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by Susan J. Paxton

spacer.gif (836 bytes)When John Kenneth Muir’s book An Analytical Guide to Television’s Battlestar Galactica appeared in 1999, many fans were excited to finally see a book on the series. But the relative success of Muir’s book turned out to be a case of long-starved fans accepting third-rate material not on its merits but due to a dearth of anything better.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir freely admits in his book that he is not a fan of Battlestar Galactica; in fact he refers to the series as a “guilty pleasure” and as “the most fascistic American science fiction program of all time.” The question that must then follow is why he wrote the book; another question, why he did such a poor job on it is, I suspect, pretty much answered by his comments quoted above.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)It is obvious that Muir’s entire research for this book consisted of watching video tapes, glancing back through old magazines, and checking a few BG web sites. He did not trouble himself to interview anyone involved with the series, attend any conventions, or talk to any more knowledgeable fans. The result of his intellectual laziness—there is no kinder word—is a book that is rife with easily avoidable errors of fact and insupportable opinions.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir begins by discussing Glen Larson and his role as “creator” of the series. All of Muir’s information here is lifted from magazine articles; he never troubled to contact Larson personally and interview him. If I were to write a scholarly book on a TV series or film, the first thing I would do is interview the creator, if he was still alive, and if he was not available, then his surviving associates. Muir failed to do any of this. He quotes, from a magazine article, Larson’s claim that the origin of BG could be found in his idea for a series called Adam’s Ark. What Muir fails to detect is that Larson’s story about Adam’s Ark changed dramatically over the years. Originally Larson claimed it was set out in space, moving towards Earth, so that the Biblical stories would turn out to be distorted memories of the epic travels of the protagonists; later Larson claimed that Adam’s Ark was about a “Howard Hughes-like” billionaire named Adam who realized Earth was doomed and launched hundreds of unsuspecting people out into space to continue humanity, which is the story Muir repeats. Muir had a chance to discover the discrepancy and make an important and original contribution to BG scholarship. By failing to interview Larson and, more importantly, others who worked on the series, he missed the chance to discover that BG’s origins are more shadowed—that in fact Leslie Stevens (who was still alive at the time Muir was writing his book) had the original idea, not Glen Larson.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir’s superficial approach leads not only to error but also to omission. It is absolutely impossible to understand BG without knowing that it originally was intended to be a 3 hour TV movie followed by two 2 hour specials, a fact widely known in fandom but which Muir completely and totally ignores. We never hear about the struggles between Larson and ABC, struggles largely responsible for the eventual form and the eventual failure of the series. Muir notes briefly, for example, that Dirk Benedict was cast as Starbuck, without ever mentioning that his casting was a major bone of contention between Larson and ABC, something Dirk has discussed extensively in his book Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy and which Larson has also mentioned in interviews.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir’s critical faculties also appear to be in the same kind of abeyance as his work ethic on this project. He refers to only six BG episodes that “might be termed good, in the same class as a solid episode of Star Trek or Space: 1999 (his putting Space: 1999 on the same level as Star Trek also says a lot about his critical faculties, but I digress).” Muir’s chosen six are the premiere, Living Legend, War of the Gods, Man With Nine Lives, (episodes most BG fans would agree are among the top ten, by the way) and Greetings From Earth. I hate to point this out to a respected BG expert like John Kenneth, but out of 100 BG fans, 98 or 99 would assure him that Greetings From Earth is a piece of crap. When fans rate the episodes, Greetings From Earth inevitably joins Fire in Space near the bottom of the barrel. Muir then picks some episodes as second-raters, classifying Lost Planet, Long Patrol, Baltar’s Escape, and Take the Celestra as “perhaps marginally better than the average hour of science fiction TV—assuming the average is The Fantastic Journey, Star Trek: The Next Generation or the first season of Babylon 5.” The rest of the episodes get completely trashed.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir does make a good point when he mentions that part of the problem with many of the episodes is that no one actually familiar with science fiction was involved in the production. But he fails to realize that his ratings of the episodes are greatly at variance with how real fans of the series feel and that even episodes that are widely disliked—Fire in Space is the prime example—inevitably have redeeming factors fans cherish. Fire in Space features good characterization and showcases Herb Jefferson and Terry Carter (to such an extent that it was nominated for an NAACP Image Award), Lost Warrior, in spite of its Wild West overtones, is a wonderful showcase for Richard Hatch, just as Long Patrol is for Dirk Benedict, while Gun on Ice Planet Zero is underrated and a good look at the early, pre-ABC tinkering version of the series. He also, due to his sketchy research, doesn’t realize that a lot of the early episodes with their stock plots and cheap sets were the result of having to suddenly take a show intended as a series of specials and put it on every week.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)In his comments about the early “space Western” episodes of the series, Muir displays a massive lack of knowledge about the premise of the series. Why, he wants to know, is the technology on these planets so primitive? Why do the Colonials keep finding human civilizations as they move away from the Colonies? The answer is obvious—these planets were cut off during the Thousand Yahren War—but Muir is apparently unable to figure out what any half-aware viewer must have immediately realized.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Later, Muir claims, “On the morality issue, Battlestar Galactica simply has very little to say,” a comment fit to leave any reasonably intelligent viewer of the series wondering if Muir watched the show at all. BG has a very well developed streak of morality running through it. Apollo could have waited for rescue and done nothing, but chose instead to face down Red-Eye on Equellus. Using the Galactica’s computers, Starbuck included himself on the deadly dangerous mission to Arkta out of his feelings of obligation and love for his friends Apollo and Boomer and his responsibility for Cadet Cree. Living Legend finds Cain and Adama arguing the morality of their differing approaches to solving the fleet’s fuel problem. War of the Gods is an episode heavily involved with problems of morals, as Iblis tries to seduce the people of the fleet to follow him down the happy path to perdition previously trod by the original reptilian Cylons. Evidently, in spite of the fact that Muir claims elsewhere that War of the Gods is one of the best BG episodes, he slept through most of it.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)After briefly covering the history of the series and its bastard offspring Galactica 1980, Muir continues with a series of detailed synopses/critiques of the episodes, giving him plenty of chances to display his pathetic lack of research and critical failings.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Discussing the premiere, Muir comments that director Richard Colla was “apparently” replaced by Alan J. Levi. Muir adds, “According to rumors and industry gossip, the change was made because Colla fell behind schedule.” Well, Colla was not “apparently” replaced, he was replaced, and he was replaced because he and Glen Larson did not see eye to eye, not because he fell behind schedule. How do I know this? Because, unlike John Kenneth, I asked Alan J. Levi. No rumors, no industry gossip, just good old-fashioned research.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)A few paragraphs later, Muir, obviously a liberal of the brain-dead school, whines, “Battlestar Galactica seems to think that martial law is mankind’s best hope for survival, a stark contrast to Star Trek, which stresses democracy and individual freedom above all else.” What Muir appears to be saying here is that the situations depicted in Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica are similar, which they are not. Star Trek depicts a settled, organized Federation, while BG portrays a crisis, the flight of a few pathetic survivors from their ravaged planets. If Muir wants to try “democracy and individual freedom” under those circumstances, he’s welcome to try, but the result would be no survivors at all, just a pile of individualistic democratic corpses. Muir’s liberal disdain of the military comes into full flower later in the book.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)In his critique of Long Patrol, Muir professes himself confused that Maren Jensen’s Athena character gradually faded in importance as the series continued. Evidently he never noticed that she wouldn’t act her way out of a paper bag, and, of course, he never bothered to ask anyone actually involved with the series what had happened.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir obviously doesn’t like Gun on Ice Planet Zero, so we can’t expect him to do justice to the episode in his critique. But Muir might have been better prepared to discuss this episode if he had been aware of the very early script, Crossfire, it was based on, and if he knew that it was in fact the second episode shot.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)According to Muir, Living Legend is “without a doubt the strongest episode of the Battlestar Galactica collection,” an opinion even the most fervent fans of this episode might disagree with. Lloyd Bridges’ portrayal of Commander Cain is so overwhelming and magnificent that on first viewing it tends to paper over the cracks running through the episode. I personally would have loved for Omega or someone to raise a hand after one of Cain’s Pattonesque harangues about his military prowess and ask, “Yes, sir, but what about Molecay?”
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Discussing Fire in Space, Muir claims, “In the world of Battlestar Galactica, water is apparently called ‘boraton’.” I can’t speak for other fans, but I personally never thought that boraton was water; it looked like some kind of fire-fighting foam, more logical when dealing with fuel fires than using water which will just spread the fuel around without smothering the flame. Muir also gripes about Tigh writing in English with a pen instead of using some kind of alien looking hieroglyphics or speaking his message into a computer to make a printout. He claims, “these are not nit-picks,” I disagree; they are nit-picks. Tigh writes in English because the viewers read English (it’s worth noting in this context that the various signs we see aboard the Galactica and other ships in the fleet are written in English). And in an emergency, anyone will reach for a pen rather than boot up the computer, load Word, and wonder if he should use Arial or Garamond.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir’s failure to do adequate research reaches the nadir in his discussion of War of the Gods. Muir asserts that the crashed ship on the planet where Iblis is found is in fact the battlestar Pegasus and quotes reams of “evidence” to prove his thesis. The problem is, no matter how much significance Muir attaches to Apollo’s comment that the crashed ship was “as big a battlestar” or his attempts to prevent Sheba from seeing what was inside the wreckage, the ship is not the Pegasus. It was never intended to be the Pegasus.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Now I will admit that at the time War of the Gods first aired, the prevailing theory in fandom was indeed that the mysterious ship was the battlestar Pegasus and fans used much the same evidence Muir quotes so plentifully to prove their point. Then the novelization appeared, in which Apollo and Starbuck find the remains of demons in the ship, and the script drifted out to fandom, with the identical scene. And lastly, people who worked on the show, from Richard Hatch to Larson to Terry McDonnell and Jim Carlson, all came forward and said that the ship was a ship full of demons, and the scene showing the dead demon was cut because ABC thought it was too frightening to show in the 8 p.m. hour.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir even comments on the novelization version of the scene and then goes on to claim, “This is an unacceptable solution….” Unacceptable? It’s the correct solution! Muir adds, “Some fans believe that this footage was actually shot….” Believe?! It was shot. In my view, John Kenneth Muir’s claim to know anything about BG falls to pieces on this point alone. Here he parades his ignorance and lack of research for the entire world to view, and claims that any opposing view is wrong, when in fact those opposing views are the truth. What an ass.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir also parades his ignorance when he comments that Iblis is also known as Mephistopheles, a name symbolic of Satan. Later in the book he adds, “Although the name Iblis itself does not seem indicative of ancient myth or biblical parable….” Again, if Muir had strained himself slightly, he would have found out that Iblis is the Muslim name for Satan.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)One of Muir’s strangest claims throughout this book is that the Borellian Nomen with their lumpy makeup and chatter about “The Code” were the inspiration for the “improved” Klingons of Star Trek—The Motion Picture and the ST—TNG TV series. He expounds on this theory at great length in his critique of Man With Nine Lives. Of course he never bothered to take the time to ask anyone involved with the later ST efforts if they were indeed moved by the example of the nomen or if the Klingons evolved due to better makeup techniques being available to the later productions of ST and the Klingons being depicted as beings of honor in various ST novels (most notably John M. Ford’s The Final Reflection).
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Discussing Murder on the Rising Star, Muir misspells the names of most of the characters. Again, if he had availed himself of the ready supply of BG scripts, he could have easily avoided these errors.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)An error that Muir is not alone in making involves the use in Greetings From Earth of the shuttle from the Buck Rogers premiere. Muir, like others, claims that the full-size mockup and model were used later in Buck Rogers, when in fact the Buck Rogers premiere was shot first and the models reused here (in fact, a marginal note in the Gun on Ice Planet Zero script describes a set as being a “Buck Rogers set.”).
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir also takes the opportunity in his critique of Greetings to wonder why so many “aliens” in televised science fiction are humanoid. Evidently he doesn’t understand that the humans of Terra are supposed to be related to the humans of the Colonies, and in other cases he apparently forgets that it’s a lot cheaper to depict a bipedal, two-armed, one-headed alien than to create a character that’s an intelligent gas of some kind.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)The less said about Muir’s discussion of Galactica 1980 episodes the better, but I freely admit I am totally astonished that he compares Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home to Galactica Discovers Earth and suggests that the ST movie was inspired by G80. Later, he compares Galactica Discovers Earth to Independence Day (it’s worth noting here that Muir, naturally, did not recognize the several obvious BG tributes that actually were in ID4)!
spacer.gif (836 bytes)With his coverage of the episodes behind him, Muir rolls out the big guns for his major critique of the military focus of the series. Muir appears to be astonished that a series called Battlestar Galactica is about the military (WHAT a surprise!) and that the military is portrayed in a favorable light (WHAT a surprise!).
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir begins by pointing out that science fiction TV is traditionally liberal, noting the examples of Star Trek and ST—TNG. Interestingly, while Star Trek displayed liberal social views, it was still about the military. Captain Kirk and Captain Picard gave orders, and their underlings obeyed—often to the death. Kirk and Picard also battled enemy ships and enemy cultures. Muir apparently has forgotten these picky details. He also claims Space: 1999 as a liberal show. Again, while socially liberal, when Commander Koenig gave an order, it was obeyed.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir then sadly points out, “Amazingly, Battlestar Galactica does not at all follow the proud liberal traditions of science fiction television history. It is not concerned with tolerance, diversity, integration, or cosmic friendship.” Interesting claims for a show that featured African American actors in very prominent roles, women in combat, Apollo’s speech to Boxey in the premiere about cosmic tolerance, and the efforts of the Colonials to prevent a nuclear holocaust on Terra, to name just a few obvious contradictions to Muir’s thesis. Muir compares BG to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO—a good comparison, by the way, and one not often made, to Muir’s credit. BG is set in the middle of an emergency, the devastating Cylon offensive against the humans, and UFO too is about an alien threat to humanity. In such situations, the military is of necessity going to be the focus. Just as UFO was about the adventures of SHADO, led against the aliens by the resourceful Commander Straker, so BG follows the efforts of the Colonial military to save humankind, led by the resourceful Commander Adama.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir also feels it necessary to slam the Colonials for their religious beliefs, comparing Adama to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and contrasting that to Star Trek’s stylish atheism. He claims that the Borellian Nomen are “religious dissenters” and are persecuted for their religion—a claim that is total and complete claptrap, with no evidence whatsoever in the series to support it. He adds that there is no acceptance of religious dissent or disbelief in the Galactica universe—again claptrap, as Colonel Tigh, in Lost Planet, is obviously agnostic. What is strangest about Muir’s treatment of Colonial religion is that he never mentions—because I’m sure he never noticed—its obvious connections to Mormonism.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Muir points out that civilian characters such as President Adar and Sire Uri are rather poorly portrayed in the series. This is something that even fans find a little irritating. It’s not that the military is always right, it’s that the writers felt they had to paint the civilian leaders in unbelievably broad strokes that is the problem here. But Muir uses this not as a sign of problems with the writing, but as evidence that the writers and producers of BG were a bunch of raving fascists. He concludes, “If a new Battlestar Galactica is produced, one wonders if it will continue to occupy the paranoid, fascist terrain of its originator, or tuck tail between its legs and offer a more optimistic, idealistic and (dare we use the word) ‘liberal’ view of life in space.” Good God, I hope not.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Going on to discuss fandom and BG merchandise, Muir comments that the fanzine ANOMALY is from Richmond, Virginia. I hate to point this out, but ANOMALY was my fanzine, and it was never from Richmond.
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Discussing the novels, Muir claims that Glen Larson “was the scribe for many Battlestar Galactica episode adaptations,” when in fact Larson wrote none of them in spite of having his name on them (Muir also claims that George Lucas wrote the novelization of Star Wars when in fact it was ghosted by Alan Dean Foster).
spacer.gif (836 bytes)Battlestar Galactica has long deserved to have a scholarly book written about it. Terry McDonnell, one of the story editors, was actually contracted at one time to write such a book but didn’t have time to do it. Fans thought when Muir’s book came out that at last their prayers had been answered. But thanks to Muir’s slipshod approach, the result was a book loaded with errors of fact, errors that could have easily been avoided with more research and, most importantly, the interviews with cast and crew members that Muir never troubled to do. Most irritating is the fact that since the appearance of this book, Muir has gained acceptance as the Battlestar Galactica “expert” he clearly is not, making an appearance on the Sci-Fi Network’s Sciography special and writing articles for BG web sites, most recently a screed on BattlestarGalactica.com demanding that Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto change not one jot or tittle of Battlestar Galactica in their revival—this in spite of John Kenneth’s comments above about a new production perhaps taking a more “liberal” view. This is a respectability John Kenneth Muir does not deserve, and one hopes that Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto are not taken in by his claims to an expertise he clearly does not possess.

�2001, Susan J. Paxton

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