a brief defense of television

I'm not even a "Battlestar Galactica" watcher, but I was cc'd on this email between two friends the other day, after a dinner conversation that involved a little BSG.

I was thinking about bsg (Battlestar Galactica to the uninitiated) while driving home. It dawned on me that I have thus far missed one of the most obvious cultural/political allegories in the series: The humans hail from twelve tribes. Devastated by the Cylon attack, they take to wandering in space in search of earth. interesting conflation of Jewish and Roman history, no? (Evidence of the latter in their polytheism, their erstwhile dominance, militarism, and use of roman names such as Apollo, Hera, etc.) especially if one interprets the Cylon's militant fanaticism of the belief in "the one true god" as a metaphor for militant islamic fundamentalism. another interesting wrinkle if we tease this reading out further is that the Cylons "were made by" the humans. sounds somewhat familiar if we consider the oft-heard political narrative that Islamic terrorists have their genesis/antecedents in the protracted decolonisation of the Middle East and Africa. I love bsg.