Which I liked. I appreciate and admire how topical Battlestar was, how it told the story of a society under attack from a race vowing to destroy it, complete with civil-liberties crackdowns, prison-torture scandals, religious fundamentalists and suicide attacks. It was an allegory for the current war on terror, yet never explicitly took any side. In fact, in Battlestar’s hands, it was our heroes that led the suicide attacks. It did all this, however, without losing any of its kick-ass excitement and Hollywood movie-worthy thrills. I just felt it wasn’t up to the quality of my beloved Lost.
However, last night I finally caught up with the two most recent episodes of both shows, and it confirmed to me what I had long suspected – Lost is just turning into pure crap, especially compared to Battlestar. I started to fear the worst during the last season, which I thought had taken a significant decline from the first three (although a lot of people will try and convince you that series three was rubbish. Which it wasn’t). It seemed to have lost sight of what had made the show great – it was a story about the people who crashed on an island, not about an island that had some people crash on it. Series four suddenly became all-action, all-the-time, cramming exposition and narrative details into every single scene – it was exhausting. What happened to the great scenes from seasons gone by, such as when Jack realised he couldn’t save Boone’s life, or when Locke, wracked with guilt over his part in Boone’s death, bangs on the top of the hatch door, or when Michael, drifting on the broken raft, weeps over the fate of his missing son – all moments which were accompanied by the brilliant, mournful piano score. Lost used to know when to slow it down and focus on the characters, which were once the most important part of its dynamic. Now, it has none of that. It doesn’t even feel like the same show anymore. Season one has a totally different tone and pace to this current season, and I am really questioning how they are going to bring it all together so that in years to come, when I watch the entire series back again, it will feel like a consistent, flowing story.
Battlestar Galactica, however, is just going from strength to strength. It has never lost sight of what it was originally trying to say, and each plot development has been a natural evolution of the narrative. Sure, it has had some weak points – specifically in season two, when it got particularly episodic (what the hell was the point of that awful black market episode?) – but for a show of such otherwise consistently high quality, that is a minor flaw. The great thing about Battlestar is that even now, as the series is winding down and they are increasingly gaining momentum towards their unpredictable (but seemingly logical) conclusion, it has never forgotten the characters, and the smaller moments. Moments such as when the fractured relationship between Admiral Adama and his son Lee was healed a tiny bit just by a proud look from father to son after Lee had successfully destroyed the Cylon fuel ship, or when Gaius Baltar, isolated and alone as the fleet celebrate a victory, starts to believe that he is an instrument of God himself (both moments, actually, come from the same episode – the exemplary ‘Hand Of God’ in season one). The most recent episode, ‘The Oath’, while being heart-racingly exciting, also had these smaller moments, including a particularly great scene where Baltar makes a selfless (well, as selfless as Gaius Baltar can get, anyway) last-ditch attempt to contact the leader of the mutiny (no spoilers here) and implore him to call it off.
I used to think Lost was the most perfect show on television, and the first two seasons are, but while it used to be the show that gave me inspiration to think of my own TV show pilot, it is now just a show that gives me encouragement to actually write it. After all, if poorly-written crap like last night’s episode is held up as “better than anything else on primetime” then why shouldn’t mine be able to succeed?
