Battlestar Galactica

I mentioned before I was watching Battlestar Galactica again. For those not in the know it was a remake of the original which continued on from the original Cylon War. It didn’t quite line up logically but it is SciFi so we give it a large amount of leeway by default. I’m also going to ignore most of the storyline and all of the special effects as this is not a review. I just want to look at the political aspects as it could relate to our current situation after an event.

For those not aware of the background the story is simple. 40 years ago there was a war between intelligent robots and their builders. Eventually an armistice was reached and the robots disappeared into deep space. The 12 colonies in the war went back to their own home planets and life went on as normal. Now, 40 years later, unknown to anyone the Cylons have now engineered robots indistinguishable from humans and these have infiltrated the military to put back doors in the defence software as a prelude to a devastating nuclear attack. The twelve colonies are wiped out and the human race is down to 50K survivors in a single day. The series is about their search for a thirteenth colony called Earth to escape the cylons and make a new home.

When I watched it the first time I was more interested in the story, the special effects and what was going on to pay much attention to the political aspect. Even this time when I started watching it I was looking at what we could learn from a preppers viewpoint. I think I can say that the answer is not much. Most of the issues are what we would expect, shortages of food, water and medicines. What I noticed this time through was more political and it had a gritty realism.

First of all the military were running the show all the way. Using force to implement their will. Arresting dissenters and ignoring the instructions of the people they were duty bound to protect to go out and attack the bad guys. Now, our guy was a good guy and soon realised what he was doing but only because he was put into a situation and he respected the new president, who was about 45th in line or something. All the way through the show he was in charge, sure, the president ran the civilians and was a figurehead but whenever the two clashed the military took over.

At one point they came across another surviving Battlestar, Pegasus, and their commanding officer had stripped its civilian fleet of anything useful and abandoned them. The commanding officer of Galactica accepted this and did nothing. The crews killed civilians and ignored instructions from the government by command from the military. Sure you could see the commander was torn but his will was law and it was resolved by a third party killing the commander of the Pegasus and the status quo was restored with our leader now commanding both Battlestars.

The next issue was when free and fair elections were held and our hero didn’t like who was voted in. He again only did what he wanted too but this time he retreated into his military shell and kept his troops under his total control. The situation was again resolved with a plot twist that left the old president in charge and our new president as a bad guy ready for a trial. With the will of the president pushing for revenge not justice. Our hero despite having a very strong bias was on the tribunal for this guy’s trial and again, it took a plot twist to put him on the right side of justice. Everyone was being forgiven for crimes, except who our leaders didn’t like.

Later on, again, our president was out of action and the legitimate vice president was ignored completely by the military. Legal legislation was enacted by the new regime and this was totally ignored by the military, always under the guise of, military matters. This lead to insurrection with some of the military taking control as they are legally obligated and a small firelight took place with our hero, taking back control and the ringleaders, the vice president and a senior military officer being executed for mutiny. In reality for not obeying illegal orders and following the legitimate government.

I enjoy this sort of show but one of the issues is that by accepting a certain amount of disbelief because it is a show is that I accept it in areas that shouldn’t have it and this part seemed so realistic. You could see how it could happen each step of the way, honour and duty, and it brought up the old military dilemma. A soldier is there to kill the enemy and defend civilians but what when it comes down to the soldier or the civilian? The civilian dies so the soldier can go on but purely war for wars sake.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realised that this is the sort of thing that goes on and it is accepted by everyone with few complaining. We are indoctrinated into this.

So, in the end, I did learn something that is useful to us. The government is not your friend and military force is so easily turned against civilians who are seen as ungrateful whiner.

Oh!, we already know that. Perhaps I should stop watching these shows other than the pretty pictures.