I admit it; I didn’t watch Battlestar Galactica when it first came on.
Okay, that’s not quite true. I watched the initial mini-series when it first aired, but I didn’t remember much about it. I certainly watched it a few days after the rest of my friends had seen it, and I remember commenting that “Oh, hey, making Boomer a Cylon was kind of interesting.” But for some reason, I had been distracted while watching it, so some of it didn’t make sense. And, to be honest, I had less-than-fond memories of the original series, which existed in a hazy portion of my mind.
So, BSG didn’t really imprint itself on my brain for quite some time.
Here’s where I tell you how I ended up watching part way through Season 1 and got hooked to watch the season finale.
Nope.
I didn’t watch any of the first season as it aired. In fact, I remember meeting up with some people the night of finale, after it had aired. I knew they loved the show, but I still hadn’t seen it. Maybe I knew that catching up with it was pointless until I watched it from the beginning again. But I asked them how it was, and they exclaimed praise after praise about it.
So, I finally decided to watch it when Sci-Fi started the season over again.
And after watching “33 Minutes”, I knew I had missed out on something great.
I crammed through the episodes in time to watch the Season 2 premiere with my friends, and I’ve been a fan ever since.
Oh, BSG and I have had some issues. The middle to end of Season 3 dragged on. I was bored. In fact, not even Starbuck’s death made me like the show; it felt more of a relief to have her gone. I stopped watching it on a weekly basis, preferring to just leave them on tape until some point in the future. A friend accidentally spoiled the big cliffhanger, of Starbuck’s return and the four Cylons revealing themselves, and I found myself not caring all that much.
I was a BSG fan more out of protest than anything else. “Well, I’ve invested so much of myself in this show, I suppose I’ll watch the end of Season 3 finally and watch Season 4.”
Then a funny thing happened — it got good again. Sure, there were some missteps, but Season 4 has once again showed us the good storytelling that we had in Season 1.
And in less than 24 hours, it will be over. One of the best shows on television will be but reruns.
One of my friends refused to watch the show, saying he liked the original 1970’s show. This new version was just a soap opera in space.
He was right for a while; that third season had too much drama, and not the good kind.
But when we step back and look at it as a whole, we found a drama that reflected on the human condition — sometimes a bit too close for comfort.
They say that the best science-fiction does that. They say that a story can hold up a mirror to our own world and show us who we are, within the context of its own fictional universe. BSG did that. From showing how tragedy can inspire us to work together, to showing how human nature always struggles to break through in sad, violent, even evil ways; from showing how religion can influence people in both positive and negative ways; from showing how even in the worst of times you can find happiness and love… and in the best of times find heartache and pain — these are the aspects of humanity that BSG displayed for us all.
And to say that a show can’t influence the culture? Just this past week, Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Ronald Moore and David Eick were involved in a discussion about Battlestar Galactica — at the United Nations. Think about that — they were discussing a television show with representatives of UNITED NATIONS! And once again proving that the show had lessons for us all, Edward said that BSG depicted a vision of race that he hoped that today’s youth would make a reality — that there is only one race, the human race:
I’ll miss the old girl when she’s gone. Thank you for redeeming yourself, Galactica, and for providing stories that will hopefully last for generations.
To Galactica, the best ship in the fleet.
So say we all.