Battlestar Great-showica

The main cast of Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca on the set of the Galac­ti­ca’s hanger.

I just fin­ished watch­ing the Sea­son Three pre­miere of Sci­Fi Chan­nel’s Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca. I just want to go on the offi­cial record to say that BG is the great­est show ever on tele­vi­sion. That’s right, bet­ter than The West Wing. Bet­ter than Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment. Bet­ter than I Love Lucy for all you tra­di­tion­al­ists. Bet­ter than Sein­feld for all you com­e­dy fans. Bet­ter than any of the Star Trek fran­chise for all you sci­ence fic­tion fans. It is the best show ever in the his­to­ry of the medi­um of tele­vi­sion1.

I had­n’t real­ized this truth until tonight, but I can say that I firm­ly believe it, now. The mini-series that aired a cou­ple of years ago was real­ly pret­ty good and did quite a lot to real­ly update the show from it’s 70’s clas­sic (yet real­ly cheesey) stature. The first sea­son went fur­ther and the sec­ond sea­son even more so (par­tic­u­lar­ly Sea­son 2.5). How­ev­er, after watch­ing tonight’s episode I remain amazed.

Amazed at the shows will­ing­ness to go way beyond just a sci­ence fic­tion show about a future strug­gle between man and his robot cre­ation (yeah, how many times has that plot line come up in sci­ence fic­tion?). It delves in to how frag­ile the indi­vid­ual human mind is and what we strug­gle with per­son­al­ly. It pro­vokes its view­ers with polit­i­cal and eth­i­cal ques­tions most tele­vi­sion shows sim­ply do not have the courage to ask. It does this with­out forc­ing an answer on its audi­ence, leav­ing them to judge what should be and what is. The smartest show on tele­vi­sion right now just hap­pens to have eight foot tall shiney robots and space­ships that can trav­el faster than light­speed. It’s prob­a­bly the sex­i­est and edgi­est show to boot. It encom­pass­es so much of what is great about good sto­ry telling and all with an amaz­ing look and a ensem­ble of great characters.

I watched the mini-series when it aired and was impressed, but real­ly did­n’t fol­low the show that much dur­ing the first sea­son. I watched the Sea­sons one, two, and 2.5 on DVD and the show has sim­ply got­ten bet­ter the whole way. Sea­son three looks to be the best yet, so if you’ve not been watch­ing them get them from Net­flix, down­load them from the iTunes store, or buy the DVD sets now2. You’re in for a great time.

1. Okay, so you think I’m com­plete­ly crazy at this point, but hon­est­ly, from my point of view and con­sid­er­ing all that this show has, I hon­est­ly mean this. Fur­ther, it has been nom­i­nat­ed and won a num­ber of awards in just two years, not the least of which was a Peabody Award [↩]
2. Or at least wactch The Sto­ry So Far at SciFi.com. [↩]