The government in question

I would like to see -- just once - a science fiction movie in which the designated agents of the US government don't act like a pack of gun-happy, testosterone-crazed morons.

After I wrote that last week, I started thinking. Was I being fair? Was it true? Do science fiction movies actually portray the US government in such a negative light?

Well, two movies I’d recently seen certainly did: Starman and The Day the Earth Stood Still. And then we have Alien/Aliens; the government in question may not be specifically identified with the United States, but it’s close—and whoever they are, they’re the bad guys.

On the other hand, the US military in Independence Day is definitely testosterone-crazed and gun happy, but in that movie it’s a good thing.

(A digression: I turned to the internet to refresh my memory with the titles of other science fiction movies. Wikipedia proved a great resource; one article has all the science movies since forever, by year. It’s an endless, fascinating list, what with Santa Clause Conquers the Martians (1964) and Beware! The Blob (1972). Then there were all those great movies that I hadn’t thought about in a while: Silent Running, Twelve Monkeys, The Fifth Element (an all-time favorite). Our Netflix queue is about to get a serious makeover.)

At any rate, returning to our topic—

Perhaps I was too harsh. After all, when you are watching a movie, you know it’s a movie. An alien spaceship has landed in Central Park, 18-wheelers are dissolving in front of your eyes, and none of it is going to affect you at all.

But what if it was real? What if you were in charge of the defense of your country and a spaceship lands? What do you know about it? Nothing, probably, except that the owners of the spaceship have vastly superior technology than you do. Are they friendly? You don’t know. Maybe striking at them immediately is your one chance to save your country, your species, your planet, etc., etc.

We know that neither Keanu Reeves nor Jeff Bridges is really going to hurt us. But reality doesn’t come equipped with alien movie stars.

I think what bothered me more than the violent response – in Starman and The Day the Earth Stood Still – is the lack of reasoned discussion. It was as if government officials were, as a group, incapable of hearing an opposing point of view, incapable of questioning their own judgment. That’s the worst place to be, as even we moviegoers have, in the recent past, every reason to know.

I'll continue thinking about this topic, and I'm certainly going to be more aware, as I watch any sci-fi film from now on, of its point of view re the government and the military. We shall see . . .

Starbuck and Cylons

As usual - what with having the cheapest cable TV package possible, the one they don't tell you about and you have to ask for specifically - we didn't see this series when it started its run on the Sci-fi channel, in 2003. So we've been renting one season after another from Netflix.

(I'm talking about the 're-imagined' Battlestar Galactica, by the way - not the original 1978 TV series, which I can vaguely remember watching on an old black and white set.)

Reviewers on amazon seem to be split about the re-imagined 'Battlestar'. A minority are outraged that the original series - apparently bright and positive and full of manly men and good morals - was tampered with to make the much darker and difficult 2003 version. The majority love the new stuff, and consider the older version to be, you know, so last century.

Apparently one of the causes of outrage was changing our rules-breaking, kickass hero Starbuck - into a woman. I have to question if the people complaining about this have actually seen the new series, since Katee Sackhoff - who plays Kara 'Starbuck' Thrace - is the compleat rules-breaking, kickass heroine. She is of course an attractive woman, but I love that they don't try to make her gussied-up and pretty like a fashion model.

So I'm going with the majority on this one. I wonder if seeing the series in compressed time - sometimes two or three episodes a night, with no commercial breaks - might have a different impact on viewers than the original idea of once a week. At any rate, I've been hooked from the first 5 minutes.

We have Edward James Olmos and Mary McDonnell - two actors of a certain age, both of them wonderful - playing Commander Adama of the Galactica and the President of the Colonies, respectively (the 40 or so people ahead of McDonnell's character in the line of succession all having been killed in the main Cylon attack). We have Michael Hogan as Saul Tigh (the eXO with a drinking problem and a wife with a very interesting history). And we have a group of younger characters, including the rather remarkable Cylon 'Six.'

One of the great additions to the re-imagined series is the idea that some Cylons are 'skin-jobs' - that is, they look and can act exactly like humans. This leads to consequences, which are just now - in the last weeks of the last season of the series - being played out.

Now if I can only figure out how to get a hold of the final episodes . . .