Sideways : Battlestar Galactica

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Sideways

Battlestar Galactica

I'm about half through the second season of Battlestar Galactica on DVD, and it has gotten to the point where I won't let myself rent more than one at a time because I know that I won't be able to stop once I start watching.

The show itself is both fascinating and infuriating--infuriating because it is based up the same old Frankenstein meme, but fascinating because it brings up all sorts of questions about artificial intelligence, consciousness, faith and identity. Just when it starts pissing me off there's a twist that gives the story a little more depth than I expected...

I'm wondering what everybody else thinks of the show. In what ways does it intelligently present transhumanist ideas? In what ways does it misrepresent them? What do you like? What flaws do you see? Does it represents a step forward for transhumanism into the mainstream, or a step backwards?

Published Monday, August 28, 2006 11:07 PM by Sideways

Tags: television, science fiction, Battlestar Galactica

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	ideal wrote on August 29, 2006 5:18 AM I don't think it makes a step in either direction in terms of transhumanism. I'm a huge fan because it seems to challenge peoples default assumptions on issues in our past(plus, it's fracking awesome). For those who live in a cave and only come out to use a computer, the show's bad guys are monotheistic robots with traditional JudeoChristian values and the good guys are pagan humans who seem to be locked in some sort of holy war(though it also seems it started because of the oppression of the robots).
	Tygerx9 wrote on August 29, 2006 6:30 AM well, I am watching the show and i think it does a bad service concerning transhumanism, especially since the creators of the serie decided to make the androids religious,what for? cant see the logic in that. however the most irritating issue for me is the way the humans treat the (so-called) artificial life forms, " watch out she's a machine"!, that is after he has fallen in love and made love to a machine and couldnt tell the difference if his life depended on it, a kind of backtrack realization that he was fooled. well if he was fooled to such an extant, obviously the "machine" had passed the turing test and is for all practical puposes sentient and to my mind should be accepted as human.
	Sideways wrote on August 29, 2006 5:14 PM Personally, I think that making the Cylons religious was a brilliant idea. What could be more quintessentially human than religion? To portray the machines as mystics and true believers is an attack on our assumptions about what makes humans unique. Which, I'm begining to suspect, is one of the main points of the show. Not an episode goes by without the human characters being confronted by the essential "human-ness" of the Cylons. The reaction to this is predominantly denial, but a lot of the dramatic strength of the show comes from the slow realization of some of the main characters that the Cylons are more than objects. In that sense, I think Battlestar Galactica is makeing a pretty strong pro-AI transhumanist statement.
	Mr. Farlops wrote on August 29, 2006 10:43 PM I saw the first season of BG on DVD with friends and I do have to admit it's some of the better science fiction out there on TV. One wonders when some of the humans might start converting to the Cylon's religion? The series doesn't really state explicitly if the cylons are smarter than humanity or not. But let's just speculate for a moment if they were. Wouldn't that make some people begin to think that they know something about reality that we don't? Did they spot some evidence for a god that we're just too stupid to spot? Occasionally though, I do get a little tired of the robo vamp trapsing around in Baltar's subconscious. I haven't seen the second season yet so nobody tell me if Balt is insane or not!