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Ask Matt
Monday, May 26, 2008
Is Battlestar Too Trigger Happy?
Question: I'm perplexed at the choices the Battlestar Galactica writers have made this season. The main players spend their time whining, mumbling and making inane decisions while the supporting players have been treated like used Kleenex: Brave Callie gets tossed out the airlock, loyal Dualla rates only a "see ya" when Lee leaves her, and heroic Tyrol and Tigh have become sniveling cowards hiding in storage closets. But as hard as it is to see beloved characters mistreated, it's worse to see the repetitious use of a loaded gun as a resolution to every plot point. Need to stop an FTL jump? Don't shoot the computer, shoot Gaeta. Having bad dreams? Frak the handiest Cylon. Have a score to settle? How about a double murder in the hangar bay to settle old debts? It's like the whole fleet has gone Charles Bronson on steroids. The "look out, there's a gun!" shtick has been done to death on shows on like ER and Law & Order. It is baffling to see the Peabody-winning BSG writers resort to such a tired plot device. What gives with the gun play, and how do you rate the writers' choices so far this season? — Stephanie
Matt Roush: If you think Battlestar Galactica is celebrating violence because its characters are wielding weapons on a (might I add) military warship, you're watching a different show than I am. With all of this talk about destroying the Cylon resurrection hub and thus rendering the feuding Cylons as mortal as the humans, even as we watch Roslyn battle her cancer while Baltar preaches a new gospel, I find the show's take on mortality and spirituality a lot more potent than the melodrama of who's shooting whom. Which tends to play out in pretty desperate circumstances. (The murder of Callie a shocking moment by anyone's standards, I would think.) And to boil down the existential crises of the secret Cylons by describing them as "sniveling cowards whining and mumbling and hiding in storage closets" misses the point of this shattering revelation (which I still don't fully understand) on these heretofore heroic characters. So basically, I guess this boils down to me approving of the writers' choices more than you, though I'll acknowledge the show is less conventionally entertaining these days. But to charge it with becoming Bronson-esque simplistic? No way.
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