I just had to be the first to post. And as I don't have cable (so can't watch yet) but don't mind being spoiled because I've always enjoyed the process of the narrative as much as the point, I enjoyed reading what is going on in one of the best, and most thoughtful shows on television.

Take all our baby advice? Do you feel better now?

This wasn't the Heather Havrilesky of "I Love to Watch (You Drooling Chickens Who Watch TV)". It was far too thoughtful for that Havrilesky. I will refrain from offering obvious explanations - a twin from a negative-parallel universe, plagiarism, schitzophrenia, actually taking the right prescribed meds, a really good editor forcing proper media criticism - and just accept the situation. For now.

There has been a tradition of science fiction involved with social situations, but it's in the genre's literature, not its entertainment media. Also, for the most part science fiction literature has been old-school conservative. For the few liberal voices like Spider Robinson or Harry Harrison, there are lots more like Ben Bova or Jerry Pournelle who range from old-school 1950's Republican to Ann Coulter lunatic fringe. Don't forget that the National Review was the first mainstream magazine to regularly review science fiction books.

It used to be Westerns - "Bonanza" comes to mind - that tried to show contemporary problems set in a distant setting to make them less immediately threatening. The Western is dead, all the hype about "Deadwood" to the contrary. When science fiction dies off (and George Lucas is doing his level best to kill it) perhaps some other genre, maybe the hard-boiled detective story, will grasp the falling torch.

this is how i watch it.

and while I give the show A for effort it has serious problems with pacing and it's strained need to be "relevant" and "serious".

I'm a huge of science fiction literature, movies, and TV, but this show always strikes me as a group of geeky writers sitting in a room saying, "See, we are sophisticated!".

And since the mention of current world events was mentioned you could easily make the case that this show represents what it would be like under an extremist musliim state.

Written science fiction is conservative? What the hell are you talking about?

Yes, there's Pournelle, and Bova. But Asimov? Clarke? Or leaving the old giants aside, how about some of the (slightly, in some cases) more recent greats of the field like Marion Zimmer Bradley, Joe Haldeman, Ursula LeGuin, Greg Bear, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, Nancy Kress, or Kim Stanley Robinson? Over the last half-century, diverse voices like theirs have made literary SF what it is today -- and you'd be hard put to dismiss them as a bunch of reactionaries.

Writing thought-provoking fiction that doesn't fit comfortably with a particular worldview is an inherently progressive activity; combining it with carefully worked out speculation on the future of society is even more so. Battlestar Galactica is welcome proof that media SF is finally catching up. It's about time.

And for those who automatically dismiss BSG, or any other SF regardless of the medium, as "nerdy" because it's got, you know, spaceships'n'stuff -- maybe try some of the authors mentioned above. You may find some of your prejudices overturned. Or not, of course, since it's in the nature of prejudice to ignore evidence to the contrary. In the latter case, too bad.

...it might approximate an extreme Christian or Jewish or strong atheist state - it could be any situation where an oppressive government with a fanatical belief in a single truth is in charge. And did you fail to note that it's the *good guys* who employ terrorist tactics - and they're not even monotheists? Or is that OK since their enemy is clearly "evil"? The thing I've always liked about B*G is that it's not afraid to show characters - human or Cylon - in all their complexity. No one on the show is free from mistakes. Let's try to conserve that complexity in our discussion, shall we, rather than reducing the Cylons down to our current administration's oversimplistic "good guys/bad guys" scenario.

I would not simplify Ben Bova and Jerry Pournelle as simply 1950s conservative republicans. Pournelle teamed up with Larry Niven for several really great works of Science Fiction.

You said it better than I could have, but you definitely said it as I feel it. It's a great show. Another great show that was overlooked by the mainstream that dealt with the same issues and more, was "Babylon 5" - Anyone reading this that like "Battlestar Galactica" but has not seen "Babylon 5" should definitely check it out on DVD...

I am referring, of course, to that idiotic movie, that colossal waste of film called "Starship Troopers". I have read Heinlein's novel several times and the film adaptation is a travesty and the idiots who made it, should be erased from this, and all other, space-time continuua.

...or perhaps BSG, unlike the rest of the shows out there, deserves a thoughtful review. Until I borrowed the miniseries from someone a last month, I thought I had sucessfully kicked me TV addiction. Sure there were things I watched, but nothing I cared terribly about missing. Even "Bleak House", which I really enjoyed, wasn't important enough for me to tape. Then I watched BSG. and damn, the next thing I know I'm buying seasons 1 and 2.0 on ebay. Amazon just delivered 2.5 yesterday and I stayed up until 4am watching it. It's really just that good.

The posts here are sure going off in all kinds of directions. Which I guess makes sense if you've watched BSG for any length of time. This dark "re-imagining" of the awful show from the 70s is, at times, full of despair. Sometimes more than you can take, but on the other hand, it's complexity, its resistance to easy solutions (like annihilating the Cylons) and its willingness to turn the tables by showing us the world through the Cylons' eyes, makes for really engrossing storytelling. There is a place for just pure escapist fantasy. There's a place for just plain fun.

"Hercules" and to a lesser degree "Xena" in the 90s and the current "Supernatural" stand out as examples. It's harder these days to separate the political and social unrest of the times we live in from sci-fi media. No one who's thoughtful about it will dispute that. For me, "Battlestar: Galactica" is an artistic smorgasbord with consistently great writing, soulful acting by an international cast, incredible cinematography and production values, and slam bang action and suspense. If memory serves, the producers of this show cut their teeth on the comparatively family-friendly "Star Trek: The Next Generation". So for them, and for us, this is the kind of creative stretch you crave. Bravo!