I would have liked to see Moore develop his idea of Cylon captives held as hostages, another ugly aspect of modern warfare.

As for sending kids off to die in hopeless causes, all military organizations do that, to one degree or another, either by training, discipline and coercion, or by appealing to adolescent psychology, patriotism and group dynamics. In the mideast, religious fanaticism is also employed.

We form an idea of the military from Hollywood: grim, determined, wisecracking thirtysomething heroes. But when you show up yourself all you actually see around you are scared and homesick teenagers, zits and all. We may call them “our fighting men”, but as you get older you start thinking of them as just “our boys”.

In a conscript military, even the lifers usually retire by age 40, so by my age what you see is an army of little boys led into battle by men young enough to be your children–or even your grandchildren. We have a professional, all-volunteer force now, so its not quite as bad it used to be, but its still enough to break your heart.

My problem isn’t how it was portrayed it or even that suicide bombers aren’t effective. Any other show that would have been perfect. My problem was in the set up. They were fighting an invincible enemy. Any moron could see they were throwing their life away without any possible gain to the war effort.

I remember Moore talking about an earlier draft of that episode where the resistance was kidnapping key leadership cylons and incarcerating them in a hidden room under suicide watch so they couldn’t resurrect and rejoin the war. Moore decided to abandon that route and go with suicide bombers for the impact. I agree it made a bigger impact, but at the cost of story plausability in my opinion. Of course by this point in the storyline I was desperate for a way off of New Caprica and was happy anything at all was happening.

1)cowards
2)in it for personal gain.

Exploring these contradictions was a big part of what the show was all about. The good guys in Galactica tortured prisoners, executed them without trial, assassinated political enemies, mounted coups d’etat against legitimately elected governments and mutinies against legitimate military command authority, dealt expediently with gangsters, exploited, mistrusted and lied to the media, stole elections, suborned the judicial system, violated military and governmental ethics, and even seriously considered genocide. In many ways, the Cylons fought more honorably. And of course, if you were in the Admiral’s family, were one of his friends, or were sleeping with him, you were usually forgiven your transgressions and quickly reinstated, whatever your crimes. Talk about nepotism…Even the arch-villain of the piece, John Cavil (the Dean Stockwell character) at least was working within the requirements of his own species survival strategy as he saw it. He also got the best lines! And, of course, even goody two-shoes Madame President was always ready at the drop of a hat to shove someone she didn’t like out an airlock.

Of course, there always seemed good reasons for doing those things at the time, but isn’t that always the way we justify it to ourselves, especially in wartime? “The ends justify the means.”

As we have seen lately in our own country, many believe it worthwhile, even patriotic, to put the country at great risk in order to discredit, obstruct and even sabotage the actions of a legitimately elected government that they feel is in the wrong. The show did an excellent job of exploring these contradictions and inconsistencies in moral and civic behavior, and I do believe the recent mideast conflicts provided many of the examples. The show stands as one of the best philosophical and political dramas ever done on commercial television, (not just as a slam-bang top of the line space opera). But you’re right, after Starbuck’s mysterious crash-landing and resurrection on Earth, things rapidly started going down hill dramatically.

The drinking never bothered me when watching it. I listened to the podcasts by Ron Moore that he released with each episode for a while and he talked a lot about pushing all of the boundaries into contradictions like Doc Cottle being a chain smoker, Starbuck being female etc.

One of those flip upside down moments that I thought was pretty stupid though was when on New Caprica the heroes start strapping explosives onto young freedom fighters chests…for what? I get we were at the height of the Iraq war when these aired and it gave a mirrored perspective on that war, but the stupidity! The population is down to 40,000 some odd lives and the best use of those lives is to deliver a bombs which only kills their own side? I could buy it if they were actually able to make some ground in the war, but there was no gain. The cylons were just downloaded into new bodies and slightly annoyed. Meanwhile the humans population was dwindling because of it.

Ron Moore did a superb job on the show at the start, but it became pretty apparent that he was beginning to flail around a lot in the last few seasons. He was making it up as he went and there was no plan. Yeah the cylons didn’t actually have a plan either. The show opening was a lie.