mac387 battlestar galactica: contemporary us scifi

•  “All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again” –  Leoben Conoy, 1.08 “Flesh and Bone” –  Laura Roslin, 1.12 “Kobol’s Last Gleaming Part 1” –  Six, 1.10 “The Hand of God”

•  “I see the paLerns ... It’s all there, I see it and you don’t” –  Leoben Conoy, 1.08 “Flesh and Bone”

•  “If you believe in the gods, then you believe in the cycle of Ome, that we are all playing our parts in a story that is told again, and again, and again throughout eternity.” –  Laura Roslin, 1.12 “Kobol’s Last Gleaming, Part 1”

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The function of sci-fi

•  to depict “a world clearly and radically disconOnuous from the one we know, yet returns to confront that known world in some cogniOve way” – Scholes, 1975: 29

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•  “[S]cience ficOon conjurs the invisible forces – technological, social, economic, affecOve, and poliOcal – that surrounds us. It makes those forces visible and palpable, and brings us face to face with them, however frightening and untoward they may be.” – Steven Shaviro, 2003: xi

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•  “Science ficOon is not about the future; it uses the future as a narraOve convenOon to present significant distor-ons of the present” – Samuel R. Delany, 2005: 291

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•  Sci-‐fi frequently asks difficult quesOons of humanity and the present

•  Via: – Allegory – Metaphor

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1978 -‐ BaLlestar GalacOca 24 episodes

1980 -‐ GalacOca 1980 10 episodes

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2003 -‐ Mini Series –  2 feature length episodes

2004 -‐ Season 1 –  13 episodes


2006 – The Resistance –  10 webisodes


2007 – Razor –  Feature film


2009 -‐ The Plan –  Feature film

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2010 – 19 episodes

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2012 – 10 webisodes/1 feature

BSG’s reimagining allowed for

•  “comment on things that are happening in today’s society, from the war against terror to the quesOon of what happens to people in the face of unimaginable catastrophe” – BSG producer Ronald D Moore cited in Bassom, 2005: 12

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Call it ‘NaturalisOc Science FicOon’ •  “Our goal is nothing less than the reinvenOon of the science ficOon television series. We take as a given the idea that the tradiOonal space opera, with its stock characters, techno-‐double-‐talk, bumpy-‐headed aliens, thespian histrionics, and empty heroics has run its course and a new approach is required. That approach is to introduce realism into what has heretofore been an aggressively unrealisOc genre.” – Moore, 2006, Ba%lestar Galac-ca:NaturalisOc Science FicOon or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera

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Call it ‘NaturalisOc Science FicOon’

•  “This idea, the presentaOon of a fantasOcal situaOon in naturalisOc terms, will permeate every aspect of our series” – Moore, 2006, Ba%lestar Galac-ca:NaturalisOc Science FicOon or Taking the Opera out of Space Opera

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Miniseries (2003)

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Sci-‐fi/fantasy TV post 9/11

•  BSG •  Heroes •  Lost •  Firefly •  Fringe •  Terminator: TSCC •  V •  Etc…

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Battlestar Galactica

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Ba%lestar Galac-ca

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BSG •  FluctuaOng moral ambiguity: – Sympathise with the enemy (2.10 Pegasus) –  Inhumanity of the enemy (2.05 The Farm)

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Moral ambiguity is

•  ‘symptomaOc of many contemporary American television programs with long running narraOves and extended series arcs. The character development and narraOve trajectory of the vampires Spike and Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-‐2003) and Angel (2000-‐2004) is constantly in a state of flux.’ – Peirse, 2008: 120

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Start

End

NarraOve arc

•  extended character depth •  ongoing plopng •  episodic variaOons • MiLell, 2006: 23

Summary so far

•  The fluctuaOng moral code of the ficOonal universe – we are never quite sure who to trust, or how far they can be trusted

•  Large narraOve arcs – useful for developing complex characters and their moOvaOons

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Sci-‐fi post 9/11

•  ‘I realized if you redo [BSG] today, people are going to bring with them memories are feelings about 9/11. And if you chose to embrace it, it was a chance to do an interesOng science-‐ficOon show that was also very relevant to our Ome’ – Moore cited in Edwards, 2006

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Parallels

•  9/11 – Mini-‐series

•  Camp X-‐Ray in Guantanamo Bay – 3.1 Occupa-on

•  South African TRC – 3.5 Collaborators

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They look like we do

•  In the original series, the Cylons were obviously mechanical; they symbolized the fear of losing our humanity to technology (at a Ome of rapid technological innovaOon no less). In the new series, by contrast, the Cylons “look” human — a fact that viewers are reminded of at the outset of every episode – OL, 2007

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•  In the new series, the whole of humanity is threatened by a few Cylon sleeper agents (read: terrorists and insurgents) who “look” human (read: but aren’t “really” human). Ba%lestar Galac-ca, then, is a symbolic “working out” of social fears, namely the fear that a network of not-‐really-‐human agents could suddenly and without warning destroy us and our world. – OL, 2007

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Fringe

27 S2E1 “A New Day In The Old Town”

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

28 S2E1 “Samson and Delilah”

Recurrent themes

•  PatrioOsm •  NaOonalism •  Terrorism •  Torture •  PoliOcal corrupOon •  Genocide •  War crimes

•  Religious fanaOcism •  Insurgencies •  Suicide bombing •  Sleeper cells •  Military occupaOon •  Human suffering

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Torture and Otherness

•  Dehumanise the enemy •  CreaOon of the ‘Other’ (Hall, 2001)

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•  1.8 Flesh and Bone -‐ Starbuck tortures Leoben •  2.10 Pegasus -‐ the crew of the Pegasus torture and rape Gina; Lieut. Thorne does the same to Cylon Sharon

•  3.1 Occupa-on -‐ Cylon Cavil tortured Col. Tigh •  3.7 A Measure of Salva-on -‐ Cylon D’Anna tortures Gaius

•  3.13 Taking a Break From All Your Worries -‐ Cmd. Adama tortures Gaius

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Linguistic devices

•  ‘Toasters’ •  ‘Skin-‐jobs’ •  ‘It’

•  Fundamentalists •  Terrorists •  Extremists •  Axis of Evil •  War on Terror –  OL, 2008: 17

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See George Lakoff, 2003, on metaphor hLp://www.alternet.org/story/15414/?page=1

1.8 Flesh and Bone

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1.8 Flesh and Bone •  “Unlike 24 and it’s glorificaOon of torture, the psychological effects of using torture are apparent upon Starbuck, and Leoben uses those effects against her … Further, the torture is useless: Leoben is lying about the existence of a nuclear warhead and the enOre sequence appears to be a sort of a test of moral character, one that the Colonials fail. For them the threat of danger outweigh the ethics that suggest democracies do not torture” –  Stoy, 2010: p8.

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2.10 Pegasus

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3.1 Occupa-on

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3.1 Occupa-on

•  Cylon occupaOon is ‘an unmistakeable metaphor for the US occupaOon of Iraq’ –  (OL, 2008: 22)

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•  ‘The really audacious stroke of this season was showing us a story about a suicide bomber from the point of view of the bomber and his comrades ... We sympathize with the insurgents wholeheartedly’ – Miller, 2006

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CogniOve dissonance as storytelling device

•  Moore tosses out the idea of doing an episode told from the point of view of two of the killer androids. Then, the whole group tries to figure out the Cylons' deeper moOvaOons via a rapid-‐fire series of metaphors. The Cylons are Nazis, hell-‐bent on solving the Human QuesOon. The Cylons are Jews, trying to defend Israel. The Cylons are U.S. troops in Iraq, caught off guard by an uprising. – Rogers, 2006

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•  BaLlestar GalacOca’s easily decipherable criOcism of the war on terror is thus frequently interrupted by random bouts of noise emerging from the narraOve uncertainOes that are mapped onto various aspects of the relaOonship between humans, Cylons, history and technology – Kohnen, 2008

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BSG at the UN

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Conclusion

•  Science ficOon encapsulates contemporary anxieOes, oyen in ambivalent ways

•  Metaphor forces reflexivity •  Post 9/11 context of suffering/torture •  The moral certainty of the Bush administraOon constantly brought into quesOon

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Sources

•  David Bassom, 2005, Ba%lestar Galac-ca: The Official Companion, London: Titan Books. •  Samuel R. Delany, 2005, “Some Presumptuous Approaches to Science FicOon” in James Gunn and MaLhew

Candelaria (eds.), Specula-ons on Specula-on: Theories of Science Fic-on, Lanham, MD: Rowman & LiLlefield. •  Gavin Edwards, 2006, ‘IntergalacOc Terror: “BaLlestar GalacOca” Tackles Terrorism Like No Other Show.” Rolling

Stone, hLp://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9183391/intergalacOc_terror •  Stuart Hall, 2001, ‘Who Needs “IdenOty”?’ in Paul du Gay, Jessica Evans & Peter Redman (eds), Iden-ty: A Reader,

Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. •  Melanie E. S. Kohnene, 2008, ‘Signal to Noise: The Paradoxes of History and Technology in Ba%lestar Galac-ca’,

FlowTV, hLp://flowtv.org/?p=1056 •  Laura Miller, 2006, ‘Space balls’, Salon.com, hLp://www.salon.com/ent/tv/review/2006/11/10/baLlestar/ •  Jason MiLell, 2006,”NarraOve Complexity in Contemporary American Television”, The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall):

29-‐40. •  Brian OL, 2008, ‘(Re)Framing Fear: Equipment for Living in a Post-‐9/11 World’ in Timothy PoLer & C. W. Marshall

(eds), Cylons in America: Cri-cal Studies in Ba%lestar Galac-ca, London: ConOnuum. •  Brian OL, 2007, ‘Set Your Cathode Rays To Stun(ning)’, Flow.TV, hLp://flowtv.org/?p=635 •  Alison Peirse, 2008, “Uncanny Cylons: resurrecOon and Bodies of Horror” in Tiffany PoLer and C. W. Marshall

(eds), Cylons in America: Cri-cal Studies in Ba%lestar Galac-ca, London: ConOnuum •  Adam Rogers, 2006, ‘Captain’s Log’, Slate, hLp://www.slate.com/id/2154625/ •  Robert Scholes, 1975, Structural Fabula-on: An Essay on Fic-on of the Future, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre

Dame Press. •  Steven Shaviro, 2003, Connected, or What It Means to Live in the Network Society, Minneapolis, MN: University of

Minneapolis Press. •  Jennifer Stoy, 2010, ‘Of Great Zeitgeist and Bad Faith’ in Jennifer Stoy & Roz Kaveney (eds) Ba%lestar Galac-ca:

Inves-ga-ng Flesh, Spirit and Steel, London: I.B. Tauris

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mac387 battlestar galactica: contemporary us scifi

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