Matt Yglesias is, once again, wrong about Battlestar Galactica. This time, he responds to the paranoid rantings of Dirk Benedict, who played the original Starbuck, by emphasizing precisely the wrong thing. Benedict’s complaint:
“Re-imagining”, they call it. “Un-imagining” is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy human civilization, one would assume.
Yglesias responds: “claiming that the Cylons are justified in their desire to destroy humanity seems like a perverse reading of the action.”
No no no! The show was good precisely when it WAS suggesting that. It’s a legitimate question. The show became terrible once it decided that it had resolved that issue and became a giant metaphor for contemporary politics. And when it decided that the mysteries were significant for their own sake (OMG, who’s the last Cylon?!?!?!?!?!1/1/1/1onequestionmarkone), rather than as clues for the single overarching question of exactly what justifications for our existence make sense once we admit the possibility of something beyond ourselves.
The fact that the Cylons were human inventions themselves only heightens that point. The radical Other, that nevertheless springs from within us, and which challenges the entire mythology of human existence…that’s fascinating stuff. When it turns out that the Cylons are precisely as boring and stupid and petty (and useless) as humans, the show collapses on itself. It turns into space opera, and the endless “darkness” becomes tedious. It becomes darkness for its own sake, an affectation, rather than significant for what it might reveal.