Tonight's Battlestar Galactica was outstanding, and I think it was a milestone in TV Scifi. The reason is that Ron Moore, who cut his chops as a writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation, finally faced what is the toughest standard in SciFi . . . The Wrath of Khan plot. For the uninitiated, Ricardo Montalban is Khan, the super-human genius that Captian Kirk wronged in the orignial Star Trek series (actually, Kirk was quite reasonable given that Khan tried to take over his ship and he still left Khan on a paradise planet with the woman Khan loved . . ., but still, Khan felt ill-used). Anyway, Kirk makes some mistakes. Khan outsmarts him, and Kirk is left to salvage the situation. The bottom line is: he can't. He's defeated Khan, but Khan's last revenge is to take the life of Kirk and his crew (paralelling the Kobayashi Maru test). Kirk should be defeated, but heroically, the always logical Spock sacrifices himself for everyone, and they escape.
Not in the BSG version--A great script that places all of the fuck-ups on the commander of the Battlestar Pegasus, Col. Jack Fisk, who is not equipped to command, and who falls into a Cylon trap (a la Kirk), and in a very non-Kirkian manner, Moore has him abdicate his command responsibilities to Lee Adama (imagine if Kirk had left the bridge in a tense moment and said "Chekhov, you have the con."). Fisk unexpectedly proceeds to play the Spock role and fix the ship at the cost of his own life, just in the nick of time. Ron Moore managed to turn one of the greatest Sci-fi movie memes of all time on its head. "The needs of the many, do not . . . outweigh . . . the needs of the few (or the one)" until push comes to shove and imperfect people make heroic (imperfect) decisions. A hero is one man's idiot, but even if you made the mistake, you can still save the day.
It's one of the best things Ron Moore has ever produced (with the possible exception of Carnivale), complicating "heroes" in a time when we're forced to do that in America as well. In case he wasn't facing enough, Moore also had this episode deal frankly with the issue of abortion. See if you see that featured on American Idol or CSI or any of the "flavors of the week."
For those non-geeks who don't follow this thread--I pity you. Please watch good television and look up from the drool-inducing America's top-Idol-Model-Survivor-Idiot-Jackass brand of television.
And for all of those who would like to make comparisons to Commodore Decker in the ST:TOS episode "Doomsday Machine," don't even go there. Totally different.
--TinFoil Out
3 comments:
But Baltar totally set her up. I thought that it showed more about how the abortion issue is a cynical political calculus in their world and in ours.
yeah, it was a cynical political stunt. If Laura had come out in favor of choice, Baltar would have established himself as the forced-birth alternative. It didn't matter what side she choose, Baltar would exploit either...although the way it turned out, Laura is faced with the loathsome prospect of advocating something she actively fought against on Caprica.
Mikelle
Then, of course, there's "static cling" which is also annoying :)
Yeah, BSG was a big Mormon show--but I think Ron Moore's turned a lot of that mythology on its head. It will be interesting to see how the abortion plot plays out--like I said, I thought that the episode showed more of the cold political calculus around the issue than any statement pro or con.
Dirk Benedict should SO do a guest spot! That would be great.
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