A Not Un-Bearable Temporal Distortion

So, I had to improvise a little bit in my Science Fiction Genre class the other day because a guest lecturer I had lined up was unable to join us.  So I wound up showing a couple of anime from the Animatrix, the direct-to-DVD release that adds some of the back story to the two sequels to the Matrix.  And I showed the class the first regular episode of the SyFy Channel's Battlestar Galactica series, which is entitled "33" and I think was the best episode in the entire run.

The original series from 1978 was clearly derivative of the first Star Wars film from the previous year, and an attempt to capture some of that sparkle for TV.  It only lasted one season, followed by a short-lived attempt to revive it in 1980.  While the original series has had its fans, simply put, it was not very good.  Not horrible mind you, just not very good.

The scenario was taken from the Book of Exodus, with Lorne Greene, well known to audiences then as the patriarch of the Cartwright clan on the long running western series Bonanza, leading a ragtag fleet of spaceships on a quest to find the mythical planet Earth.  The fleet was all that was left of humanity, after an attack by the evil Cylon robot empire destroyed the 12 colonies, 12 worlds named after the 12 signs of the zodiac.

The original had an underlying religious sensibility, and in Battlestar Galactica 1980 there even was some interaction with angels, but the relationships were never clear.

Unlike the original, the remake was a high quality production, with a great deal of originality, and it very much captured a post-9/11 sensibility, really emphasizing the fact that humanity was almost entirely exterminated, and that the survivors were just barely hanging on.  The 12 colonies were again associated with the 12 signs of the zodiac, and consistent with this, human culture was depicted as polytheistic—they would say gods where we would say God—and specifically rooted in the ancient Greek pantheon (e.g., Zeus, Apollo, Athena, etc.).

Interestingly enough, there's also a Mormon reference thrown in, a carry-over from the original series, whose creator, Glen Larson, was Mormon.  Both series make reference to Kobol as the home of the human race, and Kolob in the Mormon faith is the "is the star or planet nearest to the throne of God" (see the Wikipedia entry on Religious and mythological references in Battlestar Galactica). What impact this may have on the candidacy of Mitt Romney, it is hard to say (a number of people have speculated on the possibility that Romney is a robot, and my friend Paul Levinson thinks he might even be a Cyclon!).  Perhaps if he chooses Newt Gingrich as a running mate, Newt having made a moon base one of his campaign promises, he'd have the science fiction vote sewed up.  

Sound far-fetched?  You may be surprised to learn that Reagan gained favor in the SF community due to his "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative.  Seems that many SF fans saw the militarizing of space as worthwhile in that it was a surefire way to get us up into space, and keep us there.  Those damn peaceniks are all about feeding the hungry, curing diseases, eradicating poverty, and the like.  Lewis Mumford saw quite clearly that the space program was as massive a waste of labor and resources as the building of the pyramids in the ancient world, noting that both constitute attempts to send a select few into their respective notions of the heavens.  Rationally, I know he's right, although  it's hard to shed that emotional attachment to the vision of space travel a la Star Trek.

Anyway, the humans in Battlestar Galactica were essentially as modern as us in most ways, and more so in regard to space travel, and the fact that their religion was based on the Greek gods can be seen as reflecting and symbolizing the fact that western culture is dominated by a secular humanist orientation that is rooted in Greek philosophy. By way of contrast, the Cylons believed in God--they were monotheists, and generally much more religiously oriented than the humans.  And this being a post-9/11 series, this twist clearly reflects our anxiety about Moslems generally, and Islamic fundamentalism and the terrorist initiative that sprung from it more specifically.

I should note that back when the new series was on the air, I wrote several posts about it, and you can find them by clicking on Battlestar Galactica over on the side, down at the Labels gadget, where all of the labels are displayed in cloud formation.  But I'm bringing all this up because I wanted to note the theme music for the series, which has been widely applauded for its aesthetic appeal, has some middle eastern overtones to it.  It also turns out that some elements of the theme come from a bit further to the east.  There's a bit of singing in an unfamiliar (hence alien in a sense) language, and over on YouTube the person who posted this video, pastafarian69, noted the following:

Turns out, the singing in BSG's opening is actual lyrics, taken from the Gayatri Mantra: oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ tát savitúr váreniyaṃ bhárgo devásya dhīmahi dhíyo yó naḥ pracodáyāt


The Language is Sanskrit. Basically, it translates into something like: We meditate upon the radiant Divine Light of that adorable Sun of Spiritual Consciousness; May it awaken our intuitional consciousness.

 He then added the lyrics to the video, as you can see below:

So, now, the music for Battlestar Galactica was create by Bear McCreary, who has also done music for the sequel series, Caprica (a major disappointment, the series that is, not the music), The Walking Dead (one of my favorites of current series), Eureka (a series that never lived up to its promise, and one that I gave up on), and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (a great series that inexplicably never caught on and was canceled).  If you're interested in his work, go check out the Bear McCreary Official Site.

And this brings me finally to the point of this post, which is to share with you a short video, one that is, appropriately enough for Blog Time Passing, entitled Temporal Distortion, and which features a soundtrack by, you guessed it, Bear McCreary.  So, here goes:

Temporal Distortion from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

And, according to the write up over on Vimeo:

What you see is real, but you can't see it this way with the naked eye. It is the result of thousands of 20-30 second exposures, edited together to produce the timelapse. This allows you to see the Milky Way, Aurora and other Phenonmena, in a way you wouldn't normally see them.


In the opening "Dakotalapse" title shot, you see bands of red and green moving across the sky. After asking several Astronomers, they are possible noctilucent clouds, airglow or faint Aurora. I never got a definite answer to what it is. You can also see the red and green bands in other shots.


At :53 and 2:17 seconds into the video you see a Meteor with a Persistent Train. Which is ionizing gases, which lasted over a half hour in the cameras frame. Phil Plait wrote an article about the phenomena here blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/10/02/a-meteors-lingering-tale/

There is a second Meteor with a much shorter persistent train at 2:51 in the video. This one wasn't backlit by the moon like the first, and moves out of the frame quickly.


The Aurora were shot in central South Dakota in September 2011 and near Madison, Wisconsin on October 25, 2011.


Watch for two Deer at 1:27


Most of the video was shot near the White River in central South Dakota during September and October 2011, there are other shots from Arches National Park in Utah, and Canyon of the Ancients area of Colorado during June 2011.

 Is this video science fiction? Not exactly, not in a purist sense, but it does use science to create an alien and alienating, and in a sense fictional sense of space and time.  Perhaps we can speak, in an abstract sense, of a science fiction aesthetic that exists independently of any science fiction scenario? Or perhaps we need to create an entirely new category for this sort of experimental video?

Last Minute Bloginess

So, between the three days of MEDIA: Overseas Conversations (IV): An International Conference on Media Literacy-Ecology-Studies-Education that I reported on in my last 3 posts, and getting ready for the MEA Convention in Mexico City (see Media Ecology Mexico), which begins on Wednesday morning, there just hasn't been time for the old blog.

I'm not sure how much time, if any, I'll be able to devote to blogism for the next week, but please feel free to tune into the convention. I am told by our hosts, Tecnológico de Monterrey,
Campus Estado de México, that a live video feed will be available from the official convention website, http://www.media-ecology.org.mx/, and you can also review the schedule there to see what you might want to catch, if anything.

I had hoped to squeeze in an entry on last night's penultimate Sopranos episode, which was a very powerful piece of television, but I really don't have the time to compose an entry that would do it justice, so it will just have to wait until I get back, and have time to work on it, which means I'll write an entry for the final two episodes together in about a week and a half.

I did want to note that my prediction about Battlestar Galactica (see Battlestar Galactica Finale and Battlestar Galactica Finalized) has now been confirmed on the SciFi Channel website:

Battlestar Ending Next Season

The producers of SCI FI Channel's Battlestar Galactica confirmed that the upcoming fourth season will be the show's last. Executive producers Ronald Moore and David Eick said that it was a creative decision to end the acclaimed series with the upcoming 22-episode season.

"This show was always meant to have a beginning, a middle and, finally, an end," Eick and Moore said in a statement on May 31. "Over the course of the last year, the story and the characters have been moving strongly toward that end, and we've decided to listen to those internal voices and conclude the show on our own terms. And while we know our fans will be saddened to know the end is coming, they should brace themselves for a wild ride getting there: We're going out with a bang."

In November, a special two-hour Battlestar episode, "Razor," will air. The fourth season kicks off in early 2008.

At last month's Saturn Awards, Edward James Olmos said that the upcoming season would be the show's last, prompting Eick to say at the time that no decision had been made. "I promise you that when Ron and I make a decision about Galactica's future, we'll let you know," he said then.

There also was a column by Michael Cassutt on the same site where he expressed similar sentiments to my own about the quality of Jericho, and its unnecessary cancellation (see my previous posts, Jericho Fit and Audience Abuse), and also introduces the welcome news that CBS may at least approve a TV movie to wrap up the storyline. Here's what he had to say:

June 04, 2007
The Cassutt Files
The Walls Come Tumblin' Down

By Michael Cassutt


The science behind science fiction suddenly makes sense, thanks to Hard SF novelist and working scientist Wil McCarthy.


Award-winning critic John Clute informs and entertains as he shines a light on the most important new books in SF and fantasy.


Scott Edelman, Science Fiction Weekly's editor-in-chief, sounds off about everything and anything that matters in the sci-fi universe.

Apocalypses are hot right now. So saith no lesser authority than Entertainment Weekly, at least when looking at recent novels.

For example, Cormac McCarthy's The Road won the 2007 Pulitzer for fiction—though the novel is impossibly grim, the reading equivalent of being stomped in an alley by monks from A Canticle for Leibowitz. Even more strangely, it was picked up by Oprah's book club. Less strangely, The Road is going to be filmed from a script by Joe Penhall.

Two other recent novels, James Crace's The Pesthouse and Matthew Sharpe's Jamestown, have also been much discussed and possibly even read.

My family's fave, 28 Weeks Later, is still somewhere in theaters, those that aren't running this year's trequels.

Yes, apocalypses are hot—except at CBS, where the promising sci-fi series Jericho, about a small town in Kansas dealing with the horrific aftermath of a nuclear strike on several American cities—was canceled in mid-May.

As the John Mellencamp classic says, more or less, the walls "came tumblin' down."

Jericho was the bomb

Like all baby boomers, I grew up in the shadow of nuclear war. I had nightmares from exposure to early Twilight Zone episodes. I went through the "duck-and-cover drills." I remember feeling a good deal of fear—and sleeping in the basement, as we did during tornado alerts—during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. My small hometown in Wisconsin was near a Nike missile base—for shooting down not Soviet ICBMs, as everyone assumed, but only Soviet bombers.

I read more apocalyptic post-nuclear literature than was probably good for me, notably Pat Frank's chilling Alas, Babylon (1959), about the aftermath of a nuclear war as seen from a small town in Florida, and the classic Walter Miller Jr. novel cited above—the wonderful A Canticle for Leibowitz. I was disappointed (as an action-seeking youth) and later chilled (as a more mature adult, or so I fool myself) by the book and movie On the Beach.

Even that creepy sequence in George Pal's version of Wells' The Time Machine—the atomic satellite looming in the London sky—left an impression on me.

Oh, heck, it would be difficult for me to compile a comprehensive list of the post-nuclear stories I've absorbed.

So I was both pleasantly surprised by CBS' announcement last May that Jericho would be on its fall 2006 schedule, and more than pleased by its first episode.

Here's what I liked about Jericho: That instead of dealing with the nuking of America at the level of, say, 24 (where you talk to the president of the United States on your cell phone), it focused on a small town. It felt like the proper way to view such an event. ...

I also loved the character of Jake Green, the prodigal son who returns to town after a long, painful absence and is forced not only to stay, when the mushroom cloud rises in the west ... but to deal with his estranged family, and his ex-girlfriend.

The casting was good—particular Gerald McRaney as mayor of the troubled town and Lennie James as the mysteriously knowledgeable Robert Hawkins. The writing was smart. The events proceeded with a ruthless logic: the breakdown of civil authority, shortages of food and medicine, the problems of refugees and freelance paramilitary groups ... Jericho touched on all of them.

It also perfectly captured what is alluring about a post-nuclear world—the chance to be free of the past and the complications of everyday life, and to start over.

When the series returned in February, it was with a striking story that explored Jake's backstory as well as the larger conspiracy behind the nukes.

(By the way, has anyone commented on the similarities between Jericho and the climactic revelations on Heroes? I'm not talking about influence and certainly not plagiarism, but that whole zeitgeist thing.)

Unfortunately, the gap between the first half of Jericho's season and its return—from late November to early February—was fatal. The 2007 episodes reached 1.9 million fewer viewers than the first bunch. With viewership falling below CBS' threshold for renewal, Jericho was gone.

Too much flash, not enough bang

Tempting as it is to blame the network, it isn't entirely fair. Jericho's writing and production team made several choices that hurt the show's chances.

NOT ENOUGH LIGHT—Here I'm talking about tone. Yes, we've had a nuclear exchange; yes, people are starving; yes, the citizens of New Bern are being badasses. Every now and then you've got to lighten it up. Jericho permitted itself no jokes, none of the battlefield humor found in, say, Band of Brothers. There ought to have been a storyline about, say, what happened to the high-school basketball team—or some citizen with a quirky hobby. Something with a few laughs.

TOO MUCH LIGHT—In this case, I mean physical light. Limited by a television budget and schedule, downtown Jericho was a backlot and its outskirts some of the same locations seen in C.S.I.—the golden hills around Valencia, a town north of Los Angeles. You can get horror out of a sunny sky: look at the Mad Max movies. But it never played as a convincing Kansas winter to me.

BACKSTORY VS. FRONTSTORY—The writers who originally developed Jericho—Josh Schaer and Jonathan E. Steinberg—reportedly imagined a fabulous five years' worth of developments. But the series didn't get a go-ahead until that original pilot was reshaped by Stephen Chbowsky into the compelling first episode we saw, with Jake's return. The backstory as finally teased was interesting, however, and should have been exposed earlier.

HEROIC CONFUSION—I noted this in my last column ("The Mikeys"). Jake Green failed to be the central hero—am I detecting resistance by actor Skeet Ulrich? There were great action set pieces where he was off to one side observing, or letting some other character seize the moment, or absent. The series let Lennie James' Robert character dominate the screen time. It was a natural mistake—Robert was the mystery man with the cache of weapons and the ties to the forces behind the bombs.

Maybe Jake needed to be the one who knew about the big conspiracy.

CBS executive Nina Tassler, responding to criticism from fans over the cancellation, has opened the door to some sort of concluding episode—perhaps a TV movie? I hope so, but it won't change the fact that Jericho joins the long list of promising sci-fi series that died a premature death.

Too bad. I would have enjoyed seeing it develop.

Some good points, not that I agree with everything he had to say, but when does that ever happen?

So, so much for my last minute bloginess, time to go finishing packing, get a few hours sleep, and it's off to the airport and south of the border.

Audience Abuse

So, the networks have all released their prime time schedules for next fall, and the CBS television series Jericho, the subject of one of my recent posts, has been canceled. How rude! Here I go to all the trouble of writing about the series, and saying some nice things I thought, and they go and cancel it on me.

This is getting to be a problem. I'm getting a little tired of investing my time and mental energy, getting all involved in a series, and seeing it get cut, sometimes without even a full season. This past year, I followed The Nine, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Daybreak, and I know there were one or two others that I've forgotten about, and last season there was Surface, Invasion, and some others, all series that delivered an intriguing mystery, a high degree of complexity, a continuing narrative that required more mental participation than the typical television show, and above all quality. They were promising us programming to rival HBO's achievements, such as the incomparable Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, Entourage, Big Love, etc. And they were promising us programs like Lost, and Alias (before those series went off the deep end), and 24.

The problem with these cool (in McLuhan's sense of low definition, high ambiguity), involving shows is that they require viewer commitment and participation. If you're in, you're all in as the Texas Hold 'Em crowd likes to say. This is a fine strategy for attracting loyal and dependable fans, a cult following, but not for reeling in the massive audiences that have been the networks' bread and butter. So, they get some of us hooked, and when it turns out that the sum of us is not enough, they leave us hanging out to dry on an unresolved story line.

Of course, the fact that it's millions of viewers who are left high and dry matters little, or not at all, given the scale on which network television operates. It is odd, indeed, to use the same term, mass media, to refer to television and to forms of printing that may only result in tens of thousands of copies being produced. Television is the massiest (it actually is a word) of the mass media, it's a nuke, in contrast to print media which are nothing more than machine guns and grenades.

And, television is a business, but it is a business that is now abusing and alienating its product. Not its customers, mind you, because viewers do not buy the programs. The programs are nothing more than the bait that lures us in, so that the networks, stations, and channels can deliver the audiences that they've created into the hands of advertisers. We are the product of television, in more ways than one. This is basic media economics, as taught in Mass Media 101 courses, of course.

The advertisers pay for eyeballs, as they put it, but the cost of producing the commercials and advertising campaigns is tacked on to the price we pay for our products and services, at least those that are advertised. That's why it's been said that we don't pay when we watch, we pay when we wash, meaning that we pay extra for the advertising and marketing of the laundry detergent that we use, and everything else that we consumers purchase and consume (everything that's advertised, that is). We have no choice in the matter, it's taxation without representation, media tyranny.

And it's like an addiction for the advertisers, they know that they could stop if they wanted to, but they just don't want to, in part for fear of losing sales if they do. So, they're TV junkies, paying through the nose, or put another way, advertisers are the johns, the TV industry, they're the pimps, and guess what that makes us viewers?

The rates advertisers pay are based on ratings, which are based on a small sample of viewers who are given electronic devices that record what they watch, or are asked to keep track of them by keeping a diary or log. So, a few hundred people in effect decide the fate of our television programming. Here's another analogy, we're the product, like chickens on a farm, and every so often the inspector comes and examines a few of us, and gives us a rating of Grade A, B, or C. There's no guarantee that either rating is necessarily accurate, although the law of large numbers says that it probably is fairly accurate, but the main thing is that it makes everyone feels better and provides data to back up decisions about rates and renewals.

So based on what this small group of people say and do, estimates are made as to how many people are actually watching, and based on that advertising rates are set, and if not enough people are watching this threatens to lower the rates too much and, oops I canceled it again.

It's an unstable, volatile system, and that's fine for a medium whose best programming, as Neil Postman pointed out long ago, is its junk. That's why the quintessential television show is the sitcom. Not much commitment needed, you can pick it up any time without much problem, nothing much changes from episode to episode, there is no real beginning to the story, and no need for much in the way of a conclusion.

I don't mean to imply that sitcoms can't be good, there have been absolutely brilliant comedies aired on the networks over the years, for example, The Burns and Allen Show, The Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Get Smart, Green Acres, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, MASH, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, South Park, and now The Office. And if the show gets canceled after only one season, like The Honeymooners, it doesn't damage the overall quality of the series, nor is it terribly damaging to stretch out a series, as long as the laughs keep coming, as was the case for Seinfeld and continues to be for The Simpsons.

But trying to turn commercial television into an art form, trying to produce complex, continuous, involving television series while operating in this sort of economic environment has turned into a form of audience abuse. Traditionally, the networks understood that quality television could not co-exist with an open-ended series. Instead, it could take the form of an anthology series such as Playhouse 90 in the 50s, each week presenting a new theatrical production adjusted for the TV set; Rod Serling's innovative Twilight Zone also worked because it was an anthology series. Quality also came in the form of the stand-alone special, the documentary film made by television news crews, such as Harvest of Shame, the made-for-TV movie such as Brian's Song, and the television miniseries such as Roots and The Day After.

It was understood that quality television meant never having to say you're sorry about having a beginning, middle, and end, it meant knowing exactly how long you need to tell the story you want to tell, making sure you have the resources to complete the number of episodes needed to bring the story to completion, and not stretching the story out just because you've attracted a lot of viewers (as Lost has done, and even Battlestar Galactica has suffered from a little padding). Again, none of this applies to comedy, only drama, tragedy and melodrama.

We have only to turn to BBC programming, for many years the staple of PBS stations, to find examples of programs that knew how to stay within their limits, The Prisoner being a prime example. The reason that the BBC was different was because it was public television, like PBS, not commercial television--as Postman has pointed out, public television networks place certain limits on television programming (often based on other forms and media such as print and the fine arts), while commercial broadcasters let their television programming go with the flow, giving carte blanche to the medium's bias towards immediacy and discontinuity (and now, this...).

HBO, being primarily a movie channel, and having dabbled in made-for-TV movies, produces television series that are more or less cinematic, a term that once referred to a certain kind of material and machinery (celluloid, film projectors, etc.), but now mainly means a certain level of quality. Artistically, there are coming from the right place for complex, involving programming.

Also, HBO is in certain respects similar to the BBC and PBS, in not trying to sell its audiences to advertisers. They do try to sell us to cable companies as subscribers, but that's at least a bit more direct. We may not be able to pay only for what we watch, but we can decide whether or not to pay for the package that includes The Sopranos. Their business model must intrinsically include a healthy respect for their audiences. We are, at least in some respects, their customers.

But we will always be nothing more than product for commercial television. Specialty networks like SciFi Channel treat their product with more care, hence programs like Battlestar Galactica, and as the audiences for CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, and CW continue to shrink, they no doubt will pay more attention to quality control as well, quality of viewers that is. But we'll always be packaged goods to them.

Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with selling ourselves, as long as we know that's what we're doing. And as long as we get a fair price for our goods. If we put in the time and effort needed to watch their programming, then we need a reasonable guarantee that our efforts will be rewarded with the minimum wage of wrapping up a narrative appropriately. If viewers invest in a series like Jericho, and the return is not sufficient to warrant its continuation on network television, then make sure it continues on a cable channel instead, or at least give us a TV movie or miniseries to wrap the story up.

At the same time, I can only imagine that many viewers, having been burned by all of the cancellations, will be reluctant to commit to the next round of complex, continuous narratives that the networks present in an attempt to create the next Lost, or now Heroes. Expect a viewer revolt as a natural response to the networks' audience abuse. With online viewing and on demand services on the rise, commercial TV's days are numbered, and mark my word, the network walls will come a tumblin' down.

Battlestar Galactica Finalized

A little more than a week ago, in a post entitled Battlestar Galactica Finale, I went through all the signs and came to the following conclusion:

Season Four of Battlestar Galactica will be the last. I go on record with this prediction: 2008 will bring the series finale for Battlestar Galactica. Remember that you read it here first. I am not saying that I want to see the series end, mind you, but I would rather see it bring the story to its conclusion than leave it hanging or inflate it until it bursts. And it seems as if the creators of Battlestar Galactica have too much integrity and sense to do that, and for that I applaud them.

Well, I didn't expect my prediction to be confirmed so quickly, but in a report on IESB.net dated May 10, 2007 you can find the following:

Edward James Olmos and Katee Sackhoff Confirm Final Season of Battlestar Galactica!!!

Written by Stephanie Sanchez

Thursday, 10 May 2007

The IESB attended the 33rd Annual Saturn Awards today in Universal City and spoke with both Edward James Olmos and Katee “Starbuck” Sackhoff of Battlestar Galactica fame.

When asked about the next season of Battlestar, Olmos had this to say, “This will probably be the most extraordinary season of Battlestar, it’s the final season so, it’s definitely going to be the most vicious.”

IESB: Final?

Olmos: You heard it first.

IESB: Are you serious?

Olmos: Very much so.

IESB: I want to go cry, I know they were talking about the Caprica spinoff, is there a possibility of that then?

Olmos: That’s up to them, I have no idea, but as far as we know, in respects of the way we have this show constructed, this is the final season.

IESB: Wow.

Olmos: So enjoy it while it’s here.

Say it ain’t so Katee! A bit later, we caught Katee Sackhoff on the red carpet and asked for a comment.

IESB: Eddie just gave me some earth shattering news.

Katee: Hmmm.

IESB: It made me want to go inside and cry.

Katee: Did you hear that Battlestar might not go anymore?

IESB: What the fuck is wrong, what’s going on?!

Katee: Yeah, this might be, this may be our last year. If Eddie is saying it, I guess I can repeat it.

IESB: I was like, what’s wrong with these people?

Katee: I think part of the problem is that it’s an expensive show.

IESB: But it’s a great show.

Katee: It is, but we don’t have the viewership that a great show should get.

IESB: They should put it on NBC.

Katee: They should, but then how would I do the Bionic Woman at the same network, to be jumping back and forth, we have to keep it a little separate right now.

We have more from Katee and Eddie via red carpet video interviews coming soon but for now, take this as it is, may Battlestar rest in peace.

So, there you have it. A bit of the old magic ecology.

btw, Lost recently announced that they would wrap things up, after 3 more seasons! some folks never learn...

Wild Palms 2007

I'm teaching a course on the Science Fiction Genre this semester, I've been doing it once a year on average for over a decade now, the emphasis is on film, but we also cover other media including books, magazines, theater, radio, television, cable, home video, and we also talk a bit about music and video/computer games. Actually, today was the last class meeting, and the final is next week (good luck guys!).

So, this semester, for the first time, I had the students screen the 1993 television miniseries Wild Palms (copies of the DVD are placed on reserve, students watch it on their own time, then we discuss it in class). I never had a chance to use it before, because it wasn't available on video for about a decade (it came out on VHS circa 1994, but was discontinued not long afterwards), and only came out on DVD late in 2005.

My students were not at all familiar with Wild Palms, hadn't even heard of it, and this is no doubt due to the fact that the miniseries was not only unavailable for something like a decade, but has rarely, if ever, been rerun on television. Many of my students are quite savvy when it comes to sci fi, so I imagine that anyone who was too young to see it when it aired, or otherwise missed it, would be in the same boat, that is, not fully aware of this remarkable production.

So, let me first of all tell you that this is quality television. If you like programs like Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Twin Peaks, or The Prisoner, then you ought to check out Wild Palms.

Here's some background for you. The miniseries is 285 minutes long, which means it's almost 5 hours. It was intended to be a miniseries, so the story is resolved in the end, not left open for a series to follow. In this sense, it is like a movie, albeit a very long one, although it is broken up into 5 episodes (it was aired over one week). But it also draws in some ways on the soap opera genre, specifically the primetime soap opera such as Dallas and Dynasty, with a large number of characters involved in complex familial, romantic, economic, and political relationships.

The miniseries was officially billed as

Oliver Stone Presents
Wild Palms

and the famous film director Oliver Stone (Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, JFK, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, Alexander, World Trade Center) is seen as the creative force behind the miniseries, although he does not actually direct any of the episodes (in film, the director is generally considered to be the auteur, in television it's the producer). Stone is listed as the Executive Producer along with Bruce Wagner, who is credited as the writer, and Wagner is the writer of the comic that the miniseries was based on, which was illustrated by Julian Allen, and appeared in the magazine Details back in 1990.

Stone's JFK looms large in the background of Wild Palms, which revolves around a mysterious conspiracy, and Stone even appears briefly in a scene in which he is being interviewed on television, the interviewer asking Stone if he's bitter now that the files on JFK have been unsealed and Stone has been vindicated.

The story is set in 2007, which makes it interesting to watch now that it is 2007, but 2007 was 14 years in the future back then. The future that Stone and Wagner envisioned is quite different from our own, but I imagine that many people would say that Wild Palms' image of an America subtly slipping into authoritarianism was not so far off the mark. But images of the future ultimately say more about the times that they were produced in than the times that they depict (and supposedly predict). More on this later, but first some further notes on the production.

The casting is very interesting, and very interestingly television-ish. The main character, Harry Wycoff, is played by James Belushi, who back in 1993 was best known as the brother of John Belushi, and a kind of John Belushi-light on Saturday Night Live (some of my students had trouble with this casting, because they identify Belushi with his more recent sitcom dad persona). It was an unusual choice, because this was basically a dramatic role, although there were some moments where he shifted into a comic persona. Harry's wife, Grace, was played by Dana Delany, who best known for her starring role in the TV series about Vietnam, China Beach, which went off the air just a couple of years before the miniseries premiered. Grace's mother, Josie, is played by Angie Dickinson, a move actress and at one time a sex symbol with a long track record, also known for her television work as the star of the seventies series, Police Woman. Coty, the son of Harry and Grace, is played by Ben Savage, then best known as the younger brother of Fred Savage of The Wonder Years, but soon afterwards to become the star of Boy Meets World. Bebe Neuwirth, a very talented Broadway actress, but best known as Lilith, the wife of Frasier Crane on Cheers, plays the role of the famous actress Tabba Schwartzkopf. Film and television actress Kim Cattrall, who would in a few years become famous for her role as Samantha in Sex and the City, plays Harry's old lover, Paige Katz. Additionally, the character actor Robert Loggia, known for his work in the crime genre, typically as a mobster, plays the villainous Senator Tony Kreutzer; the British actor David Warner plays the imprisoned revolutionary and Grace's father, Eli Levitt; Ernie Hudson, who would become known for playing Warden Glynn on Oz, was Tommy, a friend of Harry's; Charles Rocket, probably best known for getting fired from Saturday Night Live after saying "fuck" on a live broadcast in 1981, played Stitch, a comic revolutionary. And that's just to mention some of the cast!

The Wikipedia entry on the miniseries contains a plot synopsis, as does the TV.com listing. Neither summarizes the complex and convoluted plot in its entirety, nor do they give away the ending. I won't go into much detail here, but what's intriguing about this image of a future America is the sense of slipping gradually into fascism. Individual citizens are beat up and kidnapped in public, in broad daylight, off of the streets, in restaurants, etc., by men in black types, secret service/agents/police, this happens repeatedly, and mostly people ignore it, make believe they don't see anything. In and of itself, it makes for a powerful set of images, and the idea for this comes from the real life situations in countries such as Argentina and Chile back in the 70s and 80s.

The leader of the opposition is imprisoned in a "Perceptory," an image again taken from real life, e.g., Nelson Mandela. And children are kidnapped and indoctrinated, turned against their parents, an idea that has its source in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The rhinoceros is a significant recurring symbol in Wild Palms, and it is an allusion to the 1959 play by Eugène Ionesco in which one individual after another turns into a rhinoceros, symbolizing the spread of fascism and Nazism in Europe. Rhinoceros is a classic example of theater of the absurd, and Wild Palms could be considered a TV miniseries of the absurd, coupled with numerous film noir elements.

There are references to a nuclear event brought on by terrorism at some point in the recent past, which occurred in Florida, Boca to be specific (but actually part of the conspiracy). Now, as a New Yorker it's always a relief when my hometown isn't made to be ground zero in these narratives, as we were always the ones who were hit first in all of the old atomic war stories (but not, refreshingly, in 24 or Jericho). But this event in Wild Palms serves the same function as our 9/11, in changing the political climate of the United States (in the miniseries, there is a reference to Pearl Harbor as similarly pivotal). It is also interesting to note that that region of Florida was ground zero for another kind of era-defining disaster, the disputed 2000 presidential election.

The title Wild Palms, which presumably comes from the Faulkner novella about an ill-fated love affair (which is part of the plot in the miniseries), points to the geographical setting of the narrative, Los Angeles, and we are very much in the world of Hollywood show business here, which perhaps accounts for the noticeable use of Jewish names for many of the characters (and German names as well). There are also several gay characters, unusual especially for this time, but not for Hollywood. And there is a strong Japanese emphasis, which is definitely a west coast thing, but also reflects the ascendancy of the Japanese economy in the 80s, Japan's important role in electronics and computer technology, and also the influx of Japanese popular culture in the past few decades. The use of tattoos for identification purposes follows, I believe, the Yakuza (Japanese mafia), but also presages the recent rash of tattooing in mainstream culture. There's also a lot of play and pun with GO!

Virtual reality technology is the big thing in Wild Palms, and there is a Neuromancer-like interface (William Gibson has a cameo appearance where he is identified as the man who coined "cyberspace") to a virtual world where individuals can interact with one another through avatars that appear to be fully human. But the big breakthrough is its combination with holographic technology to create entertainment that breaks out of the box and projects into the room, and this is used to create a sitcom that takes place in your own living room (the technology is called Mimecom, and the slogan goes, is it real or is it Mimecom?, a take off on the actual advertising for audio cassettes that went, is it live or is it Memorex?). Like I said, this is Hollywood.

The sitcom is part of a conspiracy plot, however, and another technology that's introduced is Mimosine, a drug that makes VR and holograms seem real to us. Note the connection to mimesis here, and also Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, but there actually is an amino acid called mimosine which inhibits DNA replication in mammals, possibly a reference to the child abduction plot element. Mimosine is shown to be addictive (addicts bleed blue liquid out of their noses, reminiscent of the nose bleeds caused by cocaine use, especially associated with the entertainment media), and there are hints of future drug dealers and addicts, and links back to LSD and psychedelics. While most of the story centers on prominent personalities, there is a bit of the cyberpunk scenario in Wild Palms (i.e., Wilderzone), and also some references to technoshamanism.

The sitcom is called Church Windows, and the program, the VR/holographic technology, and the Mimosine drug all have the same source, Senator Tony Kreutzer, who is also the founder of the Church of Synthiotics and the New Realism. This is patterned on L. Ron Hubbard (it's said that Tony wrote science fiction, just like Hubbard), on Dianetics, and Scientology. Tony is a cult leader, and where Scientology hooks you up to some kind of electric device, Synthiotics connects you to VR technology. And just as Scientology has very powerful connections to the entertainment industry (again, a West Coast thing), Wild Palms takes this a step further in making Tony a media mogul. And he is not only a senator, but a presidential candidate, so there is a strange combination of religion, media, and politics at play here. It may seem a bit distant today, when the media tend to be identified with liberal politics, but let's not forget about all that conservative talk radio. And more importantly, Wild Palms looks back to the eighties, and that was the decade when a Hollywood movie actor became president, and there was, and is, a conservative cabal out there in addition to Reagan (John Wayne, Bob Hope, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger). Also recall that Reagan's rise also represented the ascendancy of the religious right, the Moral Majority, and they remain a powerful force in the Republican party. So, a media-religious-political complex is a plot element that reflects trends originating in late 20th century America.

I go into all this not because I'm pushing the politics of Wild Palms, but just to explain where the miniseries is coming from. Conspiracy makes for an exciting plot, and the miniseries draws on the conspiracy theme that begins with the Kennedy assassination, runs through Nixon's Watergate scandal, and culminates in the Reagan era. But instead of the heavy-handedness of films like JFK, the sci fi scenario provides enough distance to handle these themes safely, and even make them fun. The distancing effect of science fiction was put to good use by Gene Roddenberry in the Star Trek series, enabling him to tackle social issues that could not be dealt with in a straightforward manner. But Star Trek's style was realism, the same for Battlestar Galactica, whereas Wild Palms is much closer to David Lynch's Twin Peaks in being mysterious and intriguing, and stylized and yes, artsy (in a good way).

Wild Palms is a delight if you are into symbolism, and quotations and allusions. Towards the end, there are clear allusions to scenes from the movies Videodrome and Blade Runner. There are quotations of Yeats' "Running to Paradise," Eliot's "The Hollow Men," and Whitman's "O, Captain, My Captain" (about the Lincoln assassination, but often invoked in reference to Kennedy). There's an outrageous version of "All Along the Watchtower" done crooner-style, and Tony Kreutzer sings the Groucho Marx song, "Hello, I Must Be Going." The soundtrack in general is terrific if you're into sixties music--I get chills from the way Gimme Shelter is used in the last episode. The two groups at war with one another are The Fathers, which references both hierarchical religious organization and the older generation on one side of the generation gap, and The Friends, which references the Quakers who are associated with peace, as well as the baby boomer peer group (e.g., Woodstock) on the other side of the gap. In this sense, Wild Palms anticipates the culture wars that continue to plague us today.

A further note, Harry's daughter, Deirdre, nicknamed "Buddha," is a late talker who has not started to speak yet. I understand this to be a metaphor for silence in the face of atrocity, cultural trauma, a bit of Pete Townsend's Tommy. But I can't help but wonder if this character wasn't also inspired by an encounter with autism (as was the case for Townsend). I was surprised to see, when I looked up Angie Dickinson, that her character in Police Woman had an autistic daughter who appeared in a few episodes.

Be that as it may, Wild Palms has the kind of depth to it that makes repeat viewing worthwhile.

Battlestar Galactica Finale

I've been mulling over the Season 3 Finale of Battlestar Galactica, the topic of several previous posts (Battlestar Galactica Redux, God and the Machines, and Postscript to God and the Machines), and here are some thoughts about what is coming next.

The season finale makes it pretty clear that they are about to find Earth, and this pretty much fits in with the way the series has moved. The miniseries gave us the Cylon invasion and genocide, with the 40,000 odd survivors escaping in a "ragtag fleet" led by the last battlestar. Season 1 was all about surviving Cylon attacks, and embarking on the quest for Earth, not knowing where it is or even if it exists, but the season ends with the survivors finding the planet Kobol which was written about in their sacred texts, and which points the way to Earth. The quest continues in Season Two, but at the end of the season the survivors find a planet that can (barely) sustain human life and is hidden from the Cylons, and they decide to settle on it, after which they are discovered and occupied by the Cylons. Season Three has Galactica rescue the survivors, and ends with the promise of finding Earth.

In other words, each season advances the plot significantly. Unlike other series that have stretched plot lines out, and consequently lost their way (and I'm thinking here about Lost, and Alias for that matter), Battlestar Galactica advances the plot line in a significant way each season, making each season move in a fresh and exciting new direction. This is a series where the creators seem to know what they are doing, and where they are going. That's not to say that every episode holds the same significance--this is not a miniseries, after all, and each season retains some episodic qualities and includes some digressions. But viewed on a season by season basis (or even half season since they tend to be broken up in that way), it is clear that advancing the plot takes precedence.

So, we can expect to encounter Earth in Season Four. And the producers of the series have demonstrated a commitment to quality. Now, here's another hint. The original 1978 series was canceled with the first season, and consequently the survivors never reached Earth (and I have to again say what an achievement it is to have remade that mediocre program into this outstanding new series), and there were only 22 episodes made. And it was recently announced that the Season Four order for 13 new episodes was increased to 22!

Now, I'm not trying to go all numerological on you, no conspiracy theory here, but maybe a touch of some sentiment or homage?

So, putting the pieces together, we have a series dedicated to quality, but also expensive to produce and with ratings that (sadly) are not all that great; we have a plot line that promises to bring the survivors to Earth next season, which represents the fulfillment of their quest; we have a sudden 40% increase in the number of episodes for one season, and we have a total number of episodes for next season, 22, that matches the total number of the original series.

My conclusion: Season Four of Battlestar Galactica will be the last. I go on record with this prediction: 2008 will bring the series finale for Battlestar Galactica. Remember that you read it here first. I am not saying that I want to see the series end, mind you, but I would rather see it bring the story to its conclusion than leave it hanging or inflate it until it bursts. And it seems as if the creators of Battlestar Galactica have too much integrity and sense to do that, and for that I applaud them.

Postscript to God and the Machines

A quick addendum to my previous post, which was in response to a recent entry on Bob Blechman's blog, entitled Cylon Monotheism: Religion in Battlestar Galactica.

Writing has been described as a secondary symbol system, because the letters or characters (only alphabets have letters, other writing systems have characters) are symbols that stand for other symbols, specifically the written word stands for the spoken word.

Cylons, being the alphabet come to life (as discussed in my previous post), are the embodiment of a secondary symbol system that stands for the primary symbol system of speech. And what is the embodiment of that primary symbol system (you may ask)? But of course any good media ecologist can tell you the answer is us-- we human beings are the embodiment of speech, which is encoded into our genes (the potential of course, waiting to be activated by actual interaction, so that the potential is inherited, but the specific language is inherited). Writing is pure invention, the technologizing of the word as Walter Ong puts it, and as the embodiment of writing, the Cylons are secondary symbols that stand for their makers, human beings. And this means that human beings are primary symbols that stand for...?

Genesis 1:27: "And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Human beings are symbols that stand for God. And the Cylons, being monotheists, want to wipe out humanity so that they can take our place as the primary symbols of God.

Setting aside the science fiction scenario, the implications of human beings being the symbols of God, or the medium of God for that matter, are worth considering. But that's a topic for another time.

God and the Machines

In a recent post on Bob Blechman's blog, entitled Cylon Monotheism: Religion in Battlestar Galactica, Bob makes reference to my own post here on this blog, in which I praise the incorporation of religious themes in the show, specifically making the humans all pagans in the Greco-Roman mode, albeit with a tendency towards secular humanism, while the Cylons, technological creations of the humans who evolved from robots to some form of biotech human enough to breed with us, are portrayed as monotheists, albeit with a tendency towards fanaticism. Bob disagrees, however, with my own positive evaluation:

I concur that Battlestar Galactica is wonderful, both as Sci-Fi and as television drama of any kind. However, I find the Cyclon's religious affectations confusing and troubling within the total context of the show.

As a model media ecologist, Bob raises some very good, thought-provoking questions. as he goes on to write a bit later on:

If, in spite of being created in the image of their creators, Cylons reject polytheism, how did they stumble across monotheism?

In a 1977 Issue of ETC: The Journal of General Semantics, in an article titled "Alphabet, Mother of Invention," Marshall McLuhan and Robert K. Logan speculate on the possible origin of monotheism:

"Western thought patterns are highly abstract, compared with Eastern. There developed in the West, and only in the West, a group of innovations that constitute the basis of Western thought. These include (in addition to the alphabet) codified law, monotheism, abstract science, formal logic, and individualism. All of these innovations, including the alphabet, arose within the very narrow geographic zone between the Tigris-Euphrates river system and the Aegean Sea, and within the very narrow time frame between 2000 B.C. and 500 B.C. We do not consider this to be an accident. While not suggesting a direct causal connection between the alphabet and the other innovations, we would claim, however, that the phonetic alphabet played a particularly dynamic role within this constellation of events and provided the ground or framework for the mutual development of these innovations."

Perhaps Cylons, while surely literate, as robots are not subject to McLuhan's and Logan's media assertions. One could argue that Battlestar Galactica is not media ecological at all, and therefore need not adhere to the tenants of ME. The humans of BG can develop an advanced civilization without the benefit of alphabetic literacy, or, if their alphabet is phonetic, they can retain their polytheism in spite of it.

Religious robots, while intriguing, remain a problem, especially self-ordained monotheistic robots. I believe that the depiction of Cylons as monotheistic in the absence of human mortality or alphabetic literacy can only be seen as a true leap of faith on the part of Battlestar Galactica's creators.

Now, I admit that the fact that I am intrigued by all this and moved to write about it brands me as an irredeemable geek. So be it!

Bob raises the question of whether Battlestar Galactica is media ecological or not. The temptation, as a fan, a fan of anything, is to defend the program and provide rationales, rationalizations, logical explanations, for all of its inconsistencies and inaccuracies. That's what fans do to shore up the universe that they we want to believe in (this bears more than a passing resemblance to the ways in which followers in any given religion seek to interpret their sacred texts in order to maintain the plausibility of their belief system). But I'm not interested in doing that. Frankly, it seems to me that most science fiction film and TV is more about presenting an engaging narrative (or more often, an engaging set of visual effects) than it is about producing a credible scenario based on scientific extrapolation and/or speculation (SF writing is quite different from the audiovisual forms, however).

And even when they do a good job on the science and technology side of things, the creators seem to know next to nothing about the field of communication, and invariably get things wrong, or simply fail to imagine what nonhuman communication might be like. Typically, the aliens are less alien in their communication than members of oral cultures can be. Then you have something like Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where the concept of meaning in communication seems to totally escape him, along with the distinction between the signifier and signified. I remember when the film came out, back when I was an undergraduate at Cornell University, and one of my Beta Theta Pi fraternity brothers came back after seeing it, and was marveling at the possibilities of universal communication through music that the film seemed to present. I tried to explain that it didn't matter if the symbol was speech or music, because it would still have to mean something. I didn't get through to him, however, no doubt due to his inebriated state of mind.

Even Star Trek: The Next Generation fell prey to this. I recall an episode that involved contact with a race that the Federation had been unable to establish communication with in all previous attempts, despite the best efforts of both sides, as the alien speech was translatable (through the "universal translator"), but just didn't make sense. Captain Picard finally figured out that the aliens speak in references to stories, i.e., myths, legends, and the like, so that to indicate that I'm in trouble I might say the equivalent of "Daniel in the lion's den." Certainly an original idea, but it makes no sense, because they could not communicate in narrative unless they had grammar and vocabulary, which presupposes the possibility of making novel statements without referring to some story which could only have been communicated through grammar and vocabulary in the first place.

So, it would not surprise me if Battlestar Galactica messed up in trying to conceive of alien communication. Except that the series makes no attempt to do so. The humans all seem to speak English (what a throwback to the good old days of SF!), as do the Cylons. Whereas the Star Trek franchise did make the commendable effort to develop alien languages, notably Klingon, along Sapir-Whorfian (therefore media ecological) lines (as a warrior race, the Klingon language relies on the imperative form of verbs much more than we do, and their imperative forms are much more developed and complex than ours), and Star Wars introduced the amusing technique of using subtitles with alien speech (back in 1977 when it was first seen in the theaters, everyone laughed out loud when they saw it), Battlestar Galactica does not seem to be very interested in languages. In contrast, J. R. R. Tolkien began by creating fictional languages, and based on his "Elf Latin" he created the myths and legends of Middle Earth (I wrote a paper on this once, and it was supposed to be published in an online proceedings, but that never got organized, so maybe I'll post it here, if there's sufficient reader interest--ha ha).

Battlestar Galactica is interested in visual symbols, however, which fits in with the visualism of Greek culture (as opposed to the oralism of Hebraic heritage, a point central to Walter Ong's work, as Tom Farrell explains in the first major book-length examination of Ong's scholarship, Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication, and also see An Ong Reader: Challanges for Further Inquiry). And there is some evidence of something along the lines of runes or hieroglyphics as they encounter ancient religious artifacts, I believe (but to be honest I was not paying much attention to these things, so I would have to look at the episodes again to be certain).

But to get back to Bob's post, he essentially raises the question, do they have alphabetic literacy on Battlestar Galactica? The answer appears to be yes. I just took a quick look at the program's website and checked some of the images in the Gallery, just to confirm that the writing "Battlestar Galactica" can be found on insignia on uniforms and mugs, and of course it's also written on the ship itself. Given that the humans are Greco-Roman in their orientation, it is not surprising that they would used the Roman alphabet that we all use, but it's also part of the program's conceit that these humans from a distant part of space are essentially the same as us in the way they speak, dress, behave, etc. And if the humans have alphabetic literacy, it follows that the Cylons, who were created by the humans to serve them, and who are superior to the humans in just about every way, would also have alphabetic literacy.

Now, we can turn to the media ecological thesis that monotheism is a by-product of alphabetic literacy. Bob cites a seminal article by Marshall McLuhan and Bob Logan, published in the general semantics journal Etc. back when Neil Postman was the editor. After McLuhan passed away, Logan went on to write an entire book, now in a revised edition, entitled The Alphabet Effect: A Media Ecology Understanding of the Making of Western Civilization, and one of the early chapters is devoted to the argument that Moses and monotheism, not to mention The Law, was an effect of the Semitic alphabet, aka aleph-bet. Another book that carries the thesis into controversial new areas is Leonard Shlain's The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image (a similar argument about the alphabet bringing about the end of goddess worship was made by Joseph Ashcroft in his doctoral dissertation completed in the old media ecology program at New York University). But the argument that the alphabet led to monotheism was first put forth, I believe, by Harold Innis in Empire and Communications (and see also Innis's The Bias of Communication).

So, from a media ecological point of view, monotheism is all but inconceivable without writing, and appears to be specifically linked to the alphabet. Does this mean that cultures with alphabetic literacy necessarily move from polytheism to monotheism, however? Here, I think the answer is no. As Lynn White, Jr. says of technology in Medieval Technology and Social Change, an innovation opens a door, it does not command. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans developed monotheism on their own, however much they eventually accepted the idea as it spread from the Jews to Gentiles via Christianity. For that matter, while the Semitic alphabet made its way to India in antiquity, where it led to the invention of the number zero and positional notation in mathematics, it did not lead to monotheism per se. What does seem to occur, however, is a tendency towards more abstract notions of the divine, so that the literate elite in ancient Greece and Rome rejected the mythic narratives and personalization of the gods (criticizing Homer), and turned toward a form of religious worship that acknowledged "the gods" as a higher power, and along the way reduced the number of deities, and even moved Olympus from a mountain top to the more distant sky. Hinduism also moved towards more abstract conceptions of the gods, to the extent that they could be seen as manifestations of one divine force. And of course Buddhism is so abstract that there is no god in a personal sense. Along the same lines, in the west the abstraction of monotheism eventually leads to deism, and finally to abstracting God out of existence with atheism.

So, it would be conceivable for the humans on Battlestar Galactica to have alphabetic literacy, but never arrive at pure monotheism. Alternately, it would not contradict anything in the narrative to date if it were the case that they had developed monotheism, but rejected it, much as, for example, in the New Age movement we find people raised as monotheists who have turned to neo-paganism. Battlestar Galactica's scenario indicates that the humans that populated the 12 colonies (whose names correspond to zodiac signs) split from those of us on the 13th colony of Earth some time in the distant past. If the split came during antiquity, before monotheism caught on beyond the confines of ancient Israel and Judah, and the Greco-Romans who split had no further contact with Judaic culture, it would be conceivable that they might never invent or adopt monotheism, and just continue to move towards a more abstract polytheism that eventually yields to secular humanism. This possibility is reminiscent of a Star Trek episode (original series) with the absurd scenario of a planet somehow populated by aliens who are more or less human and followed a similar course of history, except the Roman Empire remained pagan and persisted into their equivalent of 20th century Earth; at the end of the episode, Captain Kirk and company realize that references to "sun" worship were actually about worshiping "the Son," implying that Christianity had just been introduced.

Now for the big question that Bob raised: How could it be that the Cylons are monotheists when the humans that created them are not? Since the Cylons do have alphabetic literacy, they therefore have the necessary prerequisite for monotheism. One possibility is that the humans developed monotheism, but it never caught on among them, and instead was adopted by the Cylons. This would follow the pattern of Christianity originating with the Jews, who largely rejected the new religion, and likewise Buddhism originating with the Indians, who mostly remained Hindus or became Muslims. The alternate possibility is that the Cylons developed monotheism on their own. As they have the alphabet, and appear to be quite capable of independent thought and novel ideas, this certainly seems within the realm of possibility. And this would be, in my opinion, the more interesting scenario.

But what troubles Bob is the idea of religious robots. Now, holding aside the question of whether it was the older, robotic Cylons who embraced religion, or the newer, organic models, Bob wonders whether it makes sense that a robotic religion would emerge if the Cylons cannot die, but rather simply have their consciousness transferred as long as there is a resurrection ship or facilities within range. And he is right in making the point that one of the important functions of religion is to help us to come to terms with our own mortality (see Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death, which I brought up in a previous post). But however much the Cylons have extended their lifespans by decreasingly the likelihood of imminent demise, they would have to be aware of the possibility of true death should they find themselves out of range of resurrection, or should the technology fail (and media ecologists know that nothing is foolproof and fail safe), and anyway sooner or later entropy will catch up with them and they will die along with the universe. So they still must live with the knowledge that eventually their consciousness will be extinguished, and perhaps the need to deny death may be all the more greater when they are so much closer to immortality than we are? But, apart from this issue, there is the question of whether death is the only reason for religious belief? In the absence of death, might a race of beings turn to religion for other reasons, say to provide a sense of the meaning of life, to provide guidance on how to live their lives, to establish a sense of justice and morality, or simply to provide legitimacy for their social arrangements and actions?

Another possibility I haven't mentioned is the possibility of divine revelation, that God actually exists and revealed Himself to the Cylons. Within Battlestar Galactica this possibility seems to be inconsistent with the fact that the Cylons have committed genocide against the human race. But I don't think there's anything in particular that that the program shows us that actually indicates that the Cylons are deluded fanatics--that is, the program presents the Cylons' beliefs in a neutral manner, and it's only our own incredulity that keeps us from entertaining the possibility that they really are on a mission from God (remember Sodom and Gomorrah?).

Certainly, there is nothing new about violence being committed in God's name, so I think viewers can recognize in the Cylons something very familiar. The obvious connection is to Islamic terrorists, and more broadly to religious fanatics of all stripes and colors, but all major religions, I believe, have taken up the sword at one time or another in their histories, in order to wipe out the infidel. Nor is there anything about alphabetic literacy that is inimicable to violence. McLuhan often stressed the militancy of the alphabet, given its bias towards homogenization. The alphabet was a great technology for military organization. Before the alphabet, battle was basically a matter of running amok and trying to kill as many of the others as possible--that was the way the Trojan War was fought. Jump ahead a few centuries after the introduction of the alphabet, to the era depicted in the recent film 300, and order and discipline, modeled after the alphabet, becomes the rule, one that was intensified by Alexander the Great, and even more so by the Romans--it was all about holding a line (like the written word), uniformity in forming a shield war and phalanx, etc. For more on this, see McLuhan's follow-up to his bestselling The Medium is the Massage, his War and Peace In the Global Village.

Which brings me to a point of great significance for our discussion, the myth of the origin of the Greek alphabet, which McLuhan discusses in both The Gutenberg Galaxy (and see my previous post on Gutenberg!) and Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. According to Greek myth, the alphabet was introduced by Cadmus, who was a Phoenecian, in fact the son of the king of Phoenecia. This acknowledges the Semitic origin of the alphabet, and it follows that the Semites of Phoenecia, traders who sailed all around the Mediterranean, would be the source of the alphabet's dissemination to Greece. The Greeks called it the Phoenecian alphabet, from which is derived the term phonetic. Cadmus was told by the oracle at Delphi to found a town, which became the city of Thebes. Before doing so, however, he was forced to slay a dragon, and then, following Athena's instructions, sowed the dragon's teeth, from which sprung up a race of men called Spartes (Greek for "sown"). All of them were armed for battle and savage, and Cadmus tricked them into fighting among themselves until only five were left, the ancestors of the five noble families of Thebes, who took Cadmus as their king.

McLuhan felt there was an important insight in this myth, relating to the association between the alphabet and the military. The significance of the teeth is that they occur naturally in a line, looking relatively identical, and therefore are the body's analogues to the letters of the alphabet (alphabet as extension of the teeth); teeth also have much to do with the consonants of the alphabet, as the action of tongue in relation to teeth results in different sounds (e.g., "s" and "t"). Of course, teeth are sharp, they are natural weapons, and again they resemble an army of men, at least an orderly one of the sort made possible by the alphabet.

So, do you see where I'm going with this? The Cylons are Battlestar Galactica's very own Spartoi, they are the new beings sown from the dragon's teeth, they have a Phoenician/Semitic link (again the most obvious connection being to fanatical Arab Islamic terrorists, and note also the Semitic sounding music during the opening credits, as well as the similarly styled rendition of "All Along the Watchtower," which only the final four newly discovered Cylons could hear, in the season finale).

Do I have to spell it out? It's not a question of whether the Cylons have the alphabet, or alphabetic literacy. The Cylons are the alphabet sprung to life, they are what you reap when you sow the dragon's teeth. They are the alphabet as it evolves into the printing press, and mechanization takes command, giving rise to mass production, the multiple, identical copies that, ultimately, are written in the letters D-N-A, so send in the clones. As letters on a page, the Cylons naturally worship a divine Author-ity. Looking at it from this angle, Battlestar Galactica is very media ecological.

A few further thoughts come to mind, however anticlimactic they may be.

A descendant of Cadmus, King Laius of Thebes, was the father of Oedipus. And the Cylons are trying to fulfill an Oedipal fantasy by killing their collective father, the humans, and marrying their mother Earth. Is Battlestar Galactica a Greek tragedy? It certainly has many of those elements.

But at its conception, it was more of a Biblical narrative, of wandering in the desert, of revelation at Mount Sinai, and eventual arrival in the promised land. A perfect theme for this time year! Could it then be that the Cylons have more in common with angels than with demons, being nearly immortal, superior in power, more certain about God, interested in breeding with humans (as angels were early in Genesis), great and terrible (let us not forget the angel of death who slew the Egyptians' first born)? Can anything less than an act of God then save the remnants of humanity? Will the Cylons turn out to be fallen angels? Will a savior arise?

Well, the hour is growing late, and tomorrow The Sopranos are back on, introducing a very different set of issues, so the Cylons will just have to wait.