Battlestar New Caprica?

Furthering the boob tube mania, let us now proceed to that other show I’ve been known to watch, the one with all the spaceships and killer robots that I recently claimed was “arguably the most potent, dramatically vibrant series on television.” Last weekend, Battlestar Galactica, at this point undoubtedly the best science fiction show in television history, and one of my favorite shows of all time, ended its second season with a whopper of a 90 minute episode, upending huge chunks of the show’s basic premise in a move that can only be called ballsy. The AICN talkbalk for the episode, always a good place to gauge the fanboy blood pressure, was split between angry detractors and happy supporters, with some on the negative side ready to claim the show had jumped the shark.

But as far as I’m concerned, the show is continuing right on track with all of its most basic, core elements. As I wrote in my NRO piece, the show is, at its most basic, an exploration of how civil society functions, how all the major pillars—church, state, military, science—interact and spark off of each other to shape the way humans live. And this new twist, in which the humans settle on a ragged planet they call New Caprica, will give Ron Moore an opportunity to develop those ideas even further. We’ve seen how the major institutions interact in crisis mode and its immediate follow up; now we’ll get to see how they behave on the ground, as they vie for supremacy in a situation that at least appears to be more permanent (though I have a strong suspicion that it won’t be).

And really, the change isn’t nearly as major as some are making it out to be: the Cylons have merely shifted their tactics (there’s that word again): Instead of attempting to menace the humans with brute force, they are coming in as ostensibly benevolent overlords—so long as there is no resistance. The show has pretty much always worked on three levels: personal understanding (each character attempting to redefine their understanding of the self and their interpersonal relationships), societal survival (avoiding destruction at the hands of, maybe even defeating, the Cylon enemy), and political stabilization (trying to restore and maintain order in the wake of total civil upheaval). All those elements will still clearly be at play in the New Caprica setup, so it doesn’t seem to me like the shift in locale will really make things all that drastically different.

And for those that want an official taste of what the next season brings, Ron Moore confirms, denies, and waxes vague about the future of the show over at Now Playing. The spoilers aren’t heavy, but they make clear a few points that some think are debatable.