The Advocates of Difference: Thoughts regarding narrative strategies in the new Battlestar Galactica TV series

Abstract

During the second half of the first decade of the new millennium, American TV audiences were presented with a series – Battlestar Galactica, a remake of a 1980’s science fiction soap opera –, which not only dealt with the issues of terrorism, suicide bombing, and war, so ubiquitous in mainstream media and political speeches back then, but which used those in such a way as to make viewers watch those events from the perspective of the opposing side. To touch upon such current, sensitive events was a risqué approach, but the series producers and writers managed to face most obstacles and get the attention of hard-to-satisfy TV critics. This was mainly due to the fact that the producers risked making essential, sometimes controversial, changes to the reference material of the original series, which were crucial in challenging fans’ expectations and thus opening the new series with a clear message of “anything goes”. This article tries to understand, not only how some of the more polemical narrative decisions might have influenced viewers’ response, but how these decisions could have been pre-determined by the general cultural mood, resulting in a creative feedback loop.