Beta Star Galactica

Jimmie at Sundries Shack tries to dissuade me from my anti-Battlestar Galactica stance by tempting me with photos of BSG's female stars (like Grace Park) in scanty attire.

Simple question: Do the BSG babes run around in lacy underwear during the show?

Answer: No, obviously they do not. However hot they might be, space babes don't shop at Victoria's Secret.

Do you see how wrong this is, Jimmie? Suppose you were asked to imagine an alternative reality in which such impossibilities as inter-galactic space travel were possible -- a scenario where you can dream up pretty much anything your freaky little mind might want. And there's no lingerie? No bustiers or merry widows? No garter belts, for crying out loud?

I'm sorry, if I was given artistic license to conjure such a fantasy universe into existence, my alternative reality would have the space babes wearing satin and lace more or less 24/7. Also, their dialogue would consist mainly of lines like, "More coffee, Commander McCain?"

BSG illustrates the failure of the Beta Male imagination. In other words, rather than imagine a red-blooded patriarchal universe -- e.g., America, prior to about 1974, where the guys sit around smoking cigars and playing poker while adoring chicks bring them fresh sandwiches and cold beer -- the Beta Male is capable of imagining only a post-feminist universe like our own, where the women are "complex" and "have issues."

BSG is not really an alternative universe so much as it is a projection of the present universe into fictional circumstances. It's sort of like these latter-day historic dramas in which all the women act "empowered" as if Justice Stephen Breyer and Gloria Steinem had been calling the shots in Elizabethan England or whatever.

Answer me this, Jimmie: Why can the producers of BSG defy the laws of physics, but they can't defy the EEOC?

UPDATE: Bob's Bar & Grill says, "Now clean up the coffee or what ever else you were drinking that went flying out of you nose."

No, Bob. Just wait. The space babe in lacy white lingerie will clean it up for you. The she'll bring you a fresh cup.

Welcome to my sci-fi fantasy, OK?