![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Welcome Back, Battlestar
Jan. 17th, 2009 11:57 amI have to admit that, for all that I was aware the final set of Battlestar Galactica episodes were approaching, I somehow had the sense this wasn't as big a deal for me as it could have been. One of the most heartening explanations I could come up with for that was that I didn't want to speculate too much because I might somehow turn cobweb fantasies into "non-negotiable demands," but even that didn't quite seem to explain everything... After all of that waiting, though, once I started watching the first new episode itself I was absorbed.
( No names are mentioned, but things may still be given away! )
As it turns out, I also happened to spot, just hours before the new episode aired, a short article in an issue of "The Atlantic Monthly" that took a look at Battlestar Galactica. It was somehow tempting to conclude that the article was just one more example of critics holding themselves well above a "popular" work, although I did put a little thought into their comments about how "contemporary resonance" seems to have been replaced by "mysticism," and how the show would be just about incomprehensible for someone picking it up cold... (One thought that drove me to start watching the show as its first season got under way was worrying just a little about how I wasn't giving live-action shows a chance when they started and then, as buzz started building up around them, concluding it was "too late to start...") I also couldn't help but notice, though, how it threw in a little comment about how "proper space opera," of which the only two examples given were Star Wars and the Battlefield Earth movie, "advertises with chilly pride its remoteness from life as we know it". I immediately started remembering all those attempts to link current events to the new Star Wars movies, and then contemplated how I'd much rather think of Star Wars as dealing with "universal" human questions such as "what makes a good person evil" and "what makes an evil person good"... but there, perhaps, I'm stepping into the role of the fan who can't bear any criticism whatever.
( No names are mentioned, but things may still be given away! )
As it turns out, I also happened to spot, just hours before the new episode aired, a short article in an issue of "The Atlantic Monthly" that took a look at Battlestar Galactica. It was somehow tempting to conclude that the article was just one more example of critics holding themselves well above a "popular" work, although I did put a little thought into their comments about how "contemporary resonance" seems to have been replaced by "mysticism," and how the show would be just about incomprehensible for someone picking it up cold... (One thought that drove me to start watching the show as its first season got under way was worrying just a little about how I wasn't giving live-action shows a chance when they started and then, as buzz started building up around them, concluding it was "too late to start...") I also couldn't help but notice, though, how it threw in a little comment about how "proper space opera," of which the only two examples given were Star Wars and the Battlefield Earth movie, "advertises with chilly pride its remoteness from life as we know it". I immediately started remembering all those attempts to link current events to the new Star Wars movies, and then contemplated how I'd much rather think of Star Wars as dealing with "universal" human questions such as "what makes a good person evil" and "what makes an evil person good"... but there, perhaps, I'm stepping into the role of the fan who can't bear any criticism whatever.