Battlestar Galactica’s Landmark United Nations Retrospective
In a testimony to the depth of the story telling that has made Battlestar Galactica the greatest science fiction series ever made in the eyes of many people, the United Nations has played host to an examination of the issues tackled by the show.
On Tuesday a special UN panel was convened. In attendance were Edward James Olmos (Commander Adama), Mary McDonnell (President Roslin) and the series creators Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, together with four UN officials and Whoopi Goldberg moderating -- and of course a number of reporters and other privately invited guests.
The panel has generated a lot of interest in the fictional Battlestar Galactica, but more so it provided a platform for the issues that the series has tackled across its four year journey to find a voice. Very real issues.
Since the UN panel was convened, a number superb of write ups about the session have emerged. Whilst they describe the same event, they do so with individual perspective. Following are selected excerpts from some of these write ups, and links to follow through and read the full article if you want to.
Sci Fi turned the United Nations into the Quorum of Twelve. Which may be the third coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
While the idea of the UN hosting a retrospective on Battlestar Galactica might sound a little odd, as the night went on it started to make perfect sense. From the very beginning, BSG has dealt with moral issues — what it means to be human, the rule of law vs. the military might, the arguable merits of armed insurgency — issues which find themselves on the UN’s docket almost every day. As Robert Orr, the Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Planning put it, “You’ve got people thinking about issues that we try and get people thinking about every day.”
Maureen Ryan (aka The Watcher, Chicago Tribune):
The audience members sat in the seats reserved for diplomats and delegates, but instead of nameplates listing the names of real countries, signs in front of each seat said “Caprica,” “Gemenon,” “Picon” and the names of the other nine colonies seen on the Sci Fi show. The overall effect made you feel as though you’d stepped onto one of the show’s sets; perhaps “Battlestar’s” president Laura Roslin (McDonnell) was about to pacify the restive Quorum of the Twelve Colonies.
But this wasn’t a set. And despite the fact that “Battlestar Galactica” is set in a fictional universe, the United Nations representatives on the panel praised the show for its depiction of the ways in which war, torture, deprivation and terrorism affect real people.
Standing in a United Nations chamber before a table covered in placards for each of the 12 Battlestar Galactica colonies, Edward James Olmos delivered a stirring speech that led a crowd of reporters and students to join in a chant of “So say we all,” one of the key phrases from the show.
It could have been a stirring moment in the series finale — but the moment was real.
Perhaps the evening’s highlight came when Olmos went on a partial tangent about the use of the word “race,” and forcefully argued that the only race which counted was the “human race.” He drew increasingly louder clapping and cheers as he proceeded to channel the charismatic leadership of his Battlestar character, Admiral William Adama.
“And then I end up well prepared as the admiral of Battlestar Galactica to say to all of you, there but one race, and that is it! So say we all!” Olmos said, invoking a common “Battlestar” chant used on the show.
“So say we all!” the crowd roared back, responding twice more as Adama’s voice rose to a shout. Wild applause filled the chamber, and for a moment it wasn’t hard to imagine being on the hangar deck of Galactica.
“I love that you did that here at the UN,” Goldberg said after everyone had calmed down.
The panel launched into a moving discourse, prompted by a collection of retrospective clips from BSG about human rights in both the science-fictional and modern day worlds. United Nations workers sat next to the Admiral, and spoke from the heart about extreme human rights abuses around the world, after viewing a scene from the first season, with Starbuck torturing Cylon Leoben with a water bucket and a smirk, and the brutal abuse of Pegasus Six. For every clip, the “real world” speaker shared how these shameful and violating acts continue across the globe, and sadly aren’t limited to dark space operas.
Human Rights Deputy Director Craig Mokhiber lamented that even the utopian ideal the United Nations was formed around was considered, by some, science fiction. “We look at it in a different way,” Mokhiber explained. “It’s true that we are an idealistic organization… but we are focused on international law and diplomacy to settle disputes. We don’t see it as utopian, we see it as the only reasonable alternative to what inevitably would be a horrific dystopian society.”
James Hibberd (The Live Feed):
In “Battlestar,” the human race was nearly extinguished by the artificial life form it created. But Sci Fi’s show has increasingly shown the Cylons as sympathetic, frequently raising questions about what it means to be human, and whether there’s such a thing as absolute good and evil.
“One of the tough things about the show is to constantly blur those distinctions — that really good people would do really horrible things and really horrible people would do good things,” showrunner Ron Moore said. “So we work very hard to get to a place where we never really wanted the audience to be comfortable with the idea that the Cylons could be redeemed … and likewise, humanity.”
And here is the footage of Edward James Olmos’s speech about ‘one race’:
Edward James Olmos’s ‘one race’ speech:
Whoopi Goldberg speaks, and various other clips:
March 20th, 2009 at 11:15 am
Where can the retrospective clips on human rights be viewed individually? They were amazing!
March 20th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hi Laura.
All the clips are available here:
http://www.un.org/webcast/2009.html
Bear in mind the clips are in Real Media format, so you’ll need a player that plays .rm files.