No More Mr. Nice Gaius!
One of my most anticipated Christmas presents of 2005 was the Battlestar Galactica season one DVD set. I started watching the show (very reluctantly) about halfway through the first season. Having missed the very beginning, I was interested in seeing how the whole shebang started out.
Now I can handle marathon viewing sessions longer than most people (probably due to ten years of watching far too many addictive anime series.) And to be honest, I tend to multitask during marathons of shows that I’ve seen previously, which makes my having gotten through most of the BtVS and Angel season sets in two days much less impressive (if that sort of thing impresses you, which it really shouldn’t.)
But I’ve found I can only watch two, maybe three episodes of Battlestar Galactica at a time. It’s beautifully filmed and well acted and has (with the exception of several recent episodes) some very strong writing. But it’s SUCH a damn depressing show.
It’s not the genocide of the human race or the ongoing war or even that the older episodes are full of characters that have since died in tragic and often painful ways. It’s the fact that the majority of the tiny surviving remnant of the human race seem to be complete douchebags. All the infighting and betrayal and sheer arrogance and stupidity and utter disregard for life when it has become such a precious commodity really makes me think that the Cylons are the ones we should be cheering for. The fact that the humans are pagan followers of the Greek pantheon of gods while the Cylons believe in the more traditional (to us) Judeo-Christian-type God makes me wonder if that is what the writers are actually going for. I suppose it all depends on what the true cause of the first war really was.
As much as I was looking forward to getting these DVDs, I’m seriously considering putting the set on eBay after I finish watching it. It’s a fantastic show, but not one I see myself really digging into again.
(I almost didn’t use the word douchebag because this is a “serious” journal. But the effect was too good to pass up. Plus, I ruined the whole thing with “shebang” right off the bat.)