Those of us who’ve watched every minute of Battlestar Galactica from the 2003 miniseries up through the first five episodes of the third season in 2006 know very clearly what is going on.  Battlestar Galactica challenges our perceptions about politics and religion.  Battlestar Galactica deliberately and skillfully pulls us into a highly intense emotional connection with its well-defined characters.  Then, as our reward for making such a devoted connection, Battlestar Galactica breaks our hearts with poignant and controversial situations and plot turns that one rarely encounters anywhere else but in major motion pictures. 

Battlestar Galactica chooses to hit us hard emotionally, and as we find ourselves reeling from the impact, we may be unaware of how many of our deeply-held perceptions about politics and religion are being challenged.  This process is not limited to only one episode.  In truth, there probably is a cumulative effect.  The more you watch Battlestar Galactica, the more impact it may have upon your perceptions.

The most obvious example of this is a central storyline to the whole, sweeping arc of stories told on this sci-fi adventure series:  A gorgeous blonde woman takes a vulnerable man by the hand and leads him on a journey to the best sexual fulfillment that he has ever experienced.  Once he is hopelessly hers, she shocks him by revealing that she is not a human being.  Worse, she announces that she deliberately has betrayed not only him, but the entire human race.  She may look and feel like a gorgeous blonde woman, but she is this man’s mortal enemy.  She used him sexually to get military secrets that allowed her race, the Cylons, to wipe out most human beings on several planets.  She continues to manipulate him sexually so that she can next sway his political beliefs and behaviors.  She turns him from a highly intelligent, if disconnected and cynical man, who once was happy to stand on the sidelines, into an ambitious politician who ends up winning the election as president of all the surviving human beings.  As if that were not enough of an accomplishment for her, she then works hard towards her next goal of converting this man to her religion.

As we watch these two essential Battlestar Galactica characters–the sexy blonde alien female manipulator, and her vulnerable human male target–we are invited to set aside our perceptions.  We can understand clearly why he falls for her sexually.  She is stunningly beautiful.  But, why does he start believing in her politics and her religion?  Why does he forsake his own human species to aid her and, in so doing, aid the enemy Cylons?  All because she offers him the very best sex that he has ever had in his entire life?

No, there is far more going on here.  We watch as Battlestar Galactica deal with terrorism and suicide bombings in the context of an intense political warfare between human beings and Cylons that has obvious religious overtones.  Some bloggers have commented that Battlestar Galactica has a leftist slant and that watching its depictions of terrorism and suicide bombers can undermine public confidence in the present United States war efforts in Iraq.  (Maybe such bloggers should get a life?) 

True, Battlestar Galactica has depicted suicide bombers in sympathetic ways that no other American television series has.  But, this is science fiction, not a history lesson.  Battlestar Galactica should not be perceived as being an allegory about Iraq or Al Quaeda.

The man who should know all this is Ronald D. Moore.  He specifically said for viewers not to perceive of this series as an allegory or about Iraq.  

Bloggers with misperceptions and everyone else should take a deep breath and stop and read what Ron Moore has to say about Battlestar Galactica.  He is the one responsible for the political and religious content in Battlestar Galactica, but the reasons for doing so are to make you rethink your perceptions:

The show isn’t a polemic you know. I don’t approach it that… I don’t like a lot of moralizing television. A lot of story is sort of structured in TV to sort of teach you a lesson. To tell you this is the right answer to a given set of circumstances. This show is dealing with a lot of complicated ideas, a lot of complicated notions… What does it mean to be free? What does it mean to be safe? I don’t know the answers to a lot of those things. I have opinions and I have feelings and I have a political point of view and I’m not naive enough to think that doesn’t influence what I do. But, I don’t look at the show primarily as a vehicle show… A lot of people draw parallels to the war in Iraq and there’s an insurgency and suicide bombers and so on. But, the crafting of that story was less about okay here’s a political statement about the war in Iraq than it was okay what happens to my people in those circumstances? What happens to these characters that we’ve created and I throw them into this mess and I move some of the puzzle pieces around so that it’s not a direct allegory. So it’s not so clear as to who the good guys and the bad guys are and just see what happens. I want to see what happens. I want to see who’s going to collaborate, who’s going to fight back, who’s going to be trapped in the middle, who’s going to be questioning their own moral judgments, who’s going to become a suicide bomber, who’s going to slap somebody because of that. It’s like dealing with things that are contemporary and you’re dealing with things that are important, but I just try very hard not to make the show a vehicle for that idea. That said, there are fundamental things that I do believe come out in the show. There was a point where I had [former president] Laura Roslin saying “every person gets a trial and it’s not an option that the president gets to dismiss it their way.” I want her to say that because I believe that. But, it wasn’t a show that was all about that. This wasn’t the lesson of the episode. It’s just what that character would say in that circumstance so I had them say it.

Ron More also specifically spells it out quite explicitly:

The show would never be a direct allegory. Laura Roslin is not going to be George W. Bush. The Cylons are not going to be al-Qaeda, but they were going to have elements of it and part of the opportunity of the show was to move pieces around the game board a little bit. Say, okay well we’ve all experienced this set of events, this set of emotions. What if I move this piece over here and what if I put you over there? How do you feel about it then?…One of the foundational elements of the show is the religious conflict between the two civilizations. The monotheism of the Cylons. The polytheism of the Colonies. You know what is God? What is human? What does it mean to be alive?