For as long as I can remember, I have loved apocalyptic stories about the ends of civilizations, and conversely, also stories about the spread of our species throughout the galaxy. The Stand is one of my favorite examples of the former, as are Earth Abides and Alas, Babylon, and one of the better examples of the latter is Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars series. On the surface these themes appear to be complete opposites, but they’re not, really; both are survival stories. It’s just the level of prosperity and scrappiness that’s different from one to the next.

There aren’t enough current stories like these to whet my appetite, so I find elements of them wherever I can. When Serenity was released last year, I was captivated by the opening narration about humanity’s expansion into space, and wrote about how very much I wanted Joss Whedon to abandon his primary plot and spend hours documenting, in great detail, the timeline of that expansion. I’m fascinated by What Comes Next — that is, where our future lies in the hundreds of years that will pass after I’m gone. A small part of me hopes and hopes that somehow my generation will be the first to defy typical life expectancies. There is so much I want to see that can’t possibly happen before my time is up.

I vaguely remember watching the original “Battlestar Galactica” when I was a kid, but my memories of it are muddled with memories of watching “Buck Rogers”. Erin Gray, Dirk Benedict — they were costars in my mind; Twikki and Muffit (or was it Muffitt?) were interchangeable to me. That’s how clearly I remember the Galactica. So when I heard about the reinvented “Battlestar” being shown on the SciFi Channel, I dismissed it out of hand.

I Netflix an awful lot of television shows to watch while I work. I hate commercials, so only watch TV on DVD. After nearly two years of working from home, I started to run out of go-to television — I’d exhausted “The X-Files” from start to finish, along with “Firefly,” “Cheers”, “The West Wing”, “M*A*S*H”, “Sports Night”, “Six Feet Under”, “The Sopranos”, “Frasier”, “The Wire”… you get the idea. So I started taking chances on shows I’d never seen before, and “Battlestar” was the first one on the list.

I started with the miniseries, and figured if it sucked, it would be no big loss. I’d remove the first season from my queue and move on to whatever was next. Except it didn’t suck. It was hands down the best thing I’d watched in a couple of months, and without a doubt the best science fiction I’d ever seen on TV.

But what grabbed me wasn’t the Cylon invasion and the destruction of humanity’s twelve home worlds, and it wasn’t the sexy blonde in the red dress, and it wasn’t the documentary-style camera work. The end of the miniseries delivers on both of the themes I mentioned earlier, and to great effect.

Struggle is really the operative word in this show, and every episode reflects the larger struggle for survival while pushing smaller, intensely urgent conflicts to the foreground. The show’s debut episode, in which the surviving fleet has to execute faster-than-light jumps through space every thirty-three minutes (which is how long it takes for the Cylons to locate the fleet each time it jumps), is probably the best example of this. It’s that grand struggle, however, that keeps me watching — will humanity survive this fight? Will they ever be able to leave this fugitive existence behind and forge a new one somewhere else? Will their generation be the last?

A few random bits about the show:

• The reimagined Cylons are beautiful. Menacing, imposing, distant. Very cool.
• The aforementioned documentary-style camera work, which is established at the very beginning of the show, when an explosion sends a piece of debris at the camera and the camera is actually sent spinning by the collision.
• The producers refer to the 1979 Galactica ship design as a sort of ‘alligator on skis’.
• The ever-present tension created by life on a ship for an indeterminate amount of time. The producers specifically referred to Alien as the pattern they wanted to follow here. They’ve done well, though none of the scenes really measure up to the early crew scenes of Ridley Scott’s film.
• The first season’s opening credits were wonderful, broken into two parts: the first half was sad, almost mournful, and outlined briefly the Cylon attack and humanity’s retreat; the second half jettisoned the funereal music in favor of beating drums and fast action sequences, a reminder that humanity might be on the run, but they aren’t dead yet. The second season’s credits changed things up a little, and are less effective.
• One of my only complaints about the show is also about the credits — the second half of the sequence often splices scenes from the current episode into the credits, sometimes giving away key plot points and spoiling what you’re about to watch.

I’ve only seen what’s been released on DVD — the first season, and the first half of the second. (The studio rushed the first ten episodes of season two onto DVD to meet Christmas demand, selling it at full price without making it clear that the set contained only half of the season. The final half of the season hasn’t yet been released, but will likely sell at full price as well. This is a fucking joke.) But profit margins and such bullshit aside, I’m chomping at the bit to see what happens next. I’m a big fan of cliffhangers, but only if I can satisfy my curiosity immediately. Damn this show for being so good.

Monday, May 22, 2006   

1. Keli wrote:
   February 26th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

   April 4th…I’ve been waiting for this to come for almost a whole year! Why make us wait so long?

   I’m really glad you like this show, because I respect your opinions. And if you didn’t like it, I’d have had to boycott your site! haha!

the blog and design portfolio of Jason Gurley. (Learn more.) This site has been around since 1998; me, since 1978. In 2005 I drove 3,000 miles to see a movie. 2009 is pretty aimless so far, but I'm sure I'll get around to something sooner or later.

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My DVD collection

01. dreaming of falling
02. marvelous descent
03. a conversation
04. the colors
05. huffnagle island
06. a hundred million
07. sixty-six stories
08. anyone earthbound
09. a girl named eleanor
10. a route obscure and lonely
11. a certain stillness
12. this is jack
13. wide flat lands
14. going home
15. girl unscrewed
16. slow rehabilitation
17. twenty-three stories
18. a far-off point
19. fifteen years quiet
20. a one-beer fella
21. luminescence
22. one-sided conversation
23. hearts big and stupid
24. nineteen seventy-eight
25. first light
26. a hundred years
27. too long to stop now
28. plainswept
29. a widower in training
30. spies and assets
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32. leaping over couches
33. cricket song
34. eleanor's first kiss
35. like so much ballast
36. too much
37. the longest wait
38. the second ice storm
39. rocket summer
40. waiting
41. wax wings
42. breakup
43. tough beans
43. the heavy gray sea