Was Battlestar Galactica Star Trek Done Right?

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The Characters
Where BSG really shone was the character work; Moore, along with a host of amazing writers including Jane Espenson, Michael Taylor, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, created characters that embodied the best and worst of who we are, and made us fall in love with them – even if that love was dirty and wrong and filled with self-loathing (Hey! Just like Gaius Baltar himself). Even when the plots and the mythology failed, BSG‘s characters were strong enough to keep you watching, and carry the show all by themselves. Star Trek, on the other hand, goes for a more plot-centric form of writing, and so the characters are more a collection of archetypes, stereotypes and catchphrases than people you can really believe in. Sure, we all know and love Kirk, Spock, Bones, Picard, even Sisko and whatever the grumpy Doctor on Voyager ended up calling himself, but they were more a means to an end than anything else.
Advantage: Battlestar Galactica.

The Settings
We’d all rather spend time on the Enterprise than the Galactica (Especially if it’s the groovy, colorful 1960s original. Look at that retro futuristic design!); that’s kind of the point of BSG, after all. But even beyond the lure of clean clothes and lack of people dying in the corridors, Star Trek‘s world seems more appealing than even the future metropolis of BSG‘s prequel, Caprica. While Caprica and the Galactica may be more true to life, that brings with it an element of mundanity than even the fantastical “alien” elements – the V-Worlds, Serge the floating butlerbot – feel bogged down by (And don’t even get me started on Pyramid); Trek‘s universe may be as locked into the time in which it was created, and feel appropriately dated now, but there’s just something more attractive about a world where people get around by teleporter or flying shuttle, and use tricorders and phasers to me. Sorry, realism.
Advantage: Star Trek.

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