Sopranos in Space
Jan 3rd, 2007 by Conor McCabe
I watch a lot of TV. The cheaper the better. I love Big Brother with as much zeal as I loathe the ironic detachment dickheads who hang around proclaiming their post modern attraction to the programme, slipping the hand every so often and copping a quick feel , but never ever getting down nasty and dirty with the Big Bro. I love it because it is deviant. It is shallow. It is throw-away. It is bubble gum. It offers no insights to the human condition. It is unashamedly exploitative. And I adore it.
Every so often, though, there’s a need for a bit more. There’s this desire to try to make sense of the human condition, and stories are how we do it. From the time we are born; from thumb-sucking days, stories are read to us. We watch them on TV and we in turn tell them to our parents, to our friends, and to ourselves. We need stories, the argument goes, because stories are what we use to understand the world.
I haven’t read a novel in about two years, primarily because I was working on a dissertation and fiction just seemed too much like work, but the need to hear a good story just doesn’t go away. Luckily, two programmes came along which answered this need perfectly. The first was the Sopranos. The second was Battlestar Galactica.
Anyone who’s a fan already knows that the ‘Resurrection Ship’ episodes rank among the finest pieces of television written in recent times. Galactica is a sci-fi programme, and in the second of these episodes a battle takes place where nothing less than the future of the human race is at stake. Loads of space ships and explosions and the usual sci-fi stuff. The battle serves merely as a sub-plot to the real dramatic tension, a power struggle between the two human military commanders, which is played out in exquisite fashion.
The episodes were number ten and eleven of season two, and built on the complex characterisation developed over the previous weeks and months. The Galactica’s Captain Adama is no Captain Kirk, rebooted to factory mode with the start of each week’s signature tune. He makes mistakes, and people die because of it. As with the Sopranos, some stories are left hanging, and returned to after a gap of four, five, maybe six episodes. (With the Sopranos, I’m still waiting for the Russian shot in the snow by Pauly and Christopher - but not killed - to return).
It is also intensely topical.
The new season kicks off with a full-blown insurgency by a human population under occupation, by an enemy that sees itself as a liberator. It comes complete with suicide bombers, portrayed in a sympathetic manner, driven by desperation in the face of overwhelmingly superior, better-equipped, forces. The previous season had a president faced with an abortion issue on the eve of an election, wondering whether to court the religious right. All happening in space, of course. You know, sci-fi stuff.
The programme is obsessed with stories, religious, personal, political. Everyone has a story, and even the Cylons (the baddies but complex baddies) are searching for their story, their set of metaphors to canonise and proclaim as the truth.
The third season starts on Sky One this month – for the life of me I do not know why RTE2 haven’t snapped it up yet. But do yourself a favour and get to see the mini-series, season one and season two before you tune in. The episodes are available to watch online on dailymotion, although it takes a bit of digging, while the DVDs are in Laser on South Great George’s Street.
The virtues of BSG well set out there.
It is one of the best TV shows ever made. Of that there can be no doubt.
There’s the odd weaker episode, but even these are great by ordinary standards.
Hi Mr Tagomi,
It’s true. I mean, the ‘black market’ episode that followed resurrection ship was particularly weak. But overall, yeah, some of the best tv drama written these days. It’s working within a genre, but doesn’t feel the need to be constrained by it. and tackling contemporary issues as well. War, resistance, ideology and religion.
[…] Because of my current circumstances, I’m too busy to consume by usual diet of articles and features that make putting together coherent, hopefully intelligent, blog posts possible. I’m not moaning but with a new child at home the only media I’m consuming comes from the livid flicker of the telly. And unless by blog posts are going to be about the cerebrally eviscerating porn that is celebrity big brother, (which is only taken in peripherally anyway – yes Dr. Ben, I’m one of those people who HATES Big Brother) I currently have very little to write about. […]
Then don’t watch Big Brother and watch Battlestar Galactica instead. It starts on SKY ONE tonight. Make it part of your narrative centre of gravity.
Yes, I watched it. Well most of it. It didn’t quite it the mark on my pretentiousness-o-meter but I enjoyed it all the same. It was hard to catch up on the story lines or figure out who the characters were after missing two seasons. For example, which one is Starbuck? It was very weird seeing what’s his face Dirk on CBB (or shit in a jar, as I like to call it) and turning over to BG only to find out that the character he’d played had been written out. Also, the fact that most of the characters use the word ‘frack’ instead of fuck is annoying. Made up curse words, which although understandable, sound twee and pointlessly chaste when they’re supposed to hard and mean. The writers clearly want to exploit the earthiness of ‘fuck’ but can’t put it in the mouths of people who’ve never been to earth in the first place.