Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Battlestar Gallactica. I ordered the four-hour initial miniseries from Netflix, and started watching it last night. Its all about relationships and, incidentally, about a war with robots who have gotten 'way out of hand. (What an idea for a story!) I guess this is very post-modern - the relationships. The relationships, with one exception, are exceedingly dumb.

The exception and, by far, the most interesting relationship is that between a degenerate but brilliant scientist/thinker and the latest revison of enemy robot, a blonde bombshell. The place lights up when they are on the screen. Otherwise, the relationships are contrived, the characters over-drawn, and mostly unbelievable. (I believe the relationship between the degenerate scientist and the robot; I don't believe the other relationships. Go figure.)

We have all the usual suspect relationshps. The failed father and bitter son. The male noncom and the female officer. We have several semi-out of relationship people but sure to get one soon: the bad girl fighter pilot, about whom more below, the commander definitely not Captain Kirk, the former Secretary of Education now the President fighting breast cancer.

A lot of people act pretty badly, and not just my two favorites. If the carrying on between genders on the Battlestar Gallactica is any indication of where we are going with both genders in the armed forces, then I am taking a second look at Islam. We have one female, cigar smoking, fighter pilot actually bait a middle aged colonel and then slug him in one scene. Moments later, the commanding officer brushes it off, and a few moments later we learn that she was his dead son's girl friend at one point. Please.

We have a monumentally stupid interworld government that has put everything everywhere, traffic lights, space ships, defense forces, down to its space fighters, on one gigantic network, which the robots penetrate of course. Fortunately, the commander of the Battlestar Gallactica is a Luddite and refused to network.

Having watched a couple of hours of this laugher, the big question is whether I will watch the rest. The answer is, I will. I want to see that blond forever.

No comments: