Space-Age Religious Tension
Salon has a new article up praising the SciFi Channel series Battlestar Galactica. This article, while focusing mostly on the human elements of the show, also mentions the religious subtext that I have brought up before on this blog.
“Faith in “Battlestar Galactica” is as fraught as it is in real life. The cylons are monotheists who talk about “God’s love” and the salvation that awaits those who repent of their sins, even as they proceed to brutally exterminate those they consider to be “corrupt.” The human beings are pagans who worship a pantheon of gods with the names of ancient Greek deities. The prophecy Roslin believes she’s fulfilling, of a leader who takes her people to the promised land but doesn’t make it there herself, echoes the Old Testament, while the prophecy’s emphasis on an eternal cycle in which “all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again,” has intimations of Eastern religions.”
I’ll be interested to see how this theme develops as the series progresses. It is rare for a show of this nature to have the main characters be so overtly religious, and to have that religion not be fashioned after one of the traditional monotheisms but on classical polytheism.
No responses yet
