Consider this the first in a series of reflections on the now-concluded Battlestar Galactica. Obviously, numerous spoilers follow for those who have not yet caught up with the end (or even the beginning) of the series, so caveat lector.

Peter and Matt are not wrong to see in the final episode hints at a “crunchy” or agrarian critique of a hyper-technological civilization, but I tend to agree with Matt that the “transparent craving for the supposed authenticity of the land will seem so pat to future generations.” At its best, the “crunchy” or agrarian critique should not be based in such a craving, as if there is an authenticity of the land that liberates us from the artificiality of technology, but instead be based in the recognition that man should be using techne to shape a landscape rather than objectify an “environment” for exploitation or pure preservation without any use. After all, it is not techne, which is part of human culture and cultivation of the land, but the glorification of techne, that leads to the abuses that agrarians and neo-traditional conservatives find so troubling.

One of the most annoying things about Battlestar Galactica is its tendency to insist on choosing between a primitivist society or a technological civilization doomed to destroy itself. The mythology of the series takes for granted that the latter will always happen, sooner or later, and in the final scene of the last episode the writers engaged in an unusually blunt, embarrassingly heavy-handed effort to drive home that we are just a hop, skip and a jump removed from the Cylon rebellion ourselves. In the least credible plot device of the entire series, we are supposed to believe that the incredibly fractious, disunited Colonial population will submit meekly and unquestioningly to some flight of fancy by Lee Adama to return to the land, despite his heretofore insufferably pious attachment to high-minded democratic principles and procedure. If only to insist on the importance of self-government, I have to protest at the idea that the conclusion of BSG has anything to do with a genuinely agrarian, decentralist or neo-traditionalist view of things. It has more in common with revolutionary dictates forcing intellectuals to go out into the fields and villages than it does with a real respect for the way of life that the cultivators and villagers have. In the end, the return to the land is treated as a therapy for alienated space-exiles, who have no knowledge of cultivation of crops or the raising of livestock, except, of course, for Gaius Baltar.