TV's Best Show?

The end of M.A.S.H., the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the last episode of Lost’s First Season, and tonight; these are some of my favourite moment in television history. What’s the deal with tonight? The fourth and final season of the best-written science fiction on television premieres.

I could tell you that Battlestar Galactica (in its 2004-now version) is the best most “realistic” and dramatic sci-fi ever on TV, or that it’s the show that’s best portrayed the effect of mass trauma on a society (boring and social-worky, yes I know...) Instead I want to tell you two things:

1) Battlestar Galactica is a gritty, realistic drama that works on themes of family, survival, and equal measures of fear and hope. Few other shows (with or without killer robots) have managed such dramatic excellence.

2) Whether it was entirely intentional or not, BSG has managed to be the only television show that has addressed the way the world (and especially the US) has changed since September 11, 2001. It works like this: The Cylon attack that wipes out humanity’s home worlds is a society-changing event. On personal and societal levels, part of the show is always about defending humanity militarily while trying to preserve its freedoms and laws. Sound familiar? If this sounds cold and academic, somehow its not! Individual decisions are made about what can be acceptable in a society under threat. Torture, genocide, suicide bombing, its in there... At the same time, family, relationships, and hope become more precious than ever.

The show has a minimalist realism that makes it utterly watachable. Clothes look like our clothes, a chair is a chair, and guns fire bullets, not killer lazers. There are no aliens. Let me say that again, there are NO aliens. The main difference between their society and ours is that they are space-faring. People have real problems and very few things work out perfectly in the end. People fall in love and people die. People sacrifice everything for each other and people cheat, lie, and stab each other in the back. People are people.

The single biggest strength of the show is that its story-telling is not exclusively episodic. The whole series exists (we hope) within a large story arc and every episode advances the story. This can make it harder (but far from impossible) to get into the series but if you’re along for the ride, what a ride it is! It works very well on DVD.

Battlestar Galactica airs tonight on Space: the Imagination Station. Try it, its good for you.

B.