Battlestar Galactica, Dead Parrots and Gaming Platforms
Amy and I have been watching the 2nd season of Battlestar Galactica from the Sci-Fi channel (we have the series on DVD as we don’t have time to follow the channel’s schedule). One idea that occurred to me today was the same concepts that surrounded the original series as well as those of the original Star Trek. This idea is that the episodes are intended to not only be great entertainment, but good social commentary as well.
In this case, it occurred to me that the new BSG series mirrors some of the growing horror we’ve experienced in our nation at the hands of terrorists. When you don’t really know who you can trust, it becomes truly scary. This was brought out in one of the episodes when a member of the crew is accused of being a cylon just for having a love affair with another who turned out to be a cylon. He was in no way guilty of the charge, but merely guilty by association in the eyes of those who put him in the brig.
Just makes you wonder if you may one day be accused of being a collaborator just because one of your close friends turns out to be less than a friend. Or even better, that friend had no choice due to certain situations thrust upon them (I remember reading one story where the doctor was doing attrocities, but only because it turned out that his family was being held hostage).
BSG brings home some of the issues we now face and will face due to fear and distrust.
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Dan, a friend of ours, had dropped by this evening so we could pay him for the work on our dryer. We were doing some catching up and when he asked about how our church was doing, one of the things I mentioned is that we did have a member who was doing his best to push a doctrine on others that really had no basis. However, every scriptural example that disproves his belief was rebutted with some off-the-wall explanation.
Dan then spoke up and called that the Dead Parrot method. Amy, never having seen the Monty Python sketch, didn’t understand, but I just burst out laughing because the minute Dan said it, I knew exactly what he meant. In the sketch, a customer returns a deceased parrot to the pet shop and the owner has every possible, inconceivable reason for why the bird is alive, but not showing any signs of life. That was what the member of our church was doing, for every proof to the contrary, he had an explanation that he had convinced himself was correct.
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“People don’t stop playing games because they get old; they get old because they stop playing games.”
Well, I must be getting old. I’ve already decided that I won’t be jumping the shark and getting an Xbox360, or a PS3, or a Nintendo Wii (when either of the later become available). I no longer have the interest for these machines as I did a few years ago.
Does this mean that I’ve stopped altogether? Nah. I still have my PS2 (we also have a GameCube, but it’s mostly Amy’s machine) and I do buy games once in a while. However, I think I may be going more towards old board games and card games and such. After all, they rarely use electricity and don’t require the latest video cards and motherboards and maxed out memory and stuff that you throw away money on.
Gaming is still very much a part of my life and probably will be for a long time… at least until I get old… or stop playing.
