Battlestar Galactica: The Frakking Story

So what is the big deal about this show? Why has it captured the attention of both fans and critics in ways that so few shows have? The basic plotline ins't all that creative or original, but it's the message and tone behind the story that gives the series its distinctive voice.

The new Battlestar Galactica began with a 4 hour miniseries; the Sci Fi Network told the creative team to have the miniseries set up the conflict and the characters. If it did well, it would get picked up as a regular series. And so what is the conflict? It actually begins before the miniseries; decades ago, an advanced human civilization in a galaxy far, far away (sorry, had to do that) created a race of robots called cylons to serve as both soldiers and laborers. Unfortunately, the cylons rebelled against their human masters. Sound familiar? When I heard that, my mind jumped to Terminator, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. The idea of robots turning on their creators has been around for decades. So I wrote of Galactica as nothing more than some people trying to make a buck off a known name. But it's what happened after this rebellion that sets the show apart. The war against the cylons ended 40 years before the first shot of the miniseries. There was an armistice declared, and the cylons left to find their own planet and set up a society of their own. These events are described in the prologue; we are told these facts through title cards while the visuals show us a space station created to serve as a neutral location for negotiations, should they ever become necessary. The human government (hereafter called the Colonial government) always sends a representative, but in 40 years, the cylons never sent anyone, and no one has heard from them since the armistice.

At least until the beginning of the miniseries. In the 40 years (and possibly even before), the cylons found a way create biomechanical models that mimic humanity so well that they are nearly indistinguishable from real humans. There are 12 different humanoid models, each with multiple copies, similar to any mass-produced item or piece of software. Their ability to blend in with humans has allowed them to infiltrate Colonial society and sow the seeds of an attack. And what truly sets this show apart is that the attack not only succeeds, but succeeds so well that the Colonial population is reduced from billions living across 12 planets (each one a colony of Kobol, the planet from which human life originated, and each named with a derivative of the western zodiac, such as Caprica, Tauron, and Gemenon) to less than 50,000 living in a a small fleet of spaceships.

Yes, this is a story of genocide. Genocide, terrorism, and fear are the driving forces in the world of Battlestar Galactica. While there is some humor every now and then, this is a tragic story. Episodes often deal with the crew making extremely hard decisions in order to survive another day. The fleet, which flies through space under the protection of the Battlestar Galactica. Battlestars are large, space-faring battleships that are part of the Colonial military fleet. Galactica only survived the cylon attack because its computer system was so archaic, it was not part of a network and therefore could not receive the computer virus used by the cylons to cripple Colonial defenses. Led by Commander William Adama and the newly-appointed President of the Colonies (I won't say who it is right now because I don't want to spoil too much, though I may reveal who it is at a later time), the human race faces food and water shortages, cabin fever, and most importantly, attacks from the cylons. But even when the cylons aren't around, they are still the cause of fear and paranoia in the fleet, since anyone could be a cylon.

Up next: Real world parallels, and hard decisions...