I’ve really got to say that the last three episodes of “The Best Show on Televison”, Battlestar Galactica, have served as such a contrast to the previous season worth of episodes (from Pegasus through Taking A Break From All Your Worries, with the possible exception of Scar) that I realized how much I’ve really not been feeling the Battlestar vibe as I once had.
For me, the interesting thing about the show isn’t the Cylon threat. It’s the characters who have survived the near complete genocide of their race, the ordinary men and women crammed into these tin cans and running across the stars for their safe-haven while, all around them, supplies run low, ships break, and they’ve as much to fear from each other as they do a Cylon basestar. I love Battlestar Galactica because, while it is indeed a very in-your-face science-fiction show, at heart, it is a character study with a very basic question: “In an extreme situation, with everything to lose, how much value is placed on the social norms and legal values of a civilization nuked into oblivion and whose survivors are rapidly crumbling away?”
The last few episodes have focused entirely on life within the fleet.
Last night’s episode found Deckchief Tyrol leading a strike against unfair labour practices within the fleet, where survivors from respected worlds were sheltered from dangerous work; while those survivors from worlds known for their low-class were pressed into unsafe work, and where qualified individuals from these worlds were prevented from rising above the station assigned to them by the accident of the world of their birth. Adama, clearly, has all but abandoned his values: to end the strike, he orders Callie (Tyrol’s wife) placed up against a bulkhead and shot. For me, it was amazing to see Baltar’s revelation that he come from a colony known more for its manure than its culture: amazing also to hear his British replaced by one much coarser, and to gain the insight of a man who has spent his whole life reinventing himself.
Two weeks before that, it was Lt. Agathon’s unlucky role to bear witness to the mistreatment of colonists from Saggitaron sheltering Galactica. Particularly disliked among the colonies, a group of religious fundamentalists whose practices (particularly with the regard of refusing medical treatment, and a clear allegory to certain religious groups within the US today) threaten the well-being of every member of the fleet, are victimized by a murderous and sly medical practitioner. Agathon’s warnings go unheeded; he’s threatened by his commanders to zip his lips and keep to himself, his colleagues think he’s nuts for protecting “those people.” But Agathon, clearly, hasn’t lost those values instilled in him — perhaps he is young enough to still be idealistic — which makes his eventual victory in the matter such a triumph.
I guess the point that I’m trying to make here is that without its characters, and without this drama, the show would be nothing. I’m actually glad that the show only got renewed for a thirteen-episode fourth season: hopefully, the quality will improve over the last twenty-some episodes.