God in fiction

If you will forgive a little indulgence I'm going to examine to recent depictions of God, or God like being, in television. I want to look at how I think it has been done right and been done wrong. These shows are RDM's Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural.

Supernatural was, very quickly, ignored as a fantasy show, cashing in on Buffy fans who missed their gothic demons and monsters. Still it proved to be a lot more than that. Instead it was a very well researched and constructed Victorian biblical horror. However, rather than relegate it to an outdated concept the creators pulled a lot of it into the 21st century.
There's nothing original in that, Doctor Who has, for decades, played the same game. Pulling on characters like the Devil (recently), vampires (that have been around for decades in one form or another) and even Gods (known as the Guardians).

What has made Supernatural interesting is how it treats family. Between them the Winchesters have been through heaven, hell and everything between. They have fought demons, angels, gods, vampires, ghosts and various monsters from across gothic lore. All the while becoming closer and closer. They've betrayed each other, trusted and doubted.

The reason I've gone into all that is to show the challenges. By the fifth year we discover that Armageddon is on the cards and why. The angels have always been preventing the end of the world, but now that god's supposedly left the building they've decided to just let it burn. Bringing forth a final fight between two brothers, Lucifer and Michael to kick start the whole shebang. Choosing the Winchesters as their respective vessels the two angels gear up for the biggest fight in existence. Given that the angel's are described as dicks.

The fight ends, well that's giving too much away. The point is throughout the last episode we get the narrative structure we need. A man, already acknowledged as a prophet, writes the story. At the very end, when the Apocalypse is stopped, he grins, sit's back and vanishes in a puff of smoke.

Now there is still a debate as to if this character was supposed to be God, but I'm going to assume he was. Now His approach was interesting, as he was masquerading as a prophet He saw things that hadn't happened yet. Making Him a valuable asset to the brothers, as He directed them right where he wanted and when. At the end though He sat back and let it happen. We get the impression that He set the board, coached the players and then let them play.

It's an interesting take, the devil is always supposed to be the arch manipulator but here we get the impression that He plays a whole new level of the game. All the time letting people make their own choices. It's interesting, modern and very well thought out.

The problem with God is exactly the same reason for superheroes. It is far easier to create something that stands for our ideals than live up to them. Now if there is a all father creator (and that is a big question all in itself) Supernaturals depiction, of a beginner giving us a start to work from is a good one and far better than the other alternative.

In BSG everything they did was wrong. First of all they began blaming any leap of narrative logic on "the will of the one true God". Things that most of the time we don't really care about because of narrative convenience. Then things stared getting freaky. Rather than the sort of event you can just shrug off things happened that made no reasonable sense. The resurrection of Kara Thrace, the delusions with knowledge of the future, the mysterious song and even the miraculous timing that is littered thought the show. All can be summed up as absolute fucking stupidity. As soon as any god like being starts actively interfering with an issue it moves from belief to fact. When this is done in a science fiction, not fantasy, perspective then motivation must be explored.

But there is one thing more important. Free Will is the most important thing we have. People have fought wars over it, killed, loved, dreamed feared and even dreaded it. The very idea that our actions are our own and that we are responsible for their results is the very corner stone of our culture and social beliefs. To say that god puts his plan above that not only flies against all the classical teachings (which it does) but against our very concept of free will.

Setting the stage is one thing, actively prompting the players is another. You can play the game, MC the event, hell you could even provide the grand prize, but you can't load the dice too. From a moral perspective it is incredibly wrong. From a literary one its worse. Writing "and then God waves a magic wand. Solving the problem" is not only the ultimate in hack writing but it is also the single worst plot development you can come up with. It's trite garbage that was always treated as a running joke in Greek theatre.

When what you're writing was a cliché before Christ was born you redefine the very concept of a hack writer. Supernatural's treatment of God is leagues ahead of the tripe Galactica foisted off on us. Every plot twist regarding Him meant something, even if that twist didn't make sense at first. Ideas that seemed unimportant came back years later as a major development. Seemingly unimportant bits of character development proved to be a vital step in muddying the waters. Casual acquaintances become reoccurring villains or friends. Sometimes both.

Most importantly of all it carries more than just a happy ending. Season 5, while a good ending in itself was also a great launching off point. As all good endings are. There was enough tragedy to make it moving, enough hope to make it uplifting and enough development leading up to it to make you give a damn. Having God hand you the location of a handy home as well as safety from your enemies is not only too neat but had no gravitas. Worst of all it wasn't a reward, it wasn't gained because the Galactica band of misfits earned it. The co-ordinates were given long before they even thought of trying to recover the little girl.

To those of you that praise BSG I implore you look again, look at the crap they tried to foist off on you and realise just how stupid that show really was.

The lost of Caprica YAY!

Ohh I feel vindicated

Now I've deliberately avoided everything I came across with Caprica. I have an intense hatred of RDM's Battlestar Galactica, seriously I loath it with every fibre of my being.
I saw the pilot episode of Caprica and almost went in to a psychotic rage, everything I hated in the show was twisted into something worse. The religious terrorism angle has gotten old, very fast. The massive leaps in convenience and contrivance, leaving plot holes in their wake, have gotten worse. Then there's the angst, oh god the angst. Every character seems to be riddled with angst, and rather than learning from their mistakes and growing, as anyone else would, we still have the hollow soap opera style that drove me batty before.
When you watch a soap opera you know, just know that certain characters will never learn form their actions, never grow and develop and never, ever, think. It is what's known as an "idiot plot" where people make idiot decisions simply to move the emotional plot along. Even if it goes against their character and personality.
In short I can pick this show apart for hours at a time. On any signal subject; from the Cylons (their plan sucks, makes no sense on retrospect and the end goal is apposed to the results they achieve when it works), the Galactica's crew (do they even a gram of sense between them?), the god storyline (urm, why? Seriously I'd love to go toe to toe with the writers on this one), the whole mess with the Final Five (oh the plot holes they had to paste over with clumsy retcons made the whole story look like one big bandage) and every other part of this insult to intelligence.
Caprica is worse, every level seamed to be tailor made for people who didn't like BSG to loath even more. Heck even some of the most obsessive BSG fans hated the show, and the clumsy characters to the point that by the end a three episode marathon to wrap the show up brought in less than a million viewers.
Less than a million, I want anyone reading this to realise that. Less than a million people watched this. Even more people watched the end of Galactica 1980, look it up!
Ahh well, I'll probably get it on DVD sooner or later if only to feel righteous rage at the incompetence.

This does, however, mean have a problem. Syfy has now cancelled two of it's flagship programs very recently. We've also lost Stargate completely, with the proposed Atlantis movie cancelled and very little on the horizon. Only a crappy remake of Being Human on the cards. While the UK is still experiencing a massive sci-fi renaissance the US seems to be ignoring it. Heck even the channel supposedly devoted to science fiction is trying to distance itself from the concept.

Thank god for Doctor Who.