Television’s Cylon Transition
Now that I’ve settled down into S.F., I’ve been nosing around catching up on telelvision shows and various bits and pieces of media that people have been recommending to me for the best few months and that I haven’t gotten around to seeing yet. One of these, Battlestar Galactica, is someting I lost track of around the second season or so, which is a shame — because it’s amazing.
In any case, Wired’s extended interview with the creator, Ron Moore, is great on a bunch of levels, but I think one point was particularly interesting. He says:
One of the things I liked about the way we reconceived the show was just by saying that this wasn’t one of the best ships in the fleet, that this was the— Enterprise is the best ship in the fleet. Even in the old Galactica series, the Galactica was a special ship. But if you tell stories about the elite or the best of the best, it always sort of throws you into this: They have to be really good, they have to be smarter than the average bear, they have to be paragons on some level to achieve this heroic status. By saying the ship was going into retirement, that they were all kind of castoffs and knuckleheads and people that other ships didn’t want, and [that] Adamas going into retirement too and didn’t make admiral and has a bad relationship with his son, [and that] He’s divorced, [has] lost one son in an accident he still can’t grapple with, and tolerates an alcoholic as his first officer, He’s already a deeply flawed man
Which is a really great contrast, since in Star Trek, all the threats have to come externally from aliens and whatnot, since the characters are essentially flawless. For Battlestar Galatica, even the external enemies in the form of Cylons look like the characters, and the crew seems to often be battling with broader internal sociological forces (greed, ambition, etc) more than anything else.
I think this pattern of “cyloning” the conflict repeats itself. I think it ends up going broadly across different genres television media, forming a weird cross-genre transition that occurs in the late 1990s and continues into the present. It’s more than that certain characters are conflicted heroes or have a dark past (I mean, come on, freakin’ Michael Knight has a dark past): the entire construction of the conflict and the enemy in the show has shifted to focus on personal, or emergent flaws in a group. The enemy gets to be us (or at least the main characters of the show).
Consider for cop procedural shows: Law and Order vsThe Wire. The cops in all three subseries of Law and Order are total badasses. Whether its Ice-T kicking ass or Vincent D’Onofrio, you know who the bad guys are, and they’re being taken down by the heroes. In The Wire, the problems are reversed. The cop department’s petty politicking and the failures of the staffers are mostly what keeps them from stopping the criminals. And when they’re dealing with the drug dealers, the problem is often more disperse and sociological than anything else. I’m thinking of that scene at the end of season 3 where McNulty and Bunk break into Stringer Bells apartment, and one says to the effect of, “Who the hell are we after?”
Same goes for comedy families: The Simpsons vs. Arrested Development. Though the incompetence of The Simpsons gets them into all kinds of trouble, much of the conflict and action in the show is generated from external events. Whether its from Sideshow Bob, Monty Burns, or some other influence. For the Bluths in Development, it’s always the flaws of the family that keep them from getting back on their feet (and is the source of comedy). Their supposed enemy, the Sitwells, aren’t really even an enemy at all. And when the eventual enemy behind their problems is revealed, it turns out to be someone (kind of) in their own family. Cylons right there.
Reality shows, a new genre that emerged during that transition, is also in the Cylon pattern. Whether its Survivor, America’s Next Top Model, or Top Chef, Cylons abound. True, the participants in these shows are always challanged to deal with some external threat, but the real focus of the show is evident in much of the commentary about the show. (“So-and-so is such a bitch, hoo-and-ha totally did this to her/him”) And also in how they cut it — much of the show is focused in what the people (and sometimes the judges!) are doing to each other, rather than what they are creating (a measly final few minutes are spent displaying the foods or whatever else).
The big limitation in this respect seems to be medical dramas — House still seems to follow the “best-of-the-best” model, and the key problem always seems to be the resolution of some external problem (what people are suffering from). This seems different from something like E.R., where much of the focus was on internal and interpersonal conflict. Though even there, it’s notable that the problem usually exists in human weakness, and that a subnarrative is that House himself is always dealing with his flawed personality.
I think it’s clear that a pattern exists, though the reasons why seem a little more obscure. The timing of it is tempting to pin on 9-11 and the War on Terror, since the political narrative of “enemies among us” joined with the human failures in business and government during the period seem to focus attention more on the enemy as ourselves than from the outside. (Note the distinction in these narratives from some Cold War dramas like Invasion of the Body Snatchers — where the enemy also looks like us, but doesn’t reflect on us as people. The enemy is alien, we are human). Though, needless to say, that’s pretty speculative. I’m also inclined to argue on the broadcast implications of reality shows becoming increasingly popular along this model, forcing writers to try to adjust to remain viable in the marketplace (a corporate budgeting scenario).
I dunno, any thoughts on why out there?
[Note on Picture: even Battlestar’s Cylons have undergone a Cylon Transition]
