Woe without end

Battlestar Galactica. Easily one of the darkest TV series to grace our screens. The campy naivity of original '70s series, the bad hair cuts and the cheesy starship models. All gone. The BG universe have been updated with moody music, fantastic acting and a 3 year arc that keeps going deeper and deeper into despair. And the latest season just started off downright depressing.



The Cylons are not just toasters anymore. They look like us and Xena. And they live forever, free to download the experience of one host to the next upon death. Righteous in their belief that they are in the grace of God, they hold captive the remaining members of the human race in the hope that the humans can coexist peacefully with the Cylons for the glory of God.



The last of the human race stranded on a cold bleak planet alone against the Cylon regime. With no hope in sight, Tigh who is leading the Resistance, recruits and uses suicide bombers to strike against the tincans and their human symphatisers.



Baltar have become even more despicable as the puppet president of a Vichy-style government who was compelled by the Cylons to order the death of the people who foolishly elected him into power.



Starbuck is trapped in a Desperate Housewive nightmare to cohabit with her Cylon husband/warden and used as a breeding factory to spawn more human-cylon monstrosities.



There seems to be no hope. The human race are alone, lost in an endless starless night, no end to the suffering and the injustice.



In their desperation, Adama is sending Boomer to the occupied colony. And the irony of a Cylon sent to liberate the humans from her own people.

This morbid combination of despair and suffering just keeps me come back again every weekend for more. And more. Where do the characters draw the line between fighting back and losing their humanity? Questions that haunt us here and our actions in real life. In its all consuming darkness, BG has become the next big step for sci-fi. A refreshing move after the saccharine sweet Star Trek universe and the melodrama of B5.

Will the humans escape from the righteous Cylons? Will Apollo work out and get his washboard abs back? Will they ever find Earth? Stay tuned...

EDIT (10/11/06) - There is a lovely piece in Salon about BG being an allegory for the Iraq occupation.