Battlestar Galactica: No reason to get excited

I can still be surprised by people who watch the same things as me and get something completely different out of it. The Sopranos was one of the first times it really hit me, when people I saw it with would be disappointed in an emotionally crushing episode because nobody got whacked.

It has happened quite a few times since, but the biggest difference might still be in the 21st century version of Battlestar Galactica.

I watched the whole thing again recently and it remains a massively intense show. It is still a great watch in these stressful times - the world might be slowly burning down, but at least you don't have to worry about getting blown out an airlock by a fracking toaster. The performances are wonderful - Saul Tigh's amazing emoting eye remains a wonder - and the action still holds up, the shaky camerawork during the space battles used to annoy me but has aged really well, capturing the chaos of warfare in the vacuum.

But my favourite thing about it was always the weird spiritual dimension to it all, lurking behind the militarism and murders. When Baltar admits he sees angels in the room in the final episode - the first time he's really spoken any truth - it's a big moment, but there have been signs and prophecies and genuinely supernatural events that can not be explained, right from the start.

And most of all, I adore the idea that All Along The Watchtower is some kind of eternal song, a deep species memory that comes back out again and again. People hear it coming out of the walls of spaceships hundreds of thousands of years ago, before it finds a new frequency with Bob Dylan's mind in the 20th century. A song so good it transcends space and time and becomes a signal from the divine.

I still see people scoffing at the unknowable nonsense that permeates Battlestar Galactica, they just want to see soldiers shoot the shit out of robots, and I do respect that. But that's not why I got so much into it, I watched it for the strange and the spiritual, and for a song that existed out there in the universe long before humanity rose on Earth, and which led the way home.