BSG on Salon
I know, I know: what am I doing commenting on this fandom anymore? Well, Salon's "I Like to Watch is weighing in on "Battlestar Galactica's recent dark turn" and I thought you should all have a look-see. Either click the link above or
And what's the second important item on my agenda, right under "cocker spaniels"? "Battlestar Galactica" (10 p.m. Sundays on SciFi), of course. Ahem. Can you fracking believe it? If you didn't watch last week, don't read this part. For those who did: Have the gods gone mad? There's got to be a twist, right? Does this mean that Starbuck is a Cylon, one of the so-called final five? Does this mean that she's going to replace Gaius Baltar in the endless plinky-plink French new wave film that has been unfolding this season?
Let's back up a little, for those of you who haven't spent the past week throwing tantrums in Television Without Pity forums and calling Ronald D. Moore at home, threatening to take out his knees with a baseball bat, Tonya Harding style. Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck, played by Katee Sackhoff, was until last Sunday night one of the more compelling and charismatic lead characters on "Battlestar Galactica." Starbuck was the best fighter pilot by far on Galactica -- imagine that, a woman, the best pilot of all! -- but not only that, she was tough, bossy, sexually fickle, emotionally remote and self-destructive. As a male character, not so interesting, but as Salon's Laura Miller elucidated so eloquently back in 2005, watching Starbuck drink and play cards and get violent and boozy was always entertaining and slightly surreal. Despite a few obnoxiously soapy recent episodes, in which Starbuck and her true love/pal/rival Apollo revealed the stinky crevices of their love/hate relationship, Starbuck has generally provided "Battlestar" with some of its more provocative plots.
Yes, it goes without saying that we should be appalled that in 2007, Starbuck is one of the only overconfident, unapologetic heroines to ever grace the small screen. Let's just consider a handful of contemporary female TV characters: Meredith Grey of "Grey's Anatomy," Ally McBeal Deux (Kitty) of "Brothers & Sisters," Cheerleader Claire of "Heroes," Cheerleader Lyla of "Friday Night Lights," Harriet of "Studio 60," Simpering Susan of "Desperate Housewives" -- some of them smart, some charming, some confident. But look at how they all roll their eyes and pout and fret and giggle under pressure. Look at how they wring their hands and second-guess themselves and weep and then turn on their feminine wiles like one of "Charlie's Angels" to solve any problem. Why? Why is it so important that female characters be jittery and emotionally fragile, as if their femininity depended on lots of coy eye batting and neurotic bottom-lip biting? Are male TV writers really so unimaginative and/or threatened that they dream only of nonthreatening, impish kitty cats? OK, not every one of those characters is a limp little goo-goo-eyed rag doll, but can you or can't you picture every last one biting her bottom lip?
So why kill off one of the only brazen, swaggering female characters on TV? Why? Why Starbuck? Why now? Someone please explain to me why Starbuck needs to kick the bucket at this point. Sure, there's all this talk of her destiny from Leoben, the abusive daddy of the Cylon species. But is Starbuck really the appropriate character to transform into a mystical figure in colonial mythology? How stupid is Kara going to look, that perpetual smirk pasted on her face, clothed in glowing white robes, pointing the way to Earth? Didn't it seem like they were going to cast Chief Tyrol as the savior, back when he was walking around that temple, mesmerized by the place his parents talked about when he was a boy? And then, when he seemed to have marital problems and almost floated off into space with Callie? If not Chief, then why not someone exceptionally dull, like Apollo's wife, Dee?
Critics and bloggers and viewers talk about killing off lead characters for no reason as if that's brave -- the kind of logic macho Starbuck might've embraced, actually -- but what, exactly, is so courageous about arbitrarily knocking off one of your best characters just because she's one of your best characters? This is the way I felt when the writers of "The L Word" decided to give Dana cancer. The writers said it was important to take away a character that everyone loved because that way it hit home more. I understand that logic when you're writing a movie script, but how do you take one of the mainstays of your running narrative, a narrative that unfolds over the course of several years, and sell that character up the river?
Let's be realistic, here. So many other characters on "Battlestar" could bite the dust without my giving it a second thought. Apollo has always been kind of one-note and chumpy. Baltar's bulgy-eyed sock puppet routine is as dull as mud by now. I'd be thrilled if I never saw Number Six again -- when will the Cylons discontinue that faulty model, or at least upgrade her bony ass? Dee, as I said, is a total bore. So many easy sacrificial lambs to choose from, and they choose one of the best characters of all. Can you imagine how limp and worthless those fighter pilot scenes are going to feel without Starbuck?
The episode itself was better than most this season, but I still didn't buy that it should add up to Starbuck basically killing herself. If you're going to ax a major character, at least stretch it out over a few episodes and convince us that it's a crucial part of the season's narrative arc. Squeezing in all of that last-minute camaraderie with Apollo felt forced and rushed, and I didn't think a few Bad Mommy flashbacks and some mysterious iconic images really did enough to convince us that Starbuck suddenly had a Very Important Destiny in the afterlife.
And while we're on the subject of unlikely heroes, how annoying is it that Baltar would be rallying the common man with an anti-imperialist screed a couple of episodes back? I liked that episode, but why would a privileged, educated guy like Baltar find himself in a position to lead the proletariat from oppression after essentially betraying mankind by becoming a pawn of the Cylons? Are we supposed to believe that the working man has so little sense of history that he'd buy revolutionary rhetoric from an imprisoned traitor? Yes, yes, he's a spoiled, musing intellectual like Karl Marx. But it still seems like they needed someone to fill in terrorist Tom Zarek's shoes since he went legit, and they didn't have anything better for Baltar to do since he left his French new wave sex fantasy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a long way off from giving up on "Battlestar," no matter how much I question the writers' recent choices. (We'll talk about the idiotic "Check out this crappy scene we cut!" feature at a later date.) Although I've talked to people who are actually mourning Starbuck's death like she's a real person, I can't say that I'm inconsolable over it. For me, the most upsetting scene of the whole episode was the last one, where Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) is crying and adding Starbuck's angel to his model ship, and then suddenly he smashes the ship to smithereens. It was such a devastating scene, since Adama loved Starbuck like a daughter and since he'd been working on that ship since the first season.
And as it turns out, according to Ronald D. Moore's recent podcast, Olmos was improvising, funneling his anger at Sackhoff's impending departure into the annihilation of the model ship, which was actually an antique worth $100K. The prop department had a heart attack, but the ship was insured. Too bad, really -- what better way to inflict revenge on the producers than by landing them with such a hefty bill? You have to love Olmos all the more for that one. Like the soulful but aging cocker spaniel, he's not afraid to bite the hand that feeds!
And what's the second important item on my agenda, right under "cocker spaniels"? "Battlestar Galactica" (10 p.m. Sundays on SciFi), of course. Ahem. Can you fracking believe it? If you didn't watch last week, don't read this part. For those who did: Have the gods gone mad? There's got to be a twist, right? Does this mean that Starbuck is a Cylon, one of the so-called final five? Does this mean that she's going to replace Gaius Baltar in the endless plinky-plink French new wave film that has been unfolding this season?
Let's back up a little, for those of you who haven't spent the past week throwing tantrums in Television Without Pity forums and calling Ronald D. Moore at home, threatening to take out his knees with a baseball bat, Tonya Harding style. Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck, played by Katee Sackhoff, was until last Sunday night one of the more compelling and charismatic lead characters on "Battlestar Galactica." Starbuck was the best fighter pilot by far on Galactica -- imagine that, a woman, the best pilot of all! -- but not only that, she was tough, bossy, sexually fickle, emotionally remote and self-destructive. As a male character, not so interesting, but as Salon's Laura Miller elucidated so eloquently back in 2005, watching Starbuck drink and play cards and get violent and boozy was always entertaining and slightly surreal. Despite a few obnoxiously soapy recent episodes, in which Starbuck and her true love/pal/rival Apollo revealed the stinky crevices of their love/hate relationship, Starbuck has generally provided "Battlestar" with some of its more provocative plots.
Yes, it goes without saying that we should be appalled that in 2007, Starbuck is one of the only overconfident, unapologetic heroines to ever grace the small screen. Let's just consider a handful of contemporary female TV characters: Meredith Grey of "Grey's Anatomy," Ally McBeal Deux (Kitty) of "Brothers & Sisters," Cheerleader Claire of "Heroes," Cheerleader Lyla of "Friday Night Lights," Harriet of "Studio 60," Simpering Susan of "Desperate Housewives" -- some of them smart, some charming, some confident. But look at how they all roll their eyes and pout and fret and giggle under pressure. Look at how they wring their hands and second-guess themselves and weep and then turn on their feminine wiles like one of "Charlie's Angels" to solve any problem. Why? Why is it so important that female characters be jittery and emotionally fragile, as if their femininity depended on lots of coy eye batting and neurotic bottom-lip biting? Are male TV writers really so unimaginative and/or threatened that they dream only of nonthreatening, impish kitty cats? OK, not every one of those characters is a limp little goo-goo-eyed rag doll, but can you or can't you picture every last one biting her bottom lip?
So why kill off one of the only brazen, swaggering female characters on TV? Why? Why Starbuck? Why now? Someone please explain to me why Starbuck needs to kick the bucket at this point. Sure, there's all this talk of her destiny from Leoben, the abusive daddy of the Cylon species. But is Starbuck really the appropriate character to transform into a mystical figure in colonial mythology? How stupid is Kara going to look, that perpetual smirk pasted on her face, clothed in glowing white robes, pointing the way to Earth? Didn't it seem like they were going to cast Chief Tyrol as the savior, back when he was walking around that temple, mesmerized by the place his parents talked about when he was a boy? And then, when he seemed to have marital problems and almost floated off into space with Callie? If not Chief, then why not someone exceptionally dull, like Apollo's wife, Dee?
Critics and bloggers and viewers talk about killing off lead characters for no reason as if that's brave -- the kind of logic macho Starbuck might've embraced, actually -- but what, exactly, is so courageous about arbitrarily knocking off one of your best characters just because she's one of your best characters? This is the way I felt when the writers of "The L Word" decided to give Dana cancer. The writers said it was important to take away a character that everyone loved because that way it hit home more. I understand that logic when you're writing a movie script, but how do you take one of the mainstays of your running narrative, a narrative that unfolds over the course of several years, and sell that character up the river?
Let's be realistic, here. So many other characters on "Battlestar" could bite the dust without my giving it a second thought. Apollo has always been kind of one-note and chumpy. Baltar's bulgy-eyed sock puppet routine is as dull as mud by now. I'd be thrilled if I never saw Number Six again -- when will the Cylons discontinue that faulty model, or at least upgrade her bony ass? Dee, as I said, is a total bore. So many easy sacrificial lambs to choose from, and they choose one of the best characters of all. Can you imagine how limp and worthless those fighter pilot scenes are going to feel without Starbuck?
The episode itself was better than most this season, but I still didn't buy that it should add up to Starbuck basically killing herself. If you're going to ax a major character, at least stretch it out over a few episodes and convince us that it's a crucial part of the season's narrative arc. Squeezing in all of that last-minute camaraderie with Apollo felt forced and rushed, and I didn't think a few Bad Mommy flashbacks and some mysterious iconic images really did enough to convince us that Starbuck suddenly had a Very Important Destiny in the afterlife.
And while we're on the subject of unlikely heroes, how annoying is it that Baltar would be rallying the common man with an anti-imperialist screed a couple of episodes back? I liked that episode, but why would a privileged, educated guy like Baltar find himself in a position to lead the proletariat from oppression after essentially betraying mankind by becoming a pawn of the Cylons? Are we supposed to believe that the working man has so little sense of history that he'd buy revolutionary rhetoric from an imprisoned traitor? Yes, yes, he's a spoiled, musing intellectual like Karl Marx. But it still seems like they needed someone to fill in terrorist Tom Zarek's shoes since he went legit, and they didn't have anything better for Baltar to do since he left his French new wave sex fantasy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a long way off from giving up on "Battlestar," no matter how much I question the writers' recent choices. (We'll talk about the idiotic "Check out this crappy scene we cut!" feature at a later date.) Although I've talked to people who are actually mourning Starbuck's death like she's a real person, I can't say that I'm inconsolable over it. For me, the most upsetting scene of the whole episode was the last one, where Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) is crying and adding Starbuck's angel to his model ship, and then suddenly he smashes the ship to smithereens. It was such a devastating scene, since Adama loved Starbuck like a daughter and since he'd been working on that ship since the first season.
And as it turns out, according to Ronald D. Moore's recent podcast, Olmos was improvising, funneling his anger at Sackhoff's impending departure into the annihilation of the model ship, which was actually an antique worth $100K. The prop department had a heart attack, but the ship was insured. Too bad, really -- what better way to inflict revenge on the producers than by landing them with such a hefty bill? You have to love Olmos all the more for that one. Like the soulful but aging cocker spaniel, he's not afraid to bite the hand that feeds!