Cylons in America: Critical Studies in “Battlestar Galactica

Cylons in America: Critical Studies in “Battlestar Galactica.” Tiffany Potter and C. W. Marshall, eds. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Reviewed by Kristina Busse in SFRA Review #285 (Spring 2008): p.19.[1]

Busse notes that the rebooted "Battlestar Galactica [...] is particularly prone to change course and tone [...] and to overthrow classic alliances of good and evil, right and wrong. This is, after all, the show that ended its second season by terminating the odyssey that was the premise of the show and its third by revealing that four main human characters were stealth Cylons" — the last part of which increases the blurring of boundaries as the show develops from Battlestar Galactica (original television series) and its clear division between humans and killer robots.

The collection’s most provocative essays include Carl Silvio and Elizabeth Johnston’s Marxist analysis of labor, alienation, and utopia in the show; Alison Peirse’s psychoanalytical approach to Cylons and their bodies; Tama Leaver’s reading of the show in terms of artificial intelligence and reproduction; Matthew Gumpert’s reading of hybridity and binary oppositions in Cylons and humans [...].

On labor (and labor and alienation), see in this wiki the works cited here:[2] For the human/robot contrast in the original show, see "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance."

RDE, finishing, 12Jan21