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August 06, 2005
TV : Battlestar Galactica, Season 2
Most television is junk – pointless entertainment without wither philosophical or artistic virtue. Occasionally a show slips by the network executives that is actually intelligent and meaningful. Other times a show may slip by that is actually artfully conducted and a joy to watch. It is exceedingly rare that a show manages to get produced with is both meaningful and artistic, and virtually unheard of that such a show manages to last a season much less get renewed.
The new version of Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi channel is a show that has beaten those odds.
This is what good Science Fiction, no… good television is all about.
The show manages to dissect the human psyche and leave all of our virtues and vices splayed on the screen like some horrid vivisection demonstration. It is not pretty; but is truth. The characters are complex, with varying numbers of faults; but none without virtue either (Even Baltar – the closet traitor – has some vestige of humanity the shows on occasion). The questions raised about faith, government, the military, are all questions worth asking.
On top of that, the show is produced with a nearly cinematic quality, using techniques rarely seen on episodic television. The use of camera angles, motifs (such as the blood dripping on the floor that bracketed this past week's episodes), music, silence, all make the program a work of art that would be worth seeing even if the story was of lesser quality.
Finally, the show does not go for the simple answers, the neat endings. There are always multiple plot lines, and most are left hanging from episode to episode. Major characters are killed. Others are taken out of the action for several episodes. None of the "safe" assumptions that normally apply to American TV seem to apply here.
Oh, and they have not entirely forgotten the original series. While the story has diverged, key background elements keep showing up to tie the series together. This week, the man-on-man basketball-like game they used to play (and wager on) in the old series made an appearance. I'll be very interested to see what, if anything, they end up doing with "Count Iblis" in the new show.
Posted by Steven at August 6, 2005 08:35 PM
