"I don't want to be human!" - Reflecting on Battlestar Galactica

About one year after being assigned to watch the pilot movie of Battlestar Galactica, I’ve finally finished the entire series. That, my friends, was a fun ride.

            I’m a tough critic – I always have been. It takes a lot to impress me, but even less for me to deride a series or movie’s writers and their scripts as inept or, frankly, stupid. Season One is remarkable in so many ways. But the second season of BSG heralds a rapid decline in quality writing. By the third season, the scripts have become abysmal; the plot is convoluted, directionless, and confusing. Characters lose their … well, character … and the cylons stop being terrifying/awe-inspiring and became too human (not in a positive, constructive, way that develops depth - but in a way that indicats the writers were desperately trying to add melodrama where none belongs).

            Despite it all, I powered through the weaker episodes and emerged in the fourth and final season with renewed vigor. The writing improves - characters solidify again, the plot begins to move in a single direction, and the desperate need to know and understand the cylons reemerged in my stomach.

            When the credits finally rolled on the last episode, I was heartbroken. I really wished it wasn’t over.

            What makes the fourth season so extraordinary is the script’s return to what makes the first season extraordinary. Questions like, “Are you alive?” become a driving theme again. Theological debates rage (and not superficially, as they do in seasons 2 and 3). Gaius Baltar asks a question that pierces to the heart of the discussions on faith – “What if God doesn’t create good or evil? What if He just creates?” And always the idea of immortality… and what it means to be human.

            I won’t talk too much more – I know that readers of this blog are still being exposed to BSG, and I don’t want to spoil anything. But below are two videos - similar in content but starkly different in tone – that help describe the (eventual) main antagonist’s motivations. And why he simply refuses to believe in God. One is, obviously, from the fourth season, and the other is a lecture being given by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

“I don’t want to be human!”

I don't want to provide any spoilers here, so I'm avoiding discussion on some of the things I'd love to talk about ("Are the cylons human," anyone?) - but based on the two videos above, I pose two questions - how intelligent is intelligent design? What can we extrapolate from our deeply flawed physical design?

And... do you want to be human?