Well dear reader, it’s been a funny old week or weeks maybe. Here in Glasgow we went back into a partial lockdown last week meaning that we can’t have anyone visit our homes – but we can go out an meet people and go to restaurants etc. I totally got my head around this as the levels of infection do seem to becoming from infections via home visits not through commercial venues. To me going to a restaurant is safer as it has all the safe measure in place, unlike most of our houses. Not saying there not clean or anything but you know, you do tend to relax and maybe not keep to strict physical distancing in your own living room.
So far so good, but now we are faced with “the rule of six”. Meaning from Monday, only up to six people from 2 households can meet anywhere. So, we aren’t quite in total lock down, but social restrictions are definitely ramping up. Meanwhile the UK government continue to use the cover of Coronavirus to deflect attention from their outrageous behaviour around flagrantly breaking international law around the Brexit agreement. I have a feeling all this will not “all be over by Christmas.”
All this will give me (and anyone else with access to the BBCiplayer) the perfect excuse to re-watch one of my most favourite TV shows of all time – Battlestar Galactica (not the original one but the more recent 21st century TV show). Fellow BSG fans will probably have spotted a reference in the title to this post.
BSG was one of the most interesting (sci-fi) dramas of its time. It was one of the few, if not only US tv series to directly comment on the American invasion of Iraq. It drew really powerful analogies around the concepts of: insurgency, the role and place of invading forces, collusion and related moral/immoral justifications. I watched much of it via DVD on long train journeys back in the days when I spent a lot of my time traveling between Glasgow and Birmingham in particular!
As we often say context is key, and this time around I will be watching in a completely different context. For one thing I won’t be on a train! I know “the plot” but this time around the battle to save c.50,000 humans left in the universe will have a completely different context. Will I see the Cylon threat more as the the threat from Coronavirus (not just COVID-19 but all its past and future strains)? How will I perceive the human refugees in light of our current refugee crisis? 13,000 people were made homeless again in Greece this year when the camp there were living in was destroyed by fire. Yet I feel too numb to fully comprehend this tragedy as my main media messages are full of “the rule of six” and “Brexit”, and our UK governments seemingly unstoppable corruption under the guise of “making Britain great again”
What about climate change? PPE, masks, disposable plastic is back with a vengeance under the guise of protection and personal safety – despite them adding our increasingly out of control pollution problem. Where is our humanity now? what are our shared values? In our rush to get back to “normal” it seems that closing borders are more important that opening up and sharing. That first rush of compassion and care that the pandemic engendered seems to be evaporating.
BSG has a fair bit of its own mythology and mysticism in it too, including an arc about finding Earth , the fabled 13th colony, that some rogue ancestors founded. The phrase “all this has happened before, all this will happen again”, is quoted in the series. I think it’s from one of “the scriptures”. It’s a line that has stayed with me, and as we move in and out of stages of lock down, it seems apt to our current context. When and how we will get out of the lockdown cycle I don’t know, but at least I have something to watch and think about for a few weeks, and maybe a new stream of posts . . .
Gosh – yes! – BSG Reimagined is, along with The Wire, one of the few long-form series I’ve rewatched. It never seems to lose it’s relevance; there’s more than a whiff of the egocentric Gaius Baltar about our unfortunately current PM. But on the positive front there’s several strong female characters (Laura Roslin, Starbuck, Number Six, Number Eight). And (to me) the major philosophical question – “What does it mean to be human?” – seems more pertinent than ever.
I also liked the controversial ending. I know others didn’t, and blame the writers strike for a dip in quality (and it’s true that some episodes in series three are arguably superfluous) but I thought the ending was on point. “Time is a flat circle”, as Rust Cohle um Friedrich Nietzsche said.
If we have a winter of lockdown, I may go for another rewatch…
Thanks for that John, yes lots to think about!