Battlestar Galactica Under Review

I was tipped off to the show by a handful of people. Most said, if I liked Lost – which of course I do – then I would probably also like Battlestar Galactica. OK fine, after a few years of not watching it, I figured I’d take a chance and throw it on the ol’ Netflix Queue.

Received and watched the first disc, which was basically just a miniseries. I liked it. The concept of the show and the themes it dealt with were pretty interesting; a story about humanity and our sins and shortcomings, and what it means to “be alive,” and what it means to earn it. I liked the concept quite a bit and added the rest of the discs for season 1.

So far I’m halfway through the 3rd disc of that season. And right about now, it’s starting to lose it’s appeal ever so slightly.



“Frak this”
OK I get it: it’s on a cable channel that doesn’t like to allow cussing. I get it. But? Seriously? “Frak?” And they use it so damned much. I must admit that I’d really prefer they used the workarounds we’re all familiar with instead, so that “I don’t give a frak, ma’am” would actually be easily translated into “I don’t give a crap, ma’am.” See? Both avoid using “F*ck,” but one sounds like something you’re familiar with, with the other sounds like it was designed to make you laugh at its ridiculousness.

This may sound like a strange critique coming from a guy who says “f*ck” instead of “Fuck” in his own site, but I maintain: they’re different. You read “F*ck” and in your mind you’re saying “fuck,” whereas you hear “frak” and you just laugh out loud (lol). So there.


Logical inconsistencies
The humans in this show are running away from the robotic workers they created that revolted. They are faster, smarter, stronger, blah blah blah “I’ll be back” and all that BS. So. They seem to be one step ahead of us and have huge computational advantages. HOWEVER, I just got through watching an episode that contained not one, not two, but THREE logical inconsistencies in just one section. I shall now bore you with the details:

A fighter pilot – human – shoots down one of the robotic space fighters. They collide and both wash up on some moon. The human pilot finds the wrecked – I use this term loosely – robot fighter. She finds it and wouldn’t you know, it’s bleeding. Why? Because they’re alive, which is a clever plot development, EXCEPT that we already sort of know this because they have human-like models, and it’s also enormously stupid. Why? Well if you’re building a being whose purpose is to fly around in the vacuum of space and kill things, you don’t want it to be organic because then it’s for more susceptible to failure and has to have life support systems. The robot army would have noticed this, and would not have made a ship/robot that needed life support systems when they could have just kept it nuts, bolts, and circuits and had it live forever, essentially.

Now it gets worse. This pilot wants to fly the crashed robot fighter back to her ship. The problem? The ship is a being unto itself, it is not piloted by a robot, it is the robot. Now, I’m not a scientist, but I’m pretty sure that a mouse couldn’t crawl up my dead ass and find levers to control functions like my arms and legs and speech; I’m me, there’s no controls for that, the controls are my brain. Well it’s the same with this ship – it’s “alive,” it shouldn’t have controls.


Except it does. Which is utterly ridiculous, because if it has a “brain” to control these functions, it shouldn’t have levers and stuff.

Thridly, let’s not forget she shot it out of space. This created bullet holes. We saw these as she walked up to it. Well, it turns out that apparently you can just stuff a jacket into these holes and properly seal a damaged ship for space flight. With a parka. Seal. A. Space. Ship. With cotton.

… rrriiiiiigggghhhtttt…


But Still
It could be intriguing. I can see why people would recommend it to followers of Lost. And I think that I have the time to spare on my Netflix queue, that I can give it time to develop. More time, that is. See if it finds its stride before I find my blanket and pillow, or worse, my laptop and a long streak of hate to spew.

I’ll keep you updated.