Starbuck whines

Sheesh man, this whining is so emasculating!

There was a time, I know I was there, when men were men, women were women and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won. Everything has turned into its opposite, so that what was once flirting and smoking is now sexual harassment and criminal. And everyone is more lonely and miserable as a result.
…
“Re-imagining”, they call it. “Un-imagining” is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy human civilization, one would assume. Indeed, let us not say who the good guys are and who the bad are. That is being “judgmental,” taking sides, and that kind of (simplistic) thinking went out with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Kathryn Hepburn and John Wayne and, well, the original “Battlestar Galactica.”

I kind of pity poor Dirk Benedict. He sounds like Grandpa Simpson. I think, however, that his version of Starbuck would have found a lot to like about the new BSG, because at its core, it’s about strong people who keep going in the face of overwhelming odds, about the importance of principle and honor, and a basic embrace of the essence of being human. What makes BSG special is that it does so in classic science fiction style, by using the strange and unfamiliar as foil to probe the familiar and known. How better to answer the question of, what makes us human, then by having machines ask it?

One gets the feeling that Dirk never read any (Philip K) Dick. The Matrix, Blade Runner, even good ol’ Spock the Vulcan… all of that goes over his head, and he is left fuming, impotently, about ambiguous moralities. Science fiction is for grown-ups. The old Galactica series was for kids.

(good as BSG is, though, Firefly still holds the edge. I wonder what sort of conniptions that show would send Dirk into?)

(via Steven)