Utopia, Relationality and Ecology: Resurrecting the Natural in Battlestar Galactica

The re-imagined television series Battlestar Galactica features few natural environments and Earth is only a half-conceived idea in the human characters’ minds for the bulk of the narrative. However, in this article I examine how the dream of Earth supports belief in an ideological boundary between humans and Cylons and, simultaneously, how affective relationships between humans and humanoid Cylons increasingly function to subvert the foundation of this boundary. Within the context of these conflicts, which I examine from an ecological perspective, I demonstrate how the discovery of a utopian Earth resurrects an ideological distinction between organic humans and “artificial” Cylons