“Come on. Do I look like the mother of the future?” - Sarah Connor

By Lisa Fary

I’ve been starving for Battlestar Galactica for the past year, so naturally I tuned in to the specials (BSG: Revealed and BSG: The Phenomenon) on the Sci Fi Channel this weekend and sucked it up from my flatscreen like a BSG vampire. That bliss lasted for about two minutes, until I heard David Eick say, “We wanted to do something to the genre which hasn’t been done in a generation, which is actually treat it seriously.”

Really? A generation? There have been no programs that treated the genre seriously in about 20 or 25 years? Or has David Eick just not watched sci-fi programming since Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was on?

My love/hate relationship with BSG isn’t quite as borderline personality as my epic love/hate relationship with Lost. After some episodes of BSG, I’ve yelled, I’ve rolled my eyes, I’ve written diatribes about why Laura Roslin is a lousy teacher. But, I’ve never sworn off the show - I’ve sworn off Lost many times (which, of course, I still watch because I’m Lost’s bitch).

The pretension in that statement, “We wanted to do something to the genre which hasn’t been done in a generation, which is actually treat it seriously,” really turned me off, and I turned the special off in annoyance. I wasn’t going to sit through that pretension for an hour and be subjected to commercials, too.

Of course, I Tivoed the BSG special and watched the next day because I’m BSG’s bitch, too - I’m quite the sci-fi tramp. However, while we agree that BSG is awesome, I disagree that it’s the only sci-fi program in the last generation to treat the genre seriously.

So, let’s take look at the sci-fi programs and movies from the last generation (without bringing up the 25 seasons and 624 total episodes of the four Star Trek series that ran during that time period) that also treated the genre seriously* (and also won Peabody Awards - BSG was not the first sci-fi show to do so).

Alien Nation
Hey, look! It’s a show (and a movie) about social injustice and minorities in America! Producer Kenneth Johnson called the show “In the Heat of the Night with aliens.” In an interview with Pink Raygun, Johnson said, “Every minority felt like it was about them. We got awards from the Asian American community, the Hispanic community, the gay and lesbian community. The New York Board of Jewish Education had us send them every episode, which they used as a teaching tool. They all felt like it was about them, and it really was.”

Earth 2
It had the bleakness of humans forced to live on space stations due to an uninhabitable Earth and it had the added benefit of Clancy Brown. Everything is better with the Kurgan.

Dark Skies
Like American Dreams, Supernatural and The X-Files all rolled into one. Taking place in the 1960s, Dark Skies was about an alien race that takes over Earth via manipulating people and events in history, including the assassination of JFK. You won’t find it on DVD because Sony didn’t want to shell out for the music (we’ve heard that before).

Stargate SG-1
Your show doesn’t get to be the world’s longest consecutive running science fiction series without treating the genre seriously.

Farscape
OK, it had Muppets, but it was an amazing show (TV Guide called it one of the best cult shows on television) with complex storylines and compelling characters. A fan campaign brought Farscape after cancellation for The Peacekeeper Wars miniseries and it will be back for webisodes this year.

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Firefly
So, Joss Whedon geeked out on camera for the BSG: The Phenomenon special, but we can’t gloss over Firefly. While Firefly had more levity than BSG, it took on issues of class, pioneering, government, and being on the losing side of a war. Like BSG (but, before BSG), there were no aliens.

But, the most grievous snub indicated by Eick’s statement is toward. . .

The X-Files
We certainly can’t overlook The X-Files, which also won a Peabody Award - indicating that it took sci-fi seriously - and made Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Greatest TV Shows of All-Time (along with BSG). It had darkness, it had human drama, it had the sense of an unstoppable enemy out to destroy (or enslave) humanity. It also drew in viewers who weren’t necessarily sci-fi fans, including chicks.

We have to wonder, without The X-Files and Firefly (and Glen Larson - BSG was his idea in the first place) having already done much of the heavy lifting, would a reimagined Battlestar Galactica have been the success it is?

Maybe this is more of an issue of the semantics surrounding the word “seriously.” If by “seriously”, David Eick meant “incessantly bleak - will make the viewer feel as if stomped in the face with a giant boot for an hour,” then, yes, BSG may be the first sci-fi show in a generation to do that.

*This list is not exhaustive. Some other pre-BSG science fiction shows that treated the genre seriously in that time frame are: Stargate: Atlantis, Roswell, Babylon 5, Dark Angel, Earth Final Conflict, Quantum Leap, Andomeda, Taken.

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Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl.