This chapter continues the examination of technical legality through a detailed analysis of Battlestar Galactica. Whereas, in the previous chapter, Dune emerged as a jurisprudential text that explored the base elements of sovereignty, revealing that law as technology is founded on the alchemy of death and time, this chapter shifts the focus directly to technicity. It argues that Battlestar Galactica shows that technology collapses the received Western metaphysics, yet it affirms that Being continues as ‘technological Being-in-the-world’. Battlestar Galactica is a journey through the darkness of law as technology to a possibility that is ‘responsibility for becoming’.

This argument is in three stages. The first stage reviews the series, noting a significant shift in emphasis from the politics of Season 1 and 2 to the metaphysics of Seasons 3 and 4. The second stage begins by taking seriously the suggestion of Schmitt that closed the previous chapter, but shows that Battlestar Galactica does not re-enact science fiction's tendency to fascist fantasies. In Battlestar Galactica's identification of sovereign and subject, the public becomes personal. This movement away from the public to identity is not complete. Behind the show's animation of identity lies a now familiar monster, but in an unfamiliar environment. Closing this stage is a fundamental realisation that the personal, threatened by essence, discloses the technical.

The third stage draws upon these strands. Battlestar Galactica challenges the metaphysics of technology. In Battlestar Galactica, the distinction between human and technology has been completely blurred. Here Battlestar Galactica seemingly performs Heidegger's ‘end’ of Western metaphysics in the occupation of Being by Enframing. This climax appears to be the total triumph of the monster, seen in the implosion of the Frankenstein myth in Chapter 1. However, Battlestar Galactica – notwithstanding its apocalyptic sensibilities – suggests that living remains after the end. The occupation of Being by Enframing can lead to technological Being-in-the world, which opens to ‘responsibility for becoming’.

Battlestar Galactica Redux

Any analysis of Battlestar Galactica must begin with the original television series of the same name. The original series had a short run during 1978–9, with a dismal spin-off, Galactic 1980 (1980), and was essentially a Star Wars rip-off.