The Defining Battlestar Galactica Episode That Pissed Off The Entire Network

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 4 seconds ago

The Battlestar Galactica reboot is renowned as one of the best sci-fi series of the modern age. Showrunner Ronald D. Moore got his start by writing extensively for Star Trek: The Next Generation. He took those early writing lessons to transform his own show into the polar opposite of Trek: instead of being an episodic, optimistic utopia, Galactica was a serialized, brutal dystopia. This was perfectly fitting for a show about humanity’s endless fight against genocidal robots. But as with all great sci-fi shows, Battlestar Galactica uses its futuristic tales to express the concerns of the present day.

At the time, one of the biggest national anxieties was the so-called War on Terror. After the 9/11 terror attack, many Americans were all too happy to wage battle against a ruthless foe that killed thousands of civilians in the most brutal attack since Pearl Harbor. Eventually, many began to wonder if the ultimate cost of the War on Terror would be our humanity. Battlestar Galactica was the boldest commentary on America’s post 9/11 anxieties, but not right away. In fact, it wasn’t until Moore clashed with the network over the episode “Flesh and Bone” that BSG became an unapologetic (yet surprisingly unpreachy) critique of the George W. Bush administration.

The War On (Space) Terror

“Flesh and Bone” was a Season 1 Battlestar Galactica episode in which Starbuck interrogated a Cylon, Leoben, who had infiltrated the civilian fleet. When the Cylon reveals that he has hidden a nuclear bomb somewhere in the fleet that will detonate in nine hours, Starbuck resorts to torturing him; rather than revealing the location of the bomb, though, he wants to rant about religion and the importance of the one, true God. The torture intensifies, and shortly before the nine hours are up, Leoben admits to President Roslin that there was never any bomb. In turn, she has him summarily executed by getting airlocked into space.

You don’t have to be a Political Science major to see how “Flesh and Bone” was meant to parallel the War on Terror. Starbuck is someone who must deal with the scenario that came up during every single debate about torture in the early aughts: “What if a bomb is about to go off, and this is the only way to find it?” The fictional Starbuck eventually takes her cue from real-life American soldiers and waterboards her foe (a religious extremist, no less!), but she doesn’t get any answers. The final revelation that there never was a bomb in the first place makes the torture look that much uglier because it was all for, quite literally, nothing. 

The Abyss Gazes Also

Interestingly, the torture in this episode was initially going to be much, much more severe. According to Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion, episode writer Toni Graphia revealed that, “In one draft, Leoben had electrodes hooked up to him…Ron decided we weren’t going to do any fancy torture techniques, because the show doesn’t do a lot of high-tech stuff.” Plus, he eventually concluded that “the heart of the episode wasn’t really about the method of torture, it was about one of the show’s most tough-@ss characters developing a little empathy towards the enemy.” 

In an interview with Concurring Opinions, Battlestar Galactica executive producer David Eick revealed that this episode “represented the most extreme period of tension and disagreement between ourselves and the network.” He reiterated that earlier drafts of the script had more extreme torture scenes that “were emblematic of what was going on at Guantanamo and places like that.” While the final episode did tone things down a bit, it didn’t soften the ugliness of Starbuck’s actions. “It became our argument because we were trying to take something real and force the audience to have the same trouble with it that the network was having.”

All Of This Has Happened Before

Eick and Moore obviously won that argument, as evidenced by the prominent torture scenes in “Flesh and Blood” and the other uncomfortable War on Terror parallels (including suicide bombers fighting the Cylons) in future episodes. As recorded in Battlestar Galactica: The Official Companion, Moore claimed that “Flesh and Bone” “was obviously influenced by the Abu Ghraib incident, and all the other examples of prisoners being tortured.” He deliberately avoided any Picard-style speeches about torture, though, because “We wanted to really make viewers think about the issue, without preaching to anyone about it.” In some ways, that’s Battestar Galactica’s biggest strength: It expresses big ideas without telling you directly what to think.

According to Ronald D. Moore, the War on Terror commentary helped inform the show’s other big themes. “We wanted to do an episode that was complicated and also touched upon the larger sort of thematic and theological issues of the show,” he said. Eventually, the show regularly pulled off a narrative hat trick with stories that balanced thrilling narratives with crunchy themes and mind-bending religious questions. But Battlestar Galactica’s transformation into the best sci-fi show of the modern age began with “Flesh and Bone,” a Season 1 episode that helps prove an old adage: whenever you piss off the network, you know you’re doing something right!