What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world!

—Hamlet (II, ii, 115–117)

William Shakespeare was a storyteller who understood the nobility of man and how to spin that nobility into epic tales that would transcend the centuries. True, Shakespeare populated his plays with evil characters, but there was never a great deal of confusion over who was the hero and who was the villain (okay, maybe there was a little grey area in Richard II). Shakespeare knew how to please an audience. So did a fellow named Gene Roddenberry. Both men understood the audience appeal of man’s inherent nobility, and the commercial value of clearly delineated lines of good and evil in spinning a lasting yarn.

Star Trek won’t likely enjoy widespread performance four centuries from now, but with forty years, five series, and ten movies (and an eleventh on the way), not to mention billions of dollars in Paramount’s bank account, only the most pessimistic of cynics could even try to argue that Roddenberry got it wrong. Neither, in my opinion, did a gentleman by the name of Glen A. Larson, who also understood the dramatic and commercial power of superimposing man’s inherent nobility onto epic tales of good versus evil, in an original creation called Battlestar Galactica. Tens of millions of viewers thrilled to the weekly  …