My former website, Trekology.com, helped to persuade Wesley Y. Joe, Ph.D. to collaborate with me on an extended piece that analyzes Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica. The outcome is a chapter (excerpted here) that we wrote together entitled, “Inverted Perspectives on Politics and Morality in Battlestar Galactica” in the book, New Decades of Political Science Fiction, published in June 2008 by the University of South Carolina Press (link).  You can read the entire chapter online at no cost here.

For me, researching and writing toward what would be the final version of the chapter was sheer joy. I loved every minute that I spent returning to the research tradition regarding science fiction in which I had first ventured when I worked in Hollywood during the 1970s.

Ronald D. Moore obviously learned the “tricks of the trade,” so to speak, that were pioneered by Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek for injecting or embedding discernible themes and messages about politics and religion for the audience to ponder. Moreover, the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on the United States and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Iraq provide the political and social context for Battlestar Galactica producers and writers to inject urgent and controversial questions of military and political significance. Since the word battle is in its title, nobody is surprised that this series explicitly deals with warfare and conflict between political and cultural opponents using the science fiction format. What may be surprising, however, is that Battlestar Galactica attempts to compel viewers to evaluate difficult and challenging questions about their core beliefs and values.

That is the subject of the “Inverted Perspectives” chapter that examines the controversial choices to employ religious and political themes in Ronald D. Moore’s Battlestar Galactica.

One of the most compelling aspects of science fiction–and what initially attracted my interest in the genre when I was a teenager–is science fiction’s ability to pull so effectively from the worlds of politics and religion to make persuasive points about real life. Such an injection of politics and religion into a science fiction television series required a deliberate intent to do so and great courage to face the consequences from both the network and the audience.

Moore succeeded in using politics and religion as a powerful rhetorical platform for Battlestar Galactica so that he could challenge the audience. He clarified what he was attempting to accomplish with Battlestar Galactica as far as embedded idea content and messages in a 2007 interview on Salon.com:

“One of the mistakes TV often makes is that it tries to tackle complicated moral and legal issues and wrap them up in an hour and give you a neat, tidy message by the end: ‘And here’s the way to solve Iraq!’ I don’t think that’s helpful, and I don’t think that’s good storytelling or great to watch. Our mission is more about asking questions, asking the audience to think about things, to think about uncomfortable things, to question their own assumptions. I like the show best when you get to a place where you’re not sure who you’re rooting for anymore, you’re not sure whose side you’re on. And you’re confused and you might even be angry about what we’re doing but at least it’s forced you to a place of trying to define your own point of view on something.”

During the writing of our chapter about Battlestar Galactica my writing partner Wesley Joe and I discussing lofty subjects as extraterrestial gods and politics as we dined in a Vietnamese restaurant near the Pentagon. We both discovered during our work on that chapter how exploring such thinking would certainly require more space than one chapter in a book would allow. But, our chapter is a good start, even if it’s only one small step.

The excerpts on this page from the “Inverted Perspectives” chapter. Copyright © 2008, University of South Carolina. This material is used with permission from New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction, edited by Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox, published in June 2008 by the University of South Carolina Press. You can read the entire chapter online at no cost here.

The Power of Distortion

The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent war in Iraq provide the political and cultural context for the producers and writers of Battlestar Galactica to pose urgent, controversial questions about military and political issues for viewers to ponder. Battlestar Galactica challenges its audience’s core perceptions, beliefs, and values in ways that one rarely finds in commercial television programming.

Ronald D. Moore, Battlestar Galactica’s showrunner, manages, controls, produces, and often writes or rewrites the series’ episodes. He has stated that he uses a “different prism” through which stories and characters are “twisted” from the expected or anticipated norm in ways that few, if any, other television shows ever attempt.

Moore’s storytelling technique deliberately distorts what viewers may deem as “normal” or “expected” perspectives on people, politics, organized religion and moral issues. The specific purpose of this distortion is to serve a rhetorical process that aims to convince Battlestar Galactica’s audiences to look at individual political, religious, and human moral issues from a variety of perspectives.

By bringing the ambiguity of these issues into the foreground, Battlestar Galactica challenges average citizens to think about the potential merits of perspectives they oppose and the drawbacks of perspectives they embrace. In commercial television–the dominant entertainment medium in the United States–this is a relatively recent development.

The chapter entitled “Inverted Perspectives on Politics and Morality in Battlestar Galactica” examines how the Battlestar Galactica producers and writers defy the conventions of directly allegorical stories to push viewers outside of their comfort zones and upend their abilities to pass quick moral judgments about pressing contemporary questions of war versus peace and right verses wrong. The chapter considers how effectively Battlestar Galactica tells human adventure stories of a military and political nature through a bold challenge to audience opinions on three essential points:

**Battlestar Galactica provides commentary on deeply held U.S. beliefs about contemporary politics and the military.
**Battlestar Galactica questions the connection between organized religion and political and military actions.
**Battlestar Galactica compels viewers to accept that during political and military conflicts, despite any idealized standards of right and wrong, fundamentally decent people can behave in uncivil and immoral ways.

The rhetorical process in Battlestar Galactica using the “inverted prism” to distort what is depicted on screen strips away the audience’s sense of comfort about television characters and the fictional situations in which they exist. Battlestar Galactica then asks viewers to compare and contrast these characters against their own expectations of human nature and behavior. The comparing and contrasting leaves viewers with no choice but to reflect on persuasive depictions of the characters’ behavior in times of military and political conflict.

Battlestar Galactica characters are unlike the typical characters in science fiction television series. Instead of following long-standing traditions of character development for commercial television, Ron Moore intentionally creates personalities that more closely resemble real people. When viewed through Moore’s “prism” of rhetorical distortion, his characters can be illogical, deeply flawed, and often exhibit unpredictable behaviors based on their intense emotional and physical drives, much like genuine people.

Battlestar Galactica Characters Differ From Star Trek Characters

The deeply-flawed characters approach in Battlestar Galactica differs substantially from how science fiction television characters have more commonly been construed for decades, especially following Star Trek’s influence on science fiction television and motion pictures. Ron Moore worked on Star Trek and he acknowledges that Battlestar Galactica continues to be informed by the optimistic and heroic characters of Star Trek. But, he clarifies his intentions for the characters on Battlestar Galactica:

“My characters may not have all the answers (sometimes they’re not even aware of the questions) but they contain kernels of both good and evil in their hears and continue to struggle for salvation and redemption against the darker angles of their natures. Their defeats are many, their victories few, but somehow, some way, they never give up the dream of finding a better tomorrow.”

The Power of Sex as a Weapon

Battlestar Galactica characters are also unlike commonly created science fiction characters in terms of their sexuality. Ron Moore maintains one core strategy in the depiction of human beings throughout Battlestar Galactica: Each human’s gender, tribal or planetary origin, and race are completely irrelevant in the Battlestar Galactica universe.

The series is, if nothing else, a complicated, interconnected story about humans at war against their mortal enemy, the Cylons. But unlike in the real world, where both politics and the military are male-dominated, the Battlestar Galactica audience encounters a completely gender-blind political and military infrastructure.

The life-forms on Battlestar Galactica known as the Cylons are explained as having originally been created by humans “to make life easier”–a sanitized way of saying that the humans created the Cylons to be their slaves. Of course, ultimately, the Cylons get smart and decide to kill their masters. They attempt payback using nuclear weapons against human race, but fail to wipe out all human civilization. So, the Cylons bring in a secret weapon in the service of their military strategy–sophisticated and highly intelligent beings who look outwardly indistinguishable from human beings. And, they use sex as a weapon against humans.

The power of Cylons over human beings is thus vividly established. The sexual dominance of a human male by a female Cylon–one of the most stunning storytelling aspects employed by Battlestar Galactica–symbolizes the military and technological power that the Cylons exert over human beings. This theme of a female’s use of sex to dominate and control a male, both literally and figuratively, serves as the lynchpin of the Cylons’ political and military campaign to wipe out their human enemy. Sexual control of males by aggressive females driven by often intertwined political and religious agendas is reinforced consistently throughout Battlestar Galactica.

On Battlestar Galactica, nudity and sexuality are depicted without any apparent prurient significance, shame, or moral consequences. Male and female crew members live in close proximity, sharing not only living quarters but toilet and shower facilities within a military environment that affords little or no individual privacy or separation of the genders. There is also the depiction of attractive females who are sexually dominant over males.

This may certainly serve the purpose of attracting and maintaining both female and male audience interest in Battlestar Galactica, but the more crucial reason to portray sexually dominant females is to establish an effective rhetorical storytelling process that catches the audience off guard. Ron Moore has chosen to disregard stereotypical portrayals of males and females on commercial television and instead calls viewer attention to well-defined characters that can serve a persuasive purpose as models of less commonly valued roles and attributes in a universe where race and gender distinctions do not exist. He calls upon Battlestar Galactica viewers to focus on the critical issues of personal behavior and individual decision-making.

What is “Good” and What is “Bad”?

As exemplified by highly sexual characters, who are young and attractive, Battlestar Galactica employs Ron Moore’s “different prism” for storytelling which consistently violates audience expectations about human behavior. Moore twists the typically expected central characteristics such as heroism, courage, selflessness, devotion, and moral behavior of the best characters, presented instead off-centered traits to keep viewers on their toes and invert their perceptions about what is versus what should be.

The series demands an emotional response from its viewers, especially in the context of the rapid, ongoing changes involving the U.S. military and the U.S. political landscape since the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war in Iraq. The audience is compelled to decide for itself whether the asymmetrical nature of the warfare on Battlestar Galactica between humans and Cylons can be or should be used to justify behavioral choices that frequently appear to disregard basic morality, democracy, and civility.

At the outset many viewers may readily and easily identify the “good guys” (the human race) as they fight against the “bad guys” (the Cylons), and the audience is likely to expect the human good guys to be portrayed as people who behave heroically and even admirably in defense of their civilized society and its essential morality. But instead, Moore’s “different prism” depicts the “good” humans as choosing to behave in ways that in today’s world would be considered immoral if not evil. A most controversial human choice is suicide bombers who attack Cylons. Since the series does not shy away from depicting immoral and violently uncivil attributes and behaviors in what are obviously “good” people, the audience is left with no choice but to confront the difficult questions of why these fundamentally good people frequently behave in an immoral manner and the extent to which context informs moral judgment.

What is “Fair” in War?

Nowhere is Battlestar Galactica’s use of the “different prism” rhetorical device more evident than in several stories that raise questions about the use of otherwise illegal or extralegal emergency measure to address threats to the safety of the political community. Governing authorities and political and legal theorists have grappled with various forms of these issues for centuries. But in the United States, at least, commercial television rarely engages public audiences in such nuanced, multidimensional considerations of these issues or contemporary manifestations of them.

In the immediate aftermath of the cold war, within the U.S. once commonly discussed manifestations in popular political discourse of these issues temporarily faded. They returned with a vengeance, however, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. One of the most controversial manifestations is the Bush administration’s effort to reduce legal constraints on executive-branch prosecution of military and domestic antiterrorism operations. The administration has claimed rights to detain individuals, including U.S. citizens in the United States (as opposed to on a foreign battlefield), in solitary confinement almost indefinitely without charges and without access to legal counsel, an assertion of powers that alarmed civil libertarians and was never adequately addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

How should ordinary citizens react to a head of state’s assertion of broad discretionary emergency authority? Does it represent a kind of legalized lawlessness, and, if so, should be care? Are civil liberties, the separation of powers, and other pillars of democratic republics inviolable? Or are there occasions for which the “strict and rigid observation” of them, as John Locke wrote, are dangerous obstacles to a head of stat’s capacity to provide for our collective security?

The issues are complex ones with no universal answers. Yet the public debate over these issues, particularly conducted through popular entertainment media, can be a polarized, shrill exchange of highly oversimplified conceptualizations of the problem. A genuine contribution of Battlestar Galactica is its use of the science fiction context and the “different prism” device to highlight important complexities and invite viewers to think about some basic aspects of contemporary U.S. national security issues free from at least a few partisan perceptual biases.

Battlestar Galactica presents the viewpoint that military governments have a limited capacity to govern and are sometimes less functional than regimes that enjoy democratically grounded legitimacy.

Why Do Religions Drive Political Behaviors?

Ron Moore has embedded a deeply reverential love of democracy into the fiber of the human characters in Battlestar Galactica. “More than a little of the politics of Battlestar Galactica can be traced back to Abraham Lincoln’s passionate views about freedom,” Moore wrote. This creates a powerful rhetorical context that is easy for viewers to understand and embrace: Just as in Lincoln’s era, when the outcome of the American Civil War was dependent upon an unwavering dedication to preserving the Union, so too will the outcome on Battlestar Galactica’s Cylon-verus-human war depend upon humanity’s ultimate defense and preservations of its freedoms and its democratic society in the the galaxy. To this mix Moore adds the controversial element of theocracy, and in so doing the forces his audience to consider difficult questions.

For instance, why would artificial life-forms (the Cylons) created by human beings evolve to such an extend that they would have their own extremely fanatical religious beliefs? In turn, why would those beliefs drive the Cylons to engage in a divinsely inspired, bloody war against the human race? Although Moore cautions not to perceive of the Cylons are directly allegorical, he admits that the Cylons “have aspects of Al Qaeda, and they have aspects of the Catholic Church, and they have aspects of America.”

Although mainstream science fiction typically has chosen to avoid the subject of religion, Battlestar Galactica defiantly challenges this tradition. Moreover, incorporating two opposing organized religions and various deities into the series challenges the audience to ponder the controversial idea that perhaps gods are created by believers and not the other way around.

But more important, it is the religious dichotomy between humans and Cylons that defines and shapes the military and political clashes between the two sides. At the heart of Battlestar Galactica’s life-and-death struggle between religions are deeply complicated questions that viewers must grapple with: Can the human race retain its political system based on liberty and freedom of religious beliefs after having created the Cylons to serve humanity essentially as slaves; what should humans expect when the Cylons ultimately rebel against their human creators and attempt to wipe out the entire human race? Do humans have any divinely inspired fate to prevail over their creation, the Cylons?

[If you are interested in learning more, including gaining access to the sources used in the writing of the above essay, please consult the chapter in New Boundaries in Political Science Fiction, edited by Donald M. Hassler and Clyde Wilcox, published in June 2008 by the University of South Carolina Press. You can read the entire chapter online at no cost here.]