Battlestar Galactica, Military Politics, and Journalists
By stephanie - Wednesday, August 16th, 2006
(This post contains spoilers for those of you who haven’t finished seasons one and two yet.)
Battlestar Galactica has some interesting and sometimes contradictory messages about the military. First, we had a military coup, which made Adama look like an asshole (and frankly seemed out of character to me).
Then, we have a situation where civilians are killed by the Battlestar Galactica militia during a riot caused by civilian resistance to martial law. (This time, Colonel Tigh looks like the asshole, which makes more sense.)
But, rather than dealing with the officers and soldiers involved with the “Gideon Massacre,” the situation is happily resolved when an embedded reporter (who is actually a Cylon) boards the Galactica and creates a tearjerker news piece about how the brave Galactica soldiers are saving lives. At the end of the report, as soldiers and pilots walk through the halls of Galactica in slow motion, the original Battlestar Galactica theme plays in the background, oh so patriotically.
I kept trying to figure out what they were trying to say here. Support the troops, even when some of them stupidly kill civilians they aren’t supposed to be killing, and others are blitzed on drugs (eer, excuse me, “stims”)?
Or, was the message, look at how the media can manipulate the public on either side of the equation? Because at first, the reporter was going to do an expose on said “Gideon Massacre.” The tearjerker piece was created after Adama and the President asked for the reporter to do something more “balanced.”
Or…maybe the writers were just trying to say: Beware of all journalists, since they are actually Cylons in diguise.