As I promised at the end of the previous entry, I’d like to say a few things about Dirk Benedict’s essay on the new Battlestar Galactica series. Be warned that things go off into some distinctly ranty territory toward the end. I didn’t intend to rant when I first started writing this, but I got on a roll and managed to say a few things I’ve been trying to think of how to say, so take it or leave it at your discretion.

First of all, I’ve learned to be cautious about what I accept as real when I’m out there on that InterWeb Thingie, so I did a little digging before posting the essay. As far as I can tell, it’s authentic. The real Dirk Benedict apparently wrote it for a UK science-fiction magazine when, presumably, all he’d seen of Neo-G was the four-hour miniseries that preceded the regular series. As I said earlier, I’ve been unable to locate an original source for the essay; I copied it from a fan site.

Secondly, just because I posted the essay doesn’t mean I endorse it or agree with everything it says. I’ve repeatedly stated that I like the new Galactica, despite its differences in tone and mood from the original. I’ve got no problem letting both shows co-exist in peace, and I have no particular complaint with the feminist movement that seems to rankle Dirk so much. Nevertheless, I think he scored some valid points. For instance, I agree with his opinion that those aforementioned tonal differences between BSG78 and BSG05 (’04, when he was writing) are a reflection of the times in which the respective shows were made, and that our current times are pretty sad in comparison to his younger days. The late 1970s were, culturally speaking, a hopeful time when things were starting to pick up after a long period of pessimism and gloom. By contrast, I see the early 21st century as dark and cynical, more similar to the Soylent Green half of the ’70s than the more ebullient, post-Star Wars years.

I also found myself nodding when Dirk criticized the new show’s abandonment of the family values (like I said, he sometimes sounds like a Republican!) that characterized the ’78 version. This is something I considered mentioning in my own review of the show, but decided to drop when I noticed how long the entry was getting.

The old Galactica was built around a central family relationship — Apollo, his sister Athena, and their father Adama — as well as Apollo’s friendship with Starbuck and, to a lesser extent, Boomer. Conflict largely came from external sources, and the overall dynamic between the main characters was warm and reliable. Neo-G, like many other modern TV dramas, generates conflict by making most of the character relationships dysfunctional and antagonistic. It’s a valid approach that works quite well on any number of shows, but I’m ambivalent about it in this particular case. Obviously, it’s an easy way to differentiate the remake from its warm ‘n’ fuzzy predecessor, but it also ignores what I feel was one of the original show’s best qualities, namely the certainty that whatever else happened, these characters could rely on each other. You can argue that people who’ve just had their worlds blown out from under them are apt to be pretty grumpy; however, it’s equally valid (if rather old-fashioned) to believe and hope that they would pull together in times of strife. Certainly it would be a more inspirational direction for the new show to have taken, and I believe we could use some inspirational heroes these days, just like we needed them when Star Wars and Galactica came along in the mid-70s. But that’s just me, I guess.

Getting back to the essay, Dirk also identified something interesting about Neo-G that I hadn’t previously noticed, which is the fact that the show is dominated and driven by female characters. The most dynamic characters, the ones that catalyze all the action, are women: President Roslyn, Starbuck, Boomer, and the Cylon hottie, Number Six. The male characters, by contrast, are more marginalized and (in my opinion) mostly unlikable: the colorless new version of Apollo, his hard-nosed father Adama, Colonel Tigh (who was proud and noble in the original but an abrasive drunk in this one), and, of course, Six’s weak-willed plaything who betrayed all of humanity because he had the best sex of his life with a fembot, Gaius Baltar. This inversion could be read as fair turnabout, given how lightweight and stereotypically “girlie” the women were in the old show. Dirk Benedict thinks it’s a result of the feminist movement, which he obviously feels has gone too far. Me, I just find the switch interesting, with no implicit or explicit moral judgement.

Finally, I wanted to leap up and pump my fist in the air when Dirk slammed something I tried and failed to articulate a couple weeks ago, namely the modern attitude that newer is always better and if you prefer the older for some reason, then there’s something wrong with you. It’s an attitude I encounter often, because I unabashedly continue to enjoy the music, movies, TV, and even clothing styles of the ’70s and ’80s. (Which isn’t to say that I still dress like it’s 1985, only that I don’t cringe when I see old photos of myself. It was the style of the times, folks, no better or worse that any other has-been style, and it doesn’t hurt my feelings one bit to acknowledge that I used to wear parachute pants and a mullet.)

I’ve been accused of being defensive about my likes and dislikes, and taking personally any objective criticism of these things. Maybe I do take things too personally. But if I do, it’s a learned response that comes from all the crap I’ve been handed for continuing to like stuff that the media and the marketing flacks and the faceless arbiters of “cool” tell me I should not like. My affection for vintage, “cheesy” things isn’t misguided nostalgia — if it was, I’d still be watching childhood favorites like Gilligan’s Island, which I just can’t do anymore. That show and others like it no longer speak to me enough to overlook its flaws. But I continue to like a lot of other things from my youth because I find some redeeming value in them, despite and sometimes because of their shortcomings. It’s subjective, of course — one man’s value is another man’s waste of time — but I’m not a fool and I resent the implication that I am because I remain loyal to things that more “with-it” people don’t like.

That implication comes not from personal attacks per se, but rather from the way criticism is so often phrased in absolutes. It isn’t enough to say something could’ve been better, or that it didn’t work for a particular reviewer. No, the item in question is always denounced in terms that leave no room for debate or personal taste. Logic suggests that if something like a TV show or book or film can be assigned an absolute judgment of worth, then a rational person shouldn’t have any grounds to disagree with that assigned judgment because, of course, it is absolute and was presumably applied by someone who knows what they’re talking about. And yet people disagree with critics all the time. How can that be? Assuming that the critic isn’t wrong somehow — say, because reviewing a film or TV show is far less “objective” then the critic would have us believe — then the fan of something “bad” is, at best, guilty of having poor taste; at worst he’s an idiot who wouldn’t know bad if it burned holes in his retinas. Either statement is hugely insulting to that fan, who is most likely of perfectly adequate intelligence but who, when it comes down to it, simply likes what he likes, which happens to be different from what the critic likes.

In the end, these things always boil down to nothing more than “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” It’s the refusal of so many critics, both professional and not, to acknowledge this fact — and allow for different opinions — that makes me feel defensive.

Critics aren’t the only ones contributing to this poisonous atmosphere, though. Marketing is just as big a problem, as Dirk points out. Marketing is all about making us want to buy the new product, whatever that new product may be, so the marketing folks have to convince us that the old is no longer adequate. And that’s a problem that goes far beyond this superficial nonsense of arguing over TV shows. It’s pretty easy to see how this insatiable, artificially constructed need for the new has brought us a society in which everything is disposable, so much so that people no longer have any sense of continuity with anything. I think a lot of the craziness and misery that surrounds us on a daily basis is directly attributable to the sense that nothing lasts — not classic TV, not this week’s fashions, not literature or art or architecture or technology or even the landscape. It’s all disposable and destined for obsolescence. And I personally find that immensely depressing. Which is probably why I fight so hard for the things that I loved as a child and continue to love as an adult. Because I want and need things to last. It doesn’t make me foolish. It makes me loyal. Maybe it even makes me sane.

It’s nice to know someone out there apparently feels the same way, even if he is a bitter, feminist-hating, has-been television actor…