Annotated Bib: Battlestar Galactica

A temporary posting of my BSG annotated bibliography:

“33.” Battlestar Galactica. SciFi Channel. 14 Jan 2005.

The first episode of the series, “33” explores the first few days after the initial Cylon attack. The episode is notable for its attention to time; “33” refers to how long the crew has between each new Cylon attack.


Battlestar Galactica Podcasts. http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/. 14 July 2006.

In an attempt to give viewers even more of their favorite shows, the SciFi channel and other cable networks have begun producing Podcasts, which can be downloaded and played with the show simultaneously. Podcasts speak to the desire of viewers to extend the discourse of the plot by allowing the authors to name their intents and give background information about the construction of each episode—including providing oft-quoted spoilers and character analyses. The Podcast for the final episode attempts to explain the director and writer’s choice in narrative trajectory, citing a need for a refreshing storyline.

Booker, M. Keith. Alternate Americas: Science Fiction Film and American Culture. Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2006.

Booker’s latest explication of science fiction history and evolution explores the intersection of SF and American ideology, particularly post-modern ideologies. First, he posits “America as Utopia—Or Not,” naming our current period as “post-utopian” (4) because “The particular nature of American historical experience complicates the American utopian imagination” (11). Seeing SF film and literature as a cultural critique of Cold War and post-Cold War ideologies, Booker traces the “weak” utopianism in major works of the latter 20th century (25). Anti-utopianism, he argues, results in the fragmented narrative style and uncertain arguments usually associated with postmodernism, and the two are inherently related. As a post-apocalyptic dystopia, Battlestar Galactica: 2003 demonstrates both the hesitancy to establish social and moral norms and the non-linear narrative style that Booker attributes to the intersection of postmodernism and utopianism. Booker’s argument that narrative style is a symptom of social conditions, of audience needs, assumptions, and desires, is helpful in that he is able to link such disparate texts as Psycho and Cinderella by pointing to the overall ideologies created by the construction of each text. Battlestar Galactica: 2003 draws from several Hitchcockian techniques to create a dissonance in the subjective point of view, and Booker’s relation of Hitchcock’s techniques to anti-utopianism should prove useful.

---. Science Fiction Television. Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 2004.

Booker gives a history of the evolution of science fiction in television, beginning with the classic Twilight Zone and ending with a brief note about the Battlestar Galactica miniseries. Booker outlines the premises of the major and minor programs and describes the stylistics of each series. What is important about this text is its attention to intertextuality among series, particularly in relation to the earliest SF television. While the book as a whole lacks a central thesis, it does provide insight into the emergence of more “intelligent” SF, such as the X-Files and Babylon 5 as contextually contingent.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992.

As a book “about plot and plotting,” Reading for the Plot (xi) attempts to “talk of the dynamics of temporality and reading, of the motor forces that drive the text forward, of the desires that connect narrative ends and beginnings” (xii-xiv). Brooks, taking a Freudian model informed by plot and narratology, highlights the structures of plot in relation to the distinction between story and discourse (or fabula and sjužet) (24-25). Brooks’s claims of the inherent human need for narrative and the structures which facilitate playing out those desires (such as the detective story) provide a way to understand Battlestar Galactica’s narrative techniques and the final episode’s sudden shift of time. Because readers/viewers constantly desire a recital of the events around a trauma (here, the destruction of the human race), Battlestar Galactica (successfully) tells and retells the events around the apocalypse, discursively moving slowly through diegetical time in order to satisfy readers’ desire for disclosure.

Gordon, Ian. “Superman on the Set: The Market, Nostalgia and Television Audience.” Quality Popular Television. Eds Mark Jancovich and James Lyons. London: British Film Institute, 2003.148-162.

Gordon argues that the must-see Lois and Clark of the 1990s was the result of nostalgia for earlier television sweeping the US, that it “allowed its audience, or a segment of its diverse audience, to long for something lost and address that longing in a critical manner” (156). Other television programs engaged in nostalgia, including That 70’s Show, target audience desires for the past by revisiting it with a critical eye, but Lois and Clark maintained a timeless look. Battlestar Galactica, whose mini-series production was most certainly initiated by nostalgia for the 1970s version, makes a similar move to Lois and Clark in that the timeline of the series in relation to our own time is uncertain, and its relation to the original series is also questionable. Is this the same Galactica retold, or is the war Adama claims to have fought in his youth the one we were shown in the 1970s? What makes these shows successful, Gordon argues, is their appeal to our memories of not the shows themselves, but the context in which they were broadcast originally. What makes them count as “quality” is the subtle shift in storyline from action/adventure to drama, from a focus on saving the world to a focus on character development.


Hoppenstand, Gary. “Series(ous) SF Concerns.” Journal of Popular Culture. 38:4 (2005): 603-604.

Hoppenstand’s short editorial eloquently raises familiar concerns about the future embodiments of the SF genre, that it has become too formulaic and commercialized. He argues that “these three giants of science fiction [Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Star Wars] and fantasy are the primary cause of the apparent stagnation of speculative fiction” (604). His fears that “science fiction and fantasy, having successfully escaped their disreputable origins, have now apparently returned to the disreputable” (604) may be well founded, but Hoppenstand also ignores some of the more recent “risks” taken by such SF TV as Battlestar Galactica.

Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future. London: Verso, 2005.

Jameson’s newest collection of essays takes on the subject of Utopia—both as a political ideal and as a literary genre. “Part I: The Desire Called Utopia” explores utopian thought as a whole, stemming from human desires and socio-economic conditions, while “Part II: As Far as Thought Can Reach” examines several SF texts in which utopian impulses are central. For my purposes, “The Barriers of Time” and “Progress versus Utopia, or, Can We Imagine the Future” are the most significant essays, as they take into account what is narratable and how that narration formally emerges due to constraints in time and space in the world of text. In “Progress,” Jameson argues that what SF shows us is not the limitless nature of human imagination, but the limit of what is sayable—all SF is about the present. Battlestar Galactica has taken on issues such as stem-cell research, A.I., terrorism, and martial law—all of which point to a concern for the present. Additionally, the filming techniques BSG utilizes implies a documentary or journalistic feel, not a cinematic one, again drawing connections between the viewer’s universe and that of Galactica. The real-time feel of the series also shows us our struggles with forecasting the future, with giving dystopic warnings to ourselves retroactively; if BSG is a history of a civilization, it is one meant to warn us of our own pending apocalypse—but it can only show us what we already know and imagine.

Jones, Sara Gwenllian. “Web Wars: Resistance, Online Fandom and Studio Censorship.” Quality Popular Television. Eds Mark Jancovich and James Lyons. London: British Film Institute, 2003. 163-176.

Jones discusses the evolution of “fandom” from the “harmless bunch of obsessives” in Star Trek garb to a condition cultivated by networks in order to produce revenue from merchandizing (165). Part of what is notable about Battlestar Galactica is its popularity and large fan base, despite its heavy involvement in issues such as the meaning of humanity, sexuality, and technology. Jones’s history of fandom and its relationship to network decisions about content provides a frame for understanding the reemergence of BSG in the first place, and its continued popularity in the second. BSG relies on many of the same mechanisms of fan creation that Jones attributes to The X-Files, and her comments on the creation of subtext as a tool of fandom formation can probably be applied to BSG, despite the vast difference between the series stylistically.

“Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II.” Battlestar Galactica. SciFi Channel. 10 Mar 2005.

The last episode of the second season, “Lay Down Your Burdens” ran for 90 minutes, playing over five minutes into the next programming slot. The last five minutes represent a startling shift in narrative style and content, and the events caused outrage among the fans for its divergence from the BSG style.

Moore, Ron. “Blog.” http://blog.scifi.com/battlestar/

Ron Moore, head writer for Battlestar Galactica, in addition to giving commentary in Podcasts, updates fans on the show’s progress throughout the writing process. The most recent entry is from April, responding to questions viewers had about the season finale. What is important about this blog is not so much the ability to reveal authorial “intent” but its ability to reflect viewer concerns, audience-author interaction, and at least one explication of a given episode. The blog also reflects the authors’ struggle with the text—to turn a traditional SF program into good TV.

Suvin, Darko. “Narrative Logic, Ideology, and the Range of SF.” Science Fiction Studies. 26:9 (March 1982): 1-25.

As the title suggests, Suvin’s essay explores, in a set of three hypotheses and tests, the limit of SF imagination and representation. Specifically, Suvin is concerned with extension and intension in the text, the central characteristics of SF narration, and the reasons for the “dominant emasculation” of SF texts which undermine their own premises (by mere silliness, or by ending with “it was all a dream”). More interesting for my project is Suvin’s explanation and adoption of HG Wells’ hierarchy of SF—broken down into the emasculated “pessimum” SF, the middle-ground SF (“most”), “good” SF and Suvin’s own addition of an “Optimum SF.” Using early British SF novel-length texts, Suvin “tests” his hypotheses about why there is such a large range between “good” SF and the pulp SF many of us think of as the norm. This article provides one way to evaluate SF based on a set of criteria from literary criticism and narratology. The original two manifestations of Battlestar Galactica seem to fit into the “pessimum” range while the third one has the characteristics Suvin identifies for “optimum” SF—effective, engaging SF. While his model is not perfect, his explanations for what makes an SF text “good” are a helpful heuristic for determining the difference between Galactica’s forms.

Wolfe, Gary K. “The Remaking of Zero.” The End of the World. Eds Eric Rabkin, Martin Greenberg, and Joseph Olander. Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. 1-19.

Wolfe examines the narrative structure of post-apocalyptic fiction, arguing that those texts which begin at the end (of the world) offer readers a chance to imagine the possibility of “remaking zero” or starting civilization afresh (5-6). Wolfe’s model of the structure of post-apocalyptic fiction has five parts: The discovery of the event, the “journey through the wasteland”, creation of a new community, the “re-emergence of the wilderness as antagonist,” and a final battle between the survivors to decide the structure of the new world (8). While Wolfe’s structure cannot be directly applied to Battlestar Galactica, (the “wilderness” is space itself), his sketch does provide an outline for a more traditional structure than what BSG offers, and can be used for contrasting the two versions of narrating the end of everything.