Galactica
By Atrios on Battlestar Galactica:
There’s much to like about the show. The unwillingness of its creators to pass clear judgment on the actions of its characters is part of what’s makes it great. While “bad guys who are really good” (think NYPD Blue’s Sipowicz) are a staple of episodic TV, the new Galactica benefits from not having clear heroes and anti-heroes. Not a perfect show, but nonetheless fairly unique in its willingness to embrace moral ambiguity to allow us to contemplate moral complexity.
I think of BSG (the 2004-2005 version, not the 1979 version) as part of a group of recent television series that use a speculative premise to attack a series of real world themes, and that manage to do so better than any series that purports to happen in the real world. Other series in this group include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Lost, and perhaps the first five seasons of the X-Files.
The success of these shows is somewhat curious. I enjoy Star Trek, and I enjoy Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think that Captain James T. Kirk is, if only by bizarre accident, one of the finest fictional characters ever created. However, there is no way to argue that he’s “real” in any meaningful sense of the word. The same can be said of Jean Luc Picard. The Star Trek series, the original BSG, and various other science fiction efforts appeal because of the speculative universe, not because of the human interaction in that universe. The dialogue in most of those series is grimly awful, and the characters tend, with some exceptions, to be unmemorable.
Starting with Mulder and Scully in the X-Files, however, it seems that things changed. Mulder and Scully were a more believable and compelling pair than most duos I’ve seen in non-speculative cop or detective shows. The dialogue was snappy, the characterizations crisp. I could appreciate the two characters are genuine, fully realized human beings. Joss Whedon took up this mantle in Buffy, and established a television show about high school that dealt with all manner of real concerns through the medium of vampire and demon attacks. In spite of their speculative elements, X-Files and Buffy are among the very best TV series available about police detectives and high school students, respectively. Angel, Whedon’s follow-up to Buffy, did the same thing for the private detective show.
What these shows do, I think, is remove plausibility from the equation. Many TV series, even good ones, become increasingly implausible and unbelievable as years go by. Only so many of Sipowicz’ partners, lovers, and friends can die before you just don’t care anymore. Jack McCoy can only prosecute so many of the most politically sensitive cases in legal history before you just can’t swallow. The speculative setting of Buffy et al dismisses any need to cater to reality, and thus removes a big obstacle to the success of a series. Whereas it’s troubling that a miracle happens in the ER every night, I can accept constant demon attacks on Sunnydale without difficulty. With the need to conform to external reality gone, writers can concentrate on the development and interaction of characters.
Lost and BSG: 2005 are extremely strong examples of this genre. ALL of the characters on Lost are deeply flawed and, in some very important ways, pathetic. It’s becoming clear that this is not by accident; the flaws serve to explain why they’re stuck on the island. Television is not a genre that deals with deeply flawed and pathetic characters well, but Lost is built around telling their stories. Accordingly, I feel like I understand the motivations of these characters better than the characters on shows I’ve watched for five years. Battlestar Galactica takes a superficially similar approach by placing characters in an extreme situation. What I love about Galactica is its social depth; the characters all recognize that they exist in a contingent and increasingly fragile social universe. The world that they live in has not collapsed, but could come down at any time. Nonetheless, all have roles to play, from the civilian president to the military commander to the flight captain to the imprisoned political radical. All appreciate their positions, and also appreciate that the social universe has fundamentally changed. Most importantly, these tensions contribute to our understanding of the characters.
Anyway, it’s a great time to be a fan of speculative fiction on TV. I very much look forward to the conclusion of Lost this year and to the new season of BSG opening in July.