The UN, an organization not known for it’s hipness or connection with popular culture, hosted a panel on human rights featuring the stars and creators of Battlestar Galactica (excellent coverage from io9, Entertainment Weekly and a good overview from Wired which links to the full video recording of the panel). That an organization concerned with real world human rights issues and abuses and how to overcome hundreds, if not thousands, of years of cultural conditioning, racism, and religious division would take this piece of fiction seriously is a surprise only to those who have never watched it.
You see, BSG will stand for a long time not only as a serious cultural achievement but it will eventually be recognized for the ground breaking way in which it reflected the time in which it was conceived and produced. What makes this show transcend the simple space opera that it could have been is the fact that it blatantly and skillfully mixes the social and political concerns of the day – religious conflict, the moral uncertainty of extreme interrogation techniques in a time of war, the good of the whole vs. the rights of the individual – with pure fictional drama.
The mythical ever-present “they” say that all good things must come to an end. True or not, Battlestar Galactica2.0 signs off for good tomorrow with its final two hours and I suspect that the master stroke of the show is that it will continue to reflect the reality of life by refusing to wrap all of that fictional drama up into nice neat packages.
Katee Sackhoff has already been reported as saying “I didn’t feel like Starbuck had closure.” That kind of leads me to believe that the “is Starbuck a cylon or not” mystery won’t completely be settled.
Too, based on the dramatic trajectory of the plot, it is unlikely that we’ll get closure on the whole Helo/Athena friction. While they may or may not rebond over their child, I doubt we’ll get to see them in an entirely happy marriage by the end of the series.
What of Daniel, the artist child of the final five, the one we’ve never actually seen because of older “brother” Cavil’s misdeeds? Will we learn of his place in the nature of the conflict between human and cylon? Or is he, as I suspect, part of the mystery that will be left clouded?
What happened on Earth? Who started the war there? How long do cylon “batteries” last? Do cylons even have batteries? How did the final five survive thousands of years? What’s their flesh made of that it doesn’t decay or age yet it appears indistinguishable to human flesh? If you had the chance to create a completely beautiful race of beings why would you choose to make someone who looks like Dean Stockwell? And where the hell are they getting toothbrushes and toilet paper if Starbuck is awarding as a prize the last tube of Tauron toothpaste in the galaxy?
All of this is just the fiction, and by no means my complete list of questions. Because the real world issues the show addresses are so complicated and so deadly in most of the world I doubt that the creators and writers of this show will have the hubris to attempt to wrap those up neatly and leave them for a stunned audience with a little bow stuck on top.
No, we’ll have to figure out that answers to a lot of these questions ourselves, assuming, of course, we can remember the lessons presented to us in this safe, fictional space.
On a slightly related note: SciFi has announced that the BSG finale will run 2hrs and 11mins so program your recording devices accordingly.
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