Since the clueless crew at Comcast can’t manage to get a decent cable signal to my Midtown Atlanta home, I completely missed November’s broadcast of Battlestar Galactica: Razor. Amazon.com, however, came to my rescue, shipping me a copy of the show on DVD.
In this mini-movie, Battlestar goes where none of the official Star Trek series ever dared to go, revealing that Captain Kane (of the Battlestar Pegasus) is a lesbian. In fact, Kane — a strong, but vulnerable woman, haunted by painful memories — is not just a lesbian … she’s openly lesbian, greeting her lover with a public kiss.
What’s even more remarkable is that Kane’s lesbianism is not an issue. The one character who expresses surprise over Kane’s having a female partner is not shocked by the partner’s gender, but by the fact that someone as self-sufficient and harsh as Kane needs a parter at all.
Before Gene Roddenberry (the creator of Star Trek) died in 1991, he acknowledged that Star Trek’s futuristic universe should be making television history by depicting gay and lesbian characters as readily as the original Trek depicted an African-American bridge officer in the 1960’s. After Roddenberry’s death, though, inept producers refused to make the show relevant to one of our time’s most challenging themes; for this reason (and others) the franchise quickly became stale and left the air.
By contrast, Battlestar Galactica — gritty, hard-hitting, realistic, and complex — continues to push boundaries and break taboos. Episodes focused on the war between humans and Cylons have raised more poignant questions about the war in Iraq than the American press ever has.
Like any network television series, Battlestar occasionally loses its way (last year’s third season was, for the most part, a muddled, disjointed mess). But, for the most part, Battlestar achieves in a single hour of television than most sci-fi series ever attempt.
If you’re not watching it, you should be. Start with the mini-series, watch the excellent first season (particularly the first episode, 33, which may be the tightest, most compelling hour of television ever written), the second season, the beginning and end of the third season (skip the middle), and Razor … and you’ll be good to go when the fourth season cranks up in March 2008.
“After Roddenberry’s death, though, inept producers refused to make the show relevant to one of our time’s most challenging themes; for this reason (and others) the franchise quickly became stale and left the air.”
I guess is depends on what you mean by “quickly.”
Roddenberry died in 1991, and the various Star Trek series (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), continued to be broadcast until 2005, when the last episode of Enterprise was aired. Star Trek remained on TV in some form or another for FOURTEEN YEARS after the death of its visionary creator.
The Next Generation’s last episode was aired in 1993, but the reason it was taken off TV was so that it could be the basis of big-budget theatrical motion pictures. There were four movies made in all featuring the cast of TNG, which wouldn’t have happened if they couldn’t attract a large audience.
Let me confess that I got bored with Star Trek years ago and didn’t keep up with it.
Battlestar Galactica is a great show, and I wish it well, but it has a long way to go before it can rival the success of the post-Roddenberry Star Trek.