Battlestar, we will miss you

I'm glad Battlestar Galactica concluded, but sad that it's over.  Or, more accurately, I'm sad that there's nothing else on TV that even approaches its caliber that I can watch now.  

BSG is, I think, on the short list for best TV show ever.  It is a serious attempt at a narrative that takes advantage of the television format to create a vast narrative scope.  It has a movie's focus on a singe coherent narrative, but the long format creates a story that could never be told within the time limits of a movie.  

It is definitely the best Science Fiction TV show ever made, and possibly the best visual SF narrative as well, right up there vying with Blade Runner and such.  Unlike most science fictional narratives it:

• Has real characters, with real flaws.  They obsess, fail, get drunk, get depressed, act irrationally, marry, divorce, break down, etc.  In most SF television shows characters only have superficial flaws (i.e., Worf is antisocial, Rodney McKay is arrogant), and only do anything seriously wrong when under the influence of an alien virus/transporter accident/mind control or when replaced by an evil version of themselves from another dimension.
• Has a plot.  As mentioned above, it has a single coherent plot that progresses from the first episode to the last.  Although there are couple of episodes that focus more on character exposition than plot development, for the most part BSG avoids the planet-of-the-week trap that most SF shows fall in to.  And because it is a TV narrative it can tell a more in-depth narrative than any short movie, no matter how brilliantly executed.
• Rides the Science Fictional knife edge perfectly.  There are two ways to go wrong with the science fictional element of a SF narrative.  The first is to essentially ignore it, fiat that some technology exists that lets us do all of this stuff in space, and not try to engage with it.  This is what happens in most SF anime; the science fictional element doesn't add anything to the narrative, and the war that is being fought in space might as well be fought as a naval war in Earth's oceans, except that giant robots probably wouldn't float so well.  The second way to go wrong is overemphasis of the science fictional element, at the expense of the plot and characters.  This happens mostly in SF novels, where an author is more excited about explaining his fictional technological development than creating a narrative.  It also hurts shows like Star Trek, which use technological wizardry to solve any problem and save the characters from having to make any hard choices.  BSG, however, has just enough science fiction.  The science fictional elements are crucial to the plot and add significantly to the narrative (cylons, resurrection, the nature of FTL travel, etc), but the technology doesn't take center stage, and it doesn't save the characters from having to fight a bloody defensive war that engenders great loss.

Of course, the big thing that sets BSG apart is that it is just well written.  It tackles big issues, and its themes are both timely and timeless.  It investigates the morality of torture right alongside the nature of humanity.  Characters are believable and mutable.  The plot mysteries are layered, so that the mysteries presented at the beginning of the show are peeled back to reveal more mysteries underneath.

It is, overall, one amazing narrative, and it will be missed.