The following is a copy of the email I sent to the Sci-Fi channel.

Last night, I watched the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica, and, I have to say, was thoroughly disgusted. The writers of the show have taken its previous anti-war, anti-Bush undertone to an entirely new level. The entire episode was nothing more than a justification of terrorism committed by some of the main characters, and I'm surprised and saddened that you would allow such a thing to air on your channel.

In the show, the humans who settled a new planet are now living under the Cylon occupation. Cylons control the human puppet government, and many of the main human characters have joined the "insurgency." They send people to perform "heroic" suicide bombings that kill innocent humans as well as Cylons, and shrug off the casualties as part of the war they're fighting. They murder humans who collaborate with the Cylons. The Cylons imprison innocent people for no good reason, often torturing them while the collaborators cover for the Cylons.

All of this is obviously meant to imitate and excuse the rhetoric and tactics used by the terrorists fighting our troops in Iraq. It's apparent that the show is a paean to groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and an appeal to excuse terrorism on the flimsy grounds that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." The writers attempt to create a state of moral equivalency between the show's characters and the terrorists who murder US troops, Iraqi police and military, and Iraqi civilians every day. In order to accept such a moral equivalence, however, one must first abandon one's moral values.

Moral equivalence demands that one forego all understanding of right and wrong, and suspend one's sense of morality. Without the capacity to judge between right and wrong, people -- whole societies -- become unable to act. Criminals go unpunished, and those in need of protection go unaided. For instance, without the moral capacity to call the current ethnic murders by the government-sponsored militia in Darfur "wrong" and "immoral," the United Nations is unable to act to stop them. Due to moral paralysis, hundreds of thousands of innocent people may die, as they did in Rwanda. Is reducing the viewer's capacity to judge between right and wrong by portraying the murder of innocents as justifiable the intended goal of the Sci-Fi channel?

I cannot watch this show any longer. In fact, as long as Battlestar Galactica is on the air, I will cease to watch the Sci-Fi channel altogether. Although it may not have much impact, I will urge everyone I know personally to do the same. I will urge everyone I know on the internet to do so, and ask them to ask their friends to do so as well. Moreover, I will send copies of this letter to those who advertise on the Sci-Fi channel, to let them know what their money is buying -- no longer merely good entertainment, but thinly-veiled justifications of terrorism.

Thank you for your time.

A former viewer