Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek

Brian Visaggio at the Saint Superman blog (it’s seriously great, go there right now) has a brief reminiscence on the excellence of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, telescoping it into a present appreciation for the modern reboot of Battlestar Galactica. The primary common denominator between the two is of course Ronald D. Moore, who was executive producer on DS9 for its last two (and basically best) seasons, who co-wrote the best of the modern Trek movies (First Contact), and who is now, along with David Eick, in charge of BSG.

Part of the appeal of both series, as Brian rightly notes, is that they buck the “space opera” trend by eschewing the “planet of the week” formula (new and exciting threats, new and dangerous women, no consequences, no continuity) in favour of creating a far-reaching and self-contained culture that finds itself threatened by forces both internal and external. The irony of this is that BSG manages to boast the best of both worlds by combining an arduous effort towards day-to-day survival (as on a stationary space station) with a never-ending voyage of discovery.

The difference between Star Trek at its best and Battlestar Galactica on any given day is that the former is “space opera” and the latter is an opera set in outer space.

Credit where it’s due

Look at any recent picture of Vanity Fair columnist and nuisance atheist Christopher Hitchens and you’ll see big piles of money around the area of his mouth. That money didn’t just come out of nowhere, though; he put it there, firmly and without question.

What could inspire such unqualified praise for a man who once nearly came to drunken blows with Fr. George Rutler at a dinner party?

It seems Hitch, who has previously supported the occasional necessity of what the Bush administration has called “enhanced interrogation” (among other euphemistic things), was asked by the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair if he’d be willing to undergo the interrogative practice known as “waterboarding.”

He agreed, and he describes the experience here. Even knowing that it was about to happen to him, and that he was in the hands of professionals who had made his safety their highest priority, and that he had been given both a safety word and a drop-switch to end the demonstration the instant he could bear it no longer, he was only able to last for about ten seconds. Prisoners subjected to waterboarding endure it under no such conditions. It may be too much to hope that the experience could put the fear of God into him, but at the very least this is a step in the right direction for once.

For indeed, as he declares after his experience, “if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.” Even more forcefully:

One used to be told—and surely with truth—that the lethal fanatics of al-Qaeda were schooled to lie, and instructed to claim that they had been tortured and maltreated whether they had been tortured and maltreated or not. Did we notice what a frontier we had crossed when we admitted and even proclaimed that their stories might in fact be true? I had only a very slight encounter on that frontier, but I still wish that my experience [i.e. being subjected to it as a demonstration] were the only way in which the words “waterboard” and “American” could be mentioned in the same (gasping and sobbing) breath.

I’ve always been slightly puzzled by the amount of sway HItchens seems to have with so many people, but in this case I hope that he brings it to bear with every ounce of strength he can muster.

Those with strong constitutions (or who are entirely desensitized to such things, which is also possible) can watch Hitchens’ ordeal here:

It’s rough.

A busy day

Posts to come later.

In the meantime, since I can’t think of anything to say to this that could even be printed, I’ll just post the link without comment.  Trust me, though, it gets another one of these (see here):