I've just now finished watching Season Two of the best show on TV, Battlestar Galactica, on DVD (we're a bit behind in Australia). If you haven't watched it, and want to, best you stop reading here, because there's major, serious spoilers in the post below. You have been warned...
First off, this show has everything I like in SF -- great characters, great writing, action, big philosophical issues, politics... it's not a usual mix in SF, but that's why I like it. Most of Season Two rocked, and I could sing the praises of most of the episodes in some other post. But I'm writing this one because the way the season ended really sucked.
The Fleet elects the wrong person to be president (after the President and Admiral Adama could have gotten away with a fraudulent victory scot-free, but decide against it for moral reasons) and that president sends them all to colonise a well-hidden little dump of a world, because everyone's just tired of running and wants desperately to settle down, even though their leaders think it's a terrible idea. They settle, they forget their defences, they think they're safe and let their guard down... and what do you know, the cylons show up after all, what's left of the Fleet is forced to flee, and the colonies are left defenceless, and are forced to surrender.
Now, it IS a fascinating dilemma -- would you have taken the fraudulent election, given what the alternative led to, and was always going to lead to? And certainly this is a problem with democracy, sometimes people get it wrong. As far as that goes, that's a subject worth exploring. But you have to explore it properly, and not resort to simplicity... which is not what Battlestar Galactica usually does with most issues, so I was surprised and disappointed to see it here.
The problem is that I see a trend developing, in writers exploring this issue. In the first episode of the TV series Jericho (which is the only episode of that show I'll watch, I'm sure) after some nuclear bombs go off, survivors are within hours fighting and clawing each others' eyes out to survive. And how many times have you seen it in disaster movies, where something bad happens, and people kill each other in panic and selfishness? It's the cliche of selfish, uncooperative people who, deprived of the thin veneer of civilisation in their daily lives, quickly resort to barbarian savagery.
In Galactica, they don't turn on each other (though they have in previous episodes) but they do resort to en-masse hysteria and irrational thinking, in hoping the cylons will leave them alone. There is a distrust of ordinary people here, in the writing. A cynicism of the choices ordinary people make, a distrust of democracy, and an underlying suspicion that the populace need guidance, to avoid making the wrong decisions. Now, democracy may in many cases be worthy of distrust (Hitler won %40 of the popular vote) but again, you've got to know what you're criticising.
Does anyone recall crowds of New Yorkers stampeding each other on September 11th? Of course not, the precise opposite happened. It's not always the case, of course, but in most disasters, people band together. When I lived in Perth, there were two moderately dramatic incidents -- one a car crash out the front of the house, and two a big bushfire in King's Park across the road, and on both occasions, everyone was helping everyone else. In any war or disaster or relatively minor challenge, this always happens. This, also, is the tribal instinct from which patriotism comes. And HERE's your dilemma (Galactica writers please pay attention), because the very good, positive, vital force that unites people in the face of danger and challenge, can also mutate into something nasty, under some circumstances -- see above reference to Hitler for proof. The problem isn't that people are stupid and make the wrong choices. The problem is that people are basically good, and band together, and help each other, and form united communities... that then begin to discriminate, become xenophobic and attack everyone else. The good and the bad, it's just two sides of the same coin. I've always loved the Chinese yin-and-yang symbol, and this is why -- it's life, and it's human life in particular. The things that make us good also make us bad. Evil and stupidity do not exist in isolation of more positive moral values.
People aren't stupid, it's just that their reasonable intelligence and goodness can lead to unforeseen developments. Do a people who have just been subjected to genocide ever bury their heads in the sand and hope they won't be attacked again? Ask the Israelis. They'll tell you they don't think so. Galactica's fleet may well have elected Guyus Baltar, but to suppose they'd let their Fleet go to ruin and forget to protect themselves is silly. People who are survivors of genocide become militarist, patriotic and develop a fatalistic, potentially brutal streak. They say things like 'never again' (sounds familiar, yes?), and swear it on the many graves of their ancestors. That's called not being stupid. It's rational, and the more I've understood this as I've grown older (and a little wiser, I hope), the more appreciative of Israel's position in the world I've become. But it won't be news to any Israelis that too much of this attitude creates many negatives too, with the ultimate fear being that you might become what you hate (which thankfully Israel has never come close to being, whatever her many critics claim, because Israel at least is fundamentally aware of the problem... while by contrast, Israel's and indeed Judiasm's enemies, over the many centuries, all share one thing in common -- all are utterly incapable of that kind of self-criticism, or even self-awareness).
But thinking back over previous Galactica episodes, I'm suddenly wondering if as good as the writing's been, that's been missing all along. Where is the patriotic togetherness? Where are the kids listening to pilot frequencies, and cheering for their favorite heroes, like kids in 1940 England would read of the exploits of their favorite spitfire aces? It's never existed in the show, the Fleet's always at each others' throats, the military are always distrusted (despite not deserving it, mostly) and the black marketeers are always stabbing each other in the back. Is patriotism so un-PC these days? Is everyone so frightened of it, or so frightened of appearing square, like the old Galactica show was, of unquestioning, 1950s patriotism where kids sing the anthem and salute the flag, and say 'Gee Mr Apollo sir, I'd sure like to be a viper pilot like you one day!' Is that what people think patriotism always is, and thus, why they avoid it? Has it become that terrible a vomit-inducing cliche? And if so, why not just be original, and write something that tackles it differently, rather than just pretending it doesn't exist, because it makes you somehow uncomfortable?
I'm not asking them to fly the flag. I'm asking them to observe that the flag does fly, will always fly, and that human civilisation will end if it does not, because that's the glue, ultimately, that keeps us together. Then, making that observation, proceed to also observe that some glue can be toxic.
