Four people gather around the table surrounded by stars and darkness. Creepy music sounds. One of the men in the group wants to spread a virus that will wipe out the entire robot population. Another says: “Genocide? So that's what we're talking about now?”
I was hooked. I was eleven and the show was Battlestar Galacticawhich shows how machines called Cylons, similar to humans and created by humans, destroyed most of human civilization. I started tuning in every week and soon began renting back episodes from the library or Blockbuster (this was 2006). Once I had watched them all, I watched them again. I've watched the entire series – over seventy episodes – every year for the past nineteen years. It has become a summer ritual.
There's a lot to love Battlestar Galacticafrom rich storylines to self-actualizing characters and truly amazing space battle scenes. But when I tell people how much I love it, I giggle. I expect that they, like me in their shoes, will wonder why I am participating in a stupid space show that makes no sense. But for me Star Cruiser it's much more than entertainment.
At the time I discovered Star CruiserI have seen news reports about torture being used on people detained at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. I couldn't understand how this kind of thing could happen or why other popular TV shows of the era such as 24 And Lostseemed to authorize them. Even the brilliant programs that talked about how 9/11 changed America…Soprano, WireAnd Shield— never really challenged the country's actions. Star Cruiser did. As one scholar puts it, the show asks viewers uncomfortable questions like: “What does it mean to be human? What does it mean for a society to believe it is at war? Is it possible to be moral in times of deep crisis?”
The moment torture began to be rationalized as a means of extracting confessions, Battlestar Galactica asked if it really worked. In one episode, a character named Starbuck forces crew members to hold a Cylon's head underwater to obtain information about the presence of a bomb. Eventually, Navy Commander Laura Roslin intervenes. “You've spent the last eight hours torturing this man, this machine, whatever it is,” she says. “And you don't have a single piece of information to back it up.”
At the end of the second season, the crew of the Galactica find a planet that can support human life and decide to settle there. Then the Cylons come and subject the team to a cruel and cruel task, which the team in turn violently resists. Watching these four episodes in 2014 while I was studying journalism got me thinking about what drives a person to violence and how important context is when reporting and understanding war or crime. This influenced the way I approach my work as a journalist today.
For the past two years I've been thinking about the first Star Cruiser an episode I watched nineteen years ago, “Measure of Salvation.” Looking back on it now feels like looking back into the future. When Helo's character describes what the others propose to do as genocide, his reaction is immediately dismissive and angry. When protesters, students, and genocide researchers began saying that what was happening in Gaza was genocide, government officials and many people in the media were equally dismissive and angry. Lee Adama, character Star Cruiser who wants to spread the virus, uses inhumane language to describe the Cylons, calling them “creatures, dangerous creatures.” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant then used even more inhumane language to describe the Palestinians, saying that “we are fighting animals.”
This opening scene ends with one of the characters saying, “We're starting to wipe out entire races, even the mechanical races, we can tear a piece of the human soul off… The Descendants really don't look too kindly on genocide.” Today it seems to me that he is talking about us.
