God Is In The Details

At the end of January 2004 Sky Movies held an exclusive preview screening of the new Battlestar Galactica miniseries. It had played in America a month earlier and wouldn’t appear on UK screens for a couple weeks or so. I was glad to have snagged an invite though puzzled, when I arrived, to discover the relatively tiny theater they had hired was less than a tenth full.

Maybe it was because it was early on a Friday afternoon and most of the invitees had already planned a long weekend out of town. Maybe it was because, given the legacy of the show, nobody was really that interested. The reviews from America had been good but this was, after all, the re-imagining of one of the mindless space opera shoot ‘em ups that had been spat out in the wake of Star Wars for audiences who liked that sort of thing.


It had been a long time since I had seen any episodes of the original but, as memory served, the best word that summed them up was daft: and that was being kind. Once I borrowed the DVD boxset of the 1978 Glen Larson-produced series and watched it in full, that opinion was upgraded to godawful. Granted, a ropey television show that was twenty-five years old and aimed at the youth market probably wasn’t going to stand the test of time particularly well, but I was utterly astonished to find that it was riddled with the worst clichés imaginable.

Strangely enough, when I sat and watched the preview on that January afternoon five years ago I was certainly intrigued but oddly unmoved. Of course in the end that came down to the fact that Sky, being a big tease, only screened the first half of the miniseries. When I eventually saw the whole thing it all made sense; perfectly. When the preview tape of 33, the first episode of the new series arrived at the door months later, I was absolutely astonished by how they had taken the bare bones of the original story, stripped away all the rhubarb and replaced it with a level of intelligence rarely seen in this genre.

Instead of the kind of escapist flash-bang fantasy filled with the strange monsters and aliens that immature fanboys are guaranteed to blindly lap up, this was science fiction as a skewed reflection of current society. As the dwindling human survivors of the holocaust fought an escalating war on terror, Battlestar Galactica became an utterly remarkable commentary on what it takes to survive in the face of conflict. More importantly, amongst the themes of terrorism, human rights and reconciliation, was a deep-rooted treatise on theology, pitting the single god doctrine of the Cylons against the polytheistic belief system of the human colonists that made for a truly astonishing drama.


Last night on Sky One, after four years exploring these issues, the series reached journey’s end with the final two hours of Daybreak. As exciting and emotional and thought provoking as every episode that had come before, the finale typically divided viewers in the US who had seen it four days earlier. Finally reading a lot of the reasoned and emotional internet posts from numerous television critics and the multitude of pro and con comments their words elicited, it would have been interesting to know the ages of those commenting. Reading between the lines it appeared that older viewers liked how the series was resolved while the youngsters (or the incredibly stupid) felt short-changed.

Not surprisingly, one of the main criticisms was that not every plot thread of the show was tied up in a neat and tidy bow. But how could a drama with religion at the very heart of its story come up with a pat solution to their liking? Surely all belief systems have no easy to read, squared-away answers and are instead open to everyone’s interpretation. Also some of the kids who left comments asking what planet the crew ended up on seriously need to get hold of an atlas and bone up on basic geography before they start making inroads into religion.

As for me, I had faith in the show and it paid off beautifully. In turn laughing, crying and peppering the air with single expletives, during both the action sequences and quieter character moments, by the end I was a boggle-eyed emotional wreck, especially seeing every character get the ending they justly deserved. There’s a lot to say about the show but it’s best summed up by William Adama’s word as the ship prepares to go “around the Horn” one more time:

“Just so there’ll be no misunderstandings later, Galactica’s seen a lot of history, gone through a lot of battles. This will be her last. She will not fail us if we do not fail her. If we succeed in our mission, Galactica will bring us home. If we don’t, it doesn’t matter anyway.”

Not for one second did it fail. And that’s what mattered.