I have long been a big fan of science fiction literature. My first favorite authors were Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Ira Levin and Isaac Asimov, and despite the fact my reading routine has expanded somewhat in the intervening years, my interest in alien societies and their interaction with human beings has not waned.
On TV and the big screen, I`m just as much a sci-fi fan. From `Star Trek` to Star Wars, `The X-Files,` Planet of the Apes, three Matrix movies, several versions of Dune, plus all of the Terminators, I`ve seen more than my share.
But I wasn`t prepared for what I think is clearly the most compelling sci-fi series yet made: `Battlestar Galactica.`
Because `Battlestar Galactica` is not just about pointy-headed humanoids who somehow speak English fluently while wreaking havoc on the space-time continuum. Rather, BSG is about the world we live in today, and how bad it could get if fundamentalist terror is not stopped.
`Battlestar Galactica,` you see, is a not-so-loosely drawn metaphor for a universe torn apart by jihad. The show began its third season on the Sci Fi Channel Friday night, Oct. 6.
Keep in mind that the `Battlestar Galactica` I`m talking about is not the cheesy series of the late 1970s that featured a robot dog named Muffit. The new `Battlestar Galactica` was launched as a mini-series by the Sci Fi Channel in 2003, featuring high-end production and superb acting, writing and direction. It quickly rose to become the top-rated program on the network.
`Battlestar Galactica`s` protagonists are human, but they`re not from Earth ` rather the `12 Colonies of Kobol` that seem to share with us a common Homeric.
In this parallel universe, human beings have created a race of artificially intelligent robots known as Cylons to serve man. In standard sci-fi style, the robots rebel and war breaks out. An armistice is drawn and the two sides separate for 40 years until a surprise nuclear attack by the Cylons kills billions, leaving less than 50,000 humans alive in the galaxy.
The humans who survived the genocide were those who had been `off-planet` during the attack, most onboard what the show describes as a `ragtag fleet` of spacecraft defended by a single aging warship ` the Battlestar Galactica.
Over the course of the next 33 episodes, there are battles between humans and Cylons, inter-species intrigue, and plenty of mythology and back-story to keep even the most die-hard sci-fi fans fully engaged.
But `Battlestar Galactica` ` which has been described by critics as `the best show on TV today` ` is not really about space at all. It`s more a drama that happens to be set in space. The show is about human relationships and what happens to survivors after a holocaust of such immense proportions.
Now, here`s where the parallels with our own universe become sinister. The Cylons ` the genocidal bad guys ` are monotheistic believers in what they call the `one true God` while the humans are a bunch of polytheistic pagans who pray to little idols they keep in their storage lockers.
The Cylons believe God speaks directly to them and their actions ` however morally and ethically reprehensible ` are according to a carefully laid out (and slowly revealed) `Big Plan.` The Cylons have somehow internalized a belief that they are the new inheritors of the mantle of Moses (or Zeus in this case), with humans as the infidels who must be eliminated at all cost.
Sound at all familiar?
In one particularly politically challenging episode, a group of survivors decides it`s human beings who are really at fault. They conclude that the reason Cylons hate their creators and have murdered most of humanity is that humans simply treated the Cylons poorly.