I had a hard time with Religious Studies when I was at school, not because I was a determined atheist adrift in a Catholic school and not even because it was taught by an ancient nun who would insist on referring to any religions other than Catholicism as mythology but because I kept getting thrown out of the morals and ethics classes for causing trouble. There were, of course, the standard "moral dilemmas" with which we were presented and expected to wrestle you are in a burning building along with your wheelchair bound Grandfather and the man with the cure for cancer in his brain, who do you save? I also remember that majority of the class smarmily went for the man incapable of writing down his research because he was the key to saving millions of lives yadda yadda yadda. And a few, shame-facedly abandoning the popular stance of self-righteous hypocrisy, confessed that they would save their grandfather because they loved him and, although we were told there were no right answers, there was a general feeling that this was the wrong one. I went away, wrote a six page essay on how this was all bullshit, read it out with passion and conviction to the entire class and spent the rest of the week thinking about my sins in the corridor outside.

Although I could probably have been inspired to read a book or two about moral philosophy and become vaguely informed on the subject, instead I have taken the intellectual shortcut of allowing this fifteen year old revelation to colour my thinking ever since. There's a scene in Spiderman (the movie) in which the Green Goblin confronts Spidey with a similar moral decision. Cackling in a villainous manner, he makes our hero choose between a cable car full of piteously screaming children or the love of his life, the beautiful Mary Jane Watson. Cue: tense music. Of course, it's entirely irrelevant anyway because Spidey saves both, thus proving once and for all that however much they may whinge about the demands of their lifestyle, superheroes will always be able to have their cake and eat it. But the choice as set up by the Green Goblin is just as arbitrary as the fire and, therefore, just as meaningless. It doesn't matter who you choose to save because, as far as the vagaries of fate and the interference of supervillains are concerned, saving anybody is a positive result. The only morally wrong decision is pushing Granddad out of his wheelchair and running shrieking from the burning building intent on saving your own worthless hide.

The point of this illustration is not, as it may seem, to draw attention to the negligible development in sophistication between Key Stage 4 and your average Hollywood blockbuster but to introduce, for lack of a better term, the prevalence of "moral shortcutting" in place of genuinely meaningful exploration. In particular, at least in the world of superhero movies and sci/fi fantasy books that I happen to inhabit, I am conscious of the popularity the terms "morally ambiguous" and "morally complex," which tend to be used interchangeably as Good Things, especially when set against their supposed opposite: the accusation of moral simplicity. However, it seems to me that moral ambiguity and moral complexity are very different ideas that arise in very different circumstances.

Moral ambiguity is often the product of uncertainty we ask ourselves how we are supposed to feel about certain actions or events and, because it exists in the gap between the intent of the creator and the response of the audience, it may often (but not always) be a consequence of authorial laziness or incompetence. Moral complexity does not make us uncertain in the same way, but it does make us think and ask questions of ourselves was that decision the correct decision, was that action morally right. To take a specific example, in the early Harry Potter books Snape, petty but not evil, on the side of good but still a singularly unappealing human being, was morally complex. Not hugely sophisticated, it must be admitted, but nevertheless complex. Reading along with my brain turned off expecting predictability I can still recall my surprise when poor, stuttering Professor Quirrell turned out to have the dark Lord quite literally under his hat. In the later books as we find ourselves dithering about whether he's meant to be a good guy or a bad guy he is merely morally ambiguous and, I would argue, less interesting. In essence therefore, ambiguity is not necessarily related to complexity and lack of ambiguity does not always indicate simplicity.

To some extent, this is an artificial and somewhat arbitrary distinction but nevertheless it is one that deserves to be made. The Lord of the Rings is often dismissed as morally simplistic because the bad guy is quite clearly unquestionably malignant and we are never expected to worry ourselves about the fact he may have had a difficult childhood (if he had anything as natural as a childhood). The good guys although they may be corrupted and are prey to mortal error tend to be obviously and recognisably virtuous. But just because we don't have to stop and wonder whether Sauron is really as black as he's painted doesn't mean the book is devoid of moral depth. Certainly there is no ambiguity over who is good and who is bad but there is endless scope for nuance as far as individual action and motivation is concerned. We may never question Sam's inherent goodness but he still cannot accept the possibility of Smeagal's redemption. The questions we ask ourselves are not how we are supposed to respond to this for it is presented as a blemish, albeit an understandable but whether Smeagal does deserve, and is capable of receiving, redemption. Thus it may not be ambiguous, but it is certainly complex.

Moral ambiguity tends to be praised as being depthy and courageous but often creates frustratingly unanswerable questions about authorial intent and your own perception of character and behaviour. Although it is often intellectual interesting to explore the twilight zone between author and reader, convincing yourself that Thackery found himself liking Becky Sharp in spite of himself and that Richardson was as obsessed with raping Clarissa as Lovelace was, it is more emotionally engaging to be in harmony with the creator. It is preferable to stand next to Henry Fielding say and "yes, this Tom Jones character is fun guy to be around, in spite of, and to some extent because of his faults" instead of wading through Mansfield Park wondering what Jane Austen was thinking of by dumping this spineless broken piece of fluff on us and calling her a heroine. As soon as you find yourself sitting back on the sofa, scratching your head and asking yourself "am I meant to think that character is behaving like a complete tit?" you have placed yourself, in been placed, at a remove from the action in which you were previously caught up and you become preoccupied with artificial frameworks. Simply put, you find yourself looking at the internal supports instead of the cathedral and although it's quite interesting to see what's holding the ceiling up (or failing to) it's far preferable to admire the artistry and beauty of the building itself.

To take a personal example, I have always struggled with the character of Brenda in Six Feet Under. I like the actress, which helps, but I'm not quite sure to what extent I'm meant to be condemning her for being shallow, self-deceiving and pretentious and how far I'm meant to be seduced by the fact she's supposed to be cooler, cleverer and more adventurous than me (me being the average audience). There comes point when that stops being connected to the complex layers of character development and starts being bad (or, at least, inconsistent) writing.

Similarly, there's an episode of Battlestar Galactica called You Can't Go Home Again' (Episode 5, Series 1), in which the ever-sassy Starbuck (grr) is hit by enemy fire and stranded on a desert moon with a broken leg, no food and a limited supply of oxygen. Meanwhile the Cylons are closing in on the Fleet as the rest of the squadron search the hostile moon for their missing pilot. Things get increasingly tense as the episode progresses, as Starbuck's air supply dwindles and Adama pours more and more of the fleet resources into the search, leaving the civilian ships spread out, in a poor defensive position and, with the combat air patrol deployed on the search, no protection. Eventually, they calculate Starbuck's oxygen will have run out and yet Commander Adama insists on continuing with the search, based on the groundless hope that she has a reserve supply. Eventually President Roslin intervenes, pointing out that they have used 43% of the fuel reserve and endangered the entire fleet of 45,000(ish) civilians in their fruitless search. They prepare to leave but, fortunately, Starbuck has miraculously managed to jury-rig a crashed Cylon ship and comes after them.

Usually I think very highly of Battlestar Galactica but this episode is a "morally ambiguous" mess. When I was watching it, I had no idea what I was meant to take from it, who I was meant to be questioning, and what questions I was meant to be asking. It seems clear that Adama has let his personal feelings cloud his judgement (again) but it is hard to understand to what extent, or even if, we are meant to condemn him, especially as his behaviour is condoned by his son, Lee, a character (I think) we are expected to like and respect, and the writers seem so obsessed with Starbuck I think it is assumed that we are meant to equally besotted. Until the very end, when the President intervenes, Colonel Tigh is the only opposition, and he is narrow-minded, dogmatic, easily manipulated by his transparently malicious wife and an alcoholic into the bargain. His abilities as a commander, and his strength as a human being, are constantly questioned. A charitable interpretation of the dilemma on which the episode focuses is the struggle between Adama as a military commander and Adama as the protector of defeated humanity. Never leaving a man behind, especially when they are the most qualified pilot you have, is a fine and noble maxim for a military commander. Even from a personal standpoint, prioritising the life of the person you love over the life of a stranger regardless of who that stranger is is (in my opinion) a decision with no particular moral content, especially if the threat to both is arbitrary and external. But when you explicitly have 45,000 people depending on you, limited resources and fleets of humanity-killing robots bearing down upon you, Adama's actions are absolutely ludicrous.

Furthermore, Starbuck's behaviour on the planet strips away what little meaning remains in the episode. I think I'm just generally irritated by Starbuck's unfailing ability to achieve anything but watching her crawl across the dunes with a broken leg, discover a crashed Cylon raider, somehow succeed in extracting additional oxygen from its squidgy organic interior, work out how to fly the thing (would an organic ship even have manual controls?) and chase after Galactica Just In The Nick Of Time made me want to eat my own pancreas. If Commander Adama had squandered all his resources to find an oxygen-deprived Starbuck panting in the lea of a crashed Cylon raider or even if he had insisted on putting everything into search until they calculated Starbuck's oxygen had run out, then Adama's determination to stay until he found her might have maintained some flicker of interest i.e. was it worth it, was his decision correct or fair or right? As it was, however, he behaved in a completely selfish fashion for no real purpose and it only wasn't a complete disaster because Starbuck is blessed by the god of plots.

On the subject of Battlestar Galactica, the portrayal of Cylons tends to be both complex and ambiguous, in other words interesting and frustrating. Now, I've only seen up to halfway through the second series so my comments are likely to be coloured by this but the more you watch Battlestar Galactica and the more regularly you're told that the Cylons have a plan, the more readily it becomes apparent that they really don't. Or, more accurately, that their writers don't. For the most part, the show offers quite a nuanced and complex portrayal of the Cylons, balancing their almost wholesale destruction of the human race and their merciless pursuit of the survivors against Six's human side and her capacity for mercy (also one of her models beat the crap out of Starbuck for which I remain eternally grateful) and the Cylon-FormerlyKnown-As-Boomer who shows great love and loyalty and who, like the crew of Galactica, we have been at least partially used to thinking of in very human terms. Episodes like The Farm', however, in which Starbuck (why is it always Starbuck?) discovers a breeding farm full of reluctant woman hooked up to what are essentially rape-machines, tend to blow this careful portrayal to smithereens. And, although it is easy enough to draw parallels between that and the treatment of the Cylon prisoner on board the Pegasus, nothing quite screams Unremittingly Evil like a rape machine. The Cylons have gone from being complex ("hmmthey did sort of annihilating the human race but they are clearly far more than unfeeling machines") to ambiguous ("so what the hell are the writers trying to say with the Cylons?").

I'm not implying that everything that is morally is dissatisfying but I think there's a danger that something so generally assumed to be worthy can very often be an excuse for sloppy writing and poor planning.