The best frakin’ show on TV returns tonight

By Robert Schlesinger

Or is it “frakkin’”?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have been missing one of TV’s genuinely rare delights over the last five years: Battlestar Galactica.

Starting with a 2003 miniseries, the SciFi channel updated the campy 1970s TV series, using the premise — a race of homicidal robots launches a devastating surprise attack on humanity, wiping out everyone except for a small convoy that must escape and search for the mythical planet Earth — the characters and the spaceships for a very series space opera. It’s science fiction at its best: gritty realism while using the space setting to address serious contemporary issues (freedom in a time of war, torture, suicide bombing, religious fundamentalism, etc.). Don’t take my word for it, here’s today’s NYT:

“Battlestar Galactica” is one of the more beguiling series on television, an action-adventure drama that travels through time and space to explore morality, politics and metaphysics. Science fiction often serves as a modesty curtain that permits authors to think big thoughts at a safe remove — special effects and laser make-believe palliate abstract musings and pompous parables that might otherwise bore or offend viewers.

If you haven’t watched the show you can rent the mini-series and first three seasons on DVD, or just watch this:

Frak yeah.

Update: Salon also has a primer for BSG neophytes.