Still feeling a little lost? Here’s your BSG fact sheet: The morally ambiguous good guys are… humans! Thirteen tribes of them. Many moons ago, the thirteenth tribe left all the others and settled on a faraway planet known as ‘Earth’. The remaining twelve colonised elsewhere, and named themselves after star signs. There’s Caprica, which is full of politicians, artists and fighter pilots; Saggitaron, which is where the crazy religious types live; and… uh… other ones. To make life easier (to help with folding undercrackers and crushing cars, for example) the twelve colonies invented robots called Cylons. Despite the laws of robotics, however (after all, having being invented on Earth, our heroes presumably weren’t aware of them), the Cylons turned against their creators and there was a big ass war, which ended with the robots leaving in a huff. ‘Reimagining’ So far, eleven out of the twelve models have been revealed. Some are sleeper agents, hiding out amongst the human survivors totally unaware they’re a Cylon until they’re activated and do something bad, like shoot the Admiral. By the end of last season, eleven out of the twelve Cylons had been revealed, including four of the ‘final five’, who were all sleeper agents – the Executive Officer of Galactica, Colonel Tigh; the President’s Aide, Tori; Chief Petty Officer Tyrol; and Starbuck’s husband, Sam Anders. These four realised they were Cylons as they all heard snatches of the melody of Bob Dylan’s hit ‘All Along The Watchtower’. I kid you not. Is it being broadcast from Earth? It’s hard to say, but I’m glad it wasn’t Eurovision weekend, anyway. Season Four Still not convinced? If all that excitement hasn’t enticed you, perhaps YOU are a Cylon. Battlestar Galactica might sound a little too sci-fi, perhaps, or the story might seem too involved? Just give it a chance – underneath everything, Battlestar’s key is humanity. Its huge range of characters allow for a penetrating and sometimes uncomfortably realistic portrayal of people in wartime. It also asks deep and difficult questions about colonisation, genocide, religion and the problems we make for ourselves, that directly relate to past and present world events. And it’s funny. See: Rachel George will one of our reviewers for the new series of Battlestar Galactica. *May not be true, but it’s amusing, and isn’t that the real truth? The answer is no.
