by Roger Bourke White Jr., May 2006
The Battlestar Galactica (BSG) of 1978-80 with Loren Green was one of those seriously dreadful pieces of science fiction that drove me into the technofiction concept. How could this hogwash be called science fiction? But it was, and it was popular enough to be produced for several seasons.
Now we have the 2004 remake. How does it stack up as technofiction?
The 2004 version spends the entire first season just getting Humanity betrayed and severely beaten by the Cylons -- the robot race that is humanity's deadly enemy in both versions of BSG. We are taken from the first attack to the point where the survivors decide fighting back is hopeless and decide it's time to turn-tail and find the legendary, long-lost, 13th colony, Earth.
In this 2004 version we have added a lot of 2000's cultural views, a lot of shipboard romance, and we've lost the robot dog (thank goodness!), but have we been given better technofiction?
I never watched more than a couple episodes of the 78 BSG because its self-consistency was so bad, and the robot dog was probably the most original part of the series -- I'd seen 78 BSG-style Space Opera many times before, so once I got it's flavor, I lost interest. The 2004 version I watched all the way through. It is trying to be "serious" about its people's motives and its technology, but it still does have serious problems.
An internally consistent story is one that sets premises and then lives within those premises. If a story is a science fiction story then one of those premises is that contemporary science knowledge functions as a constraint, unless it is specifically overridden by one of the story premises. For example, the writer may decide that humanity has faster-than-light space travel -- something that is currently physically impossible to do, so we will never, ever, see it while humanity is still a species. A story with faster-than-light spaceships can still be science fiction, and good technofiction, but the writer must be very careful to constrain his choice.
Constrain, in this useage, means the writer must describe carefully to himself/herself how this FTL happens, where it can be used, and what else can be affected by the technology developed for FTL travel. For instance, is FTL travel really easy to do? Can it be done in small spaces? If so, it becomes Teleporter technology ala Star Trek, and every home and business can have a Teleporter. If it's not easy to do, why isn't it easy to do? Example, entering or leaving space-time may produce a huge burst of gamma rays. For good technofiction, the writer must decide these issues first, then build what humans do around these constraints. (What writers today seem to do is base their story on what contemporary special effects people want to show off, rather than on extending science. Movie special effects are their prime constraint, not science or people.)
Each time a science law as we know it today is violated, the story moves away from being science fiction and into fantasy, or, even worse, Space Opera. Space Opera is all about special effects, and whenever there is a conflict between showing a neat special effect and a science constraint, science loses. Star Wars movies are fine examples of Space Opera, as was the '70's BSG. Surprisingly Tolkien's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings stories (book versions) are great examples of technofiction -- they have high internal consistency. (Peter Jackson shows us just how difficult that is to do when he makes the movies. The first movie is good technofiction because it follows the first book well. The second two movies are much less consistent than the books are.)
Self-consistency is the prime directive of Technofiction, and consistency with the science of the real world as we know it is the second directive. Lets see how 2004 BSG measures up. I'm going to presume you have seen the mini-series on DVD, so I will not try to tell you the story here.
The form of this next section is to: name the problem, then explain the problem in detail. Then, if I have come up with one, I will explain a quick fix for the problem. The quick fix is just a fast and easy way around the problem, it's not designed to be a cohesive and comprehensive answer. The purpose of the quick fix is to show how easy some of these problems are to avoid.
The 78 BSG was a "road-show" TV series where a space ship wandered from world-to-world to see neat things. The "trash the twelve colonies" disaster was just an over-elaborate way to set up that premise, and make an excuse for using Egyptian-motif costumes. In 2004 BSG the treachery is the center of the series. Since it is the center of the series, it needs to be well explained, but it isn't.
We are told that 40 years earlier there was a fight between the Cylons and the Humans. That fight ended in a bloody armistice, and after the armistice was signed, the Cylons flew out of human history. We are then introduced to a scene much like the Panmunjom truce building between North and South Korea.
We are also told that the 12 colonies are maintaining a fleet of 120 battlestars (we are told this exact number in mid-story), and the only other race of any kind mentioned in the movie is the Cylons. Battlestars are decidedly like World War Two aircraft carriers (WWII) -- they are big, expensive, and hold lots of Vipers, which are distinctly like WWII carrier aircraft. The US at the peak of WWII had about twenty fleet-class aircraft carriers, so if the 12 colonies are maintaining 120 battlestars, and they are thoroughly at peace with each other, they are supporting a lot of military spending. They are supporting this to defend against an enemy that has disappeared, literally.
If you were part of the defense establishment, why wouldn't you think of spending some money to find the Cylons? After the Korean War armistice, the UN forces spent a ton of money and effort on reconn of Korea, China and Russia. What was discovered by that reconn was used to justify large defense spending budgets. Why aren't the colonies doing the same? Why are they spending a huge defense budget on an enemy they haven't even seen for forty years, and haven't even looked for? This is a huge hole. It must be answered.
Quick fix: There need to be others in the story besides Cylons and humans -- these others can stay off-stage, but they are needed to be in the story as distracters. Suppose in this case that 100 years ago humanity encountered the Urulu's, an alien race. 60 years ago Humanity and Urulus fought, and the Cylons were developed as part of humanity's weapon mix against Urulus. The Cylons were a failure as a weapon against the Urulus, but the war was eventually won, at least to the extent that humanity continued its existence on the twelve colonies. The colonies current defense establishment is guided by the Urulu threat, and the Cylons have been relegated to being the mother-of-weapons-projects boondoggles. Given this background, when the Cylons show up again, it's a justifiable surprise.
The Cylon lady, Number Six, who seduces Gias Baltar, and through him subverts the entire colonial defense system, is introduced as a Cylon who looks human. Yeah... she does... and she can "look human" for me anytime! (Sorry, back to the story.) The problem this creates is that she is so human that she isn't doing anything that a fully human spy couldn't do. Why is the colonial defense establishment so vulnerable to a spy? A single spy? This is unhuman. It is a huge plot hole. (A small plot hole is that she is psycho enough that she personally kills humans as a hobby. This seems like unnecessarily risky behavior for a spy.)
And this plot hole continues throughout the mini-series. This whole version of BSG treats Cylons who look like humans as some kind of really special and difficult-to-solve problem. But, the way to solve this problem is simply to implement general purpose anti-spy measures. This is classic counterespionage. If the colonials can't deal with spies in general, if spies are a really difficult problem, it means the colonials have been discontent-free for generations. But that's clearly not the case. Gias talks about phoning his lawyer to save him from treason charges, so treason is still a well-known offense, and we have enough spending on military to support 120 battlestars. Spies should not be a special problem, and redundancy should be endemic in the defense system.
Quick fix: Given where the producers want to go with this series, this is hard to quick fix. The producers want to use the very effective "changeling monster" as part of their story line, and the changeling monster is, by definition, a monster that you can't tell from a human. This precludes the human Cylons from picking up special abilities through implants or extensions. This makes it difficult to turn them into super spies.
The Battlestar Galactica is clearly modeled on a WWII aircraft carrier, and the vipers are clearly modeled on WWII fighters. (Cylon ships, on the other hand, are modeled on Vietnam era aircraft, which is partly why it is consistent that they are kicking Viper butt.) The problem is the modeling goes too far. WWII aircraft have to get launched down some kind of runway because they need speed to get lift from their wings to start flying. A rocket-powered fighter getting started in vacuum and 0G needs no lift, therefore it needs no runway. The vipers should be launched like boats from a dock, not fighters from the deck of an aircraft carrier.
The interior of the ship is clearly at 1G. All movies have a huge problem with weightlessness, so I will cut BSG 2004 some slack in this regard, I do not expect them to show me people floating around in the bridge, or explain why they are not floating around. But... Vipers that look like they are flying through air, I will not cut slack on. The exhausts of the missiles being fired also look like they are being constrained by air. The exhausts should look like cones behind the missiles because the gases are not going to be slowed down in a vacuum. Exhaust gases look like tubes in air because the air slows down their sideways motion.
Quickfix: This one, too, is hard to quickfix. If it was easy, it would have become standard treatment following Forbidden Planet in 1958 (which did deal with this weightlessness problem). A partial solution is to be more conscious of what vacuum and 0G will really look like.
It is likely that "fighters" of the future will be pilotless drones. They will be more smart missile than fighter aircraft. "Pilots" will help the missiles acquire targets, and each pilot will have dozens of missiles at his or her command. If pilots are needed, the pilots will fly to the battle scene in some kind of small mother ship that is distinct from the missiles. This smaller ship will be a scout ship, not the big aircraft carrier-style mother ship that holds arms and fuel.
This is a problem in most space movies, and it's worse than usual in BSG 2004. In space you can see light-years in every direction! You don't sneak up on people! If a ship is coming at you, you will see it days to hours before it arrives. If the ship is going to stop near you, it's even more visible because it's braking exhaust will be pointed in your general direction.
In this series the Cylons are constantly sneaking up on human ships, and showing up only two minutes away. Pffft!
Quickfix: Best fix: You simply have to give up this plot device -- the writer accepts that ships will know other ships are coming for a long time. Next best fix: FTL travel is easy and ships of all sizes can "blip" in and out of real space pretty much at will. This is an ugly solution, though, because FTL travel blurs into teleporter travel, and it would revolutionize all kinds of transport. A third fix is that "cloaking" devices are commonplace. But if they are, then all ships will have them, and the target ships can hide, too.
The success of the Cylon attack is record-breaking:
You don't get more successful than this. The military is 1/100th its former size, and the civilian population is 1/10,000,000,000 its former size. Yet the survivors spend a lot of time thinking about getting back at the Cylons. I guess you have to think about something... but before long the reality of the magnitude of this catastrophe is going to break through: You can't go back!
What you have to be thinking about in these circumstances is: where will humanity be able to sink back to Stone Age conditions, and then recover again a few millennium hence? There is no longer a support "tail" for any kind of civilization! Nothing... Nothing! made of iron, glass or plastic can be replaced anymore! By the next generation, the sons of Man are going to have to be making everything they own from plant fiber, animal skins and rock!
The people in this series never seem to grasp that reality. There is still talk of, "Is this a democracy or a military government?" The reality is it's a government of 50,000 people now, not a government of billions. It's the government for a small city now, that's what it is, and by next generation it will be a government for a collection of Stone Age tribes.
Quickfix: The quickfix for this is the mysterious Urulus I brought up earlier. Can they be convinced to help mankind? Will they give mankind enough support to keep them out of the Stone Age? Is mankind going to have to follow the Ancient Israelite example and go into bondage to survive?
Second quickfix, the Cylons conquer humanity quickly, but take their time genociding it.
The lady who becomes president gets diagnosed with incurable cancer? Come on! We have routine space travel but no cancer cure? This is so... plot deviceish! It's as cheesy as the robot dog in the 78 series.
Quickfix: The lady is diagnosed with cancer, but it is curable... as long as you have medical facilities! Conversation goes like this...
Doctor: We've run the tests and... I'm surprised to hear it, but it's back. I'd like to get you in as soon as possible. We'll do another operation and put you on a different drug regimen.
Woman: <sighs> Let me check my calendar. Ah... I have plastic surgery scheduled for next Wednesday, can we do this at the same time?
Doctor [frowning]: This is a life-threatening situation. I'm not happy to hear I'm competing with elective surgery!
Woman: Doctor! I'm a public figure. For me there is nothing elective about plastic surgery!
You end up in the same plot place after the attack (with incurable cancer) because all the hospitals are destroyed. The woman can then spend the rest of the series searching for medical facilities that are skilled enough to fix her. The benefit of this fix is twofold: First, it demonstrates a better world in the future, second, it shows what will be lost by the devastation.
What's the point in having a military if the cities are getting nuked? There should have been a lot of military people falling on their swords after this one... if they weren't already vaporized by the blasts.
Quickfix A: Reduce the size of the military. If the Cylons are humanity's most serious threat, and they are beaten, then the military should be small. Go back to 12 battlestars, not 120, and those have been gutted by decades of budget cuts.
Quickfix B: Don't do it. Don't nuke the cities.
Space is big, and habitable planets are few and far between. There is no reason why Boomer's ship should be easier to repair on Caprica's surface than in space, or at some other facility. Also, it takes a lot of energy to fly through an atmosphere to land, and a lot more to leave. This just doesn't make sense.
Quickfix: The Baltar leaving Caprica scene should not be done with Boomer's ship.
The denouement at Gias Baltar's house is fun to watch, but it's wrong on many levels. First, why is Six telling him all this? Second, how does he survive uninjured a blast which is breaking windows on his house? Third, what happens to Six? Does she somehow protect him from the blast, then walk out herself, uninjured, while he is stunned? Or does she die in the blast and move to a new body? Fourth, how does he get from his broken house to a remote field where he is running on foot. Did he take his car? If so, where is his car? Why did he stop using it?
There is so much bizarre going on here that I'm tempted to believe some or much of it is just a mind game. That kind of ambiguity means it's not pleasing to watch. If it's leading up to something, I need to know that fairly soon after I see the scene. Or... I have to believe in the story's self-consistency so I can say to myself, "Ah... This is a clue!"
Quickfix: This one I can't quickfix because I don't know what the writer's intention was. It's that confusing to me.
The way Number Six says, "I can't die. My memories will move on to a new copy of myself." sounds more like religion than fact. But if it is fact, how are these memories moved? How are they moved across interstellar distances? This is a huge technology feat if they are, and one of those things that would revolutionize medicine and communication for everyone if it were possible. This is a good example of not being internally self-consistent. If the human Cylons can do this, who else can? If no one else can, why can't they? Gias, if no one else, ought to be thinking about this because he's billed as the brainy one.
Quickfix: See above.
This is most confusing. It could be really neat, or it could be just Space Opera sloppy writing.
Quickfix: See above.
Back to the issue of dealing with spies. Spy problems are well known to humanity.
As the press guy says in the first minute of the film, "Form follows function." If the Vipers have air intakes, what are they intaking? Space doesn't have air, and no high-performance combat fighter is going to have the luxury of outfitting with hybrid fuel systems.
In any form of real life, having a ship fly through air and space is crazy. The Space Shuttle rockets into space, and then glides back through the atmosphere because it was hugely hard to add a jet engine to its design. The designers wanted it... badly... so did the pilots. But, try as they might, the designers couldn't figure out how to put a jet engine in the Shuttle and still have a payload.
Quickfix: There is no quick fix for this. You simply have to think through from ground up what your ships are going to look like when well designed for 0G, and design a different class of ship for planetary entry. Getting between space and a planet surface is going to have to remain difficult.
If you want to get from a spaceship to somewhere civilized quickly, go to a space station.
If you want to go from a spaceship to "ground" quickly, go to an asteroid or a comet.
Space and time have been bugaboos for entertainers since Ancient Greek times, entertainers can't get them right while they are story telling. BSG is no exception, and this is where some of the worst technofiction offense always comes to light in science fiction stories.
In the case of BSG, we do have some facts. We are told that the flight from Caprica to BSG by Colonial Heavy is going to take five hours. Lets presume that Colonial Heavy makes that trip using 1G of constant acceleration -- this is as fast as you can go anywhere comfortably without some kind of FTL-"blipping" or equally-physics-violating "gravity controllers." In a constant acceleration flight the first half of the trip the ship constantly accelerates towards its destination, and for the second half of the trip it constantly breaks speed, so it will arrive at a standstill.
Five hours flight at 1G constant acceleration will take a ship .005AU's. The Earth's Moon is .0026AU's from the Earth, so the Battlestar Galactica is close to Caprica, roughly twice as far out as our Moon. If Caprica were Earth, BSG would not be a hundredth of the way to either Venus or Mars, it would be stationed comfortably close to Earth.
Likewise, when BSG decides to rearm at Station Ragnar, and the XO says something like, "There's a whole lot of Cylon fleet between here and there." My feeling is, "Ho hum... Violating space and time again." These Hollywood types just refuse to think this stuff through!
There should be a whole lot of choices as to where to rearm and refuel. They may all be bad choices, but we as viewers should get the feeling there are choices. Second, as mentioned earlier, space is very clear, and very empty. Getting from one place to another is not going to be surprising in space. The surprises have to come from something else, not from just moving from Point A to Point B.
While BSG 2004 is edgier and carries a more complex plot line than BSG 1978, it's still filled with serious technofiction plot holes. There is still a lot that is hoaky. But... the robot dog really is gone, so I may watch some more.
--The End --