On Battlestar Galactica Heroic Cylons Battle Vicious Terrorists

Some are calling the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica the best show on television so I decided to check out the season premiere to see what all the hype was about. It turns out to be even better than I had heard. The Sci Fi Channel show is a moving and haunting allegory about why we should stay the course in Iraq. The heroes are a deeply religious race, called the Cylons, who struggle to bring democratic ideals and Christian values to a planet called New Caprica (Iraq, of course) in the face of an increasingly violent insurgency. In a clever and ironic twist the Christian Cylons (Americans) are actually very human-like machines, while the villainous "humans" on New Caprica (al Qaeda) are brutal terrorists who follow a primitive polytheistic religion and behave like animals.

Although I am not generally a big fan of science fiction (my favorite genres are biblical epics, alpine mountain dramas, and women's prison movies), Battlestar Galactica is not really about the future as much as it's a subversive analysis of current events. The terrorists are led by an unscrupulous man prone to violent rages named Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos), who not only has a name that is clearly meant to evoke Osama Bin Laden, he also bears something of a resemblance to Saddam Hussein. He even has a lazy, playboy son like Saddam had. The insurgency is headed up by the unhinged Col. Saul Tigh (Michael Hogan), who is locked up in a Guantanamo-like prison at the beginning of the episode recovering from some Cylon alternate interrogation procedures (apparently New Caprica is free of nit-picking Geneva Conventions).

As soon as Col. Tigh is free he goes right back to lead the insurgents and decides to up the ante by launching a depraved suicide bombing campaign. The first attack takes out a group of idealistic young police recruits, which, of course, directly parallels terrorist attacks against Iraqi security forces taking place today. If I have any criticism of the show it's that the New Capricans are so unsympathetic and vile in contrast to the peace-loving Cylons, who are clearly just trying to help them, that at times it seems like a simplistic battle between good (the Cylons) and evil (the New Capricans). A few more shades of gray might make the show more interesting.

For example, in one scene a terrorist named Starbuck responds to the hospitality of one kindly Cylon by viciously murdering him and then sitting down to calmly eat her dinner covered with his blood. (Luckily, unlike our soldiers in Iraq, the Cylons have the power to regenerate themselves so he's okay in the next scene.) Perhaps the most annoying of the New Capricans is a liberal apologist named Laura Roslin (Mary McDonnell) who justifies the suicide bombing by saying, "Desperate people use desperate measures." At one point she self-righteously accuses the suave and sophisticated President Gaius Baltar (James Callis) of torturing Col. Tigh, but he quickly puts her in her place by echoing George Bush: "We don't use torture." What the New Capricans don't seem to realize is that they only make things worse for themselves by resisting the Cylons' beneficence. If they stopped their futile insurgency, the Cylons would be able to repair the infrastructure and give them better places to live than tents.

All in all it looks like an impressive series. I was very surprised to see a pro-Iraq War, pro-Christian series on television and I urge you to see it before liberals get it taken off the air, although I have noticed that some people on both the right and the left don't seem to get the show and have misunderstood the allegory completely. It's amazing sometimes how some people could watch the same thing I did and be so completely wrong about it. Hopefully, a lot of people will see it and it will make them think about just what it is we are doing in Iraq.

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Jon Swift,Battlestar Galactica, Sci Fi Channel, Science Fiction, Edward James Olmos, Iraq, al Qaeda, War on Terror, Terrorism, Bush, Torture, Osama Bin Laden, Usama Bin Laden, Foreign Policy, Politics