Battlestar Galactica: Immersion Therapy for Post 9/11 World

By Michael Dudley, AlterNet. Posted March 25, 2009.

BSG gained this impressive reputation for its refusal to moralize or instruct the audience how to feel about these issues. The deeply flawed and troubled crew of Galactica as led by Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) and the civilian president of its fleet President Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) must face a morally ambiguous universe and make their own choices. Just like us.

That these characters are just like us is driven home by the series' naturalism and realism. They are not from Earth but come from '12 Colonies' including the oft-seen planet Caprica, which is depicted by location shooting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Apart from a few establishing shots of some futuristic buildings and the occasional spaceship in the sky, almost no effort is made to have their culture appear in any way alien from ours or futuristic. Their clothes, homes, cars, technology, food and interior decorating are wholly familiar to us.

So when we see this society destroyed, its loss is all the more real; further, when we see the grieving survivors of the colonies setting up a makeshift shrine in the hallways of Galactica using photos and other momentos of their loved ones, the audience's own memories of similar shrines on the streets of Manhattan is instantly evoked. Over the course of the series the characters return there repeatedly, reminding us both of their losses and ours.

It is this continual and courageous confrontation with the impacts of war, terrorism and torture that has made BSG such essential viewing. While many conservatives latched on to the show early on for its depiction of a civilization under attack by a fanatical, monotheistic enemy, any attempt to identify "good guys" in the Galactica universe was quickly scotched. The show's main characters have at one time or another plotted to steal elections, tortured, killed civilians, committed acts of terrorism and betrayed one another and their government. Indeed, most of the "humans" we have identified with were revealed to be artificial humanoid Cylon sleeper agents, yet fully retain our sympathies. BSG has constantly challenged the audience to question what it means to be human, to reflect on how easy it is to dehumanize others in a time of war, and to understand how war itself dehumanizes us.

This was particularly true at the end of the show's second season, in which the fleet had settled on a world they called "New Caprica," only to be discovered by the Cylons, who swiftly invaded, imposed total control over the humans and co-opted the weak and selfish then-President Gaius Baltar (James Callis) to be their Vichy leader. In the third season, most of the main characters formed a secret resistance force while the Cylons, publicly stating their intention to create a unified, peaceful New Caprica, recruited humans to serve in the civilian police force, and used them to hunt down the resistance fighters and imprison them. Later it turns out that the characters leading the resistance were, in fact, all (unknowingly) Cylons themselves.

This continual upturning of expectations, destruction of moral certitudes and identification with the "other" only intensified in the fourth season when the long-sought planet Earth -- the mythical "13th Colony" -- was finally discovered, only to be revealed to be a blackened ruin from a 2,000 year old nuclear war. With the loss of this final myth -- the one thing that had held Galactica and the fleet together through their desperate flight though space -- human society began to unravel badly. Morale cratered, people turned on one another violently, and a mutiny and coup erupted. Even the very structure of Galactica itself started to give way, and the ship is largely evacuated for a rebel Cylon base ship.

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