I watched the season opener for Battlestar Galactica this evening to see if I could become a fan again. I found the mini-series interesting and did watch an episode or so (bits and pieces mostly) from season one and I just don't think I like BSG. If you're a fan and haven't seen this particular episode, there are some spoilers, so you might want to stop here.
First of all, I'm a "bigot." I have a great deal of respect for women in the military, but I don't honestly don't think women should be put on the front-lines of battle. In fact, I think it's probably best if we keep them out of battles as much as possible. On the spiritual level, I believe God ordained different positional roles for men and women as a part of His ultimate plan. On the practical level, I think the military is weakened by having to lower standards of strength, endurance, and physical fitness in order to accept women. Let's face it, women are the physical weaker sex, it's just a fact and since God ordained this order, there's no shame in it! He only has good ideas, after all. Finally, in war, there are acts of violence that men often perpetrate against women that are truly, truly heinous. I don't think there are reasons good enough to put women at risk to that kind of treatment.
BSG, though, has downright dainty women in combat situations and flying fighters. The obvious reason is that Hollywood prefers a pretty face to a realistic one, but gee-whiz, at least Ivanova from Babylon 5 was believable. One of the enlisted marines looked like a light breeze would knock her over. The gun she was shooting was longer than she was tall. I usually turn off my reality-checker when I sit down to watch a show or movie, it's just more fun if you try to lose yourself in it. However, I have my limits and this was a stretch.
Next, I get kind of irritated at the documentary filming style. The camera is always too close on characters and it's always moving so you can never be certain what you're looking at. I'm a visual person and this movie spends too much time flipping camera angles on me before I can get a good view of what's going on. Anyway, that just annoys me.
Then, theres the fact that the abilities of the Cylons stretch my ability to believe that they can't just swat the rest of the humans. They have the magical ability that when they die they transmit their consciousness of across space and time to instantaneously be resurrected in a fancy new body. I haven't seen enough episodes to know if any limitations have been set on this, but it appears to be a faster-than-light feature with an unlimited range. Since we know that Cylons have planted spies on the Galactica itself, it seems like they should be pretty dang easy to track by using this transmission device just to hold open a link.
Coming back to this episode, an unknown bogey crashes into the hull of the Galactica. The ship makes it more or less intact into the hull. However, there doesn't seem to be any worry about it on the Galactica itself. The moment I realized that the writers had sent this object colliding with the hull, my first thought was "boarding party," which is in fact, apparently, a major plot point of the second half of this episode (data I gleaned from the trailer). Weirdly, when the crash happens a fighter pilot stops to look to see if the ship explodes or not and he reports the status back to the Galactica. Where the hell are the marines? Where are the damage control teams? It appears that the thing is left to sit in the hull while they jump out of system and then twiddle there thumbs.
Anyway, maybe I've been reading too much David Weber and my reality-check systems have been too well sharpened by stories that are backed by research in military tactics and such. Anyway, I like SciFi and I'm glad some of you like BSG, but I just don't get very excited by it. I generally don't watch TV. I only watch it if there's something on that I really like. I find that I don't much care what happens to the Galactica and it's crew. Thus, I doubt I'll make any effort to watch another episode.
That's okay, though. Harry Potter 6 is on it's way to our house and Survivor: Guatemala should be starting in just a few weeks. I certainly have too much entertainment at my fingertips as it is anyway. Cheers.
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