Last night saw not only the penultimate episode of Battlestar Galactica, but also something that was, arguably, even more exciting: At the packed Bagdad Theater, last night’s Battlestar was followed by a personal appearance by Stabruck herself, Katee Sackhoff.
Hit the jump for a spoilery rundown of the episode, a few details on the Sackhoff Q&A that took place afterward, and, as always, a place to weigh in with your own thoughts on “Daybreak, Part I.”
UPDATE: After the jump, video of Sackhoff’s Q&A.
First up: What was this dude doing in last night’s Battlestar?
Okay, well, not exactly. But all the same, the Eerie Ghost of Ronald Reagan made a weird sort of cameo last night: When RoboAnders was sitting in his bubble bath, babbling on about some sort of prophecy gibberish, he quoted in a line from John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s poem “High Flight“—something about “slipping the surly bonds of Earth.”
If that sounded familiar to you—it didn’t to me, but my buddy Mike immediately shouted something like, “What the fuck? Reagan?!”—it’s ’cause Ronald Reagan quoted it in his 1986 speech about the Challenger disaster. Granted, “High Flight” has been quoted a bunch of other places, too, but still—there’s something weird about a science-fiction show borrowing a line that’s also been famously quoted in conjunction to the Challenger explosion. I’ll leave it to smarter people to figure out what this means, if anything.
But okay, ONWARD. After “Daybreak, Part I,” I find myself genuinely bewildered as to how Battlestar is gonna wrap up in any sort of satisfactory way, especially considering there’s only two hours left. I would love to be proven wrong about this.
I really liked last night’s episode as it was playing out—but afterward, when I remembered that it was supposed to be the first act in a three-act finale, I found myself confused. Not counting the miniseries, Razor, or the webisodes, there have been about 70 episodes of Battlestar so far—and now that they’re down to their final three episodes, I think it’s fair to point out that, well, a lot more should be happening right now.
I know that’s been a constant refrain throughout this season—the general complaint seems to be that Battlestar has spent its final season meandering around and not really accomplishing a whole lot, and that generally, this season isn’t shaping up to be as grand or exciting as people were hoping it’d be. And along those lines, “Daybreak, Part I” felt like more of what we’ve already had plenty of: Set-up. One can make the argument that Ronald D. Moore, et al., are just moving the pieces into place for what will be an astounding finale, but at some fucking point, jesus, stop moving the goddamn pieces around and have them do something. In order to wrap this series up in a way that doesn’t feel either underwhelming and/or rushed, “Daybreak, Part II” is gonna have to be pretty fucking amazing.
Still, I can’t really put my finger directly on anything I didn’t like about this episode, and there were a few things I really, really liked:
THE FLASHBACKS. Seeing what life on Caprica was like for Roslin, Baltar, and Lee was pretty great—especially since, as Mercury Arts Editor Alison Hallett pointed out, it turns out Baltar’s dad was someone we’ve known for a long time.
Other than Baltar Sr. being a cantankerous old leprechaun, we also found out that Caprica Six is still amazing (she takes better care of Baltar’s dad than Baltar does!), that Lee likes to drunkenly chase birds around in Kara and Zack’s apartment (you get that pigeon, Lee!), and Roslin used to be happy, until her whole family was killed by a drunk driver, and then she was sad, and then she wandered around like a crazy person and took baths in public fountains. (Jesus, did all that really happen last night? This paragraph sounds like its nouns and adjectives were filled in, Mad Libs-style, by a 10-year-old.)
Oh, and Anders’ flashback was the weirdest but the best: Being interviewed by a reporter from Space ESPN in the Pyramid players’ locker room, Anders talked about being disinterested in the game as a whole, and more concerned with making “perfect” plays—of attaining perfection in movement and action. It seems simple and obvious in retrospect (HE’S A ROBOT!), but I found this admission to be really touching and insightful—it kind of reminded me of the best robot short stories of Asimov.
HERA BEING EXPERIMENTED ON BY CYLONS. I know Adama and everybody are gonna go rescue her or whatever—and if that lingering shot of a wrestling-with-her-conscience Boomer is any indication, she’ll likely betray her own kind to help the humans—but I still really like the idea of eeeevil Cylons slicing Hera open to see what makes her unique.
Wait. That came out a bit more mean-spirited than I meant it to. What I mean is: It’s still nice to have some eeeevil Cylons out there, and I like that while everybody else doesn’t seem to be aware that this series is wrapping up really, really soon, Cavil and his buddies are basically going full steam ahead in their plans. The Cylons seem to be aware that there’s no time to waste; I only wish the humans (and Battlestar‘s writers) were as motivated.
ADAMA: STILL A BADASS. “No one should feel obligated to join this mission in any way,” Adama barks out at what appeared to be every single person on Galactica. “This is likely to be a one-way trip.” This scene—in which Starbuck laid out a thin red line along the hangar bay, and Adama told everyone who wanted to help rescue Hera to get on one side (GOOD JOB, HEROES), and for everyone else to stay on the other (CRY ME A RIVER, PUSSIES)—came late in the episode, but more than any other scene this season, it seemed to finally kick things into gear for some sort of interesting conclusion. Granted, the rescue of Hera might not be as epic of a climax as Battlestar fans have been hoping for, but it’s certainly a lot more interesting than watching a lot of people stand around on a ship and gab back and forth. Plus, the fact that the Cylon “Colony” where they’re holding Hera is entirely too close to a black hole for comfort? Yes. That sounds good. Next week hurry up please.
Now for the part everybody’s scrolled down to anyway: KATEE SACKHOFF.
Man, fan-driven Q&As are always such a weird combination of enthusiasm, desperation, awkwardness, insight, and humor, both intentional and accidental. Last night’s open-mic Q&A with Starbuck actress Katee Sackhofff featured at least one fangirl who had dressed up as Starbuck (yes, including the tattoo), and who told Sackhoff, “You turned me from bisexual to lesbian!” Meanwhile, another fan congratulated Sackhoff on “being one of the most coolest characters on one of the most coolest shows,” while another urged the audience to join in on a call of, “You are so frakking hot, so say we all!” before she tested Sackhoff with an iPhone Cylon Detector app. Also, there was a weird part at the start where everyone sang happy birthday to Sackhoff’s mom, who was in attendance, and this somehow had something to do with a Twitter from KGW’s Stephanie Stricklen, who is friends with Sackhoff’s mom, I think? I don’t know. Anyway, I have two points: First, when you turn a microphone over to a line of hardcore fans who get to ask semi-stalkery questions of their favorite actress, shit gets real cringe-inducing, real fast. Second, happy birthday, Mrs. Sackhoff!
Thankfully, Katee Sackhoff—who was born in St. Helens, and attended Beaverton’s Sunset High School, the “Home of the Apollos”—handled all the questioning like a pro, and seemed genuinely happy to be at the Bagdad. She bantered with KUFO’s Cort and Fatboy (and called Fatboy not only a “skinny bitch,” but also a “pussy” for admitting to flinching when Caprica Six snapped a baby’s neck in the Battlestar miniseries), and dealt with most of the fans’ questions with candor and wit. Like Starbuck, Sackhoff also seems like if she wanted, she could probably kick your ass. Also, as my aforementioned pal Mike eloquently pointed out when she walked in:
Whoa! Holy shit! Whoa! She’s like a billion times hotter than she is on TV! I mean… fuck! Fuck! Whoa! Like… holy shit! Look at her! Whoa! Holy shit!
Some of Sackhoff’s best answers were responses to some of the worst questions. One fangirl asked who she preferred: Jamie Bamber in uniform, or Jamie Bamber in a suit? “Michael Trucco,” Sackhoff replied. (This answer is CORRECT.) After another question, Sackhoff talked about how “Ron Moore really allowed the cast to make the characters their own,” and noted that her desire to explore Starbuck’s relationship with her mother led to the episode “Maelstrom.” There were also anecdotes about the final days of Battlestar‘s production. (“I stole my flight suit and threw it in a cooler on the way out the door.”)
Sackhoff also talked about her struggle with thyroid cancer (she’s better now, though she tells people the scar on her neck is from a knife fight, which is awesome), and how her friendship with Trucco ended up changing the course of Battlestar‘s final season. (SPOILER FOR “DAYBREAK, PART II” TO FOLLOW. DON’T SAY I DIDN’T WARN YOU.) It sounds like Sackhoff, like more or less everybody, expected Starbuck to end up with Lee at the end of Battlestar‘s final season, but following Trucco’s 2007 car accident, that changed. Sackhoff said after his accident, she found her friendship with Trucco to be affecting how the two of them were appearing onscreen—thus making it far more feasible for Starbuck to end up with Anders at the end of the show than with Lee. (Sorry to break it to you, dude who spent weeks drawing this.) (SETTLE DOWN, SPOILER OVER, YOU CAN START READING AGAIN.)
Re: the above: I know that rundown of the Q&A was brief and vague. I blame the beer, and also the fact that Sackhoff is roughly as pretty as Mike said, so I wasn’t in any sort of mood to spend a lot of time looking at my notebook to take notes. Anyway, regardless: Cort and Fatboy will have a video of the whole Q&A online by early next week, and I’ll update this post with video then.
ONE LAST THING. Thanks to some ill-considered travel plans, I’m not gonna be around next week for the big series finale. In other words, this is the last Battlestar episode write-up I’ll be doing for Blogtown. It’s been a blast writing these after every episode this season, and it’s been great to see what comments Blogtown readers have chipped in with, but next week, I’m just gonna turn it over to you guys: I’ll set up a talkback that all of you can use to post your thoughts. I have a hunch that the usual commenters will be around, and I suspect I’ll jump in at some point, too, so be sure to check back next week as soon as “Daybreak, Part II” starts for an open thread, of sorts, where everyone can discuss this season, the series finale, and Battlestar as a whole.
And before I (FINALLY) end this post, I want to thank everybody who’s been going out to the Bagdad week after week to watch Battlestar on the big screen, and everybody who’s been reading and commenting on these blog posts. Cort and Fatboy have been kind enough to make sure Battlestar has aired every week at the Bagdad, and for the past nine weeks, Battlestar at the Bagdad has been one of the highlights of my week. There’s something pretty great about being in a packed theater full of people who take this shit seriously; about hearing Fatboy shout out, “So say we all!” to the crowd before each episode and have the crowd shout, “So say we all!” right back; about hearing people debate Cylon mythologies in the beer line; about seeing people with T-shirts branded with the logo for the Picon Panthers. For all its flaws, Battlestar is still one of the best science-fiction shows that’s ever aired on TV—if not the best science-fiction show that’s ever aired on TV—and to watch it week after week with hundreds of people who care about it as much as I do, and then to discuss it the next day on Blgotown… well, that shit doesn’t happen very often. Say what you will about how the final season of Battlestar Galactica is shaping up, but one can’t argue with how much fun it’s been to watch and talk about these episodes.
UPDATE: Look! Video! And more here.
I just want to post a BIG, FAT FUCK YOU to whomever was “in charge” of this event. Did you not expect a larger crowd than normal with frakkin’ STARBUCK in attendance?! How the HELL could you allow a theatre full of ‘comedy watchers’ to stay in their seats when you knew you had literally HUNDREDS of people waiting patiently outside for HOURS in lines wrapping around the block??!! And when it was clear that through your poor planning there was no chance of most of these people getting into the theatre, why did NO ONE have the balls to come out and tell the crowd?! A lot of people were looking forward to this, spent several hours in the cold and were just given the finger by KUFO and Bagdad. Again, FUCK YOU!!
I don’t understand kuFU’s complaint. Why did you stand outside and wait through the comedy show? There were lots and lots of seats open through the (admittedly terrible) standup routines. Were you just too damned cheap to pay $5 cover to come inside early?
My friend and I got in line around 4:00pm and waited until they opened the doors for the comedy show around 6:30 (I think), paid our $5 and went in to sit in comfy chairs, eat some food and drink some beer.
Since the Bagdad did not charge for showing BSG, I figured it was the least I could do to pay a little cover charge to the theater to thank them for having these showings. And waiting inside, warm and full of beer and food, beats standing outside in the cold.
Aw, crap.
Okay, firstly, there will be NO COMEDY SHOW for the final episode next week, so that should eliminate that complication completely. Doors at 8, show at 9.
Secondly, I know some people are classifying the comedy show thing as an opportunity to pay for cuts in line. For some people in line, that’s how it went down: They heard the call for comedy show attendance (I’m guessing–I didn’t get there until after our show was done and Bagdad had already started allowing people in) and said “oh. yeah. I’m here for the “comedy show” and slapped down their 5. But I don’t think Bagdad did that with any sort of maliciousness in mind.
Granted, it probably should have been obvious people in line weren’t there for the comedy show, so asking people in line if they wanted to GO to the comedy show is complicating stuff/inviting anger. Especially since a lot of people probably didn’t come down with cash on hand since it’s a free screening. But I don’t think Bagdad was trying to actively screw people over.
About 1500 people showed up. The place only really fits about 600. A lot of people weren’t going to get in, regardless of whether you wanna chalk that up to “poor planning” or not. Some credit should be given to the Bagdad for constantly checking seat availability, and spending about an hour straight doing constant head counts and squeezing people into the theater ones and two at a time, putting the show on in the Backstage Bar, and allowing another 100+ people in solely for the Q&A afterwards. And don’t say they didn’t have the balls to tell people, I saw a man accost the theater manager with a fuckin CANE when she came out to tell the line that they’d squeezed in everyone they could. You wanna question someone’s testicular fortitude, how bout we look at the guy using a big stick to physically threaten a woman over a TV show.
And not to focus solely on the negative, but jesus christ there were some entitled motherfuckers up in the place. Someone actually BITCHED AT KATEE that they couldn’t come in. As in:
Fan at Door: Hey! Katee!
Katee: Hey! Thanks for coming!
Fan at Door: No, no. Wait. What’s with the line?
Katee: I don’t know. I just got here. I gotta go in
Fan at Door: (Derisively) oh. good. Great. thanks.
Katee: I’m sorry.
Fan at Door: Whatever. (turns on heel and waves her off)
These sour grapes stories suck, because the event itself went off so well, and the people who did manage to get in made it a hell of a time. Erik really summed up the feeling of camaraderie and general awesomeosity (yeah, I made up the word, whatever) these screenings have been providing, and I’m really happy that, for the most part, it’s been the party Cort and I were hoping for when we pitched it to the Bagdad. This is a once-in-a-great-while type of show, and to get to share it in the best way possible with like-minded individuals makes it even better. Thanks, you guys, for making these things as bad-ass as we could have hoped for.
Cort and I will get the official video of the thing up as soon as possible. I know there’s some phone-cam bootlegs circulating around youtube right now, if you need to feed that fix and see what you missed out on.
Okay, show discussion and random notes:
1) I liked that Gaius’ father was named Julius. as in Gaius, son of Julius. As in Caesar. Thought that was a nifty little reference.
2) I know that the shot of Adama looking at the picture of Hera and Athena was supposed to read as another “I’m getting my men” moment regarding Hera, but I also thought it was interesting in that the smiling faces belong to a half-human hybrid drawing either a map, or a dna strand, both being the key to humanity’s next evolution/change/survival — and the face that belongs not just to the most loyal cylon in the fleet next to Saul Tigh, but the woman who put two rounds in his chest and kidnapped that hope for the future just 2 episodes ago.
3) I was PISSED about Baltar not going across the red line (nice, Ron Moore) until I realized that he can’t. He is the leader of humanity now. The Galactica isn’t coming back–there’s no way. This is a one-way trip, as Adama said. He’s got the guns, he’s got the following, he’s got the experience, such as it is. the humanity that was is getting the leader it deserves, I guess.
4) Adama calling Starbuck his daughter hit me unexpectedly.
5) What the hell, Racetrack and Skulls? I love that Moore called out the writers tendency to make them the rag-tag fleet’s Lewis and Clark. They’ve now discovered the Algae Planet, New Caprica, The Basestar, and now the only feasible entry point to launch an attack against the Colony.
Can they wrap it up? I have faith. 2 hours is a lot of time if this show goes breakneck speed like Pegasus/Resurrection Ship and The Oath. The possibilities are pretty juicy: My spec is as follows.
Nothing on the Battlestar gets off alive except one Raptor, piloted by Lee and Kara, holding Caprica Six and Hera. Both the Battlestar and the Colony get destroyed and sucked into the black hole they’re parked over. They return to the fleet, led by Gaius Baltar. Gaius and Six raise Hera. Lee becomes the military commander, Gaius is the civilian leader. Show ends with the fleet continuing to search for a place to call home, with a new future ahead and the cycle broken, with no one chasing.
Why did we stand in line outside? Gee, maybe because we expected the theater to be cleared after the preceding event, since that’s what every other theater in the frakking world does. The event is advertised as free, “Doors open at 9”. What does that mean, in non-crack monkey English? That they aren’t letting people in until 9. Why? Because there’s another show going on, & they need time to clear the theater before the start of the next event. If they’d told people they weren’t clearing the ‘comedy show’ crowd out, & the only way to get a seat for sure was to pay $5 to jump the line, I’m betting most of us would have.
They screwed up big time, & compounded it with a complete lack of communication, even when they knew there wasn’t a single seat left. They should have had the courtesy to at least make an announcement that the show was full, but they were so freaked out they just hid.
And I’m pretty sure there’s a legal reason they can’t charge admission for BSG, they weren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. But I guess they found a way to get around that!
okay, my last post on this, since i feel weird speaking for bagdad management, being that I don’t work for mcmenamin’s.
So far as I understand, the theater was cleared of people who didn’t wanna stay for Galactica. About 50-100 people left.
Nobody hid from the line. I gave an example of people in the line physically threatening the manager telling them that they could no longer fit anyone else in. that happened AFTER they made the announcement, which came only AFTER they determined they couldn’t let another single individual in.
Again, I’ve been told by the Bagdad there’s no comedy show next week, so these problems won’t be occurring. I’m sorry people had to leave disappointed. I mean, I guess for something this big, there’s bound to be disappointments, you can’t involve this many people and have all of them enjoy themselves, but it really does suck that more people couldn’t have had a better time, and I’m sorry for that.
Oh yeah, some more show notes in the hopes discussion steers closer to the topic of the episode:
6) who knew that Doc Cottle’s name would be SHERMAN. Sherman Cottle. that’s almost as funny as finding out Apollo’s real first name is LELAND. Like what the hell was Bill thinking there? LELAND?
7) Julius Baltar is pretty fuckin awesome.
I didn’t even bother trying to show up, this week. I just assumed it was going to be a massive clusterfrak. The thing that’s really getting my nerd rage flowing is that the show still isn’t up on Hulu. What’s up with that, SciFi?
Speaking of nerd rage, how the could you even think this show might be better then Firefly or Babylon 5, Erik? Hell, does BSG even really qualify as Sci-Fi? Has it not just degraded into bad space opera?
Hopefully, next week, the show will return to what I think it’ll be best remembered for: really fucking bad-ass space fights.
Good to know there won’t be a repeat next week. And I knew there were going to be more people than could fit in the theater, which is why I got there more than an hour & a half earlier than usual. Which, by the way, landed me closer to the front of the line than I’d ever been (& I’ve made it in every week, no problem). As for the guy with the cane, the girl working the door had pulled at least two people from farther back in the line in instead of him – when he was the one at the front. The manager also tried to tell us only 50 people had stayed from the comedy show, which was patently bs. A little organization, honesty & communication could’ve avoided a lot of anger & cane shaking. Come out, say “We had a lot more people stay from the comedy show than we thought – our bad! We’re trying to squeeze more people in, & hopefully figure a way to get more people in for the Q&A. We’re putting the show on in the bar around the corner, too”. Voila, bummed people, but not angry people. At least for me, that’s what pissed me off about it – I’m not a 5 year old, I (& most folks in line) can deal with missing a TV show. Though maybe not the guy with the cane, eh?
@kyle: BSG is way better than Babylon 5. The fact you think BSG is going to be remembered primarily for it’s SFX porn sorta speaks to the primary disconnect in the POV’s here. At its best, Babylon was still closer to Space Opera as I understand the term than Galactica has ever been.
I enjoy space opera, and don’t hold the term to be demeaning in any way, either. But BSG isn’t really a space opera. It tends to the melodramatic side of things every now and again, but even then, it’s still more like a straight up drama that just happens to be set on a spaceship.
“it’s still more like a straight up drama that just happens to be set on a spaceship.”
That is, as I understand it, the definition of Space Opera.
Real, good Sci-Fi, as I see it, is a peace of fiction that creates a world that is somehow different from ours, and then thoroughly examines how that difference changes that world.
Babylon 5 did this–it looked at space colonization, interplanetary governance, and the idea of higher beings fucking with humanity. Granted, it may not have been very original (or well acted, or produced), but it was thorough, and it was there. Stravinsky sat down, and he built a real fucking world. He thought the whole thing through.
Moore, on the other hand: I’m not sure he even took the time to look up the word “anthropology” on the Wiki. BSG’s world–what little we know about it–makes no sense. Why, for example, hadn’t humans colonized more then twelve worlds? They clearly had the tech.
BSG hasn’t been an examination of a society, as much as its been an ongoing series of obvious, heavy handed metaphors, “ripped from the headlines!”.
Also, B5 was the first show to do the set, muti-season story. And so far, it’s the only show that’s done it right. Even if BSG does pull something off in the last two hours, it’s still clear that Moore was making most of the series up as he went along.
well, to your last point: Most fiction is made up as it goes along. It’s whether the story told at the end is satisfying that counts. On the flip, there’s just as much fiction out there that has been outlined and diagrammed to death that still ends up being pretty shitty. Whether it’s all planned out beforehand seems sorta tangential to the enjoyment as a viewer/reader/listener.
Yes, B5 came first, but to me, that argument has always been sorta specious. For example: Grandmaster Flash was the first to scratch a record. No one would call him the best DJ because he did it first, not compared to people like Q-bert or A-Trak or even Jazzy Jeff. I definitely give Straczynski credit for coming up with it first, but I can’t give him credit for doing it better than Moore, because for me, he didn’t.
Reducing the Galactica writers’ skill at drawing allegorical parallels to human history and examining why humanity has acted/acts the way it does is a pretty long way away from “Ripped from the Headlines.” It’s not Law and Order by any stretch of the imagination. There’s an examination of deeper themes in this work than there are in B5. I have a hard time seeing how being a pro at anthropology would have helped Moore do what he set out to do with Galactica.
I think the space opera tag definitely fits B5 more than it does Galactica, but since we’re considering Wiki as a valid resource, the entry for Space Opera contains both of em 🙂
See, Sci-Fi isn’t about themes, though, it’s about ideas. When I bitch about Battlestar, I’m not trying to say it doesn’t do somethings right, that it isn’t an above average TV show, I’m just trying to say that it fails completely as Science Fiction.
Moore should know a thing or two about anthropology because if he’s going to build a new society, then he should have some idea how societies work. How they change and grow.
Let me see if I can put it this way: Straczynski (however you spell it) spent half an episode looking at how the B5 post office reacted to the military rebellion; Moore sort of, kind of acknowledged that the fleet needed resources to live, sometime back in season 2.
(And to those of you who haven’t seen Babylon 5: no, it isn’t as boring as I just made it sound.)
Speaking as someone who dearly loved Babylon 5, (at least the first 2 or 3 seasons) I’ve gotta disagree with you, Kyle. For one, B5 was constantly hitting you over the head with its huge, towering, throbbing cheese factor. The costumes, the dialog, and in many (though not all!) cases, the acting were just terrible. Much worse than Galactica, which is saying something. And to me cheesiness is a big part of what makes space opera. Or real opera, for that matter. I’d actually side with Wikipedia here, and say both shows fit under the heading quite nicely. I’d be the first to admit that JMS did a far more thorough job of fleshing out his backstory and planning his plot–but that doesn’t make B5 the better show any more than it endows Bruce Boxleitner with acting powers.
@ Kyle: Is Battlestar better than Firefly? Don’t ask me to make that call! That shit’s like Sophie’s Choice, man.
(But is it better than Babylon 5? Yes. So, so much better.)
Snobbery aside (and, admittedly, this comes from a dude who enjoys not only Philip K. Dick but also Stargate SG-1, so I realize how slippery/non-existent my footing is on this issue), I do find your assertion that “Sci-Fi isn’t about themes, though, it’s about ideas” interesting.
That’s a good way to look at it, but I don’t think I agree with you–just ’cause I’ve read and watched plenty of amazing sci-fi that is totally about themes. Battlestar springs most readily to mind, but so does anything Kurt Vonnegut ever did, or for that matter, Ray Bradbury. (Some might argue those guys didn’t always write sci-fi, but I find elements I’d consider science-fictional [is that word?] in just about all of their stuff.)
(The next paragraph is more or less me about to go off on the edge of a semantic cliff. Just a heads up.)
I’ve always resisted classifying science-fiction, just ’cause one of my favorite things about the genre–or the genre how I think of it, anyway–is how flexible, expansive, and inclusive it can be. While most genres are pretty tied to their tropes and clichés, science-fiction, to me, is a huge umbrella of a term that can encompass everything from the densest novels to the wacky antics of Jar Jar Binks. To me, it’s just a massive genre, a massive term, a massive idea: If I had to define “science-fiction,” I’d end up using examples from Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein alongside ones from David Foster Wallace and Haruki Murakami, from Blade Runner and THX-1138 alongside Southland Tales and The Fountain. And there’s so much that’s in between those arbitrary examples: Star Trek, Terminator, every Marvel comic published since 1961, The Warriors, The Fountain, Eagle Eye, Jorge Luis Borges, The Road, Don DeLillo, Dollhouse, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Every time I try to define the genre, I find myself just stunned and overwhelmed: It seems to me to be a genre that’s so versatile, prevalent, and powerful that boiling it down to any sort of definition does it a disservice.
I guess my point is that I totally think of Battlestar as good science-fiction–but then, I consider a lot of things to be good science-fiction. And to be totally fair, I guess I’m not even ultimately concerned with whether something is classified as “science-fiction” or not: What concerns me are good, imaginative stories that either give me one hell of an escape or force me to look at my life in different ways. For me, stories that are usually branded as “science-fiction”–whatever that might entail–seem to do that the most. And Battlestar, at its best, has done both.
Battlestar Galactica ceased being science fiction in season 2, and turned into a drama with some science fiction elements, but more religious elements. Anyone who stuck with it after season 2 watched “Dallas” in Space.
Fly your geek flag my friends, let it fly