Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Summer 2010
Abstract
Battlestar Galactica, a television series that aired on the SyFy Channel from 2003 to 2009, tells the story of the Twelve Colonies, a human society whose home planets have been destroyed by a race of robots, the Cylons. These androids, originally created by mankind as a slave workforce, have at the moment of their revolution evolved to become physically indistinguishable from humans, and, after they turn against their creators, as the Internet Movie Data Base tag line puts it: "The fight to save humanity rages on." While the series presents itself as a traditional science fiction narrative with the usual fanciful special effects, it departs from many of its predecessors, including the 1970's series of the same name it reimagines, in its darker and grittier view of the future of the human race. Battlestar Galactica is ostensibly set in an era very different from our own, but, as many have noted, it explores with compelling directness such contemporary phenomena as the so-called "war on terror," the war and insurgency in Iraq, and the limits of American "hyper-power," by recasting these themes within a mythic narrative of foundation. In this article, I focus on the relationship between two central characters, Laura Roslin and Bill Adama, and argue that Battlestar Galactica offers a feminized version of Vergil's Aeneid that focuses on love and compromise as the basis of the new empire.
Publisher
American Classical League
City
Oxford, Ohio
Repository Citation
Pache, C. (2010). "So say we all"—Reimagining empire and the Aeneid. Classical Outlook, 87(4), 132-136.
Publication Information
Classical Outlook