Sci-Fi High

Source: Slate

The critical buzz on Battlestar Galactica, Ron Rosenbaum's new book, and the Decemberists.

Listen to an audio version of Summary Judgment by Mark Jordan Legan from our partners at NPR's Day to Day.

Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi). In its third season, Battlestar Galactica may finally have reached a critical tipping point. On Crooked Timber, a culture blog, poster Scott McLemee muses, "If someone hinted two years ago that one day I would be eagerly awaiting the third season of a remake of Battlestar Galactica, my response would have been something like, 'Get away from me, crazy person, because that is crazy, what you are saying to me.' " But most critics take pains to point out that this is more than another dorked-out sci-fi fest. "[T]he real drama here still rests in the human relationships: flawed characters, struggling to make it through chilling times without sacrificing too much of themselves in the process," Salon's Heather Havrilesky observes earnestly. Is it based on real-life current events? Perhaps, but Joanna Weiss cautions in the Boston Globe that "Battlestar is less an allegory about current events than a rumination on how we might view things if tables were turned." A commenter on Television Without Pity's message boards probably puts it best (using some BG vocab in the process): "Damn I'd forgotten how frakking awesome this show is."