as it went along. It was always like that, you just didn't notice at first.

Oh, and comparing it to General Hospital is low, man. BSG is far far better than that. Think Dallas.

a very hard programme to love

[petes_PoV]

When the new version started I watched BSG. However, I quickly found it lacking in pace and couldn't form any connection with the characters. As a consequence I stopped watching. It's hard to consider the moral questions posed by a programme when it's too dull to watch.

I watched the last ep. of the previous part and though for all the world it was "planet of the apes" again. I still couldn't form an emotional bond to any of the characters.

As a sucker for punishment, I watched the restart episode (last night inthe UK) and still felt it spent far too long on close-up shots of people looking confused - especially the guy with the eyepatch.

So far as moral questiosn go, all I can say is GO CYLONS They're far more interesting that the human (if that's what they turn out to be) characters int he show.

Suicide bombing is futile

[sjbe]

On the other hand, the kill ratio in Iraq for coalition forces is 100:1 (1 coalition soldier dead for every 100 enemy combatants). Numbers like that make suicide bombing start to look pretty appealing.

No, that just means the bomber has lost the conflict but is to stupid to admit the fact. If suicide bombers had any tactical or strategic purpose to what they were doing, then perhaps you might have a point but they almost never do. They simply walk into a random crowd and kill a bunch of random people and accomplish nothing.

It doesn't weaken the stronger military by any meaningful amount, it just pisses them off. Even when public opinion is against a war suicide bombings aren't going to cause our military to quit and go home. At most it financially stresses the stronger party but it's hardly going to bankrupt the economy. We want out of Iraq but it isn't because of the suicide bombers - it's because it is a stupid, wasteful and unnecessary conflict which we should not have started in the first place.

The Japanese started using kamikaze tactics in WWII when the leadership already knew or should have known that the war was a lost cause. It was a futile and cowardly act by their leaders which in the end changed nothing. Similar actions in Iraq and other places will have similarly futile outcomes.

Re:Suicide bombing is futile

[Jherico]

No, that just means the bomber has lost the conflict but is to stupid to admit the fact.

Asymmetric warfare isn't designed to 'win' in the conventional sense. Its designed to wear down the will of an invading force.

It doesn't weaken the stronger military by any meaningful amount, it just pisses them off.

Not in terms of absolute numbers or weapons, but certainly in morale. And again, the point of such an attack is not the effect it will have on the military (which is already admitted to be superior by the very term 'asymmetric warfare') but the effect it will have on the morale of the invaders and their homeland as a whole.

The Japanese started using kamikaze tactics in WWII when the leadership already knew or should have known that the war was a lost cause.

The allies never invaded the Japanese islands, did they? Instead they chose to use the Atomic bomb. Its conceivable that the demonstrated willingness of the Japanese to die in defense of their country discouraged the use of a full scale invasion, such as the one in Europe.
Maybe you're right, and the only people who might question whether suicide attacks are genuinely ineffective are the people like myself who are already questioning the point of being an invading force in the first place. But then again, maybe even the most pro-war mother and father might stop for a second and wonder if their child really had to die, and whether he really had to be an occupying force in the first place.
You can argue the effectiveness of suicide bombing all you want, and you can tell a conquered people that it will do no good till you're blue in the face, but even if you're right, that's not going to stop them. People who are cornered or conquered have two choices: assimilate or fight. Some will choose to fight and of those some will believe that the only effective way to fight a vastly superior force is to resort to suicide tactics. The only way to prevent this is to go all the way back and do your best to prevent the need for an invasion in the first place. Say for instance, by not lying about the presence of WMD's in a country that doesn't have them, and not conflating the government of that country with a completely unrelated (ethnically, politically, and geographically) group that is responsible for an actual attack on your country.

Re:Some easy answers to those questions.

[DaveV1.0]

Yes, let's kill ourselves faster! That is the way to win a war, kill our side off faster. /sarcasm

Suicide bombing is not an effective tactic for anything except terrorism and terrorism doesn't effect enemy soldiers. The suicide bombings in Iraq don't target the U.S. military. It targets the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army, and the Iraqi people.

Roadside bombs are a much more effective tactic. Attacking supply lines, destroying communications, general harassing attacks, snipers, guerrilla warfare, etc. work against invaders and occupiers. Suicide attacks don't.

Just ask the Vietnamese. They succeeded in stymieing one of the largest and well-equipped military forces on the planet. They rarely used suicide bombers because the tactic was counter-productive.

Ethics in Total War

[sjbe]

They grew a big enough backbone to stand up to you, despite the fact that you're war criminals who drop nukes on cities.

This has to be a troll but I'll bite anyway.

Comparing ethics from a time of total war is absurd beyond measure. Shall we get into the atrocities committed by all sides? There's plenty to go around. A nuke in a time of war is no more unethical than any other kind of massive scale bombing. FAR more people were killed with conventional bombing on both sides during WWII than by nukes and yet the nukes are somehow special? The nuke just has a bigger bang for the payload.

War is horrible but once there is a war the MOST unethical thing anyone can do is to prolong the war. It should be ended as quickly as possible and this is usually accomplished by using the most overwhelming force possible. Dropping two atomic weapons on Japan brought the war to an abrupt end and probably saved countless lives. Yes it was a horrible thing to do but there were NO options that were not horrible to consider. None.

Hyperbole is right

[Obfuscant]

Television will never be the same? Oh, please.

The last episode of BG will come and go and TV will still be the same. The "moral dilemmas" that are easy to find parallels in real life politics are easy to find because you want to find them.

When Dan Quayle spoke about the negative impacts on society when Murphy Brown deliberately became a single parent, everyone was falling all over themselves claiming "it's just a TV show" and claiming that Quayle was an idiot for even suggesting that TV might have some relevance to real life. When they find deep, meaningful parallels to real life, "TV will never be the same". Please, pick one and stick with it.

Re:Battlestar analogies

[iluvcapra]

I don't necessarily dispute you here, but what can be done when you are faced with such a lesson, other than learn it?

I would probably argue that in the case of WW2, the "lesson" the Germans learned wasn't that "Americas guns are better than yours, therefore suck it for eternity," which is the "lesson" the Germans were trying to teach France, the Austrians, Serbia, the Israelis, Palestine etc. (I guess there's a lot of room to argue about the last one, but I find the intents of both parties completely out of joint with their actions so its hard to debate it reasonably.) The lesson the Germans learned in both world wars was "We the world won't tolerate your hegemony and will fight to stop it," which is something most Germans already knew in their moral hearts but the principle required demonstration.

Either way, turning "killing for political purposes" into "teach a lesson" is pretty Orwellian and I'd like to avoid the whole construction, since it's a literary trope masquerading as an ethical principle.

Science Fiction versus Science Video

[fm6]

Now you've verged into one of my pet beliefs: that movie and TV SF (let's call it "science video") can never be "real" SF in the sense that (for example) Heinlein is SF. The problem with SV, as with all movies and TV, is that it aims at a mass audience in a compressed format. That means thoughtful exposition and intellectual complication, which is how the genre engages most of its readers, are off limits. Indeed, many people who work in the media don't even have the background to do it properly.

One reason I became a rabid trekkie early on was that TOS went further than any previous SV in trying to be real SF. One of their best inventions was Spock, who's a genuine alien, not just because he doesn't look human, but because he doesn't think human.

And yet even this key character is not carefully thought through. In an early episode, we're told that this guy's physiology is so alien that McCoy's instruments go wild on him. Later in that same episode, we get a melodramatic scene relating to his relationship with his human mother! Apparently nobody had the background to appreciate the inconsistency between these two facts. Or probably somebody did (TOS had some good scientific advisers) and the producers said, "Whatever, we need that bit of drama near the end, we're not looking for an audience that will know the difference."

Another example: Star Trek has always followed the convention that space fleet officers have naval ranks. But they've always carefully avoided the dual use of the word "captain" that's standard in real world navies. (In English-speaking countries, "captain" refers both to a rank equivalent to an army Colonel and a commander of a vessel, regardless of rank. In one of my favorite naval historical novels, The Sand Pebbles, the Captain of the U.S.S. San Pablo is a Lieutenant J.G.) A small complexity, but apparently deemed beyond the capacity of TV audiences.

Though I've always thought that this complexity was stomped on after the fact. Notice that in TOS, Kirk wears wrist insignia that anybody who knows naval ranks would recognize as a futuristic version of the "one and a half rings" of a Lt. Commander. That's about the right rank to command a ship with 400 people. But officially that's insignia of a Captain and all the other officers (regardless of rank) wear a single ring. Right.

And of course, we don't even want to talk about sound in a vacuum....

BSG is not science fiction

[mlwmohawk]

It is a space opra.

2001 was science fiction.

Arthur C. Clarke, H.G. Wells, and even a little Douglas Adams were science fiction writers. They wrote about how society changes around technology and envision life in the context of new technology.

BSG has nothing to do with science fiction. They don't contemplate the benefits or dangers of science. They use it as nothing more than a backdrop. The closest BSG comes to science fiction is in the first episode where Adama critiques and disdains technology. (Ignoring, of course, he's on a space ship.)

Re:Battlestar analogies

[iluvcapra]

And, yet, oddly those whom we "taught a lesson" in WWII at the barrel of a gun have taken it to heart and are now great international citizens.

Only to add to my reply to the other poster, I would just offer that the "lesson" the Germans and Japanese took to heart after World War II had a lot more to do with the Marshall Plan than it did with Fat Man, and that the US's aggressive investiment in building up its former enemies against Communism in the 1940s and 50s was the prime mover in bringing these nations back into the fold of peace-loving nation states. If we had taken over Germany and run our sector like the Russians ran their sector, no "lesson" in the sense you mean would have been learned, even though the Russians were using their guns to teach a "lesson" just as effectively, if not more, than we were.

Violence and military supremacy may have been a necessary aspect of the World War 2 conflict, but it wasn't the essential aspect of the peace, and I find it diffifcult to accept that it's advisable given the myriad other conflicts that we've seen over the past century, their players, forces and outcomes. Germany still lost World War I, it's cultural superiority notwithstanding, and though Israel (or the UK or France) indisputably has a stronger civil society and healthier political culture than that-which-might-be Palestine (or Afghanistan, or Algeria), these "cultural superiors" found themselves in decades-long conflicts that they usually fought to stalemate, or just plain lost.

In any case the analogy to WW2 is defective, because our actions were clearly not imperial, for the same reasons I stated above.

Re:Battlestar analogies

[Sleepy]

>If my country were invaded and occupied by a foreign power, I would ensure that I obey the cease-fires and give peace a chance, and not hide like a coward amongst my own women and children as I target the enemy's women and children.

All guerilla wars are spun this way. The danger of good vs. evil propoganda is that someday you might WANT peace, and when you try for it one of your fellow comrades will put a bullet in your head. That's already happened to the last Israeli president who wanted peace.

Israel survives as a "pure" culture by ethnically herding native born non-Jews into refugee camps. Chasing people into camps and then not allowing them to leave counts as herding. A constant state of war provides justification.

The simple truth is peace would destroy Israel, demographically speaking. The "right of return" would mean a majority Palestinian state of Israel.

Houses that were occupied by the same families for hundreds of years get taken and turned over to colonial settlers born in far away places like Moscow.

The thing is, apartheid ended gracefully in South Africa because both sides didn't brainwash themselves into a corner, and produced sane leaders who negotiated an end to minority rule. I don't see that happening here.

blood -vs- tits

[zbrewski]

Never following the BSG before, couple of days ago I taped the whole day of last season's episodes, and was relatively amused by it until the expected, but always disappointing happened:
1. Scene A: Guy got shot in the knee, blood all over, open wound and fractured bones close up, as realistic as it can get, well done, you did the good job, I feel little sick.
2. Scene B: Cute Indian actress, love scene with ex-president-turned-saint, about to undress, I feel better already, okay, she is undressing, removing last garment possible... and silly me, seasoned to realism, open fractures, blood and guts... expecting to see a tiny little bit of otherwise shapely acress' body... ah silly me... no realism here.. all we will see is standard issue bra and nothing more, because:
2.1. Blood, open fractures and guts, is good for you
2.2. Women breasts, is bad for you

And this happens over and over and everybody just whistles and pretends all is good and does not care and instead of having a realistic realistic tv, we have half realistic tv, and for other half we must all hide and sneak into wast expanses of silly and often extreme fields of what is referred to as porn...

Re:Battlestar analogies

[_Sprocket_]

What right have you lost? What can't you do now that you were happily doing before Bush took office?

It's not about what I can or can not do. I'm doing everything I did now after Bush that I did before Bush. But then, that's how these things work. You're all fine and happy until you fall afoul of someone. And that's when you become really interested in the checks and balances that keep Governmental authority from being abused.

Bush's actions have chipped away at those checks and balances. And while that doesn't mean much to most people, I can only hope that it will never HAVE to mean anything to you.

And don't get me wrong. If I am a foreign operative then by all means, tap my communications and catch me out. Use my communications to uncover my cohorts. Play the spy game and win. But be sure that you've done the due dilligance to ensure that I am, in fact, said foreign operative before doing so. And prove that work in front of a judge.

TV

[slapout]

"and when the final episode airs, television will never be the same again"

Yeap. It'll be all digital.

The US military disagreed with your opinion

[Mark_in_Brazil]

I always love to see people with an axe to grind against the United States so eager to so utterly trivialize the Japanese. They are not a people to be trifled with, especially in war. All of this historical revisionist nonsense about how they were all ready to give in is so disrespectful to them individually and as a separate and independent culture and nation.

The Germans didn't give in so easily. They were fighting street to street all the way to Berlin even when all that was left were old men and boys. Why should we expect any less of the Japanese?

You're like some fundie that selectively chooses what part of scripture they will acknowledge.

Funny you should say that about the selective quotation of scripture. Your "analysis" ignores the United States Army Air Forces' own Strategic Bombing Survey on the atomic attacks, which produced a report that stated, among other things, the following (boldface emphasis mine):

Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion (of Japan) had been planned or contemplated.

Further, it is clear that leaders in the US had signs of this before the Strategic Bombing Survey was completed. Japanese codes had been cracked, and messages were being intercepted. The Allies knew that the Japanese ambassador in Moscow had been ordered to work on peace negotiations with the Allies. Japanese leaders had been talking about surrendering a year before that, and the Emperor himself had started suggesting in June of 1945 that alternatives to fighting to the end should be considered.
Interesting fact: the Russians had agreed to declare war on Japan 90 days after the end of the European war. The actual date of the end of the European war meant that the Russians were due to declare war on Japan on the 8th of August of 1945.

Re:Loss of Habeas?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

I think you have been getting some bad information.

There is no such provision in the Geneva Convention.

Here, in fact, is what it says about the treatment of persons not in uniform (emphasis added):

"Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.

In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity and, in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be. "

So no, we aren't permitted to just shoot people who aren't in uniform.