The 18th Brumaire of Gaius Baltar

[Lenina Rosenweg]

What do people think of Battlestar Galactica (reimagined)?I recently started watching it. I like it a great deal, although it does have flaws and could be seen as essentially liberal perspective.

There are major elements of class struggle politics throughout the episodes.In one scene in the third season a charecter-a disgraced former leader, writes an underground book which is roughly like a cross between the Communist Manifesto and The Civil War in France which inspires a general strike (aboard a space colony).

I';d be interested inany leftist critiques of BSG.

[KurtFF8]

I think it's a fantastic series. The character you're referring to (can't remember his name) later is written as a more nationalistic "anti-cylon" character which kind of takes away from the excitement that I originally had seeing him as a very Leftist character.

The show certainly has plenty of contradictions, but I think it was well done and deals with social issues in an interesting way.

Are you done with the series? I don't want to spoil things in the discussion

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I've finished the third season.I was thinking of Baltar, who was president of the Colony at the time they settled on New Caprica.He sort of cooperates with the Cylons, although under duress and is later put on trial for treason.While in prison aboard Galactica One (?) he writes a book which sounds somewhat like the Communist Manifesto plus bits of Marx's writing on France.Baltar seems like an opportunist, he's appealing to the working class as a means to further his own political career, but what he says strikes a chord with the Galactica working class..

Earlier in the third season the character Chief becomes head of a union on New Caprica.. He makes a revolutionary speech which sounds like Mario Savio's speech at Berkeley ("we have to stop the gears of the system"). Later, on Galactica he is appointed to quell a worker's uprising on the fuel ship. He sees the harsh exploitation there and eventually leads a general strike.The strike is broken when Admiral Adama threatens to put Chief's wife before a firing squad.

Later the President says she wants Chief to continue his role representing the workers. The subtext is that she needs someone to control the workers.

You don't get stuff like this in Star Trek's tepid Utopian socialism.

I'm working my way through Caprica, a prequel. Also interesting.

[KurtFF8]

Yeah the strike arch was perhaps my favorite part of the series (for obvious reasons)