Battlestar Galactica [Review Time]

"There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."

A very solemn quotation to begin with, but since my theme is the irrefutable quality of Battlestar Galactica, it seems a fitting one. Still, for me much of the love for this series comes from the humour embedded within a dark situation, so make no mistake - the above quotation doesn't say everything there is to say about the series. That's my job :)

One couldn't make it through a university that boastfully calls itself "The MIT of the North" without being convinced to watch Battlestar Galactica by the engineers and computer science students of said university. Not even a girl, not even an arts major, could graduate without having seen Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog, some episodes of Big Bang Theory and Terminator 2 (at least once per anum), just to name a few nerdy pop culture staples. I mean this blog makes it self evident that I'm a particularly dorky female English student, but I still hope to argue that Battlestar is worth watching to nerdlingers and normals alike.

Do you like drama? Do you like characters constantly in tension with one another, fighting for differing beliefs on how to deal with a bleak situation: the possible extinction of the human race. How about sex. Do you like sex? Do you see the possible hilarity of a Christ figure also being a complete womanizer and a playa? Do you, like me, love crazy bitch characters, like Marla Singer, Girl Interrupted kinda crazy? It's kinda hot, right? How about death humour, black, black humour that is so dark and bleak and yet leaves you heaving for oxygen because you're laughing so hard. And the next moment you're crying because a war general has given his wife hemlock for her crimes. But before you know it you're laughing again because an insidious android is being flushed out the airlock and there's such an air of hilarity in the room.

The three-hour mini-series is really enough to show you the quality of the story you're about to take off into. You get a little hint of all of these things, and the suggestion that this is not going to be a very happy show. When you begin the series actual, take note of the population counter in the opening sequence of each episode. It is going to go down. It is rarely going to increase, which tells you exactly what this story is about; it's about the human race slowly dwindling towards extinction, about the last survivors of a holocaust slowly dying while they run from their executioners, often killing each other and themselves decreasing the human population. This is not a happy show. But it is a good show.

“I just don't respond to the title 'Doc.' A dock is a platform for loading and unloading material. My title is "Doctor" or "Mr. Vice President," if you don't mind." -Gaius Baltar

Oh Jesus...