A nifty little piece in today’s LA Times about Battlestar Galactica and its fictive relationship to the Iraq war (and others). There’s nothing revelatory in it — and you’d have to be flatlined not to get the obvious parallels in the storylines — but it’s worth reading if, like me, you’re drawn to the basic survivalist theme of the show:  How much will you sacrifice to survive, and what must you never sacrifice in order to save your humanity?

Friday night’s episode was especially gratifying for two little bits of character work:  Tigh’s poisoning of his own collaborationist wife, and Thrace’s reaction when she learns that her “half-Cylon daughter” isn’t actually hers at all.

The former was expected; the resistance had provided exactly what the colonel needed (an obstructionist mission that kept him off the sauce and on-goal). But Michael Hogan’s portrayal was beautiful and moving in depicting just how much the colonel was giving up by putting down his leggy blonde wife: given that his post-torture character is now a lame one-eyed old wretch, it’s doubtful there are many romantic relationships in his future.

Perhaps even better was Katee Sackhoff’s response when someone else on Galactica thanked her for having rescued her child, which Sackhoff’s character had thought was her own.  Her expression in handing over the little girl was a rolling tableau of shock, hurt, and humiliation. I used to see that face on people in bars just before they threw up in the parking lot.

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