More than anything it’s blurry. The new Battlestar Galactica (BSG) blurs the lines between right and wrong, good and evil, loyalty and betrayal. Context and subtlety keep the viewer in a delightful world of new perspective. Among the blurs: polytheistic humans worshipping pagan gods who were human-like themselves on the one hand, and monotheistic Cylons whose God is loving and wrathful, foreknowing and mysterious, predestinating and ominously distant on the other. It is to this God of the enemies of man that I find myself strangely attracted. BSG is blurry, a mystical quality permeates its universe from episode to episode, especially regarding its approach to divine things. Answers are not clear. There are but hints of terrible wonders, frightening possibilities. Is the Cylon God the God of the universe? What connection might there be between the destroyer of the Twelve Colonies and the Law Giver of Sinai and Suffering Savior of the Earth?

Those ’70s Gods

The gods of the original BSG were straightforward, fairly easy to understand. The most telling revelation of the original series’s cosmology came in the two-part episode “War of the Gods.”

The Galactica crew came across the mysterious Count Iblis. At the same time, Galactica’s fighters were disappearing, plagued by the appearance of a spaceship of dazzling light reminiscent of the mother ship in Close Encounters—Iblis’s enemies. Iblis promised that he could lead humanity to Earth but emphasized that they must choose to follow him freely. His ability to work apparent miracles convinced many. As the plot  …