Battlestar Galactica, possibly the greatest TV show to date.
I watched the last 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica last night. It was an event. occasionally in your life you will watch a series that has some meaning to you, that has not been a waste of time watching religiously over the years.
I think it was back in 2003 that i saw the mini series to this show based on an old fond 70's series. I had no idea that 6 years later i would be regarding it as the greatest TV show i have ever seen. If Television is to be any use at all to our own self development through life then it needs to get us asking questions about our lives, beliefs and ambitions. This one show packed all those in to its 5 seasons, during which the characters not only endured the worst that their enemies had to dish out, they discovered the darkest impulses that lurked in their own hearts. As a method of resistance, they used suicide bombers. To get information, they tortured Cylons. When they suspected treason, they turned on each other and tossed traitors out the ship’s airlock. They constantly struggled to balance human rights with the precarious security of the fleet.
We get so cushy in our lives, given premade descissions about what life is about and how we should be living it. Given set paths to choose from and to follow until death. BSG gave ideas and questions about that existence, about god and gods and the possibility of greater divinity. How that does not change the fact that we have the freedom to make choices that carve our own paths through life. It broke down reasons for laws and governance and challenged the ideas of race and what makes us more or less human than others.
“We’ve made the word race a way of expressing culture,there’s only one race, and that’s what the show brought out – that is the human race. Period. There is but one race! So say we all!" - Edward James Olmos
The Show was ultimately about humanity, dissecting it down to its grim base levels of instinct and emotion, as well as glimpsing our potential. It was a big statement of our being and will remain with me for the rest of my life as a show that made me ask questions and think about what it means to me to be human. Questions that only philosophers would ask each other, Battlestar Galactica made philosophers of all its viewers.
The end of the show suggests we are just in an endless circle, forever repeating what has happend before. This can be applied to many aspects of our world and also reminds me of a celtic knot of life, a continuous circle of life. At the knot all life starts again. The question at the very end of the show was simply 'can we break free from the circle' or will humanity stay trapped in an endless struggle with itself.
So now i am left with a gaping hole. The thought of not waiting with excitement for another season more profound than the previous leaves me slightly unnerved. It could be years before TV feels like it's actually adding to my experience of life again.....
