U.N. Gets “Battlestar Galactica” Lessons

Strife in the Middle East. Famine in Africa. Global economic meltdown. Earth has more than its fair share of problems.  Today, in the quest for answers, the United Nations will look to the cosmos.

The U.N. is hosting a "Battlestar Galactica" retrospective to examine how the sci-fi show deals with issues like "human rights, children and armed conflict, terrorism, human rights and reconciliation and dialogue among civilizations and faith," according to the Sci Fi channel.
 
Whoopi Goldberg will moderate a panel that will include the show's executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick, as well as stars Mary McDonnell (who plays president Laura Roslin on the show) and Edward James Olmos (Admiral William Adama).
 
“The show has been a sort of laboratory for the choices and issues real people in governments are making every day,” said McDonnell.
 
UN representatives on the panel include Robert Orr, assistant secretary-general for policy planning, executive office of the Secretary-General.; Craig Mokhiber, deputy director of the New York office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.
 
The event is part of the U.N.’s Creative Community Outreach Program which seeks to “establish partnerships with the entertainment industry to tell the U.N.’s story,” according to U.N. Spokesman Juan Carlos Brandt.
 
Last month, as part of the program, the crime drama “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” shot an episode on the U.N. campus.
 
Sci Fi channel thought that the themes they explore on the television show, which has drawn a cult-like following since its re-imagining in 2003, would play well in the U.N. chambers.
 
“They came to us and explained that there were themes common to both the show and the U.N.,” Brandt told The New York Times, “and that those themes could be discussed here in a serious manner.”
 
Battlestar Galactica, which just concludes its fifth season on the Sci Fi channel three days after the panel discussion, is a remake of a 1970s program of the same name. The show’s producers have said that they will make a full text version of the discussion available on the show’s website.
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