I was watching a recently aired episode of the old Battlestar Galactica. I say the "old" show because there's a new one on the way -- a "reimagined" version. I hope they've reimagined the hokey "centons" and "yahrens" and the silly, simplistic storylines of some of the episodes, but I hope they remember the basic conservative message of its producers (similar conservative messages turned up in Don Bellisario's Magnum, P.I. a few years later). The original Battlestar Galactica began with the annihilation of the 12 colonies of man after the peacefreaks signed a treaty with the untrustworthy Cylons. In 1978, this was a good lesson for the nuclear freeze pansies who never saw the evil in the Soviet Union and figured we could destroy all our weapons, plant flowers and live happily ever after. Meanwhile, the Soviets were running roughshod over central Asia, eastern Europe and central America.
In the show, reformed communist Lew Ayers played the President who scrawled his name on the hopeless peace treaty. His last words on screen, "How could I have been so terribly wrong?"
So, I'm watching this later episode called "Experiment in Terra". Following my shock at hearing John DeLancie's voice from underneath a motorcycle helmet (yep, bad props), we were treated with a story about war mongers versus the give peace a chance crowd. Turned out, the war mongers were the good guys, they were "Nationalists", and Captain Apollo gave a speech in which he instructed the simpletons by saying "We found out the hard way that the opposite of war is not peace, but very often slavery. And strength, strength alone can support freedom." Well, it would be shocking for any major television show to echo that sentiment. And two years later, President Reagan made that statement policy.
Yes, I'm a geek, and I think I've blogged about this episode before. But watching it again, I was glad that my memory of this 25 year old morality play was correct, and that the show was even more to the point than I thought. It was Chamberlain and Churchill, but without the snappy dialogue. And a space shield generated by the Galactica destroyed ICBMs before they could reach their target. Maybe "Star Wars" was the wrong title for the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Here's hoping that the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, where Starbuck and Boomer are women, gets the basic themes right while remaking a series about a people who relied on strength to secure peace, worshipped a higher power, fought the devil and were always remembering to keep faith. And let's hope they get stronger writers to execute the stories (and they may have that in Ronald D. Moore, formerly of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine).
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, Television
