Battlestar Galactica: Fiction Mirroring Reality

Every BSG fan knew at the end of last season, with those shocking last ten minutes of the finale, that this new season would be decidedly different, but I'm not sure anyone was prepared for just how different-- or just how similar to today's headlines --the scripts would be.

It is an inescapable truth that the shows we watch on television are all products of the times in which they are filmed; television scripts tend, with near invariability, to reflect, or mirror, the sum total of fears existant in the societal gestalt-mind. It's present in the attitudes held by characters, the situations the characters find themselves in, and the solutions they employ. It's in the idiosyncratic as well as the moral attitudes of that society, overall. Rarely has this not been true.

The modern re-imagined Battlestar Galactica is no exception to the rule. Only one thing makes it different-- it's thematic ferocious brutality that so mirrors today's situations and conflicts-- Torture, death squads, insurgencies, suicide bombings, puppet governments, soul-less oppressors... and no pity whatsoever for the characters.

What? You thought this was a science-fiction space opera? Space just happens to be the backdrop... window dressing. What's really on screen is a running commentary of everything gone wrong in today's world-- Violence, depravity, and every man doing that which is right in his own eyes. Guns fire bullets, not laser beams. Cutlery does double-duty as weapons of mass hemorrhage. And cowards learn to make hard choices.

I was shocked by some of the imagery in last night's season opener. Almost as shocked as I was by the scene in Gattaca wherein Jude Law, paralyzed from the waist down, struggles to climb a spiral staircase; the perfect image of a double helix, encapsulating the film's theme-- 'The Borrowed Ladder' --in one beautifully stunning scene.

Last night's season opener perfectly illustrated the 'what if'... What if the tables were turned and Americans had to implement an insurgency? What if Americans felt desperate enough to strap explosives about their torsos? What if...

Appropriately, the show began with a disclaimer: "Warning! Graphically Disquieting Scenes Ahead! Viewer Discretion Advised!" I was both repelled and drawn in simultaneously. A big part of me wants to denounce it. An equally big part of me wants to shout 'Bravo!'

If one point was hammered home more than any other, it was this: Desperate times force desperate people to lengths they would otherwise find personally and morally abhorrent. Last night's episode could never have aired during the original BSG's television run twenty-five years ago-- The writers could never have envisioned it, and the viewer would never have understood it.

So, while one part of me stands up with a hearty 'Bravo!' and demanding an encore, another part asks... no, begs, 'Why does it have to be so remorseless!?'