A new kind of sci-fi TV show

I used to be a die-hard sci-fi fan. I read Orson Scott Card, Isaac Asimov, etc. and loved Star Trek and Babylon 5. However, I think, like many fans, I was turned off by the recent incarnations of Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise. It just got old. There were too many plot shortcuts (time travel was a real culprit) and too many non-humans who for some reason wanted to be human (what about diversity and happiness in being yourself?)

Sci-fi fell off my radar for a while, but just yesterday, I saw a New York Times Magazine feature about a genre-shaking sci-fi TV show called Battlestar Galactica. Despite the awful title, the show is apparently outstanding. I guess it has to be pretty good to make the New York Times, the default newspaper of high culture addicts.

I read a number of reviews and watched some trailers. The premise is very intriguing. Strip away all the high tech gadgetry and romance of sci-fi and focus on the story. This idea sounds much more like Frank Herbert's Dune or Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy where there was technology and weird stuff but it was merely the backdrop for an interesting story. The technology was interwoven naturally into the story, rather than overwhelming it (as in later Star Trek shows).

Battlestar Galactica takes this idea very seriously. The characters look like they're running a 21st century naval fleet which happens to be in space. They use phones and pencils. They dress and look like people we would see on the street today. There is advanced technology (for instance, androids), but it's pretty limited compared to Star Trek. I'm not sure if I would have went that far, but then this show is about breaking all our conceptions surrounding science fiction TV. The focus is on the characters and how they deal with the version of reality that they face.

If it works (I haven't seen the actual show yet), it sounds like a clever idea. A major problem with sci-fi and fantasy is that the writer can spend far too much time on constructing the alternate "world." The new technology that is introduced has be logically consistent and the author has to stop and explain why things are the way they are. [There are people who like this type of world-based sci-fi/fantasy, but I'm not one of them.] A way to keep the writing tighter and more focused on a particular issue is to only introduce significant technology (like DNA modification) -- stuff that really impacts the human condition.