I Just Can't Finish It [edit: yes I can]

For the past 2 weeks I have had about 5 or 6 long, and I mean long, posts on the verge of making to the blog. Yet for some reason, I just can't bring myself to finish any single one of them. I've been thinking a lot about Marian apparitions and devotions, faith and reason, and other topics of great interest to me. But after six or seven paragraphs, I find myself floundering.

I think I need to tone it down.

So lately I've been addicted to the series Battlestar Galactica. It's not a masterpeice by any means, but it has breathed new life into science fiction. Scifi, as I know well, has generally sucked since Picard hung up his shiny, pointed boots and Riker went back to Alaska to grow his beard and go spear-fishin' with Deanna & Worf. Battlestar Galactica (BSG from now on) attempts to make scifi more realistic, more of our time in terms of style and custom than try to dream up a completely fantastical world of aliens and laser beams.

Briefly stated, BSG follows the last survivors of humanity who, after having their homeworlds completely destroyed by a race of hyper-intelligent robots on their own creation, are in search of the legendary 13th colony, Earth. The problem is that the characters in the show are very human and spend a lot time doing very human (read stupid) things. Reason it seems, even in an age of grand techonological advancements, stills gets chucked out the window when it becomes inconvenient. One of the last scientists, a certain Dr. Baltar, has hallucinations of a female robot to whom he allowed access into humanity's defense computers and thus is indirectly responsible for the nuclear slaughter of billions of people. Ex-president Roslin exploits religious belief when it suites her, then drops it when it mandates a more unpopular, however necessary, course of action. Everyone has a problem: promiscuity, selfishness, pride, alcoholism, infidelity, depression and so forth.

The allure of BSG comes from the humanity of the characters. There isn't a Captain Picard who, between trips to the holodeck, never makes a poor decision. Instead, when people make a mistake and others die, you know it. People get upset and hold grudges. Characters react and change. It may be scifi, but it feels very believable. Credit is due to the writers who recognized the problems of modern-scifi and addressed them neatly in this well produced and acted series.

With that out of the way, maybe I can finish those other posts.