Battlestar Galactica in a Granny Flat: Why life in post-austerity Ireland is like surviving a Cylon attack

I never thought I would reach a point in life where I thought Battlestar Galactica was relatable content. At the risk of incurring the wrath of a thousand screaming nerds, Battlestar Galactica was mindless entertainment, that liked to pose as something more meaningful and significant. I refer not to the original 1970s show, which is but a dim memory of my childhood, but the noughties reboot. To avoid confusion I will refer to the series as BSG and the eponymous spacecraft as Galactica. BSG, like many TV sci-fi shows had massive shortcomings. It was very much an action show, and saturated with militarism and machismo. Toxic masculinity was rife and even though there are several prominent female characters, gender roles were clearly defined. It seemed to portray an outdated society, rather than an advanced space faring race. It is a marked contrast to great feminist sci-fi authors currently writing, such as Becky Chambers or Ann Leckie. It also looked a bit cheap. It went for a gritty utilitarian look, but the tech just looked clunky and it was hard to understand how people with faster than light travel and artificial gravity didn’t have access to a 3D printer. Everyday items often popped up. Once I saw a water tank the same as one my Dad has on his farm.

I was surprised to realise that, several years after watching it, I find BSG strangely relatable. When I watched it six or seven years ago, I found the show entertaining but infuriating. I never even finished watching it. I gave up a few episodes into the final series. Not intentionally, I just fell out of the habit of watching. Fiona doesn’t like watching things with spaceships, so I only ever watched it when she was out. I never found out whether they reached Earth and I wasn’t sure I cared. So it was strange to find myself thinking about BSG over the past year or two, primarily reflecting on the mistakes the characters of the series make and thinking about what they should have done. I began to wonder if the reason for these thoughts was because circumstances of the fleet in BSG correspond closely with my own life, and with society in general. Fiona and I, and our two young children, live in a granny flat in my parents’ house and our living situation has certain similarities with BSG.

If you are not familiar with BSG, the premise is; a human civilisation, which inhabits 12 planets know as the 12 Colonies, is wiped out by the Cylon, an evolved version of robot warriors they themselves developed. A few spaceships survive, including the eponymous craft Battlestar Galactica, an aged flying aircraft carrier, which is the only military ship to survive. It survives because it is using an older operating system, XP or something. Not upgrading to Windows 10 may stand to me yet. The survivors flee to find earth, the fabled thirteenth colony which nobody knows the location of. The Cylon pursue them and much drama ensues. The series focuses primarily on Galactica and its crew, but the fleet consists of dozens of craft and tens of thousands of civilians. I think about the survivors, cooped up in their spaceships, that were never meant for long term habitation, and compare their situation to ours. Like them, we are fleeing a crisis. Their home planet was destroyed. For us a housing crisis nearly destroyed our prospects of having a home. Like the majority of the citizens of the fleet, this is not a crisis of our making, and like in BSG, the system responsible for the crisis persists and cares only about its own survival. This is not a facile comparison. It is several years since I watched BSG, but I found it infuriating in the same way I find life in Ireland infuriating. For the 12 Colonies, the catalyst of their crisis was an attack by the Cylon, for us it was the banking crisis. In addition, just as responsibility for the banking system lies with the the Irish political system, responsibility for the creation of the Cylon must lie with the political system of the 12 Colonies. After all, they created the Cylon. An issue that is never dealt with in the series is why the Cylon were created. In the series, the reason for the 12 Colonies having a huge military is because the Cylon pose an existential threat. What is never made clear is what threat existed that necessitated the creation of the Cylon. But, reading between the lines, it is clear that they were created for the suppression of internal dissent. There are allusions to regional grievances within marginalised colonies throughout the show. While none of the 12 Colonies, is officially a colony of the others, Caprica is the centre of civil, economic and military power. Of the remaining colonies , some are richer or more powerful than others, but Caprican hegemony extends throughout all 12 colonies. This is the sort of system we are dealing with, one that creates an army of killer robots to oppress their own people.

 
Likewise, the economic collapse of 2008 was the fault of the Irish government. There were myriad economic factors at play, but lax regulation or reluctance to question the wisdom of a system based on credit and property led to the crash. Then the government disastrously bailed out the banks and began a programme of savage austerity that crippled the economy and destroyed living standards. This is the greatest parallel between the political systems of Ireland and the 12 Colonies. They not only brought catastrophe on their own people, they somehow managed to survive and inflict further suffering. Gaius Baltar was a Caprican security expert who gave the security codes to the Cylons, because he had sexy time with Sexy Cylon 6. Regardless of the fact that this points to a ludicrously flawed security system, that probably could have been cracked by teenage Russian hackers with a crate of Red Bull, this brings about the destruction of the 12 Colonies. The derogatory term for the Cylon is ‘Toaster’, because the models manufactured originally were big metal things that had a 1950s style chrome finish. However, the Cylon developed new versions that are nearly impossible to distinguish from humans. There are twelve models (this seems to be the magic number in the series) in total, with a variety of skills ranging from bald to incredulous. Sexy Cylon 6 is portrayed as sexy, the producers of BSG need you to know that she is sexy and to think of her as such. Gaius Baltar certainly thinks of her as sexy and continues to think of her as such, even after she plays a key role in obliterating the human race. Gaius Baltar himself is largely responsible for the destruction of the human race, presumably he screamed out the security codes during coitus, but he not only continues to be employed, but is acquitted at trial and even gets elected president for a while. Like so many Irish politicians, civil servants, bankers, and property developers, he not only survives the crisis he creates, but thrives while ordinary people suffer. Gaius Baltar, however, is not an anomaly. He is an integral part of the system of the 12 Colonies.

 
The early seasons of BSG are portrayed as high political drama, as the surviving military and civilian arms of government vie for power. At the time of the attack, Laura Rosen is minister for education and is elevated to the position of President after every other politician dies. The boss of Galactica, and of space fighting generally, is Grizzly Old Commander Adama, who is a Grizzly Old Space Dog who likes doing things his way and has no time for all that civil rights bullshit. It gets hairy for a bit but lo and behold Headmistress Rosen and Grizzly Old Adama come to realise that the civil and military need each other to survive, and proceed to do a mating dance for hundreds of episodes. If the Cylon hadn’t existed, the Capricans would have had to invent them and, to paraphrase Declan Kiberd, as they didn’t exist, the Capricans soldered a few circuit boards together and called them Cylon. With the 12 Colonies intact, the Cylon represented an existential threat that validated militarism and internal repression. After the attack, the threat posed by the Cylon allowed the remnants of the political and military regimes of the 12 Colonies to consolidate their rule, to the detriment of their citizens. Similarly, in Ireland the system responsible for the economic collapse continued to exist, and used the crisis they created to justify a programme of savage austerity. To justify the austerity, the alien threat was not the Cylon, but the similarly alien named Troika. In each case , the need for systemic change was clear. In each case power structures remained intact and inequality, and the hardships experienced by ordinary people, increased. Of course, in BSG, like in most Irish political discourse the voices of ordinary people are absent. When we see them, they are huddled masses, crammed into tight living spaces. Even when the civilians feature, the stories we see are about them, not by them. They are the objects, rather than the subjects, of the story and when they are the central to a story, they are presented as pathetic creatures whose misery is somewhat alleviated by the wisdom and compassion of one of their leaders.

 
However that image of families living in confined quarters and hoping for a better life, while being let down by their leaders, is one that I can’t help but relate to. We, that is, my wife Fiona and I and our 6 month old and three and a half year old, live in a granny flat in my parents’ house. Like the survivors in BSG, we are lucky to have this and are grateful for it. We realise there are many not as fortunate as us. But, we too hope for a home of our own. By having a rent free place to stay at least we can save and aim to buy a house soon. But, like BSG the plot develops and we are still on the same journey since the original crisis. Fiona and I met in 2008 and had been together about two weeks when Lehman Brothers collapsed. That cataclysmic event and its consequences defined the journey our life together has taken. We managed, somehow, during the crash. It wasn’t easy but the rent was cheap. Due to lack of employment opportunities I was spurred on to do a PhD. We lived in Galway and then Cork. We were young, we had friends, we managed but it wasn’t always easy. But, we had no kids then, so not having money didn’t cause the same anxiety. However, the so called recovery wasn’t an arrival to the 13th Colony. Our daughter Cadhla’s birth in December 2015 heralded a new era for us, and for the country. But in the midst of the so-called recovery, it became clear things would never be like they had been. The austerity we suffered post crash had become permanent. Although more work became available and incomes rose, rents rose quicker. It wasn’t the crash that forced us into the Granny flat, it was the recovery. We thought it would be short term, six months max, but the time just went on and on. The recovery, was only a false refuge. It was like the arrival at New Caprica (If you don’t know what this is don’t worry about it).

 
The citizens in BSG are usually portrayed as a huddled mass. They are always huddled, and usually unkempt. The show focuses primarily on the military and political. As a historian I recognise this for what it is, a tool of reaction, to drown out the voices of the people. In historiography, social history aims to retrieve those neglected voices to challenge the conservative ‘Great Man’ version of events. When I see BSG, I see neglected and unrepresented voices. Politics and democracy are painted as top-down in BSG. Democracy is shown as flawed due to the poor choices people make and protest is shown as disruptive to the order of things. However, as in post-crash Ireland, those in power continue to let the people down. They do not challenge the dominant economic system in order to allow resources to be used for the benefit of all of society. Their agenda is to preserve a system that has failed. They oppose attempts at reform. They fail to properly maintain the fleet or provide employment. Rather than tapping into available human resources, they allow the masses to remain huddled and unemployed and do not train up people to provide needed services, such as engineering or medical skills. For, example, there is only one doctor, the doctor on Galactica, available for the entire fleet (although, I think another doctor somehow appears later). Why don’t they train people to be medics , nurses and doctors? Why don’t they train people to maintain the fleet? Why don’t they collect available resources and use these resources and the available labour to manufacture needed items? We know that there are mining vessels in the fleet, but the only thing we ever see them mine is fuel, in one episode. Why don’t they use them to secure more much needed resources? In battle they frequently destroy Cylon vessels, surely they could collect some scrap from these, store it in the cargo vessels and process it to manufacture items. In one episode we see bullets being made (Bullets in space!) and the Galactica crew once built a fighter out of spare parts. But why don’t they manufacture more to meet the needs of society? How do people with faster than light travel not have 3D printers? They should be able to print spaceships using materials mined from asteroids and recycled materials. They have abundant labour and abundant resources, yet people still struggle to survive.

 
That is what I hate about BSG, they keep doing everything wrong. It is like watching Irish politics and business in operation. They don’t deserve to be there, they keep doing everything wrong and ordinary people suffer. We suffer because of the crisis they created and we suffer because of everything they did afterwards. Meanwhile the fucking Cylon keep attacking the fleet. Here you are struggling along with savage austerity, unsuitable living conditions and incompetent leaders and a Cylon attack comes. And they come in the form of unexpected bills, or needing new shoes, or the car breaking down , and you think ‘Fuck it. Another fucking Cylon attack. On top of all the other shit we have to deal with.’ Another life similarity with BSG, is that gender roles become more traditional than you would like because childcare is so expensive. How on earth are both parents supposed to go to work? And like BSG, you stare at the screen shouting. Why can’t these fuckers, just use the available resources to provide the people with a decent standard of living. And you realise it is because they don’t give a damn. They only care about preserving themselves and their system. They take no responsibility and we suffer as a result. We are the ones stuck in confined quarters, hoping for a better future, while they work to preserve, pomp ceremony and order. We are supposed to trust their leadership to lead us to a better future, but they can’t provide for us now. They show more interest in preserving a failed system than delivering a better future. I never finished the last series of BSG, because I was worried the fleet were going to find earth, and that would have been too implausible. It would have been an attempt to vindicate a failed system and remind us, the huddled masses, that we should trust those in authority to guide us to a better future.