A major element of the show’s conception is that the people in our ragtag fleet are not the cream of humanity’s crop. They’re ordinary people, deeply flawed. For frak’s sake, Galactica was on the verge of being mothballed; no wonder its crew was made up of slackers, washouts, malcontents, and otherwise marginal types, with half-assed attention to protocol and crappy discipline (e.g. Valerii fraternizing with Tyrol in the miniseries). Roslin was a low-level bureaucrat, hardly more than a policy functionary with a slightly bigger pair of balls than average (e.g. the episode where she stood up to Adar on the teacher strike). This bunch of jamokes survived through little more than luck, and now are doing the best that they can.
This is a hundred and eighty degrees from what we normally see in television SF, typified by Star Trek with its characters who graduated at or near the top of their classes or are unique human-alien hybrids or are the leading experts in theta-band radiation or whatever other specialness sets them apart. BSG gives us a gang of totally ordinary schmoes, the kind of people you honk at on the freeway every morning because they’re driving erratically with their knees on the bottom of the wheel to free their hands to spread cream cheese on their bagel. The only character who really qualifies as above-and-beyond-the-average is Starbuck, the best pilot, the best shot, the best strategist, etc., but beyond those qualities she’s more screwed up than anybody. It’s a very different conception of the SF setting (at least on television), and it takes some getting used to. Some people still criticize the show on those grounds; they’re missing the point.
That’s not to say the show is perfect, by any means. From week to week, especially during the third season, the quality fluctuates quite a bit. As mentioned, the third-season episode “The Woman King” (no major spoilers here, out of consideration for the OP), the one about Helo’s apparently quixotic championing of an underclass, is really, really bad. It’s bad because it’s an episode that goes nowhere and reveals nothing, right in the middle of a show that thrives on long-term storytelling and revels in changing up the situation from week to week. It’s bad because it takes complicated characters and simplifies them to archetypes for the purpose of telling a self-contained and disposable story. It’s bad because it presents a hugely contrived black-and-white conflict in what is normally a fairly nuanced shades-of-gray world. And it’s bad because it’s fucking boring.
But to criticize the show because its characters make stupid choices: man, that’s exactly what it’s about. You don’t have to like it, and in fact it’s unsurprising that a lot of people don’t like it — but to say that that’s somehow wrong is to miss the point, and to attack the show for failing to achieve something it was never interested in pursuing. First, one needs to understand what BSG is attempting to do, and then one can evaluate whether or not it succeeds at its goal. You can even argue that the objective itself is a waste of time. But to say that the show is bad because, basically, it isn’t a naturalistic version of Star Trek, which is where some people, including a very good friend of mine, are coming from — that’s simply not on point.
Consider, for example, the character of Roslin. Go back and look at her in the miniseries, and through the first season. She’s insecure. Tentative. Unsure of herself. Thrust unexpectedly into a position of enormous responsibility, and trying to measure up. Taking stands inconsistently, caving in elsewhere. Finding unexpected strength in herself. Learning. Growing. And then consider who she’s become in the last few episodes (again, no major spoilers here). She’s become colder. Harder. She’s closed off significant parts of herself. There’s a sureness to her, an arrogance, that wasn’t there in the first season. Having to make hard choice after hard choice has tempered her, yes, but it’s also given her a blind confidence in the rightness of her stewardship, and naked contempt for those who disagree with her. She was willing to monkey with an election at the end of season two; she’s gotten worse since then.
She is not, in the most superficial sense of the term, a hero. She has a leadership role, and she’s been right about things more often than not, though sometimes she’s right for the wrong reasons. She has as many negative qualities as positive. We are conditioned, through long experience with conventional narrative, to try to perceive her as a hero, to sanctify her and admire her, because her character is in charge and is responsible for keeping her followers safe and happy. But again, she is not, simply, a hero, a blandly parental whitewash of leadership, like Adama on the original 70s-era BSG. It would be more accurate, I think, to describe her as a survivor. The tension between what we viewers want to see in her, and who she actually is, powers a lot of my interest in the show, but at the same time creates anxiety for some in the audience, who feel that tension but mistakenly believe that it represents some sort of failing of the show. And again, you are certainly free to say that you aren’t interested in a show that refuses to let you worship its characters; that’s an individual preference, and your choice (and as noted above, it’s why a good friend of mine hates the show). But you need to make the distinction between criticizing the show for wanting to present flawed characters as an unworthy objective, versus criticizing the show for having flawed characters in the first place. The first is valid; the second is not.
And yet, behind this, there is great humanity and compassion behind the show’s cynicism, because one of the underlying themes is that despite whatever may be wrong with these people, whatever mistakes they make, however far they fall short of representing our imagined ideals of heroism, there is still nobility and honor in their efforts. Admiral Cain, I think most of us would agree, was not a particularly admirable human being, and yet Starbuck had a point when she said, at Cain’s funeral, that the Admiral made her choices, stood by them, didn’t second guess, and kept her people going, and that (in Starbuck’s opinion) they’d be better off with her than they will be without her. Is she right? Does the show, objectively, outside of the characters’ individual perceptions and philosophies, express a concrete opinion one way or the other? Isn’t it possible for every one of us, on at least some level, to identify with Cain’s choices and point of view? At the end of the day, is Cain any more or less a hero, or not a hero, than Roslin, or Adama? And isn’t it much more interesting to watch a show that simply puts that question out there, and doesn’t take a strong stand one way or the other, than to watch a show that simplifies its situations and characters in order to spoonfeed us the expected moral lessons?
On that last point, it may seem that the show is arguing one-sidedly for diversity of viewpoint, for democracy and democratic ideals and the rule of law, and arguing against militarism and dictatorship and the quashing of dissent. And yet: it was the democratic process, a free and fair election, that put Baltar into the office of the presidency. So, clearly, the show is not giving us an unvarnished partisan screed; it may have its slant, but it also plays fair. Well, most of the time; for example, the behavior of Adama and Roslin in “Dirty Hands” (no spoiler) was contrived to suit the needs of the story, and was resolved with virtually no motivation, making them seem almost bipolar. Likewise, the left-field exploration of a secondary character in “The Passage” was poorly handled, and makes the equally poorly handled setup of the resource crisis in the same episode look good in comparison. So the show doesn’t always get the balance right; sometimes they fall on their face.
But I’m not arguing that. What I’m arguing is, whether or not the show is succeeding from week to week (and I would agree that season three is far more frustratingly inconsistent than the previous two seasons), the things that it’s doing, the goals it’s pursuing, are eminently worthwhile, and give value to the show even when the individual installments land with a thud. The central narrative principles have remained solid from day one; the show has not compromised on its core artistic themes.
So, no. I don’t think Battlestar Galactica has jumped the shark.
