A little BSG musing

[vaznetti]

I am so tired it isn't even funny. I was still working last night after midnight, because a lot of stuff has hit all at once; I didn't even make it out of the office until 8. So that brownie was a real lifesaver, but now I feel thickheaded and grumpy.

I've been watching BSG and loving it, although I have a few general thoughts about the worldbuilding. One thing I've noticed in commentaries is that this is a show about people trying to hold their society together. I think that's true, but I'm starting to wonder about all the people who are doing the real day-to-day society building in this universe: the ordinary civilians. The people who got onto a shuttle one morning with a suitcase, only to find themselves a few days later at the far end of the galaxy with the whole world they knew in rubble. What are their living conditions like? How much space do they have? How much food, and where is it coming from? What kind of social organization are they developing? How many of them have sunk into depression? How many of them are looking for a way to volunteer like the would-be pilots of episodes 4 and 5? Those people were thrilled at the chance to join up, and probably for a number of reasons. What are they doing with their time? How have they divided up the work of keeping their ships working? Is the passenger/crew divide starting to break down, or becoming stronger?

I was wondering about their living conditions in particular, because President Roslin's quarters looked rather cramped, particularly in comparison with Adama's; but as president she's likely to have more space than others. But then, Colonial One is a shuttle rather than a full-sized ship. Some of the ships we saw in the miniseries are quite large (I'm thinking in particular of the ship with the little girl, which was left behind) but others must be very cramped. And how long were the journeys those ships were on, when the Cylons struck? This is the thing I'm most interested in. It seems that the civilian ships must be more like ocean liners than airplanes, since no one has run out of food yet (or rioted over cramped conditions). I suppose that only long-haul ships would have faster-than-light in the first place, so they might be better provisioned and roomier.

It's possible that these questions were answered in the miniseries, and I've forgotten it; I expect the show to deal with them soon, because that's the kind of show it seems to be. The issue of food supplies and water supplies have already been raised, after all. At the moment, we see the world more through the eyes of the military than anyone else, and they have certain prejudices against civilian life; I'd like to see the show explore the realities of civilian life, rather than those prejudices.

Comments

[veejane.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to wonder about all the people who are doing the real day-to-day society building in this universe: the ordinary civilians.

Same here. My first thought was, hey, I wonder why all those people trapped on the space equivalent of a Greyhound Bus haven't gone batshit crazy yet? How can they be supplied with enough air or power to last, much less food for the long haul? What can the toilets on those buses smell like by now??

But then I realized, the civilians only exist when the plot needs them to, and they disappear when not needed.

Actually, I bet civilians are really quite nutritious. Solved that problem, then!

There are a number of unaddressed logistical problems with maintaining a refugee population of thousands. At least, kept apart in their tiny bus-prisons, they can't go all giving each other dysentery.

[se-parsons.livejournal.com]

Isn't space just a big convenient waste dump, though? I can't imagine the ships are getting filled with sewage, for instance. Not after what happened to the tour group here in Chi-town when Dave Matthews Band's bus driver decided to dump his tanks in the Chicago river. If they have enough water to wash hands, the chance of dystentery is pretty low. They are probably going to start getting stinky, soon, though, as they run out of deoderant, soap and the like.

How are they doing things like cooking? Washing? Sleeping? They've clearly had to have run out of prepared food by now and they haven't come up with handy replicator technology to whisk that all away like in Star Trek.

Somebody would have to be coordinating that. There would have to be manufacturing somewhere on some ships and food production elsewhere. There would have to be laundry eventually. BSG has all that stuff on board, and probably some of the luxury liner ships, too, and the prison ship. They'd have to coordinate that stuff. Who does that?

I would love to see a story about the Cylons tracking them from their waste trail.

[vaznetti]

I suspect that in this case "the space equivalent of a greyhound bus" is actually something along the lines of an ocean liner--when flight was impractical, and everyone took liners. So water, oxygen and waste disposal aren't problems--they'll have recycling for those, just as Galactica does--but food will be. But there will also be a range of comfort levels among the civilians--some people are on the Queen Mary in first class, and others are on creaky old freighters in steerage.

I have decided not to think about power sources at all.