Actress Katee Sackhoff, who plays Captain Kara "Starbuck" Thrace on the Sci Fi Channel television show Battlestar Galactica, has this to say on why this show is the best thing on TV:
"We never relied on the science fiction of the show. Most science fiction shows rely way too much on the bells and whistles. It kind of opened doors in science fiction to realize . . . it's just a setting. . . . It's not, (and) it should never have been what the show is."
Sackhoff is correct that the show's amazing character development is a major factor in why BG is so successful, but she's wrong to imply that the show's setting is irrelevant to this success. If Battlestar Galactica had been set in present day America, the show would have simply been an over-wrought soap opera. Instead, the space setting, combined with the desparate race for survival by this last group of human survivors, allows the show to explore complex issues with a depth and resonance that other TV dramas lack. Yes, the characters make the show great. But without the setting, no one would care about any of that character drama. Great science fiction is a merging of setting and drama and character. And it takes all three of those legs to support a great story like Battlestar Galactica.
