I'M LIKIN' THE NEW BATTLESTAR GALACTICA

Kevin Wohlmut, entertainment critic for Wohlmut.com

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Although I was very interested in the remake, I was out of the country when the Sci-Fi channel first premiered the new Battlestar Galactica. So I didn't actually get started watching it until midway through the first season. But it immediately impressed me.

I first tuned in during an episode where Starbuck is interrogating a captured Cylon prisoner. This prisoner was one of the human-looking clones, who are touted as the new breed of Cylon. (These clones undoubtedly save the producers scads of money on their costuming budget, compared to the elaborate shiny robots from the previous series).

But the series had dropped strong hints throughout, that these clones still have some kind of machinelike aspect to them. They have superior silicon brains or something like that. Starbuck orders the guards to smack up the Cylon clone until he starts bleeding, and then Starbuck begins waterboarding him. (Hey, these guys are hip to current events...)

So of course, remembering all the hokey plot holes in the previous series, I was immediately skeptical. "What's the point of torturing a robot?" I wondered. "He can't feel pain anyway."

The writers didn't go three minutes before answering my question. "Of course, you could turn your pain circuits off," Starbuck remarked. "But then you would only be a machine. Then a messy wet biological brain like mine could outwit you. I could think circles around you."

Brilliant insight there! Suggesting that emotions, hunches and feelings, make humans superior thinkers to adding machines. And Starbuck's comment also makes reference to all the old sci-fi shows (including the previous version of Battlestar Galactica) where humans easily outwit stupid, predictable robots. (Think of Captain Kirk talking the Nomad Probe, or the Landru Computer, into committing suicide.) The comment serves a double purpose: not only, poking gentle fun at the old Captain Kirk / BSG-style dumb robots. But also putting us viewers on notice that the new Cylons are smarter than that. These guys are actually Artificial Intelligences that have, well, intelligence. Self-awareness, rather than mathematical formulas. We should expect things like determination, insight, duplicity, and foresight from these new Cylons. (Nevertheless... in one of the most recent episodes, Baltaar has apparently learned some techniques from Starbuck's interrogation. Baltaar tortures another Cylon by playing on her/its emotions. In this series, the machines may indeed be devious and think faster than humans... but humans have had many, many millenia more practice at it.)

And quickly during this episode it became obvious that the Cylons share other sophisticated traits with humans. Like religion. The captured Cylon kept making predictions about the future as if he were some kind of Greek Oracle. And began to debate monotheism with Starbuck.

Religious AI's! Now there's something you don't see every day in schlock science-fiction. I can only think of one book which even broached the possibility (and I didn't even think that was such a great book). Yet the new BSG handles this concept really well. Very realistically, as if truly smart, alien AI's actually did have a religion -- what would they do with it?

Which brings me to the thing that most impressed me about the new BSG. What a ballsy editorial decision! During a time when real-life America is engaged in a war with religious overtones... on the new BSG series, the villains are monotheists and the "good guys" are apparently polytheists.

Now in my view, that's good writing. Good writing takes risks, and good sci-fi writing challenges what people think they know about the here and now. Surely some producer somewhere must have wondered, "Aren't we going to alienate God-fearing Christian Red-State America by presenting a series where the heroes are pagans? And they're fighting vilains who proselytize about One God?" But, unlike most of TV, the producers apparently came to the correct conclusion: "Not if we do it right." If the heroes are presented as human -- having values, having loyalties and friendships and love, even if they have character flaws -- while the villains are clearly evil, then of course the audience will identify with the heroes. Virgil and Homer knew that literary trick four thousand years ago, but Hollywood writers today generally seem to think that American audiences can't see past the most superficial jingoistic colors and allegiences.

Virgil and Homer did as much, but sci-fi writing of course takes that strategy to a new level. When, for example, realistic protagonists in a sci-fi or speculative fiction story are pagans... it's meant to force the viewer to think, to realize that maybe superficial religious chatter and dogma are less important than what a person does with his or her morals. And this, of course, may be a valuable insight into real life.

The new series quickly answered one of the oldest and most-repeated criticisms of the old series. I can't even count how many times people asked me, "If these Cylons are robots, howcome they bother to put three individual robot units into each of their fighters as if they were human pilots? Why do they bother putting life-support and air-conditioning into their fighters at all" (because humans occasionally steal Cylon fighter craft and pilot them) ? "Why couldn't they just put a computer brain into the fighter instead of an actual pilot?" Well in the new series, the Cylon fighters are clearly just integrated machines. When the Galactica captures one fighter, they have to modify it for weeks with jury-rigged equipment before Starbuck can even test-fly it. And it doesn't look like she's comfortable as she's flying it. Question answered.

Unlike the old series, in the new series the villains are a real threat. This is pretty much one of the main distinctions between good writing and bad writing -- and it adds to the drama by leaps and bounds.

One might almost argue that the fun of watching the old series, was wondering how the clumsy villains were going to screw up THIS week, and miss a perfect opportunity to destroy the handsome and invulnerable good guys. Now the tables are turned.

The first time any of the main characters meet a NEW Cylon centurion (on board the Galactica, at least), everyone immediately flees from it in terror. Because it kills the first guy standing in line, in less than one second. In the old series, the Cylons were slow, clumsy, stupid, and predictable. These new Cylons are fast, smart, and deadly.

Lastly but perhaps even more importantly, I like the series because each of the characters has one or more huge character flaws. Anyone who's familiar with my own writing, knows that I dislike shiny, happy, perfect characters. I much prefer to write about characters who have weaknesses -- because it's so much more fun and dramatic to watch them overcome their flaws, or succeed despite their flaws, than it is to watch flawless Supermen easily dispatch their hapless enemies.

Commander Adama had a striking quote about this in the first episode of the new series, and clearly this is meant to be the theme of the show.

(Background: In the old series, the Cylons were a race of robots which reptillian aliens had built, and eventually the aliens grew weaker and weaker as the robots did their work for them, until only the robots were left. In the new series, the humans built the Cylons -- as servants -- and the Cylons, being truly intelligent AIs, rebelled at the slavery, and then set about designing improvements to themselves.) Just as the Cylons declared war on humanity a second time, Adama made a speech which included the quote, "When the Cylons rebelled, we comforted ourselves by saying that they were defective. A mistake, a flawed creation. The truth is, that WE are the flawed creation." This pithy but memorable quote ties together two themes of the series: first, it touches on the religious theme, mentioned earlier. It even brings up the subject of hubris... the ancient, ancient sci-fi theme (beginning with the old legend of The Golem) that creating a truly intelligent AI is an act of hubris. But secondly, it acknowledges that all the human characters have deep character flaws.

Adama himself is a good example. He clearly doesn't know how to be a good father to his son -- although we've come to expect that from macho heroes in American media. Beyond that, he evinces a manipulative streak -- he's lying about knowing where Earth is. Following the old military maxim that a lie which gets people up off their @$$es is preferable to a truth which doesn't do that. A moral dilemma which Adama handles like a real-life military man, instead of the way a hero from literature would handle it.

In the old series, Adama was a benificent despot. All his decisions were always right, and his motivation was always for the greater good of humanity. He had some degree of religious authority (which was never really specified, but he was an expert on the old founding myths of the society). Yet he was also the elected Head of State of his planet, and took executive power over the entire human race during the emergency -- while simultaneously being the military commander of the most powerful surviving warship. Yet still he found the time to be a family man when he wasn't on the bridge of the ship. The only people who doubted or disagreed with his decisions were clear villains like Baltaar and Sire Yuri.

In retrospect, Adama was like a conservative Republican wet-dream of an authority figure (although such political divisions weren't so apparent back in the '70s when BSG was on the air.) He was the "good Prince," and allegience to him made the messy realities of Democracy not only unnecessary, but even undesirable. There was a lot of not-very-subtle ancient Hebrew symbolism in the old series. Twelve tribes, one of them lost, for example. Commander Adama was meant to represent a Moses figure, leading the people to the Promised Land.

Adama represented a seamless union of Church, State, and Military authority in the old series. But no longer. In the current storyline, the President of the civil government is pretty much in a state of open rebellion against Adama and Tigh's increasingly heavy-handed military rule. (Although this is mainly Colonel Tigh's fault, see below -- but the tensions between Adama and the President started long before Tigh took command.)

Colonel Tigh is an even better example. In the old series, he was a generic "Yes-man" to Adama. He had virtually no character except that occasionally he offered tactical suggestions which made Adama's strategies even more perfect and effective.

In the new series Tigh is perhaps second only to the outright villain Baltaar, as the most flawed of all the flawed characters. Not only is he a malicious hardass, he really is a terrible military commander with a penchant for letting his emotions get in the way of rational decisions. He's such a drunkard that, when his subordinates are talking to him by intercom, they sometimes make a "swigging" motion to each other with their hands, silently saying "the bastard is soused AGAIN, we'd better cover for him".

This makes things much more tense and dramatic when Adama gets wounded and Tigh is forced to assume command. (He knows he's a bad commander.) And as Tigh does assume command, for a serious length of time, Tigh's mistakes open up plot developments which increase the dramatic tension and precipitate new storylines. Events which will reverberate down the rest of the series, will now always be remembered as "Oh, that whole thing started when that idiot Tigh got put in command." Of course, positive plot developments might occur, too. For example, it's so clear that Tigh is making a mistake by declaring martial law, that the civillian government may well emerge strengthened and more legitimate after the fracas.

See? This is why it's so much more fun to have flawed characters than perfect ones. Tigh was utterly forgettable before -- now he's an indispensable part of the series.

All the characters have flaws. The Cylons have an unhealthy obsession with sex and religion. Starbuck in the old series, used to talk about being insubordinate; the new Starbuck is so insubordinate that it's hard for people to work with her. Yet, like the old series, she is clearly having fun while doing so. Apollo in the old series used to be a "pris"; in the new series he's an unlikeable "prig" -- there's a difference. Nevertheless, like in the old series, he's always on the side of Truth and Justice, and therefore admirable (but unlike the old series -- this sets him up for conflict with his father, Adama!) Boomer is a Cylon in a complete and thorough state of denial. The list goes on.

Shiny, happy, perfect characters are one piece of bad writing which often showed up in the new Star Trek serieses. And it's instructive to compare the treatment of some of the "rogue" characters from Battlestar Galactica, versus Star Trek. The character of Lt. Tom Paris, in Star Trek Voyager was obviously meant to be a "Starbuck"-type, from Battlestar Galactica. Yet Voyager completely ruined the character, while BSG actually pulled it off very well.

Starbuck in the old series, was immediately presented as a likeable rogue. He gambled, he drank, he smoked big cigars on-screen (when even in non-fiction shows, people never smoked on TV). As the first episode begun, his comrades already knew that he would cheat at cards any chance he got. (One of the most memorable scenes, very late in the moribund series, was when Starbuck was marooned on a planet with only a Cylon for company, and the Cylon caught him cheating at cards.) The characters constantly referred to his reputation as a womanizer. And perhaps most importantly, he seemed to be having FUN doing these morally questionable things.

But Tom Paris never seemed to be affected by temptation. By the time we encountered Tom Paris, he was already a reformed rogue. In the first episode, the captain of Voyager pulls him out of a prison term where he was sent because he'd accidentally gotten some other pilots killed in an unspecified macho stunt. We've known him just minutes, before he's trying to convince the other characters that "the ghosts of those four pilots came to me on Christmas Eve and showed me the error of my ways." Boring. Bitter, acrid -- we didn't get to see him riding high, as a hotshot stunt pilot, before his fall. Unlikeable.

This wasn't an acting problem. (There was plenty of bad acting to go around, on the old BSG.) It was a writing problem. Tom's character never really went anywhere from there.

Because the Captain had gotten him out of prison, Tom was virtually always a stalwart supporter of the Captain. Since Captain Janeway was arguably the #1 protagonist in the series, she was almost always right in her decisions. Therefore, when Tom supported her, he was being loyal, true, moral, proper, dutiful. The opposite of a "likeable rogue". Perhaps even more to the point, the bitterness receded but never seemed to go away. Tom would flout the authority of other officers -- Chakotay and Tuvok, for example -- but he only rarely seemed to have fun doing it. I suspect this was an intentional decision on part of the writers, because they desperately wanted all their protagonists to be sympathetic even as they squabbled among themselves. They couldn't handle the moral greyness of Tom having FUN while undercutting the moral authority of the other characters. The point of the Voyager series was for antagonistic humans to band together out of dire necessity -- therefore the writers felt that everyone's causes and motivations should be presented as equally valid, or else it'd seem like the "right" clique was talking-down to the "bad" clique. Thus, Tom was allowed to flout authority, but not allowed to enjoy it.

This was a mistake. You have to risk some dislike and revulsion if you want to create a believable rogue. Because Tom's character basically never went through moral changes -- he started out 'reformed' and then stayed 'loyal' -- he didn't have a "story arc" that you could follow. There was little if any tale of improvement and self-betterment. This makes for boring writing. You could say the same thing about most of the Maquis characters on Voyager.

I think the Voyager scriptwriters realized very quickly that in Tom Paris, they had failed to pull off the "likeable rogue" schtick. But by the time they realized it, it was too late -- you never get a second chance to make a first impression. At some point early in the second season, they had a story arc where he set up a gambling ring and then defied Commander Chakotay when he got caught. But all that turned out to be a saccharine undercover mission, to oust a spy in their midst by making the crew think Tom was disloyal. Late in the series, Tom commandeered a shuttlecraft and went on basically an eco-terrorist mission, because he had grown sympathetic to the plight of a harp-seal-like alien on a water world. For that he actually received a "real" (i.e., non-undercover) demotion from the Captain. However, by that time in his career, the act of defiance was waaay too late to be believable (and in that paricular script, the eco-terrorism angle was so heavy-handed that it was just tedious to watch).

Starbuck, in the old BSG series, quickly became an item with a woman named Cassiopea. When Starbuck met Cassiopea, she was being reviled and denigrated by other human survivors, because she was a "socialator" -- the word was never clearly defined, but you got the impression it was a mixture of a prostitute and a shaman (religious healer, because she claimed to have some knowledge of medicine and religion).

In terms of character development, this was a two-fer. It solidified Starbuck's reputation as a rogue -- because he was hanging out with a prostitute. At the beginning of the old series, Cassiopea differed from virtually all the other prostitutes in American films, because she didn't seem to have much of a "heart of gold" (e.g. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman). Cassiopea started hanging out with Starbuck because warriors got better food and quarters than the general refugees. Logical motivation for a prostitute.

Whenever Cassiopea protested that "socialator" was a respectable career choice back on her homeworld, it was meant to remind the viewer that Cassiopea WASN'T a respectable character. At least, not at first. But then as Cassiopea became a major character, she worked hard and became a medical officer on board the Battlestar.

Cassiopea may not have had the obvious character flaws that Starbuck had, but on the other hand she clearly started life in a low station and then worked hard to better herself. This makes her admirable -- and once again, shows a story arc. You can't have much of a story arc if somebody starts out in a respectable position, and then moves into another fine upstanding respectable position.

Tom Paris (back on Star Trek Voyager) was also given a reputation as a womanizer, and in one early episode he did indeed get tangled up in a spy ring because he put the moves on a married woman. But I don't recall him actually betraying a woman, (or anyone at all). He came off more like a serial monogamist than a real womanizer. In the first episode of BSG, Starbuck seemed very clearly to be two-timing Athena and Cassiopea. Athena even caught him on a security camera, in a memorable scene, and flipped a switch which vented steam on him while he was kissing Cassy. Athena was furious with him, and after that moment, Starbuck had basically zero romantic relationship to Athena. And thus Starbuck started becoming a one-woman guy. See, to write a character as a believable womanizer, he not only has to cheat -- however briefly -- he has to get caught, too!

(In the new BSG, Starbuck is making love to Baltaar when she calls out Apollo's name. Since they switched the gender of Starbuck in the new series, she can't exactly be a womanizer... but this was the next best thing. And it had the added bonus of making Baltaar look like a womanizer, since we know he secretly has some weird quasi-romantic relationship with a Cylon clone.)

So Star Trek failed that particular endeavor, but the new Battlestar Galactica series clearly learned some good lessons from the old. In the new series, everyone has character flaws -- but none so big that there is no hope of redemption. You even wonder about the villains, like Baltaar and Boomer... perhaps their fundamental humanity may yet overcome their inner demons.

So there you have a laudatory critique of the new BSG series. I was tempted to start writing this in more of a bulleted, "Table" format, comparing the new with the old. But instead I thought it might flow better if I wrote it more stream-of-consciousness, paralleling the sequence as I grew to appreciate the new series. Still, there are a few "1 vs. 2" comparison points left over, that I might want to put into a table.

• Cylon Centurion design:

• Alien Races:

• Consistent look-and-feel:

• Baltaar:

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