Since Battlestar Galactica finished, we’ve been feeding the scifi cravings by watching old episodes of Babylon Five. B5 aside, however, those hungry for BG news may turn to Ron Moore’s weblog, in which he answers obscure fan queries and so on. His entries are sparse, long, and difficult to read in white on black, but I am very interested by this (scroll down):
I’ve found it interesting that there’s a school of thought out there which claims that Laura should’ve been completely sidelined from the very beginning, that Adama should’ve declared martial law from the outset and ignored civilian government altogether. It probably says something about me that I found that very notion to be antithetical to the underpinnings of a decent and democratic society, and I remember the very conscious choice I made in the early stages of this project that while Colonial society was going to be flawed and riddled with problems, that at its base, it was going to be a fundamentally decent and democratic one. It was not going to toss its principles over the side in a time of crisis. It was not going to turn itself into a security-above-all state. There were certain things that mattered more than survival, certain things that mattered more than safety. They were going to hang on to their government and their rights as citizens as best they could under the situation, and would give up those rights and freedoms only grudgingly. Laura Roslin is the personification of that idea. She wasn’t elected, she wasn’t chosen, she arguably wasn’t even ready for the role, but she represented continuity to the traditions and principles undergirding their society, and she would stand for them until she died.
This, to me, proves beyond doubt that the creators, at least, envision the Galactica as ‘the good guys’, always: that they aren’t trying to sneak in a critique of militarised liberalism at the same time as offer it as an alternative to the ‘real’ security state(s). The beautiful thing about Battlestar, though, is that a critique of ‘decent’, militarised, principled liberal democracy sneaks in anyhow — despite the bagpipe music. I miss it.
Nevertheless, how freaky is it that a significant portion of the fan base — a ’school of thought’ — claims martial law was the only viable solution to the disaster, and thinks Roslin ‘wussifies’ Adama?
Meanwhile, it’s raining like the monsoon here. It’s been miraculously wet. The plants are going crazy. Well, most of them. In a permaculture experiment, A. planted a little circle of corn in the middle of wild foliage in our backyard, shaded by bamboo, numerous creepers and shrubs. She put in two more stalks in the veggie patch proper. Now, the circle, three weeks after planting, is already a foot high. Meanwhile, the ones in the veggie patch are half that. It don’t make any sense.
Another thing that don’t make sense is that I can’t seem to make the Categories function on this blog work. Hence, manually, I tell you that this blog entry is filed under “From the Ministry of Insecurity.”
