BSG: The Best Show on Iraq

(Caution: this is Chock Full O' Spoilers...)

Exodus Part Two was ... just ... *sigh * ... heart still beating...

And, thank the gods, More and more are noticing how it's a great damm show, like the New York Post....

THE best show on television about Iraq takes place hundreds of light years away, with starships, alien worlds and robots that look like humans.

It's "Battlestar Galactica," which has managed through science fiction to do what no other drama does - provide a primetime allegory for terrorism, occupation and religious conflict.

Indeed. Where else can art or politics make a lefty consider a ban on abortion and a right-winger understand suicide bombing? Insurgency anyone? Like Satrbuck tells the Post:

"You never quite know who the good guys are," Sackhoff says.

So say we all.


The Oregonian underlines it all by saying:

These are curious times: only in a geeky science-fiction series on basic cable are the most difficult questions of the day openly entertained.

An even more compelling commentary on the show is this article titled "Watching Battlestar Galactica from the Middle East".

I would posit that, as unseemly as it sounds, perhaps watching Battlestar Galactica ought to be required viewing for the leaders of the free world in our own decidedly non-alternative universe.

Now, as for that last episode... I'm totally down with TV Fodder's assessment of the Best! Scene! Evah! Good pals taped this one for me and I had to replay it ten or 12 times.

Far above in the pretty blue sky, a shiny object appears. It grows bigger and bigger.. and bigger. Something is falling into the atmosphere fast. OH... MY... GODS!!! It's the GALACTICA! Adama has jumped the ship right into the atmosphere and is dropping like a stone toward the planet!!! Why the heck is he doing that?!?!? Can he LAND on the planet??

Lol. It looked quite bad ass. And a great way to get vipers right into the action.

TV Recap gives props to this great quiet moment:

If you didn’t notice it on the first viewing, watch Lee as he thanks his doomed battlestar before disembarking. It’s one of those great fleeting moments that most shows wouldn’t bother with.

Here's something else amazing by the show that I hadn't realized.

There are over twenty-five recurring characters on the series to date, all of which appeared in the season premiere, and they just keep adding more.

(watch out, this source has spoilers I didn't want to see.)The review includes this LOL line of praise:

This isn’t just a “must see television” kind of good, this is “drop what you’re doing and break into someone’s home to watch this show on their TV instead of missing a single episode” good.

Mmmmmmm Helo

Great blog dedicated to Tahmoh Penikett

The Boys and Girls of Battlestar

The Blast Door Map

Inside the Map


Credit the site:

From upper-left of the map running counter-clockwise:

Sursum corda. Sursum corda. Sursum corda: "Lift up your hearts."
Aegrescit Medendo: "The disease worsens with the treatment" or "the remedy is worse than the disease."
Malum consilium quod mutari non potest: "It's a bad plan that can't be changed."
Cogito ergo doleo: "I think, therefore I suffer" or "I think, therefore I am depressed."
Ut sit magna, tamen certe lenta ira deorum est: "The wrath of the gods may be great, but it certainly is slow."
Liberate te ex inferis: "Save yourself from hell."
Hic sunt dracones: ""Here be dragons."
Mus uni non fidit antro: "A mouse does not rely on just one hole."
Credo nos in fluctu eodem esse: "I think we're on the same wavelength."


Written across the question mark circle:

Nil actum reputa si quid superest agendum: "Don't consider that anything has been done if anything is left to be done."

Lost returnedeth!

Click above for screencaps with thanks to The Tail Section

Shout out to Trek, and to Peace

an op-ed and a letter in the NY TImes re Star Trek, passed along by Mrs. Rasslin'

September 18, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor

Mr. Universe
By RONALD D. MOORE
Altadena, Calif.

FOUR decades ago, when the starship Enterprise first settled into orbit around Planet M-113 on Sept. 8, 1966, I was 2 years old. I could not have known it at the time, but "Star Trek" would literally change my life.

To say that any television show has changed one's life is to invite both mockery and pity for a poor, shuttered geek who must surely have been denied direct sunlight and the attention of women for the better part of his days. But in lieu of offering documentary proof that I do not, in fact, still reside in my parents' basement, let me simply tell you how "Star Trek" informed the way I look at the world.

"Star Trek" is often reduced to kitsch: Kirk's paunch, Spock's pointy ears, green-skinned alien girls. But it was more than escapism and rubber-suited aliens. It was a morality play, with Capt. James T. Kirk as a futuristic John F. Kennedy piloting a warp-driven PT-109 through the far reaches of the galaxy.

Kirk, for me, embodied an American idea: His mission was to explore the final frontier, not to conquer it. He was moral without moralizing. Week after week, he confronted the specters of intolerance and injustice, and week after week found a way to defeat them without ever becoming them. Jim Kirk may have beat up his share of bad guys, but you could never imagine him torturing them.

A favorite quote: "We're human beings, with the blood of a million savage years on our hands. But we can stop it. We can admit that we're killers, but we won't kill today." Kirk clearly understood humanity's many flaws, yet never lost faith in our ability to rise above the muck and reach for the stars.

"Star Trek" painted a noble, heroic vision of the future, and that vision became my lodestar.

As I grew into adolescence, the show provided a handy reference against which to judge the questions that my young mind began to ask: What is the obligation of a free society toward the less fortunate? Does an "advanced" culture have the right to spread its ideas among more "primitive" ones? What does it mean to be human, and at what point do we lose our humanity to our technology?

And as I grew into an adult, and my political views took shape, I treasured "Star Trek" as a dream of what my country could one day become - a liberal and tolerant society, unafraid to live by its ideals in a dangerous universe, and secure in the knowledge that its greatness derived from the strength of its ideas rather than the power of its phasers.

In my 20's, through a combination of luck and determination, I fulfilled my childhood dream - I became a writer for "Star Trek."

For 10 years, I helped propel the latter-day incarnations of "Trek" into new territory while keeping alive the set of moral principles I'd taken to heart. As I plotted the adventures of the Enterprise-D and the travails of the space station Deep Space 9, I gradually became interested in pushing the boundaries of "Star Trek," and began to let Captains Picard and Sisko find the shades of gray in a universe Kirk sometimes saw only in black and white.

Science fiction on film and television has, over the past four decades, moved decisively away from the optimism of "Star Trek." "Blade Runner," "Alien" and "The Matrix" posit much darker, dystopian futures; even the "Star Wars" movies posit the rise of a galactic empire founded on "the dark side." Social and commercial explanations abound for this shift, but my theory is that "Star Trek" set the gold standard for the idealistic vision of tomorrow and no one has successfully challenged it.

Nowadays, it may appear that I've turned a blind eye to my lodestar as the crew of the battlestar Galactica behave in ways that would've been unthinkable in the "Star Trek" universe that Gene Roddenberry created. But "Battlestar Galactica" remains very much informed by the lessons I learned from that slightly paunchy man in the gold pajama top on the good ship Enterprise.

My characters may not have all the answers (sometimes they're not even aware of the questions) but they contain kernels of both good and evil in their hearts and continue to struggle for salvation and redemption against the darker angels of their natures. Their defeats are many, their victories few, but somehow, some way, they never give up the dream of finding a better tomorrow.

And, thanks to a 40-year-old television show, neither do I.

Ronald D. Moore is the writer of "Battlestar Galactica."

September 20, 2006
The 'Star Trek' Ideal

To the Editor:

Re "Mr. Universe" (Op-Ed, Sept. 18): Like Ronald D. Moore, and a legion of starry-eyed science-fiction aficionados, I was swept up in the swashbuckling idealism of Capt. James T. Kirk. Not to mention the cool rationalism and flawless logic of his half-Vulcan first officer, Mr. Spock.

But there was more to "Star Trek" than space opera. After centuries of war, strife and intolerance, the people of Earth had finally shed their fears and prejudices and attained the best of all possible worlds: global peace.

Indeed, part of the U.S.S. Enterprise's exploratory mission was to pave the way for a Pax Galactica through a United Federation of Planets. Thus far, however, the 21st century has been defined by terror, hegemony and religious fanaticism - a far cry from the noble tomorrow of Captain Kirk and Company.

Alas, the future seems so long ago.

Rosario A. Iaconis
Mineola, N.Y., Sept. 18, 2006