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I long ago had an idea for a Doctor Who short story concerning the ultimate evolutionary form of the Cybermen. Without giving any details, lest I jeopardise further the chances of this idea reaching, let alone leaving, the writing starting-block, I was struck by the similarities between that idea and the realisation of the Cylons in the new (well, to me) Battlestar Galactica.
My loyalty to Doctor Who was one factor that prevented me watching the original Battlestar Galactica when it first aired. Others were that it was on ITV and my family was a member of the BBC tendency; and that its priorities (from the trailers and the playground gossip) seemed to be wrong - dreary robotic villains, identikit heroes, and space battles which assumed that its target audience only wanted to watch guns and spaceships. Gadgetry was never enough for me; though I loved K9, had I been a few years older I would probably have been one of those Doctor Who fans campaigning against the inclusion of the metal dog in the series.
There's been a lot of television made in recent years which I've wanted to see but not caught; and in these days of downloads and DVDs, there's less urgency about viewing than there was. It's thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pellegrina and malaheed that I've finally watched the BSG miniseries.
Battlestar Galactica wears its antecedents heavily, but knows how to make use of them. The Galactica interior sets would have made a 1970s designer proud, but the fittings' retro-toolings, with their ubiquitous trimphones, are used to make a point about humanity's vulnerability in the face of creatures for whom technology is their natural environment, while at the same time outlining that technophobia is as exploitable for the purposes of SF television in the computerised 2000s as it was thirty or forty years ago.
The first hour is very, very good indeed. The first appearance of Number Six (or a copy) on board the armistice-monitoring space station challenges audience expectations and establishes the power and authority of the Cylons; her next manifestation, on Caprica, develops the theme that the Cylons have been using the armistice to turn humanity into a laboratory experiment. As Number Six tells Baltar, struggling to keep his head above water in his moral sewer, God is love, and the Cylons seek to establish that they are gods in the human sphere.
After about an hour and twenty minutes I find the story drags a little. Perhaps if the miniseries had been presented on the DVD with individual opening title sequences, and not edited into a continuous narrative, the structure would have appeared less jarring. The programme's presentation of the military is curious. Commissioned, perhaps, in the wake of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and made in the afterglow of the US-UK occupation of Iraq and the successful removal of Saddam Hussein from power, the series establishes the military as an undervalued and neglected force for good, whose old-fashioned skills have been supplanted by what proves to be unreliable technology. Edward James Olmos's portrayal of Commander Adama seems strongly reminiscent of Martin Sheen's President Bartlet at times, helped by their physical resemblance, and could be viewed as a conservative rejoinder. However, Battlestar Galactica provides its own corrective in the shape of Laura Roslin, who with quiet authority upholds humanitarian standards when Adama would establish a war machine. By the end of the miniseries a working balance between them has been accomplished.
The position of several occluded Cylons among the humans has the potential to be turn into a dramatic equivalent of an old cartoon depicting a Communist politburo on a balcony during a May Day parade 'You mean - we're all KGB?' The limit of twelve Cylon models is a way of preventing the entire cast from being ultimately revealed as sophisticatedly-programmed Cylons, I expect. I'd like to see more of the series - the first hour or so, and the last half-hour, were captivating television and I keep hearing great things of what follows.
My loyalty to Doctor Who was one factor that prevented me watching the original Battlestar Galactica when it first aired. Others were that it was on ITV and my family was a member of the BBC tendency; and that its priorities (from the trailers and the playground gossip) seemed to be wrong - dreary robotic villains, identikit heroes, and space battles which assumed that its target audience only wanted to watch guns and spaceships. Gadgetry was never enough for me; though I loved K9, had I been a few years older I would probably have been one of those Doctor Who fans campaigning against the inclusion of the metal dog in the series.
There's been a lot of television made in recent years which I've wanted to see but not caught; and in these days of downloads and DVDs, there's less urgency about viewing than there was. It's thanks to
pellegrina and malaheed that I've finally watched the BSG miniseries.Battlestar Galactica wears its antecedents heavily, but knows how to make use of them. The Galactica interior sets would have made a 1970s designer proud, but the fittings' retro-toolings, with their ubiquitous trimphones, are used to make a point about humanity's vulnerability in the face of creatures for whom technology is their natural environment, while at the same time outlining that technophobia is as exploitable for the purposes of SF television in the computerised 2000s as it was thirty or forty years ago.
The first hour is very, very good indeed. The first appearance of Number Six (or a copy) on board the armistice-monitoring space station challenges audience expectations and establishes the power and authority of the Cylons; her next manifestation, on Caprica, develops the theme that the Cylons have been using the armistice to turn humanity into a laboratory experiment. As Number Six tells Baltar, struggling to keep his head above water in his moral sewer, God is love, and the Cylons seek to establish that they are gods in the human sphere.
After about an hour and twenty minutes I find the story drags a little. Perhaps if the miniseries had been presented on the DVD with individual opening title sequences, and not edited into a continuous narrative, the structure would have appeared less jarring. The programme's presentation of the military is curious. Commissioned, perhaps, in the wake of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and made in the afterglow of the US-UK occupation of Iraq and the successful removal of Saddam Hussein from power, the series establishes the military as an undervalued and neglected force for good, whose old-fashioned skills have been supplanted by what proves to be unreliable technology. Edward James Olmos's portrayal of Commander Adama seems strongly reminiscent of Martin Sheen's President Bartlet at times, helped by their physical resemblance, and could be viewed as a conservative rejoinder. However, Battlestar Galactica provides its own corrective in the shape of Laura Roslin, who with quiet authority upholds humanitarian standards when Adama would establish a war machine. By the end of the miniseries a working balance between them has been accomplished.
The position of several occluded Cylons among the humans has the potential to be turn into a dramatic equivalent of an old cartoon depicting a Communist politburo on a balcony during a May Day parade 'You mean - we're all KGB?' The limit of twelve Cylon models is a way of preventing the entire cast from being ultimately revealed as sophisticatedly-programmed Cylons, I expect. I'd like to see more of the series - the first hour or so, and the last half-hour, were captivating television and I keep hearing great things of what follows.
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