Battlestar Galactica

Few reboots have so completely remade a property's reputation. Taking a 1978 space-opera also-ran and rebuilding it as a grim, handheld-camera military drama about the last survivors of a human civilization fleeing genocidal machines, the re-imagined *Battlestar Galactica* was hailed at the time — and is still regarded — as one of the best science-fiction series ever made, and frequently cited as one of the great TV dramas of any genre. The writing is dense and serialized in the modern sense, the moral texture is genuinely grey rather than merely gritty, and the ensemble — anchored by the show's stoic commander, its steely president, a hotshot pilot, and a cowardly scientist who is simultaneously the show's most contemptible and most human figure — consistently turns what could be genre pulp into something closer to tragedy.

The show's documentary-style visual language — jittery cameras, naturalistic lighting, worn-down ships — gives its space battles and interrogation scenes a contemporary-war texture that almost nothing else in television science fiction has matched, and its percussive, folk-inflected score became influential in its own right. The weaknesses are real but concentrated. Some seasons sag in their middles, and a few episodes are widely regarded as filler; critics noted that the longer seasons diluted the taut storytelling of the debut. The most significant criticism, though, is saved for the series finale, which a large and vocal contingent of even devoted fans judged a cop-out — a resolution that leaned on divine intervention and left long-teased mysteries frustratingly vague. That dispute is genuinely split: other reviewers found the ending emotionally earned and satisfying, and the final season overall still drew strong reviews.

Beneath the space-war surface, the series is an unusually serious meditation on the post-9/11 world — critics consistently read its suicide bombers, torture scenes, religious fundamentalists, and civil-liberties crackdowns as a deliberate allegory for the war on terror, one that refuses easy patriotism. It is also preoccupied with religion and destiny, asking how far a desperate civilization should compromise its values to survive, and whether its heroes are choosing their own path or being guided by something larger. Viewers who want their science fiction to be an escape should look elsewhere; those who want it to be *about* something will find few shows, before or since, that do it this well.