Battlestar Galactica 2004 Rewatch - Spoilers don't need to be blurred

[Smapti]

I’m OK with Starbuck being unexplained. The scene where she finds her crashed Viper with her own charred corpse in it and realizes she doesn’t even know what she is is a great character moment.

[vislor]

@ParallelLines

My view on the “modern” Starbuck is simultaneously more and less judgmental. It’s lazy writing. Need to move your plot in a specific direction? Starbuck. Need to insert otherwise unknown information? Starbuck. Need to add more drama? Disappear/Kill Starbuck and return her.

By never answering the question of Starbuck, Moore dodged the bullet, but if the review is accurate, the truth was there the whole time - they weren’t sure, they didn’t know, and leaned on the crutch, possibly hoping for divine inspiration (snerk!) would one day come up with a conceit that would be clever enough to keep the fans happy.

Of course, that’s 100% my Opinion. But it seems consistent with the commonalities in TV series programming, especially in genre offerings.

I completely agree, it’s lazy writing. It’s worse than lazy writing, it’s breaking trust with the audience. IIRC, the whole Starbuck thing was in the last season, maybe even the last half of the last season. To introduce this concept late into the show because they don’t know how else to get someplace is terrible. No hints at this type of entity, which sounds like a Stargate ascended to me, ruins the character. Knowing that all of the times we worried about whether or not Starbuck would survive only to find out she was never in danger?

BSG may have other examples of this but I couldn’t finish my rewatch to see. Lost has a better example in the numbers. Those were introduced very early. Hurley had a huge interaction with them. Several other characters had huge things change due to those numbers. When they later dismiss the numbers as just random (and I have seen apologists wave that away by saying something things are random) is disappointing. An author that claims something is important, shows they are important, and then ignores them is not a good author to me.

@Mongoose3

I always felt bsg would have been stronger if they’d leaned into the Greek mythology side of it.

I did think Starbuck only worked as well as she did because the actress did a fantadtic job. Few women, I think, could pull off the cigar chomping pilot, but Sackoff did.

Yes, gods are real, but also capricious. Starbuck could have been a demi god or similar entity from mythology. Powerful but also flawed.

I agree that Sackhoff does a great job as Starbuck! I also agree if they leaned into the mythology and had it explain our mythology, that would have been better.

I think that brings up a good point. A lot of times, SciFi doesn’t want to have supernatural/fantasy elements in it, like mythology. Not Space Opera a la Star Wars but SciFi. Star Trek had ghosts but they were found to be anomalous energy reading or entities and they go no further. Enough to give us the science but still tell their ghost story. BSG gave us SciFi for three years by this point so to add a supernatural element late into the story is what is jarring.

@Smapti

I’m OK with Starbuck being unexplained. The scene where she finds her crashed Viper with her own charred corpse in it and realizes she doesn’t even know what she is is a great character moment.

Obviously we will disagree, which is fine! I don’t remember the scene well enough to talk to that. I can say that in terms of fiction, I want it to follow Twain. “Of course truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.” As I say above, it’s jarring to add in this supernatural element late in the story. How much better would that scene have played out if the audience could have known what it meant?

That’s my issue with having things happen for drama without a plan. It may create a great moment or scene but I would rather have it fit into the story told up to that point.

Thanks for the discussion!