literally geeking: Why the Re-Imagined Battlestar Galactica is my all time favourite Sci-Fi.

I love Star Trek. I grew up on it. Whilst I was being ignored by my parents and being forced to scrub the floors by my evil step-sisters the only thing that got me through the days were my dashing golden locks and the crew of the USS Enterprise...D (I was an 80's child). Yes Star Trek was a dream, if only I could live there...on a quiet moon somewhere...with my own holodeck, things would be alright.

They had no money but also no poverty, no sickness that Dr Crusher couldn’t figure out and everyone was serving a declaration of principles worthy of laying down their lives for rather than the propaganda BS that so many today have perished for (Controversy in the comments kids). Truly it was a Utopian vision, which kind of leads to my point.....YEA RIGHT!!!

Even being stabbed in this world is better than your shitty lives.

Within the next 150 years Star Trek's Mankind is going to have World War 3 and learnt that we can’t ever do that again (Because the first two were so successful in this area), invent a method of travelling faster than the speed of light (Salsa at the back of the ship anyone?) and thanks to the judging eyes of Vulcan’s we’ll start to be nice to each other (Judgment usually makes things worse doesn’t it).

It’s a nice idea, full of hope and wonder so it isn’t any real leap to see why people want to turn things like Star Trek and Star Wars into religions. Its ironic then that the new Battlestar Galactica is the only sci-fi that I think managed to credibly include religion as its anchoring motif and be so damn believable.

Why is it so believable? I’d like to say because a bunch of people all start saying they know what God wants and are always bitterly disappointed because ‘the God’ in the series has its own ideas (There’s a moral there for the door knockers amongst you). I’d also like to say it’s because the acting and drama was just so good that I couldn’t wait for the next episode to come and that I cried myself to sleep after Starbuck died (Oh...em...spoiler alert).

Both of those are great reasons to watch the programme but for me it was the something in the background that really cemented the BSG Universe Sandbox that these guys were playing in.

For starters the writers seemed to understand the concept of limited resources, of doing more with less or at least what appears to be less to the audience. If mankind were to travel to the stars they will have two things to contend with, themselves and their dwindling energy and food resources. Star Trek got around these problems by filling the galaxy with places to go, food that appeared out of nowhere and by just inferring that the warp core was actually generating more power than a whole galaxy.

No one smiles in Battlestar

The fact is kids that travelling faster than c is just a waste of time and energy (physics humour) and short of creating new universes to suck energy from (Thank you Stargate) we’ll never have enough. It’s much more efficient to momentarily fold space, create a tiny little wormhole, fire port thrusters and just let the laws of physics glide you safely to your destination in the blink of an eye..I assume. It sounds like a lot more work but as any IT guy will tell you, less goes wrong if it isn’t on all the time and unlike Star Trek, BSG does mention that charging the FTL takes some time.

Also on the matter of conservation of energy are the damn phasers. Now these came about in the 60’s as a way to make miniature models of ships look futuristic and badass in fights. The problem again is that firing beams of energy is a flagrant waste of power and if we could generate that much energy for weapons whilst also running the shields at maximum we’d probably be Gods. Battlestar again comes to Sci-Fi's rescue with more smart ideas from the Non-Fiction section. Gun Batteries, Missiles and to a lesser extent Rail guns. Because firing a lump of metal powered by a chemical propellant and just letting it fly...that’s efficient but using magnets to accelerate objects till they hit with the force of a missile, that’s just awesome and a great way to get rid of the surplus of energy saving lightbulbs from Star Trek.

Fast forward to 3.30 to see the cool shit

It was also hard to ignore the parallels of Artificial Intelligence with slavery in BSG. The Federation didn’t have much of an economy so the slave trade was hardly viable for them but in today’s world slavery is still a very real and ongoing stain on humanity’s soul and BSG didn’t sugar coat it, hell they downright pointed out that every civilisation needs smart and cheap tools, even the machine worlds and they make it a very grey area for what we assume is an open and shut discussion on the topic of servitude. But whilst we could have a very PC debate about that we can’t deny that today we’re building gadgets and toys right now to make our lives better and easier. But the day will come when that Smart phone is going to look up at you, think you’re an idiot and not want to get you that Google search on David Duchovny. What then? I’m sure you all think that you’ll release your AI into the cloud but it’s more likely you’ll be whining about how it’s your property and switch it off and on a few times.

But these things I’ve discussed are topics that form the tapestry of Battlestar. If I had to sum up the ultimate reason why BSG is the best Sci-Fi TV program of all time (For me at least) it would be in the character of Admiral Adama, the Commander, the Old Man and to his friends, Bill. Parallels can be drawn between Adama and Humanity as a whole, and not just in the obvious Adam reference. As a character he has the greatest burdens of any character ever written including Jesus who lets be fair didn’t go on the run from the Romans as much as just letting them have him.

Adama knew a thing or two about fighting Centurions.

He’s an old, tired man on the verge of retiring from an inglorious career. He had so much potential but instead of forging a perfect path he got to his position through strokes of both good and bad luck. Does that sound familiar? It should, because it sounds like Humanity to me, tired and on the way out. He’s not happy about it but it looks like it’s time to go and looking over his career he gets why and dammit he's going to go with a little pride...Until he gets one last chance. Cue the Rocky Montage.

His burdens were far greater than any other captain in any other series ever. He had to keep the last of the human race alive all while randomly travelling the cosmos and fighting off a race of machines whose leader is a robot man having a temper tantrum. You see Adama had real problems with no clear cut answers, only his gut instincts and steely will to survive. What did Picard have? Moral conundrums, did he make a few choices that kept him in his quarters at night pondering the meaning of life?

to make the tough choices

Adama didn’t have time for that and even if he did he didn’t have the answers. He laughed at the absurdity of the Universe, mourned silently for the people he lost along the way, did a job no one else would want and showed that a tired old species might just have one last round left in them.