Science fiction has often had an ability to comment to our current life and deal with what I like to call "future ethics". How do we deal with a race of clones? What does it mean if your consciousness can be uploaded? Do the machines we create have souls?

BSG deals with all these issues and more. I especially love when the people who you care about do terrible things. You understand their actions but wish they had found a third way. But BSG often faces down the tough choices. Collaborators are killed. Bulkheads are closed off and people die. Sometimes the leaders do less flashy things, like throw an election. You understand why they did it and it appears it is the right thing to do. But if THEY think that way, you can understand why people you HATE would think that way.

This season they have dealt with torture, summary justice and how to deal with collaborators.

I don't want to give out any spoilers, but a scene this season with Jammer and "The Circle" still sticks in my brain today.

I also love that the Cylons are the ones with the "One True God" and they are the ones who are trying to understand what it means to love someone at the same time that they systematicly go about killing hundreds of thousands of people to settle old scores. Sound like anyone you know?

If I had a quibble it is that they don't have one strong element in their world that we have in ours -- the right wing media and a co-opted mainstream media. It would be interesting to see how they would deal with that aspect of our society. They do touch on it. Again no spoilers, but I love the fact that two of the most evil Cylons were positioned in the PR business and in the media!

Do yourself a huge favor. RENT this series. Buy this series. Download this series from iTunes.

WATCH THIS SHOW.

Americans are the Cylons, monomaniacal imperialist Orientalist colonialist brutalists (sorry, the "ists" got away from me there) oppressing the spunky, noble humans, read "the Arab Middle East," who just want to live in peace and are only forced to dehumanizing violence to defend against assimilation to evil values!

My thanks to the writer for collapsing many hours of hamfisted propaganda to a less than five-minute read.

Yes, i was one of the snobs saying "how can anything worthwhile come from the SciFi channel? and with a name like Battlestar Galactica?" But as Ray Bradbury said, the best science fiction is the kind that places normal humans into completely new situations to confront completely new problems, not just some nose makeup and a new "species name."

Except of course the situations in Battlestar are not new, they are the same ones we confront today. Religion, abortion, occupation, suidice bombings, the curse of power, it's all there, and it's all done really really well.

It's really good.

"Americans are the Cylons, monomaniacal imperialist Orientalist colonialist brutalists (sorry, the "ists" got away from me there) oppressing the spunky, noble humans, read "the Arab Middle East," who just want to live in peace and are only forced to dehumanizing violence to defend against assimilation to evil values!

My thanks to the writer for collapsing many hours of hamfisted propaganda to a less than five-minute read."

No. You don't get it. First, no where in the article does it state what you think it stated. If you thought it was implied, you're just showing off your own bias.

Just to clarify for others who might think the same way:

The producers and writers have never taken a liberal/conservative, democrat/republican, america/terrorist or what-have-you position on their show. They do show things like terrorism, insurgency, warfare etc, but don't simply map that to our real world politics.

The politics and situations in Galactica are very gray. There isn't a clear right side and wrong side. However, we do empathize with the humans because they are, after-all, human like us.

The humans aren't spunky and noble and the cylons aren't ugly american oppressors. The characters all inhabit shades of gray, cylon or human, and that's precisely the point.

The article urges people to rent seasons 1 and 2 of the show, but neglects to mention that there was a mini-series prior to season 1 that is important to understanding the story. Please rent the mini-series first.

Laura, unless you know something we don't (or if you were referring back to the 70's version) it's not for certain BSG takes place during Earth's past.

Nevertheless....Best...Show...Ever

And better than The Wire, sorry.

... please start busting some heads to allow Canadians to download BSG off iTunes. I want to make my support for the show known, and I'll be damned if I buy a TV and subscribe to cable for just one show. Every time I pirate this show off bittorrent, I feel guilty and want to mail Ron Moore a cheque for 10 bucks along with a handwritten apology.

I guess I will have to console myself by buying DVD's for my unenlightened friends.

Oh, and thank you to the writers for making Baltar interesting again. He was a delight early on, and a simpering irritant for a season and a half. Thank you thank you.

I don't get it? Let's look at the subtitle and lede, shall we?

"While politicians spent a campaign season avoiding the big issues, TV's bravest series has been facing them in thrilling fashion."

"For the past month, while the national political conversation has concerned itself with racy military thrillers and antique racial slurs, the real issues -- the big, soul-scraping ones -- have been wrestled with in the wasteland of Friday night basic cable programming, on a channel otherwise devoted to no-budget thrillers about killer centipedes."

Those "big issues" the politicians are "avoiding" wouldn't be the Iraq war, and the war on terrorism, would they? Of course not! Battlestar Galactica has been wrestling with those big issues of the Medicare drug benefit, corporate corruption, and illegal immigration! You can tell by the reference in the body copy to suicide bombings, occupations, collaborators, and unstable police forces . . . just like . . . like . . .

"I don't get it"? Oh please. Run along now, Vudicarus, I'm sure Barbra and the Baldwins are having a benefit.