Hacker Cinema
Battlestar Galactica
2003 · TV series · 90 min episodes · 1 season
Created by Ronald D. Moore
ActionAdventureDramaScience FictionFantasy
A re-imagining of the original series in which a "rag-tag fugitive fleet" of the last remnants of mankind flees pursuing robots while simultaneously searching for their true home, Earth.
2 positive1 negative7 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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10 comments on Hacker News
> I claim instead that it is used as a tool of obscurantism for a fringe movement within the church
When I read your use of "obscurantism" previously, I mentally substituted something like "anachronistic, deliberately so, with the effect of obscuring [what the Mass is about, etc.]".
Wikipedia tells us "obscurantism has been defined as opposition to the dissemination of knowledge and as writing characterized by deliberate vagueness." A dictionary hit in DDG gives "a state of opposition to human progress or enlightenment."
So maybe that's what you had in mind? You mention (also in other HN comments):
> the English bishop's observation that TLM-enthusiast priests in his diocese couldn't pass a simple Latin test
There is an anecdote like that regarding a US bishop:
https://thecatholicherald.com/four-reasons-francis-had-to-restrict-the-traditional-latin-mass/
There is something similar-ish from a meeting Francis had with Slovakian Jesuits in 2021:
https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/freedom-scares-us-pope-francis-conversation-with-slovak-jesuits/
There's also Francis' "nostalgic disease" comments from 2023 — I remember those well because of the physical pain in my stomach and flushing in my neck after I read them. I had a similar visceral reaction when the credits rolled after the final episode of the new Battlestar Galactica (2003-09), but I digress.
https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/this-is-gods-style-pope-francis-conversation-with-hungarian-jesuits/
So, your "tool of obscurantism" suggests perceived motive on the part of the trads. I think that's barking up the wrong tree.
"What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful." — https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20070707_lettera-vescovi.html
In my previous reply to you, I already outlined what I understand to be the true motives – recovering our Western Catholic heritage, treasuring it, passing it on to our children, building up local Catholic culture around it. I think Benedict XVI got that, per the quote above. We want orthodoxy (little "o"), beauty, reverence, faithfulness to the Apostolic Tradition.
The young priests not knowing much Latin while being gung ho for the TLM… well, that's not uncommon with young people, getting really enthusiastic about some big idea or thing while having limited knowledge and experience of the particulars and background. (How many exuberant Rustaceans fit that bill in recent years?) I don't see any reason to think those priests' motives were anything other than embracing something "sacred and great for us too".
The Latin-language requirements, following Summorum Pontificum, were given in Universae Ecclesiae: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/ecclsdei/documents/rc_com_ecclsdei_doc_20110430_istr-universae-ecclesiae_en.html
See section 20. The priest should be able to pronounce the words correctly and understand their meaning.
That's the same requirement as for e.g. an English speaking priest whose bishop asks him to prepare to regularly celebrate Mass in Spanish (or whatever). And it's the same for an English speaking Latin Rite priest asked by his bishop to accept biritual faculties to help out at the local Ukranian Catholic parish where they have the Byzantine Rite! In both of those cases it's great if the priest goes on to learn more of the language and culture of the people to whom he ministers, but it's not required to get started. I'm not just making that up, I know priests in both situations. In the case of the biritual priest, his "Hollywood Ukranian and church slavonic" (as he put it) got so good that people would walk up to him after the liturgy and start talking to him in Ukranian, and then be surprised that he couldn't hold a conversation in it.
Now, to be fair to the bishop and the cardinal who expected more, historically the minimum Latin competency for licit celebration was low, strictly speaking, but quite high for graduating seminary. I asked ChatGPT to provide an outline, didn't look up all the sources to see how much it hallucinated, but seems about right based on reading I've done over the years:
https://chatgpt.com/share/680bc83a-de6c-8011-9f2c-4c948d222942
It's not as contradictory an arrangement as it might seem. The Church has generally held a low bar for validity and liceity, because people need the graces received in the sacraments, for their salvation! At the same time, and especially per the Council of Trent, it's understood to be critical that priests be well-educated and fully understand what they're about to avoid worlds of trouble that come from clergy just going through the motions.
Moving on to the congregation. As another HN commenter pointed it, the development and use of sacral language is part of the history of Christianity and, even discounting the TLM, it's still prominent in the Eastern churches to this day. It was/is not unusual for the congregation to not understand every prayer and response in the way they know and understand their native language. It's been just over half a century since Latin was phased out almost completely in favor of translations for celebrating the Latin Rite (despite what Vatican II decreed), but it had stood the test of time for centuries. (Of course there were controversies too like the Protestant Reformation, such quibbles.) I can't understand why it's making a comeback should be a huge stumbling block, in the big picture, again looking to our Western Catholic heritage and e.g. its treasury of sacred music.
So this is getting really long, and it's time for me to leave off, though I'll look for your reply in case you make another one. I just won't be going for another round here.
I do want to say a couple of things about the SSPX, mainly general points, because I do not have much personal experience with them — I've read things, I've met some folks who used to be SSPXers, that's about it.
There were a couple of articles on Williamson written recently, published shortly after his death. The insidethevatican page has some biographical information that helps with context and I recommend it for that purpose — Williamson led an unusual life along an uncommon path:
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2025/01/30/expelled-society-of-st-pius-x-bishop-richard-williamson-dies-at-84/
https://insidethevatican.com/news/newsflash/letter-17-2025-thu-jan-30-williamson/
I've archived those pages to share with people, as the need arises, because I think they show how dangerously self-destructive it can be to give oneself over to nuttery. Williamson built a cell around himself and carried it with him everywhere he went; under pressure, he pulled the bars in tighter and draped them with razor wire. He died isolated from the movement to which he committed his life earlier and his memory will amount to little more than a warning and the repulsiveness of extremism.
The SSPX came about in a time of tumult and confusion. Its founder, Archbishop Lefebvre, saw its purpose as continuing the formation of priests and ministry of the sacraments in line with the reforms of the Council of Trent, serving hundreds of thousands of souls who felt adrift in the storms that followed Vatican II. That's really it, even if one sharply disagrees with their decisions and canonical irregularity, it's difficult to argue that they have another purpose or motives.
Later, and independently of the SSPX, there were clergy and laity all over the world with longings for the same. John Paul II made some concessions and then Benedict XVI with Summorum Pontificum. The Abbey of Fontgombault is an example of a monastery that switched back, with permission, unconnected to the SSPX. Fontgombault's later foundation, Clear Creek Abbey, also keeps with the traditional rites.
I know you will write what you think is true and say what you think needs to be said, e.g. giving warnings about supposed tradcath links to antisemitism. I get it. But keep in mind that Williamson is a bit like a crazy third cousin uncle that most of us non-SSPX-trads don't think or care much about. Even among the SSPX he's a pariah. Also keep in mind that the Internet can act like a huge megaphone distorting representation of a community in terms of its most obnoxious members.
Checked some episodes from some shows I had available, first seasons, DVD or Bluray source:
Miami Vice (1984): 48m
Homicide Life On The Streets (1993): 47m
TekWar (1994): 45m
Nowhere Man (1995): 45m
Battlestar Galactica (2003): 44m
Dark Matter (2015): 43m
12 Monkeys (2015): 43m
Lucifer (2015): 43m
There are exceptions though. Legion (2017) episodes are around 50m, and several of the newer "made for streaming" shows have 50-60m episodes.
> You're gonna be ad-blasted, have inconsistent video quality, and be given a million popups.
If you're seeing ads and popups, you should get an ad-blocker and update it. No one should be seeing these in 2019. The quality I noted, but I also noted that you can torrent higher-quality video easily.
> Also, the availability is not nearly what you think it is.
> https://www.google.com/search?q=battlestar+galactica+2003+s0...
I clicked your link. Second page of results, first result, was a link to DailyMotion where the full 54-minute episode was available to stream in quality as good as it was in 2003.
I suspect the fact that this shows up on the second page of search results instead of the first is a success of DMCA threats against Google, not a success of DRM. But I'm sure if you added some combination of keywords like "torrent", "stream" or "free" you could get an illegal copy to show up as the first result.
I'm not encouraging anyone to do this. I encourage everyone to pay for content with money, preferably in the most direct way you can so the creators actually get the money. I'm just saying that DRM only affects people who want to do things the "proper" way. People who don't want to pay for content can easily bypass DRM with a Google search.
I think it depends on what you want out of it.
In western sci-fi, the story exists to make the reader feel good about themselves. At least, the successful ones are like this. It makes for good movies, and good story telling.
Think about that for a moment. All the western sci-fi that we've been used to: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.. All these stories are not really science fiction, but rather, science fantasy.
It goes through the normal story telling, of establishing a good guy and a bad guy. And it tries to pull you in, to empathize with the challenges of the good guy, so that you can experience his trials and tribulations. And then, at the end, the good guy always wins. He always succeeds, in some way or other. And you're left with feeling a sense of joy.
But, Cixin Lui's stories, threw all that aside. He presented you with the cold hard reality, of survival in the jungle. That there are not really any good or bad sides. Just different perspectives. And everyone is just trying to survive.
And the jungle is the galaxy. Western sci-fi is all about being human-centric, as if we are the only species in the universe that matters. Whereas Cixin, presented us with a reality, where humanity is only one of billions of intelligent species. Those that had survived the jungle, or those that hide from the rest, or those that evolved into another form, or those that end up hunting, to maintain their probability of survival.
So, if you want to continue to feel good about yourself, then stick with what you know. Keep reading western sci-fi. If you want to expand your mind, then try out Cixin's novel.
Admittedly, I think something was lost in translation. The translated text was overly wordy. But the concepts behind it, was still incredible.
I especially loved the story about the human computer system, the Qin 1.0 Operating System. That was quite creative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_(Battlestar_Galactica)
I disagree with OP RE BSG.
It was not about morality in general it was directly referencing our current views on morality, specifically the Iraq war.
But do agree subbing in animals/zombies/aliens for humans allows movies to get away with more.
and seems to be used for just about every alien home world in every sic-fi movie ever produced in Vancouver. See battlestar galactica as an example.
The whole series is worth watching
Right now TV is in its "golden age" but there are no good sci-fi tv shows (hell even the word "scifi" is dirty somehow now, see > SyFy-lis).
Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica, Outer Limits all gone replaced by Vampires and all sorts of supernatural rubbish.
Dr Who is the only interesting scifi show now worth watching, for the most part...
first episode of [modern] Battlestar Galactica.
I'm sorry to all you who disagree. The guy is right. While his nitty gritty details are wrong, lets look at a few pieces of empirical evidence.
An aircraft carrier with destroyed pumps, engines, everything, as long as the structure is more or less ok, will stay afloat. Wait... An aircraft carrier can withstand a nuclear missile, and then keep sailing (the people are going to be dead through). This was proved in the 50s (old tech baby) when the government tested nuking a retired navy fleet of carriers and destroyers to see if they will sink. They didn't understand radiation, but the ships still sailed home. 5% of the fleet was destroyed.
Lets look at the stealth bomber example as noted by btilly. While its true if the computer dies, the plane falls like a rock. However the pilot can still eject. The ejection mechanism is not linked to the computer except for maybe the automatic mode.
I think the two "worstly" engineered vehicles are airliners and helicopters. Small planes can land without power due to the aerodynamics and weight, as long as hydrolics work. Airliners are not able to glide so well, nor are they light.
Airliners though do still demonstrate the redundant designs, each critical system has a backup which is a completely different in both their physical location and approach to solving the problem. If one fails the other can take over because a completely different set of conditions will cause the other to fail.
I think Battlestar Galactica did a good job showing REAL engineering. Those ships took a lot of pounding before they got destroyed. The only time the battlestars were just easily obliterated (like the enterprise was in every other episode) is when they were hooked up with a new computer system that connected every part of the ship to itself (and the computer was compromised) this was in the very first episode. Galactica survived BECAUSE it had all of it's systems disconnected and redundant, so when some shut down, people took over operations of that one back in manual mode. Hell part of the plot was that galactica was being sabotaged. In startrek sabotage was "opse the ship is going to explode now" while in galactica they just had some damage, or had their fuel blow up, or something (can't remember 100% of the details) but point being that you can't just blow the damn ship up. Maybe a civilian ship, not the warship. The only stupid thing in galactica was the cylon battleships had that central column which was succeptable to being blown up and destroying the ship, and that resurrection ship which if destroyed would fuck up resurrection for an entire cluster. I would have expected redundant resurrection ships/hubs.
In any case, the most unbelievable part of this whole ordeal is that you have a very large ship, full of civilians, armed to the teeth, the damn flagship of the fleet. That is all. Since when does the united states (or any country EVER) pack their destroyers or stealth bombers with civilians? Preach all you want about "exploration", in a real scenario you would have a mostly unarmed science vessel armed to the teeth with sensor gear, and a warship next to it for protection. Hell maybe the science vessel docks in the warship most of the time. The second an enemy approaches, the science vessel is already in high warp with every bit of stealth engaged getting the hell away from there until the warship signals them that it's safe to return.
The soundtracks to Batman Begins and the Battlestar Galactica mini-series are not dissimilar to that for There Will Be Blood (which I've just been to see).