I've always seen myself on the fringes of nerdom. In my opinion, to be an actual nerd, one needs to be obsessed with something. I have a lot of nerdy friends and I know enough about most nerdy subjects to keep up in a conversation, but I've never been a fanboy. I've watched some "Star Trek," but only "The Next Generation" and none of the original movies. I've seen the Lord of the Rings movies, but never read the books. I enjoy Star Wars, but I've never bought anything related to it. I watch some comic book movies and TV shows, but I've never really owned any actual comic books. I used to be sort of a computer nerd, but I kicked my chat room habit years ago and I don't know anything more than basic html and how to get around Windows. I like to stay on the fringes. I've never found an obsession: until now. I think I'm officially a "Battlestar Galactica" nerd.
Both are my roommates are pretty nerdy. Not the kind that don't have social skills and only date fat, ugly girls, but they're still pretty high on the nerd continuim. One of them, Bryan, tends to watch the Sci-Fi channel quite a bit. Ocassionally, when I'm bored enough, I've been known to watch a few minutes of one of the "Stargates" with him, but only to mock it and laugh at how bad it is. For me, the Sci-Fi channel was an object of scorn, not somewhere I would ever stop for more than a minute when the remote was in my power. But all that changed a few months ago. Bryan started watching the Sci-Fi channel's "re-imagining" of the cheesey 70's Star Wars cash-in "Battlestar Galactica." I knew, like everything else on Sci-Fi, it would be horrible, but as a caught a few minutes here and there, it actually seemed watchable. The acting wasn't laughable and the effects looked realistic. When Bryan bought the first season on DVD, I decided to have a go at it. He'd already almost finished watching the first season before I started, but I quickly caught up with him and months before the second season was to be released on DVD, I was bugging him to buy it. Now, through the magic of DVD, I've seen every episode of seasons one and two.
And, believe it or not, it's actually a really great show. The acting is great. The characters are richly developed and not at all static. The plots are exciting and intricate. The special effects are always seemless and the sci-fi aspects of the show never seem silly. Time and Rolling Stone have both done articles proclaiming it one of the best shows on TV and those are just two of the many critical raves that the new "Battlestar" has recieved. A week ago Tuesday, Bryan and I finished up the Season 2 dvd's together. Of course, it ended on a cliff-hanger. I knew that the Sci-Fi Channel was already several episodes into Season 3 and that I'd probably have to wait months before it would be released on DVD and I could watch the show again without missing anything or ruining the first few episodes for myself. When I found out they were showing a marathon of all the third season episodes on Tuesday, my heart leapt, to use the cliche. That's when I realize that I couldn't deny it anymore. "My life can continue," I said to Bryan, forever claiming my place in the annals of nerdiness. I'm no longer on the fringe. I'm officially a "Battlestar Galactica" nerd. And I think I'm okay with that.
