Old News is Awesome News

The season finale of Battlestar Galactica aired in March of 2009. Obviously not "Battlestar Galactica, the sci fi series from the 70's" but the reimagined Battlestar Galactica of 2003-2009, which is referred to in our household simply as BSG.

Still, this post is not past its expiration date, thanks to the magic of DVD, and really, I just can't take it any more.

If you people don't watch this shit soon, my brain is going to explode.

Here is my challenge: if you don't watch the entire series from beginning to end, and find it 50 times more satisfying and life-changing than the finale of LOST, I will come to your house, make you and 10 of your friends a 4 course dinner, and never mention it again.*

I don't talk about TV a lot so you must know I'm serious.

Tim and I started watching BSG because of a coworker of mine, who spent a great deal of time on the phone making sure that he wouldn't have any business obligations the night of the show, and saying things like, "OMGit'sgoingtobesofuckingamaziiiiiinngggg!!" Because he was an awesome co-worker, and having Netflix feels like having free movies all the time, I put the first disc of the series on our queue.

Let me just note here: Tim has always stated unequivocally that he thinks science fiction is beyond a waste of his time, like Glen Beck, and brushing his teeth.

When the disc arrived, he said what he also says about rom coms, and things he can't remember ordering: "Who put this crap on the queue?!?! You will be watching this by yourself."

So I watched the first episode--which is actually a three hour mini-series--alone. And fell asleep. It was an epic nap. Lots of explosions and yelling. I don't know how I missed this key fact, but I had no idea it was going to be three hours long, so I didn't program my attention span accordingly. My own fault.

This, however, necessitated watching the whole thing again... in Tim's presence. And at that point, Tim admitted that yes, science fiction was pretty damn awesome and had maybe contributed something to the universe, and we should immediately add the rest of the series to the queue.

Battlestar Galactica is, like LOST, a character-driven series about a group of survivors. Only instead of being on an island, they are on a fleet of star ships, the only few ships to have survived a nuclear attack on their planetary system by a group of machines called Cylons. Cylons were created by humans as workers and soldiers but they rebelled. Now they've returned, and they've evolved. There are some Cylon models who appear human, and they want nothing short of the destruction of the human race.

So. Ok.

This show, being on the Sci Fi Network, could very easily turn into a hot steaming ball of cheese. (Dinoshark? Anyone?)



However, this show is a mass of taut nerves and short fuses. It's a visually stunning show (yay production value!!), but what's more, it's about two issues hidden in a nifty sci fi wrapper: politics and love. Can you have love without politics? Probably not. How many explosions take place when you can't separate politics and love? God, that's the fun part.

From the very beginning of the series, you become invested in the success of the survivors in their search for a place to simply live. The terrorist threat against them comes not only from outside, but from within their dwindling ranks, and possibly from within themselves, as it becomes clear that any one of them could be a Cylon. If you are a machine with emotions, how deeply can you trust those emotions?

I'm disturbed by how much this show says about our culture. Aaaaand by how much the DVD boxed set costs. Because literally every day, I think, "I want to watch Battlestar Galactica."

Bonus, there's a character named "Hotdog."

So say we all.

*If the reason you were unimpressed by the finale of LOST is because you didn't watch the whole series, Dad, you are exempt from this challenge, but I still urge you to watch BSG, because it will make you think twice about robots, er, because you will enjoy it immensely.