Battlestar Galactica: The Rise of Grimdark and the Fall of Geekdom.
"And you ask 'why?'"
Hello again.
Go on, grab a seat.
I missed the “reimagining" of Battlestar Galactica when it first aired. I don't remember why I didn't watch it, only that I didn't. So when it hit Amazon Prime, I thought, why not? I like futuristic spacey type things and BSG seemed to make an impact during it's initial run. So, again, why not?
The Rundown
There will be spoilers.
Originally airing between 2004 and 2009 after a pilot mini-series in 2003. Battlestar Galactica is a remake/reimagining of a show of the same name from the 1970's. This new version followed the same basic premise of humans being at war with a “race" of robots known as the Cylon, though their origins changed from being the creation of a dead race to them being the creation of and former “slaves" to humans.
This new version introduced some interesting concepts early on, most notably the addition of robots that looked completely human, causing all manner of hijinks because no one knew who could be an enemy, someone could be a Cylon and not even know it.
The show explored themes of religious zeal, desperation, and fear. Or at least, it tried to.
I did not like this show. There's absolutely no way around it. In fact, I almost hated it. Why did I keep watching it?
I promised myself and whoever chose to follow me that I wouldn't hate-watch anything for clicks, I'm not doing that here. The entire rage-bait model of doing things online isn't sustainable and is as unsatisfying as the ending to a grimdark story (more on that later, see this article for why I use the term “grimdark” here).
I was raised on 90's television, where shows didn't really hit their stride until their second or third season, BSG only has four. For the recognition it received, surely, there must be some kind of redeeming quality to it, right?
I went into this with an open mind and expecting something with appeal to any fan of Sci-Fi, niche though it may be. What I got was melodrama, inconsistent character portrayal, and unlikeable characters. What made this so appealing?
I'm seriously asking. It's been over two months since I finished the show, letting it marinate to try to see what resonated in the hearts and minds of geekdom. I got nothing.
I'll fully admit, it started off stronger than it finished, and the show had enough of a following to warrant a spin-off prequel series. I cannot for the life of me understand why.
Let me explain where I'm coming from here. Firstly, I greatly dislike melodrama. The overacting required for it and the way it's usually unwarranted, kicks me right out of any immersion into the fictional universe I'm trying to enjoy. BSG has it in spades. It's grating and feels unnatural, forced in for shock value like excessive colorful language or a garish sex scene.
I can navigate flaws in a story like avoiding potholes on a NYC street, so long as there's something to be found that is enjoyable, like good characters for example. But there's none to be found in this show.
The Characters
Played by Edward James Olmos, a man with plenty of acting chops and credibility, Commander William Adama is initially presented as a weary, if not battle-hardened old soldier. Once the metaphorical poop hits the propeller, he is looked to as a leader, a rock of stability for a lost and scared people. Portraying him as a paternal, stoic, figure to keep the survivors of humanity alive was apparently too much to ask as the show went on. Emotional outbursts that felt like an afterthought from the writer’s room and an inability to handle personal trauma became the norm for a seasoned military man that should be well past the psychological capacity of a teenager. By the time the show was over, they had gone so far as to deconstruct his character into someone unable to deal with his problems without drowning them in liquor to the point of sitting in his own vomit in a back alley. Gods forbid we have a strong male character to guide humanity to a new home.
And then there's Kara “Starbuck" Thrace played by Katee Sackhoff. Our gender-swapped ace pilot and girl-boss extraordinaire. This might be one of the first appearances of the much-maligned character trope. If you're unfamiliar with this term, I've discussed it before, and there are various others on this platform that have done the same. Had I watched BSG before writing that particular article, the character of Thrace would have absolutely been included as an example. She is reprehensible. More so than Captain Marvel attacking a man and stealing his motorcycle because he told her to smile. More than Michael Burnham starting a damn war because she thought she knew better. Thrace might be the archetype upon which all feminist girl-boss icons in geekdom are built. Insubordinate, disloyal, emotionally unstable, unwilling to accept responsibility, and somehow able to just get away with everything. She even goes so far as to avoid death itself, resurrected from the ashes with no explanation.
Lee “Apollo" Adama, the eldest son of Galactica's CO as played by Jaime Bamber. When he first shows up, you think he's Maverick from Top Gun, as the story progresses, he's anything but. He kowtows to Starbuck as though she outranked him and has daddy issues that he carries around with him despite being a fully grown man. Later in the show, he is disloyal to his newlywed wife, engaging in an affair with Starbuck, herself a married woman. After assisting in the legal defense of one of the most despicable people alive, he leaves his post as Captain of the Air Guard (yes, they operate in space, not the air, yet another pothole to navigate) to pursue a career in the justice system and then politics because daddy didn't let him pursue his dreams when he was younger.
Doctor Gaius Baltar. Look at that face. Couldn’t you just… step on it? Though James Callis played the part well, this man is despicable and essentially responsible for the downfall of humanity. Manipulated into allowing access to secure information, he then spends literal years covering his tracks to avoid the truth coming out. Never at any point does he express guilt for reducing humanity from billions to a few thousand, only the fear of being caught. All the while, he is plagued by the visage of the very being that played him like a fiddle.
Tricia Helfer played the humanoid Cylon that eventually became known as “Caprica Six". I think what happened here was the same situation as Jeri Ryan's addition to Star Trek: Voyager; they hired a woman based on her physical attributes, found out she could act, and didn't know what to do with her. However, unlike Ms. Ryan, the writers eventually course-corrected and gave this woman something to work with, playing multiple versions of herself. Nonetheless, she started out as the show’s overt attempt at sex appeal and little else. Primarily a femme fatale and the key to Humanity's destruction, she has an unbreakable link to Baltar that goes unexplained.
Sharon Valerii, as played by Grace Park, another Cylon. Initially a sleeper agent, there ends up being two of her involved with the Galactica crew. As “Boomer”, she has no idea that she is a Cylon until she is activated and then largely disappears until season four. As “Athena”, she betrays her people to join the human survivors. Despite the narrative potential of having two different versions of oneself on opposing sides in a conflict, she seems to exist solely as a plot device. First as an assassin, then as a walking map, and finally as the mother to the first Cylon-Human hybrid child, an event that also goes unexplained.
The last of the major players, Mary McDonnell's Laura Roslin, President of the Twelve Colonies (despite there not being any colonies left to preside over). She goes from being a reluctant leader to cold-blooded politician as the series progresses, all while being a pseudo-messianic guide from an ancient prophecy, destined to lead the survivors of humanity to the mysterious thirteenth colony: Earth. Like Valerii, Roslin feels like a background character despite her leadership and guidance being a central part of the show, at least until the revelation of Earth being a nuclear wasteland.
There were a host of supporting cast members and recurring characters, each of them with their own set of flaws, oddities, and general lack of maturity.
At one point, the only person that made any sense in his assessment of the situation the survivors were in, was a character on a prisoner transport that was a convicted terrorist. A man who was initially shown to be not only intelligent but surprisingly reasonable. Until he wasn't, because the writers needed to ham-fist a coup d'état.
Less than 50k humans left, and they're holding press conferences. They fight amongst each other as though old biases matter in the face of extinction. They make it a point of the show early on about how few people survived the assault by their former robotic slaves, about how important it was to keep as many of the survivors alive as possible, only to have summary executions later on in the show, immediately after losing a fifth of their population! (approximately 10,000 souls in case you didn't want to do math).
The Roundup
Battlestar Galactica portrayed humanity in the worst possible light. It was a collection of shocking moments cobbled together in a story that took bizarre turns without explanation. Culminating in a final season that focused less on the survival of humanity and more on romantic relationships. The finale was haphazard, to say the least. Interlaced with flashbacks from before the genocidal attack on humanity that added nothing to the plot, it ended in a moment of relief and solace for the survivors of humanity as they found a new world to settle on and give up technology altogether.
You would think the happy (loosely applied here) ending would feel like a breath of fresh air after 4-5 years of running, fighting, and dying. Instead, it feels out of place. But why?
We crave happy endings whether we realize it or not. To write a finale where everyone dies at the hands of the Cylon would have been far more appropriate to the world and story we were given, but it wouldn't have been enjoyable. Because in a grimdark milieu, where every character possesses the worst traits, where the entire universe is filled with the most horrific possibilities, to be happy is antithetical to the experience. Thus, grimdark is a setup for failure, there can be no satisfying ending to it.
Still, there were some redeeming factors at play, a highlight being the recurring character of Brother Cavil, as expertly portrayed by Dean Stockwell. As I mentioned earlier in this article, the show started out stronger than it finished. But there were too many plotholes left unresolved and too many missteps for this show to be considered “good". And while there is certainly something to be said for presenting multifaceted characters with flaws, when your characters are riddled with them, they become no different than a Mary Sue; on the other end of the spectrum, to be sure, but just as flimsy and unlikeable.
Rage-bait YouTubers “reeee” about from their gaming chairs and decry much of modern-day entertainment to be “woke". If one accepts the guidelines for said label to be a disjointed story, male characters that are little more than feckless idiots (looking at you Apollo, what a putz that guy was), the women to be blameless, better, and more important than the men for no reason other than, because, then Battlestar Galactica fits the bill to a T.
In fact, this is the oldest show that I can point to that is structured similarly to the way modern ones are today. While I'm sure there are other older shows that fit the woke framework, BSG appears to be the one where it all came together in a perfect little crap-filled package. It laid the groundwork for other grimdark shows like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and The Boys while simultaneously preparing us for the storm of lackluster entertainment with overbearing female leads and underwhelming male co-stars like Captain Marvel, Star Trek: Discovery, and the Star Wars sequel trilogy. It was as detrimental to geekdom as anime, but that's a tangent for another day…
Final Thoughts
The subtitle of this article says: “And you ask ‘why?’”. It's a quote from the show, said by Sharon Valerii (the second one) to Commander Adama after he encounters her and attempts to choke her. The last time he had seen her face it was when she (the first one) had attempted to kill him. It’s another failure on the writer’s part because it references one of two events previously in the show, neither of which Sharon 2.0 could have been aware of. It’s either a call back to the moment after Adama’s recovery where he stands over the dead body of Sharon 1.0, his would-be assassin, and asks her ‘why?’, or, as Sharon 2.0 explains later on, it's a reference to a speech given by him before the fall in which he discusses humanity in a post-war society. He says something off the cuff along the lines of “Humanity never asked itself why it deserved to survive.” When Sharon 2.0 refers to this statement, she postulates “maybe it didn’t.”
This entire exchange encapsulates the show: poor writing and the question of whether humanity in this universe should survive.
It shouldn’t.
Ouah this sounds bad, okay I consider myself warned now, not going to check it out.
There were parts I loved, but they were scarce. I reached the point where they were stuck on a planet for an entire season (fourth?). Three episodes in, and I bailed. There was too much unnecessary drama, a lack of great storytelling, and insufficient action to keep me interested.