Vox Populi is pleased to offer another television rewatch after a successful run last year with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This year we will attempt to fully bring into scope a television series praised for its multiplicity of political viewpoints veering from its historical context and connection with religion to the present day from a modern American perspective. Battlestar Galactica has often been described as a narrative in connection to America’s War on Terror stemming from September 11, 2001 to, as some citizens believe, the American purview today. The sci-fi series originated in 1978 and was brought back on the air in 2003 by creators Ronald D. Moore and David Eickin. Notably, Ronald D. Moore is most acclaimed as a screenwriter and producer on Star Trek. With his work on Deep Space Nine, Moore, prior to Battlestar Galactica, utilizes the science fiction narrative to connect with contemporary American culture. Now amongst a time of political upheaval as we come upon the 2016 election season that will bring in a new President of the United States we are most thrilled to broaden the discussion via a television show about American politics. We will be discussing our political history, feminism, language, writing and time travel in relation to Battlestar Galactica seasons 1 through 4 which aired on the Sci-Fi channel from 2003 to 2009. Each lecture presented will be paired with a screening from the season it is discussing along with readings centering around the topic of discussion. Following the lectures and screenings there will be a round table discussion with all lead lecturers focusing on the featured season. The round tables will have specific topics in order to cover though we also encourage the audience to join in on the discussion. As the lectures help illuminate much of Battlestar Galactica Universe the Round Tables will help further highlight other themes from within the series including philosophy, religion and science fiction genres.
We have some returning lecturers and some new people coming into the group. Each bringing to the discussion in their own interests from art, history, nerdom, television and writing; Ann Cornell, April Aguillard, Beth Heinly, Derek Jones, Kate Kraczon & James Myers & Jonathan McCabe.
Cosplay welcome. Ambrosia for all who attend. There are spoilers. As we conduct the rewatch in chronological order our conversations will sometimes branch off into upcoming seasons.
Description of Battlestar Galactica via Wikipedia:
“Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction media franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the original television series in 1978 and was later followed by a short-run sequel series (Galactica 1980), a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games. A re-imagined version of Battlestar Galactica aired as a two-part, three-hour miniseries developed by Ronald D. Moore and David Eickin 2003. That miniseries led to a weekly television series, which later aired up until 2009. A prequel series, Caprica, aired in 2010.
All Battlestar Galactica productions share the premise that in a distant part of the universe, a human civilization has extended to a group of planets known as the Twelve Colonies, to which they have migrated from their ancestral homeworld of Kobol. The Twelve Colonies have been engaged in a lengthy war with a cybernetic race known as the Cylons, whose goal is the extermination of the human race. The Cylons offer peace to the humans, which proves to be a ruse. With the aid of a human named Baltar, the Cylons carry out a massive attack on the Twelve Colonies and on the Colonial Fleet of starships that protect them. These attacks devastate the Colonial Fleet, lay waste to the Colonies, and virtually destroy their populations. Scattered survivors flee into outer space aboard a ragtag array of available spaceships. Of the entire Colonial battle fleet, only the Battlestar Galactica, a gigantic battleship and spacecraft carrier, appears to have survived the Cylon attack. Under the leadership of Commander Adama, the Galactica and the pilots of “Viper fighters” lead a fugitive fleet of survivors in search of the fabled thirteenth colony known as Earth.”
November 27, 2016, 1pm
Episode 21 & 22 “Daybreak Part 1 & 2”
Beth Heinly is a member of Vox Populi Gallery, a collective-run art gallery in Philadelphia, PA. Beth regularly exhibits her artwork in Philadelphia which includes curating, comics and performance art centering around themes of personal perspectives within popular culture. She is a self-published author of several comics within the realms of journal comics and horror tropes.
For Season 4 I will be discussing the Season Finale in relation to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and further theorizing time travel as a means to comprehend the circumstances we find the crew to be in at the conclusion of the series and how this relates to the series as a whole from the beginning.
Suggested Readings:
Cass, Stephen, “Battlestar Galactica: Earth, And Why You Shouldn’t Believe The Rumor” discovermagazine.com. October 1, 2008.
Kevin Bonsor & Robert Lamb, “How Time Travel Works” 20 October 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. 22 November 2016.
Howell, Elizabeth, Time Travel: Theories, Paradoxes & Possibilities, Space.com. June 21, 2013.
Sparrow, Roberta, “The Philosophy of Time Travel“, Virginia, 2001.
_________________________________________
Kate Kraczon is Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. She is currently organizing Ree Morton’s first major retrospective in the United States in over three decades (2018).
We will address the complex, often contradictory approaches to race, gender, and sexuality in BSG…with a little class thrown in.
Suggested Readings:
Darling, Kate. “Who’s Johnny?” Anthropomorphic framing in human-robotinteraction, integration, and policy“, werobot2015.org, 2015.
Darling, Kate. “Extending Legal Protection to Social Robots“, IEEE Spectrum, 2008.
Pegues, Hu. “MELUS, Vol. 33, No. 4, Alien/Asian (Winter, 2008), pp. 189-209“. Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-
Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS).
_
In an effort to raise awareness for our friend James Myers and the terrible disease he is currently fighting, multiple sclerosis (MS), we are accepting donations at the event for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. You can donate online as well with this link: http://www.nationalmssociety.org/Donate
