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Battlestar Galactica Commentary: 4.7, "Guess What's Coming To Dinner?"

While talking with friends this weekend about Battlestar Galactica 4.7, "Guess What's Coming to Dinner?", I have discovered that almost all of them are confused about what's going on.  And the ones who said they weren't confused were obviously not telling the truth or not paying enough attention.  Don't think for a second that I have any real answers to any of the questions.  I'm as confused as they are.

I am not, however, confused by the writing.  It's been compelling for the whole season, complicated and beautiful.  I think what's going on is that people are unaccustomed to processing television, or media of any kind, that deals with religion on more than the bumpersticker level.  We've gotten used to complicated relationships (see The Sopranos or Studio 60), complicated plots (see The Wire, and then watch it again), and complicated mysteries (see Lost, and then wonder if something is really a mystery if even the writers don't know how it ends), but television, and especially science fiction television, doesn't deal well with religion.

Sure, science fiction arcs often include religion.  Usually, religion motivates a monster, or the crew encounters a strange religion, or a show deals with the conflict between science and faith.  But what's happening on Battlestar Galactica is utterly different from these situations.  The Colonial Fleet is in the middle of a honest-to-goodness culture war.  Human civilization is teetering on the edge of oblivion, and they're arguing about polytheism.

The odd thing is that it works.  It's some of the most compelling science fiction I have ever watched, and the fact that they constructed a world in which this is believable and sustainable over this many episodes floors me.  Perhaps I can get wrapped up in it because they're not debating my God, or maybe we're starved for narratives that feel real, or real important.  All I know is that not knowing what's going on beneath the surface is painful, and I can't get enough.

The internet has taken speculation to its logical end, and blogging Galactica is no different.  Everyone has a theory, everyone has a top ten list of theories, but Laura Roslin put it best: "Its all pie in the sky, gentleman, until we know what's true, and what's not."

The real power of this religious debate as a storyline is that it destroy's the audience's birds' eye view.  Up until the middle of season three, we were perched on high like clockmaker gods, watching what had been set into motion, knowing who was what.  Sure, there were little mysteries here and there, even some big ones, but none like this.  For the first time, we're stuck in the same place the characters are: picking a side to believe in as a matter of faith.  We might know what the characters on both sides of the debate are doing and saying, but we don't know what's true, and what's not.