(originally written for ALARM Magazine in April 2007)
The incessant recycling of popular culture is one of the more loathsome qualities of American entertainment. Television shows based on movies, movies based on television shows, video games based on both, and every permutation in between crowd our media landscape. At best, remakes like The Brady Bunch Movie often remind us how much we liked the original. At worst, an ill-conceived rehash like 2005’s Bewitched can make us feel an awful kind of cultural claustrophobia.
But, thankfully, this is not the case with Sci-Fi channel’s re-imagining of the 1978 series Battlestar Galactica, whose third season concluded in March. Executive producer Ronald Moore has created a fascinatingly complex story that is not only entertaining as a sci-fi series, but also sheds light on the evolution of television drama over the thirty years since the original series aired. Like a good cover song, Battlestar Galactica is more than an updated version of its source material. It is the kind of re-interpretation that meditates on the original in the interest of producing something totally new.
Battlestar’s re-creator is no stranger to updating classic science fiction. A long time “Star Trek” fan, Moore began his television career writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yet unlike The Next Generation, which was, for the most part, a modernization of Gene Roddenberry’s 1966 vision of adventure tales in a utopian future, the new Battlestar turns much of the original premise on its head to great effect, bringing it screaming into the 21st century.
Conceived and promoted as a reaction to the immense popularity of Star Wars, the original Battlestar Galactica chronicled the adventures of a distant human civilization at war with an army of robots. These “cylons” were named so after the extinct race of reptilian aliens who created them centuries earlier. The humans, whose civilization was destroyed in the initial cylon attack, race across the galaxy in search of a new home on a fabled planet called Earth. Though some of the production values appear laughable now, the special effects were groundbreaking at the time, especially for a television show, running the series budget up to a then unheard-of million dollars per episode.
The most significant difference between the two versions of the series, the one simple change to the original premise that transforms the meaning of entire story, is the first thing revealed in the opening sequence of the new series. As the music starts, a title appears that reads: “The Cylons Were Created By Man.” Where the 1978 version portrays a very one-dimensional struggle between good and evil—the remaining human survivors against their merciless alien attackers—the new series centers around a darker, more layered premise steeped in moral ambiguity. Humanity created its own worst enemy.
Whereas all of the cylons in the 1978 series were “toasters,” shiny metal robots whose nefarious form is reminiscent of Darth Vader, the new series features several models of cylons who appear human. Some of these beings even believe they are human, living among humans until a switch is flipped in their programming, at which point their secret identities make them understandably useful for sabotage and subterfuge. The derogatory slang for humanoid cylons on the show is “skin jobs,” a very direct reference to the film Blade Runner, which is based on a Phillip K. Dick story about a detective trying to track down rogue humanoid androids in a similarly dark and frightening future.
The additional layers of complexity evident in the new version of Battlestar also extend to its human characters. The heroes of the 1978 version were good guys crusading the save humanity from their evil robot assailants, but the characters on the current series are more multi-dimensional. The hard nosed admiral, his alcoholic colonel, the self destructive hotshot pilot, and a host of other characters with very real, very human flaws allow the show to delve deep into moral and ethical dilemmas about the nature of good and evil, in addition to showcasing explosive space battles filled with special effects.
Nowhere is the difference in narrative complexity between these shows more obvious than in the character of Baltar. A comically villainous Count who collaborated with the cylons to orchestrate humanity’s demise in the original series, the new Baltar is a brilliant scientist who was seduced into becoming an unwitting cylon accomplice, and then tries to cover up his involvement out of self-preservation. In the 1978 series, Count Baltar is assisted in his evil machinations by a cylon named Lucifer. But on the current series he is counseled by a beautiful “skin job” cylon woman whom he loves. Since she appears only to him, we’re never quite sure whether her advice is real, or just some facet of our anti-hero’s own inner monologue.
Dr. Gaius Baltar on the new Battlestar series is one of the most amazingly complicated characters on television. He’s selfish, vain, and cowardly. But, the deftness with which he’s portrayed forces you to relate to him, to understand that his flaws and deceptions are motivated by fear and ego. If the struggling crew of Galactica represents the best aspects of humanity, he may represent some of the worst, but is human nonetheless.
Looking at these two series is truly revealing about the evolution of television drama over the past thirty years. Modern special effects and larger TV budgets may have allowed the producers to realize the look of the show in a way they could not in the 1970s. But, more importantly, current TV trends that encourage complex narrative structures and layered, conflicted characters have allowed the writers of the series to realize the story in a way that most television didn’t thirty years ago.
It seems appropriate, then, that season three concluded with some of the characters reciting a version of “All Along The Watchtower.” Though everyone gives the song’s original author plenty of credit, even Dylan himself admits that Jimi Hendrix is the one who got it right.
The incessant recycling of popular culture is one of the more loathsome qualities of American entertainment. Television shows based on movies, movies based on television shows, video games based on both, and every permutation in between crowd our media landscape. At best, remakes like The Brady Bunch Movie often remind us how much we liked the original. At worst, an ill-conceived rehash like 2005’s Bewitched can make us feel an awful kind of cultural claustrophobia.
But, thankfully, this is not the case with Sci-Fi channel’s re-imagining of the 1978 series Battlestar Galactica, whose third season concluded in March. Executive producer Ronald Moore has created a fascinatingly complex story that is not only entertaining as a sci-fi series, but also sheds light on the evolution of television drama over the thirty years since the original series aired. Like a good cover song, Battlestar Galactica is more than an updated version of its source material. It is the kind of re-interpretation that meditates on the original in the interest of producing something totally new.
Battlestar’s re-creator is no stranger to updating classic science fiction. A long time “Star Trek” fan, Moore began his television career writing for Star Trek: The Next Generation. Yet unlike The Next Generation, which was, for the most part, a modernization of Gene Roddenberry’s 1966 vision of adventure tales in a utopian future, the new Battlestar turns much of the original premise on its head to great effect, bringing it screaming into the 21st century.
Conceived and promoted as a reaction to the immense popularity of Star Wars, the original Battlestar Galactica chronicled the adventures of a distant human civilization at war with an army of robots. These “cylons” were named so after the extinct race of reptilian aliens who created them centuries earlier. The humans, whose civilization was destroyed in the initial cylon attack, race across the galaxy in search of a new home on a fabled planet called Earth. Though some of the production values appear laughable now, the special effects were groundbreaking at the time, especially for a television show, running the series budget up to a then unheard-of million dollars per episode.
The most significant difference between the two versions of the series, the one simple change to the original premise that transforms the meaning of entire story, is the first thing revealed in the opening sequence of the new series. As the music starts, a title appears that reads: “The Cylons Were Created By Man.” Where the 1978 version portrays a very one-dimensional struggle between good and evil—the remaining human survivors against their merciless alien attackers—the new series centers around a darker, more layered premise steeped in moral ambiguity. Humanity created its own worst enemy.
Whereas all of the cylons in the 1978 series were “toasters,” shiny metal robots whose nefarious form is reminiscent of Darth Vader, the new series features several models of cylons who appear human. Some of these beings even believe they are human, living among humans until a switch is flipped in their programming, at which point their secret identities make them understandably useful for sabotage and subterfuge. The derogatory slang for humanoid cylons on the show is “skin jobs,” a very direct reference to the film Blade Runner, which is based on a Phillip K. Dick story about a detective trying to track down rogue humanoid androids in a similarly dark and frightening future.
The additional layers of complexity evident in the new version of Battlestar also extend to its human characters. The heroes of the 1978 version were good guys crusading the save humanity from their evil robot assailants, but the characters on the current series are more multi-dimensional. The hard nosed admiral, his alcoholic colonel, the self destructive hotshot pilot, and a host of other characters with very real, very human flaws allow the show to delve deep into moral and ethical dilemmas about the nature of good and evil, in addition to showcasing explosive space battles filled with special effects.
Nowhere is the difference in narrative complexity between these shows more obvious than in the character of Baltar. A comically villainous Count who collaborated with the cylons to orchestrate humanity’s demise in the original series, the new Baltar is a brilliant scientist who was seduced into becoming an unwitting cylon accomplice, and then tries to cover up his involvement out of self-preservation. In the 1978 series, Count Baltar is assisted in his evil machinations by a cylon named Lucifer. But on the current series he is counseled by a beautiful “skin job” cylon woman whom he loves. Since she appears only to him, we’re never quite sure whether her advice is real, or just some facet of our anti-hero’s own inner monologue.
Dr. Gaius Baltar on the new Battlestar series is one of the most amazingly complicated characters on television. He’s selfish, vain, and cowardly. But, the deftness with which he’s portrayed forces you to relate to him, to understand that his flaws and deceptions are motivated by fear and ego. If the struggling crew of Galactica represents the best aspects of humanity, he may represent some of the worst, but is human nonetheless.
Looking at these two series is truly revealing about the evolution of television drama over the past thirty years. Modern special effects and larger TV budgets may have allowed the producers to realize the look of the show in a way they could not in the 1970s. But, more importantly, current TV trends that encourage complex narrative structures and layered, conflicted characters have allowed the writers of the series to realize the story in a way that most television didn’t thirty years ago.
It seems appropriate, then, that season three concluded with some of the characters reciting a version of “All Along The Watchtower.” Though everyone gives the song’s original author plenty of credit, even Dylan himself admits that Jimi Hendrix is the one who got it right.
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