There are also a couple of beautiful shots reminiscent of 2001.

If there was ever an underrated sci-fi classic, this is it.

We used to watch a lot of Star Trek: TNG back in the day and there was this one episode I’m sure my parents were a little uncomfortable with - ‘Justice’. After around 10 minutes of watching the half-naked inhabitants of Rubicon III indulge in guilt-free sex and other pleasures (and my mother’s glares), we were asked to leave the room  (damn you, understandable but misplaced fears).

I finally watched the episode last night, 16 years later. It was pretty silly but thematically more substantial than I recall. The USS Enterprise makes contact with a planet whose peaceful inhabitants live in fear of their god, an advanced alien being kicking it out in the planet’s orbit. When Wesley Crusher breaks a trivial rule, the Enterprise has to prevent his execution and this isn’t easy considering they’re sworn to the Prime Directive. The reason I prefer TNG over the original series is because of the former’s obvious moral core.

Anyway, Captain Picard saves the day with a speech.

I don’t know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.

Let me digress, but only slightly. The IT law overhaul in India is clearly a bad idea but shouldn’t we be worried that there are people out there making arguments like this?

If you haven’t already guessed, my respect for the man has gone down a couple of notches after finding out that the big reveal he had in store for fans of Battlestar Galactica was, “God did it”. Never mind the unresolved story threads, what about the asteroid sized holes in logic? How could a science fiction show be so scientifically and logically challenged?

Now that’s out of the way, the feature length pilot for Caprica was pretty solid. It answers a few questions that were never tackled in the original series; the most important being  how the Cylons, a breed of intelligent machines, developed a belief system rooted in Judeo-Christian traditions. BSG itself stretched the limits of portrayal of sex and violence on television. Caprica takes it further. To make up for the lack of cool explosions in space, there’s plenty of rather smart expositions on the nature of being and consciousness.

I’m fairly certain Ronald Moore will eventually let us down again but rest assured, he’ll disappoint us in style.

The recent passing of Arthur C Clarke drove me to revisit the film yet again, that too two weeks after I watched Soderbergh’s 2002 interpretation of Stanislav Lem‘s novel featuring George Clooney’s buttocks. This time around, both the films blew me away. The films while being (long) meditations on grief, are also explorations of existentialism and love; themes that feature in the two films to varying extent. For the uninitiated, Solaris was a novel written by Polish sci fi author, Stanislav Lem about a planet (Solaris) being observed by humans aboard a space station. But it soon turn out that it’s merely the humans who are under observation. *cue ominous music*

Tarkovsky’s Solaris is unabashedly more philosophical; it flits across consciousness, guilt, memories and (drumroll) love. The protagonist Kris Kelvin finds that his deceased wife keeps reappearing aboard the spacehip. We are soon privy to the fact that she may be a manifestation of his idea of her; she posseses memories and characteristics only Kelvin is aware of. Kelvin cannot seem to come to terms with her and at one point tries to get rid of the apparition by shooting her/it off into space. Dr. Snaut, another human aboard the ship decides to broadcast Kelvin’s brainwave patterns to Solaris in an attempt to communicate with the planet. The ending is one I consider far superior to Soderbergh’s version. The brainwave patterns (brainwave. heh.) cause islands to appear on the planet surface; the islands are occupied by manifestations of Kelvin’s childhood home.

Soderbergh’s Solaris is exponentially more artistic with exquisite set design and photography, heavily inspired by Kubrick’s 2001 and like 2001 is a film that is slightly ahead of it’s times; a film that will be fully appreciated only 10-15 years from now by 20 something art aficionados and intellectually impotent folk like yours truly. The science is updated too; Higgs Bosons replace Neutrinos as explanations for the spooky occurences.

I would reccomend both films but then again, what do I know? Stanislav Lem hated both.

Links:

• Philosophy in the stars: CSM
• Solaris and the philosophy of consciousness: Mind Hacks

BSG is set in a time line nobody is quite sure of (though there are chances this ambiguity may be intentional) and in a universe that may or may not be our own. Cylons are a breed of intelligent cyborgs created by humans who turn on their masters due to… well, religious differences. The Cylons are steadfast believers in a monotheistic God with scary resemblances to the Judeo-Christian version of a loving and benevolent creator. One thing leads to another and the human colonies are destroyed by the Cylons leaving 50,000 odd survivors adrift in space on a fleet of ships led by a single military ship, the Battlestar Galactica. Also, the Cylons can apparently take the shape of humans with the obligatory blonde bombshell thrown in solely for the purpose of satisfying legions of male fans with no social lives to speak of, yours truly included.

What’s different about BSG is that it takes shots at topics straight from today’s headlines; terrorism, suicide bombings, fundamentalism, religion and politics and is far superior to the mindless drivel that crowds the screens these days. The character arcs and plot twists rival those of most other contemporary series although it does seem at times that the writers are working on the story as they go; which I sincerely hope isn’t true. This is the kind of show that needs a grand finale and a much bigger audience.

Links:

• Battlestar Galactica on SciFi
• Wikipedia Article
• Ron Moore’s Deep Space Journey [NY Times]
  
• In Galactica, It’s Politics as Usual, Or Is It? [NY Times]