There’s nothing like a good Friday night mind-frak.
After months of unavoidable abstinence for increasingly frustrated fans, the mind-fraking resumes tomorrow with the return of Sci Fi Channel’s always riveting Battlestar Galactica, a superbly written, acted and directed series so filled with challenging ideas it can leave a serious viewer mentally and emotionally drained by each episode’s end. As fans know, this is a show best watched and discussed with others, lest you end up alone in a room talking to the wall.
Yes, Galactica is that powerful and profound. Unlike Doctor Who, the wildly imaginative, big-fun science-fiction adventure series that precedes it on Sci Fi’s socko Friday lineup, Galactica will never be mistaken for easy-to-enjoy television. It’s a psychological workout that never lets up, pulling viewers in deeper and deeper with each passing installment. Like a great, complex novel, it becomes more involving, more intense and more demanding as it goes. (It is startling to recall that the first version of Galactica, created in 1978 to capitalize on the Star Wars craze, was a silly, uninspiring cheese-fest.)
Issues involving war, religion, creation and extinction and the ways in which they are made to intersect drive much of the drama and suspense in this frightening, futuristic saga. Space prohibits repeating the full history of the series here, but Season Three handily picks up where Season Two left off, with the thousands humans who still exist divided in three locales: Most on a planet known as New Caprica, others on the starships Galactica and Pegasus. Claimed as a new home by the humans near the close of Season Two, New Caprica was eventually infested by the Cylons–evil, God-worshiping, humanoid beings that were created by and rebelled against mankind and have mastered the means by which to conquer death (when one dies its mind, or essence, downloads into a duplicate of the same body). After years of pursuing the humans through space (chronicled to some degree in Seasons One and Two), the Cylons essentially cornered them on New Caprica and issued a menacing mandate of peaceful co-existence enforced in increasingly violent ways.
As Season Three kicks in the humans, under ever-growing pressure and trying to regain their personal freedom, begin splintering into groups: Broken beings who simply do as they are told, insurgents who resort to any means possible to regain their freedom and expel the intruders, and trained police who have sided with the Cylons in the interest of restoring peace. Meanwhile, the crew of the Galactica, under the leadership of Admiral William Adama (Edward James Olmos) and the crew of the Pegasus, led by Adama’s son Apollo (Jamie Bamber), have spent a year waiting for an opportunity to return to New Caprica and rescue their people. For Apollo, the resultant frustration has manifested itself physically; he’s now carrying many pounds of fat on his once-buff bod. (“Have you taken a look at yourself in the mirror lately?” a disgusted Adama asks his son. “You’re weak! Soft! Mentally and physically!”)
Galactica is known for delivering episode-ending cliffhangers as startling as those on 24 and Lost, and the close of this week’s two-hour season premiere is no exception. I defy anyone, even a new viewer, to watch the entire show through to its final riveting seconds and not be back in place next Friday to see what happens next.
I sometimes think this show is simply too grim for its own good. The miseries that good people are made to endure in the ongoing war between the humans and the Cylons–even in times of strained peace–make the hardships endured by the castaways on Lost seem like mere inconveniences. Babies are taken from mothers (and vice versa). Body parts are destroyed or stolen, with shocking results. Women engage in brutal, bone-crunching fights. Others are forced into depraved sexual slavery to keep their men safe. People are gunned down, blown up or systematically destroyed from within. (In terms of emotional and spiritual destruction, there is little left of Gaius Baltar, now the president of all humanity and still a pawn of the Cylons.) As the struggle continues, growing ever more intense without a moment’s relief, humans endure endless punishments and make continuous sacrifices, including ending their own lives in violent ways.
Through it all, the Cylons are presented as manipulative beings that have both embraced and perverted religion, referring to God in reverential ways even as they herd humans into camps and begin executing them. They’re deadly, but some see the good in humanity and grow to care for their enemy. The humans, meanwhile, are noble and tireless in their fight not simply to live, but to be free. Yet some are pushed to their limit and revert to savage, soul-darkening violence to repel the monsters who would take away life or liberty. Their actions include shocking suicide bombings in which Cylons and innocent humans alike perish. In what could be the greatest Galactica mind-frak of all, viewers may find themselves rooting for these killers even as they recoil in horror at their actions.
As former president and cancer survivor Laura Roslin (Emmy-worthy Mary McDonnell) is moved to state with chilling, resigned calmness amid the atrocities around her, “Desperate men take desperate measures.”
Clearly, if Battlestar Galactica is to continue the desperate humans cannot yet win this war. Without their suffering there is no series. It would seem the stakes for these characters can go no higher, yet intensify they must if this timely story of war, insurgency and the struggle for freedom is to continue. Fans can only hope the eventual series finale brings the promise of peace and a glimmer of hope to those who survive and posthumous honor to those who perished; if not, the cumulative effect of watching this series over the years will be too depressing to contemplate.
For now, if all of this deeply relevant turmoil doesn’t frak you up, nothing will.
