[spcglider]

Originally Posted by CaptainTux

I know I replied to this thread in the past, but I am feeling deep at the moment. Not including miniseries and made for tv movies, I have three all time favorite sci fi shows. Farscape, Firefly, and the one that struck a positive chord in a dark child hood, Battlestar Galactica.

Farscape is all about the hammering of John Chichton for me. How much can one man take and how far will he go. In the beginning he could not kill, in the end, he was willing to take out the galaxy. Suffice to say the show is all about one man for me.

Farscape is an unabashed "re-imagining" of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon (the ORIGINALS). A good one, to be sure, but the human "fish out of water" story taken to it's extreme. No fault there, just acknowleging the source.

Battlestar Galactica. Okay, fine. It gave me a defined good and evil when I needed it. It gave me an ensemble of people to aspire to, respect, and root for. So why is that important for others? Why is this something we should share with the new generation of sci fi fans and why is it something to wish it could have been continued with the original cast...or at least a next generation based on the original vision?

The answer is simple...we need what BSG offers. We need heroes, we need leaders without moral ambiguity, we need hope in the face of desperate circumstances, we need faith, and we also need a good time.

Being a big fan of moral ambiguity, I'll have to agree to dis-agree! I believe what we need are leaders who know the definition of moral ambiguity and know how to use it to the advantage of the people they serve. Not just themselves. I don't believe that a black&white approach to reality is a safe one all the time. Especially when humanity is involved. That's why Commander Adama had the fashizzle. He knew when to bend or break the rules in order to keep 1000 pounds of humanity in a 5 pound space baggie.

During the great depression the best selling movies were Shirley Temple films and Westerns. Shirley Temple made sense. She was cute and adorable and put smiles on faces that had not smiled and forgotten in some time....but western serials? It makes sense. People were suffering over matters that were unclear. Let's face it...how many folk today understand why decisions made by men on a trading floor means they lose a job, price of gas goes up, and beets become less affordable? The bad guy was intangible. It was something that did not make sense. Polly Purebread tied to the train tracks as Black Bart twirls his mustache and giggles at the sound of the train whistle made sense. It was tangible and real and the suspense was palatable. The hero would ride in on a horse, rescue Polly, and smack and shoot Bart at high noon. Or Pa and his boys were gonna lose the ranch to the wicked men and the family would have to pull together with the help of a stranger. Maybe a town was under siege and Miss Kitty would have to call in an old friend to help. It did not matter. The bad guys were bad, there was no complexity, there was nothing to understand, there was no confusion. The good guys were good. They did not have a dark side, and if they did, it was because Bart killed their kid brother or they needed to redeem themselves from something dark they did decades ago. Reality sucks. The studios need to remember that we need escape from reality, not a reflection of it to dilute the fantasy we are looking for in science fiction.

That's exactly the feeling one gets from watching the epic Lord Of The Rings trilogy. And you are correct. Humanity needs a break every now and then to maintain what passes for sanity. In an objective view, it's really just lying to ourselves. But a necessary fantasy nonetheless. There were NEVER heroes pure of heart nor were there EVER villains operating simply for the purpose of evil for evil's sake (unless they were insane). John Wayne, while a standup guy and all around Hollywood like-able person, wasn't Sterling Pureheart the white Paladin in real life. He was a guy. Just like a million other guys in the great unwashed masses... going to work, doing his job, reacting with a mixture of logic and emotion to what life handed him.

It is refreshing, however, to allow ourselves the conceit of heroes and villains in cinema. It makes comforting entertainment. And that is one of the many functions of film/tv/radio/media. In fact, in light of the great tradition of storytelling, one might say one of the MAIN functions.

The bad guys were the Cylons. Why? They hate peace and equality and all the things that make us noble. Why? because they are evil. They have no souls.

Actually, if you examine the clues prvided in the story, one could infer that the Cylons were created to BE evil by the agent of evil itself, Count Iblis. If he was involved to a extent where his actual voice was used as that of the Machine Leader and then later transferred to the Imperious Leader, one could judge from the nature of the character that he was directly responsible for the ensuing situation.

Today our politicians are corrupt, our sports heroes are thugs, and our heroes are wicked and the villains are misunderstood.

While technically you are correct, I'm going to have to call this "looking through rose colored glasses". The overall trend in media is towards a "dark" hero... agreed. But I'm afraid that if you examine history you will note that corrupt politicians and sports thugs are no new phenomenon. It has been that way since time immemorial. As for wicked heroes, one has to come to terms with that self-same moral ambiguity. Is it not wicked to kill? Sherriff Matt Dillon, The Lone Ranger, The Batman, The Phantom, even Roy Rogers... all of them summarily killed their adversaries at one time or another. The only "hero" to eschew killing was Doc Savage, who captured his enemies whenever possible and performed brain surgery on them at a secret facility in upstate New York in order to turn them into useful members of society. But the killing of villains is a convenience afforded by storytelling. The creator is allowed to design an unredeemable person so vile and wicked that the only way to deal with them is to "kill them all and let God sort it out". Its a gift of the medium... catharsis. One could almost call it an emotional reward. We don't have that luxury in reality. Reality isn't that black and white. If it were, Pro Wrestling would be the only entertainment available.

While the elite say BSG and Shane and the Rifleman and Superman are simplistic popcorn and lack depth....I say this is out hope and this is our chance. The children are lost and alone and their icons spend as much time on court tv as they do on the court or screen. When they are on tv...the character is another uninspired, homogenized, gray character painting a gray world a little more gray.

It is time for a little hope, faith, and love.

Battlestar Galactica brilliantly exemplified that with simplicity. That is not popcorn, that is brilliance. When you do not need a playbook to explain what is going on, you have communicated a message effectively. That is brilliance and quality storytelling. The right inspiration can shape a dark world into a brighter place. We may aspire to be the heroes we secretly yearn for. Maybe it is about time a splash of color was added to the gray.

That is all I have at the moment. I hope my ramblings made sense and I hope I sold the candidate BSG well.

You make perfect sense. But I don't find your assesment of the world as nothing but gray to be an accurate one. The placement of color in the world is subject to the individual... and to the perception of the rest. Nature provides us with more color (in a metaphorical sense) than we can understand... add to that the color of society and the individual and we are subject to a rainbow of infinite breadth. But one must be willing to perceive it in full spectrum and not just obsess on a single color.

Hope, Faith, and Love, in my view, must remain the exception to the rule or they lose all meaning. I won't deign to argue that the existence of simplified fare like Galactica is necessary to distill and promote the message of Hope , Faith and Love, but these things are meaningless unless they are contrasted against their abscence or loss.

That having been said, I agree that Galactica is a smashing example of the epic storytelling art... carrying all the classic hallmarks that make it a much more useful thing to society than simple, empty entertainment.

-Gordon