SemiConscious Dot Org

Short answer: no.

Slightly longer answer: Aw, HELL no.

Maybe one of the creators of the original, cheesy 70’s series was Mormon. Maybe the current show’s “Lost Tribe” mythos has some superficial similarities with Mormonism (and about a dozen other religions.) So? If The Best Show on TV™ was designed as a secret Mormon recruitment tool, they’ve done a lousy job of it: morally ambiguous, three dimensional characters; the principle adherents of the One True Religion being the Bad Guys; many different philosophical viewpoints presented without any being favored; and lots of drinking, swearing, and screwing. You know, sort of like real life.

As Keith points out, fiction (and science fiction) whose primary purpose is to advance one philosophical or religious agenda almost always sucks, because character development and story believability is inevitably sacrificed for the purpose getting across the author’s agenda. The result is a story that is boring, stilted, and predictable, with two dimensional characters doing idiotic things for reasons that never ring true. That, and lots of windy moralizing and long, boring speeches. In short, the end product is terrible and unreadable. (See: the Left Behind series; any Ayn Rand novel ever written.)

BSG will go down as one of television’s artistic pinnacles, precisely because it avoids all those pitfalls.