It’s a relatively short piece and doesn’t take that long to read through

An excerpt

At the time that I discovered Battlestar, I had been seeing news accounts of torture being used on people imprisoned at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. I could not understand how these kinds of things were allowed to happen or why other hit TV shows of the era, like 24 and Lost, seemed to sanction them. Even the brilliant programs that did engage with how 9/11 changed America—The Sopranos, The Wire, and The Shield—never really challenged the country’s actions. Battlestar did. As one scholar put it, the show asks the audience uncomfortable ­questions like, “What does it mean to be a human? What does it mean for a society to believe it is at war? Is it possible to be moral during times of ­profound crisis?”