Entertainment
The Best Modern Sci-Fi Series Is Now Free To Stream
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
These days, reboots have a bad reputation, and rightfully so. Hollywood keeps cranking out bad remakes of classic movies like RoboCop and Total Recall, and Disney has created an entire cottage industry of turning its classic animated films into lazy, live-action abominations. On the small screen, reboots ranging from Gossip Girl to The Munsters have accomplished nothing but make audiences want to watch the original show. Everyone watching at home keeps asking the same question: why remake a classic show if you can’t make it better than the original?
However, former Star Trek scribe Ronald D. Moore squared this circle by rebooting a middling TV show into a modern masterpiece. The original Battlestar Galactica has a fairly dedicated fandom, but it only lasted one season before fizzling out with a crappy, low-budget spinoff. But in 2004, Moore rebooted the show into the greatest sci-fi show of the last quarter-century, one that changed genre storytelling forever. It’s a series that has lost none of its edge over the years, and you can now experience its brilliance for free by streaming it on Pluto TV.
Humanity Is On The Brink
The premise of Battlestar Galactica is that humanity has colonized multiple worlds and made amazing technological advancements, including building robot servants called Cylons. Unfortunately, they rebelled and started a bitter war with humanity that resulted in them disappearing, seemingly forever. But the Cylons come back and use their technology to destroy every human-occupied world in a galactic-scale genocide. Now, all that’s left of humanity are a relative handful of civilian ships, all of which must be protected from constant Cylon attacks by the brave men and women of the Battlestar Galactica, the last bastion of human military might in the entire galaxy.
Part of what makes Battlestar Galactica so compelling is that it’s the polar opposite of Star Trek. In Trek, everyone lives in a state of constant abundance: replicators can make whatever you want or need, and everyone more or less gets along while exploring the final frontier. In BSG, resources are constantly limited because every human world has been wiped out, forcing the crew to scavenge and salvage what they can. Moreover, there is constant tension between (and amid) military forces and civilian government, all of whom are on edge because they are the last of humanity and could die at any time.
The Sexiest Cast In Sci-Fi
It’s a bleak premise and a bleak show, but the cast really rises to the occasion. Tricia Helfer is particularly captivating as a sexy Cylon who uses her buxom beauty as her most reliable weapon in the fight against humanity. Katee Sackhoff, meanwhile, is all swinging swaggering as a hotshot pilot who is only really at peace in the cockpit of a Viper. James Callis captivates as a scientist whose brilliance may either save or doom all of humanity. But nobody is quite as compelling as Edward James Olmos, whose cool, gravelly confidence holds the entire fleet (not to mention the show) together.
While Battlestar Galactica is styled as the anti-Star Trek show, it does have one important thing in common with Gene Roddenberry’s killer sci-fi franchise: almost every episode is devoted to exploring the crunchiest philosophical questions facing mankind. For example, the show constantly examines whether religion is a valid way to provide hope to humanity or just a way to grift and prey upon the weak-minded. BSG also questions many post-9/11 arguments, including whether sacrificing freedom for security is worth it and the morality of both occupation and occupied resistance. Hovering over all of it is an eerily prescient exploration of mankind’s relationship with AI and the dangers of relying on technology we cannot fully understand or control.
Top Gun In Space
If all of this sounds too philosophical and abstract, don’t worry: Battlestar Galactica is famous (and rightfully so) for its killer action sequences. Ground-based battles are more exciting than almost anything in Star Wars, showcasing how terrifying it would really be to get hunted down by killer battle droids. But where BSG really shines is its space battles, which use Newtonian physics (another major departure from Star Trek) to showcase human Viper pilots completing one life-and-death maneuver after another against relentless Cylon Raiders. These battles are a microcosm of BSG as a whole: tension and heartbreak punctuated by moments of buoyant, triumphant joy.
While Battlestar Galactica is rightfully dubbed a modern sci-fi masterpiece, it’s not a completely perfect show. I have often joked that it has about three perfect seasons within its four-season runtime. Some parts of Season 3 and 4 are plodding, especially if you’re not a superfan of Baltar, whose character gets more or less reinvented every season. Plus, the series finale is controversial enough that fans are still griping about it to this day (and with good reason). But the ratio of good episodes to bad is nearly unparalleled in genre storytelling, and every sci-fi fan owes it to themselves to watch this groundbreaking show at least once.
Whether it’s your first time streaming it or you’ve lost count (it’s not just me, right?), Battlestar Galactica is always worth watching. Better still, it’s currently streaming for free on Pluto TV, where you can watch every episode on demand. It’s a show unlike anything else in science fiction, and after more than two decades, we haven’t had anything nearly as brilliant. Plus, we live in an age where the robots have won and AI has taken over almost everything. Why not watch a show where humanity learns how to put those clankers in their place?
So say we all!
