My Brain has Two Halves, Thank You.
Okay, so I answered Robert McCain’s grand scoffing of my Battlestar Galactica post with a reasonable answer that involved gobs and gobs of cheesecake. That ought to be enough to win any argument between two red-blooded American males, right?
Wrong. First he chides me for too much imagination (because of ray guns and galaxy-hopping spaceships that aren’t actually in BSG) and now he’s complaining that I don’t have enough imagination because I don’t put Grace Park in lacy underthings all the time! A guy can’t win.
But let’s handle the easy question first.
Simple question: Do the BSG babes run around in lacy underwear during the show?
Simple Answer: I think we can handle that.
We’ve also had Katee Sackhoff romping in bed, as well as at least two other characters where we saw some skin, too. Grace Park, you BSG fan’s might remember, showed up ostensibly topless pretty early on as multiple Boomers showed up on a Cylon Basestar. Is there cheesecake? Yeah, for a show where the human race is trying not to be exterminated, I’d say there was plenty of skin.
I suspect that this might not be enough for Robert, though. What he wants is something a bit more 1960s.
Suppose you were asked to imagine an alternative reality in which such impossibilities as inter-galactic space travel were possible — a scenario where you can dream up pretty much anything your freaky little mind might want. And there’s no lingerie? No bustiers or merry widows? No garter belts, for crying out loud?
I’m sorry, if I was given artistic license to conjure such a fantasy universe into existence, my alternative reality would have the space babes wearing satin and lace more or less 24/7. Also, their dialogue would consist mainly of lines like, “More coffee, Commander McCain?”
Let’s see. I bet I could imagine such a television show. It’d have the handsome Captain, the women running around in short skirts, alien women in various states of dishabille, and plenty of two-fisted action where the handsome Captain beats the living snot out of the space baddies.
Gosh, I wonder what that show might be like? It’s coming to me…
Oh yeah. That show. The one with the ray guns and roomy space stations and all the stuff that Robert didn’t like early this morning. But if you’re going to do the whole geek fantasy, why on Earth wouldn’t you throw in the ray guns and the big space stations and the ships that can cross the vast gulf of space lickety-split? Why restrict yourself to just The Playboy Mansion in Space? If I’m going to have Batgirl in a hot little dress, you’d better believe I’m going to have a ray gun and a fast ship too!
Okay, Robert, you’re going to have to pick one. Either you get a lot of fanciful imagination or you get something more realistic. You don’t get to fairly say that we geeks can imagine being Hugh Hefner Among the Stars but we can’t be just as fanciful with the gadgets, too. That’s like tying half our brains behind our backs.
The good news for me is that I don’t have to choose one over the other. I can do Bonanza in Space (which is what Star Trek really was) or I can do gritty realism where women can be fighter pilots and sexy as hell at the same time. I don’t see where that makes me a Beta Male. It seems to me that my geekhood is superior because I get the best of both worlds. I get a show with Grace Park and I get a show with Grace Lee Whitney. Let’s see CSI top that.
One last thing. Robert asks, “Why can the producers of BSG defy the laws of physics, but they can’t defy the EEOC?” There are two answers for that. The first, practical one, is that the EEOC really exists and can file expensive lawsuits against you. But the better answer, one that wouldn’t be asked if Robert had watched a couple episodes of BSG, is that Ronald Moore and crew really don’t defy the laws of physics. They’ve gone out of their way to have the ships and the guns and the people conform to everything we know right now, or at least everything that we know is at least scientifically plausible.
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Category: It's Entertainment!, Rampant Geekery
I think you should also point out that, while none of the "Star Trek" technology existed when the show was on the air, it certainly inspired a butt-load of the technology we use today. (Cell phones, anyone?) So while BSG may seem a bit … fanciful … today, tomorrow it will seem just another quaint SciFi show that we watch in reruns on our shiny new moon base.
While gorgeous women in lingerie serve us cold drinks, of course…
To some of us, yes. *LOL*