Last Friday was the final episode of Battlestar Galactica. In my view, BSG was easily the best science fiction TV series of the last decade, and one of the two or three best SF series of all time. It had realistic characters, a fascinating setting, and did an insightful job of posing important political and moral issues. At least in the first two to three seasons, the show also had a more interesting and more realistic portrayal of political institutions than almost any other TV series – SF or otherwise. While I disagreed with the show’s mostly left-wing political orientation, I also appreciated its many strengths. For previous posts discussing BSG and its portrayal of law and politics, see here (including earlier linked posts below), and here.
However, as often happens with TV shows, the series’ quality declined towards the end. And the final episode was in my view particularly weak. Further discussion below the fold, and includes major spoilers. Proceed at your own risk, and please don’t complain about spoilers in the comments. Spoilers have happened before and they will happen again!
Bryan Caplan highlights the main weakness of the final episode: the colonials’ decision to abjure modern technology once they reach Earth is utterly implausible and likely impossible to enforce on dissenters even if the majority were willing to make such a ridiculous decision in the first place.
In addition to Bryan’s well-taken points, I would note that Lee Adama’s advocacy of this idea (which ultimately – and implausibly -persuades the others) is inconsistent with what we have seen of this character throughout the last four seasons: in the past, he always comes off as moderate and reasonable, and shows no sign of hostility to technology. More broadly, the show gives no reason for such a sweeping change of heart by the BSG humans in general. I can believe that a few idiosyncratic individuals might suddenly become extreme Luddites for no good reason. But why would such a thing happen with an entire society that has long been highly dependent on advanced technology?
A related issue is that the rejection of technology would have had to be very sweeping in order to avoid having a major impact on Earth’s history. According to the show, the BSG fleet arrives at earth some 150,000 years ago. Even if the colonials abandon all advanced technology, but retain simple technology equivalent to that of, say, a bronze-age civilization, they would still give a massive jump start to Earth’s economic development. After all, the stone age native hunter gatherers of that era lacked large-scale agriculture, metalworking, and the domestication of animals until only a few thousand years ago. Introducing agriculture, metalworking, and domestication of animals 100,000 years or more before these things happened in our history would have had a profound effect on later development. We would today be thousands of years more advanced than we actually are. Yet the last scene of the series shows a present-day United States more or less equivalent to what we have now. Thus, we have to assume that the colonials gave up not only space age technologies, but even such simple basics as agriculture and metalworking. This is highly unlikely, and even less likely in the case of the rebel Cylons who also stayed on Earth, have even more attachment to technology than the humans, and can live for thousands of years (thereby being able to influence Earth’s development long after the Luddite human authorities of the BSG fleet have died).
Unfortunately, the final episode is the latest and most extreme manifestation of the show’s general deterioration into a fairly crude and simplistic leftism over the last season and a half. In my view, the Season 3 New Caprica occupation/resistance episodes were probably the start of this “shark-jumping” process. The screenwriters seemed to think that by having human resistance fighters resort to suicide bombing, they were making some kind of profound commentary on the Iraq War. But they evaded the crucial point that the Iraqi terrorists were viewed negatively not so much because they used suicide tactics but because they targeted civilians and fought for an unjust cause (the establishement of a radical Islamist or Baathist dictatorship). The human fighters on New Caprica targeted Cylon forces and (occasionally) humans who were fighting on the side of the Cylons, and the justice of the resisters’ cause was pretty obvious.
I don’t mean to be too critical. Overall, BSG was an outstanding series, and even the worst episodes were interesting to watch. Moreover, it is perhaps inevitable that a series will decline as the writers run down their stock of original ideas. I will also emphasize that the current BSG was far superior to the original 1978 series, even though the latter’s politics were somewhat closer to my own views. Still, I can’t help but be a little disappointed that the end of the series didn’t live up to the high standards set by its beginning. Sadly, even the best series have jumped the shark before, and now it has happened again.