Battlestar Galactica (2003)

"Enterprise, fatally, was not a popular series, even though it lasted four seasons. Just as it was winding down came a much more robust SF response to the post-9/11 world in the form of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica. Shedding the disco era look of the original series, this was a much grittier, murky series. The Cylons were not relentless robots, but genetically engineered and emotional humanoids with their own religion (monotheists vs the terran polytheists). The series addressed myriad topics raised by the Global War on Terror and the Iraq War: torture of suspected terrorists, profiling of terrorist-prone groups, curbs on democratic freedoms, enhanced executive powers for national security imperatives, and discrimination based on security fears. The season arc containing the Cylon occupation of the terran New Caprica colony was a parable of the Iraq War, involving common elements of Bush’s conflict: insurgency, foreign occupation/suppression, collaboration with occupiers, and even suicide bombers."

"Battlestar Galactica went beyond the usual space opera tropes and did what good science fiction has done for generations, from Jules Verne to Star Trek — it took the issues of the day into outer space, stripping them of the controversy of the moment, and allowing us to look at issues from a different perspective. Battlestar Galactica begins with a catastrophic attack on the human race, organized as the Twelve Colonies of Kobol by the Cylons, a robotic civilization spawned by humanity and beaten back years before. Just as many of today’s conflicts are the products of mistakes made long ago, so is Battlestar Galactica’s."

"Under pressure, people exhibit both the best and worst of the human condition. There is the extraordinary courage of the Viper pilots going out to fight the Cylons every 33 minutes for days on end as the fleet executes a fighting withdrawal, going on despite pain and casualties. But there is also the cowardice of Gaius Baltar, a prominent scientist who repeatedly betrays his fellow humans to please his hallucinated Cylon lover. The president of the Twelve Colonies, Laura Roslin, a paragon of principled leadership, is forced to repeatedly compromise her principles in order to safeguard the human race. She must constantly choose the lesser of two evils for the sake of survival. Much as with many real political leaders, her constituents do not appreciate the magnitude of the challenges she has led them through or the difficulty of the choices she faces daily."

"Military viewers will enjoy the series for the way it portrays fighting with futuristic technologies while maintaining a sense of authenticity in both the fighting and the atmospherics. The space battles are reminiscent of the great naval battles of the Pacific Theatre in World War II. The lives of the pilots and crew of Galactica are almost eerily like those aboard a modern amphibious ship."

"It's hardly fortunate that producers David Eick and Ron Moore found themselves developing the remake in the wake of September 11, but the story's broad premise - the human (read: American) military's struggles in the wake of a massive terrorist attack - suddenly gained resonance. In making the humans look, talk, shag, smoke and govern themselves so closely to how we do ourselves the show went way beyond sci-fi. Placing the action in space removed it sufficiently enough to hold a mirror to the one part of society that's normally off-limits: the way we fight right now. Giving the murderous Cylons human form - anybody could be one and probably is - meant the show could plough a chilling allegory on civil liberties crackdowns and western paranoia about sleeper cells. Painting them as religious fundamentalists who justified the genocide as a means of carrying out God's will in the face of human corruption forged a fierce parable on the war on terror that good taste would never allow so called "proper" drama to go near. "Our antagonists are not villainous necessarily," says Eick. "Yes they're out to kill us, but they've got an awfully sympathetic point of view in many respects. They're much more like the audience in terms of their being monotheistic. They're not moustache-twiddling villains and that's a strength of the show.""

"The opening episodes to this season are as much a story rooted in political tales like the Vichy France or Vietnam," says Eick. "There are a lot of different sort of reference points for us that aren't necessarily current that inform our culture in profound ways. Battles from the second world war have been used for several of our more actiony episodes. I've always said from the beginning, it's a war show - that was always our initial touchstone. We watched the movie Black Hawk Down as a reference more than any science fiction film. Though I have to say between Black Hawk Down, Alien and Blade Runner, we should probably be cutting Ridley Scott a cheque after every episode."

"A useful way to think about this is to take any piece of equipment and strip out its ability to talk to another piece of equipment. If your cell phone did not have access to a computer network, how efficiently could it operate? Could it operate at all? How do you design a navigational system for a spacecraft if the various components cannot be networked together? How do you design a fighter that relies more on human brainpower to identify threats and make decisions than anything built into the cockpit? One of the most important concepts is that there is no "master computer" aboard Galactica or any other Colonial ship. In fact, our computers are very dumb in comparison to even the PC sitting on the average writer's desk. We should always endeavor to find ways of forcing human beings to do the hard work involved with operating and maintaining a spacecraft. Human brains need to crunch numbers, organize data, and come up with solutions to complex problems."

"As a general rule of thumb, we should encounter an actual Cylon raid every third episode and in between encounters our people should constantly be studying and testing new ways of fighting their implacable enemy. It's important to note that while the Cylons were virtually invincible in the pilot, that there will be a more level playing field as the series goes on. This will be a result of the natural tendency in warfare for both sides to learn from their enemy, and develop new counter-measures for their opponents' strengths. As a general rule, Galactica's fighters are generally outmatched in combat with the Cylons, but the more we fight them, the more we learn, so that this week we have a temporary advantage and next week it's gone again. The on-going struggle will force both sides to constantly improve their technology and tactics to keep pace with their enemy."