battlestar galactica with real spoilers this time so quit reading right now if you aren’t up to date

Oh, I'll waste a little space here at the top, just in case your eyes wander further down the screen than you intended. But you aren't getting much more in the way of warnings. This is water-cooler territory today, there's no way I wait six months for everyone else to catch up.

Last chance … close the webpage now …

Here goes …

 

Well, shit.

 

One of the problems with erratic series like Battlestar Galactica is that the lesser episodes interfere with the possibility of a gradual accumulation of events leading to an outcome both inevitable and unexpected. The tone of BSG during a season goes like this: WHAM! WHAM! WHOA! FRAK! la de da de WHAM! La de da de WHAM! WHAM! WHOA! FRAK! There's no denying the impact of the WHAM, but because of the variable quality of the episodes, and because of the mixture of episodes that advance the overall arc and episodes that are standalones, the first WHAMs in a set come out of nowhere. After last night's episode, I assume we're into the season-ending WHAMs, and I fully expect all of the episodes to be strong. But last night was surprising in a "they sure took a giant leap all of a sudden" way. And it shouldn't have had that feeling … one could reasonably say that a part of Starbuck has been heading for that place (her "destiny" perhaps?) since the series began. But Starbuck's character in Season Three has followed the pattern of the series … very strong and compelling at the beginning, then pretty much absent, enough so that one could be forgiven for thinking Katee Sackhoff had gone to make a movie or something so they wrote around her character for a few episodes. Then, finally, we get a Starbuck episode, which those of us who find Starbuck the best character on the show were v.excited about. And then this? It was a definite WHAM moment, and I guess that's what Ron Moore wanted, but I think it would have carried a lot more emotional weight if we'd been led gradually to the point. And yes, I know, Starbuck has had "issues" since the moment we met her, it's not like they just made her all frakked up at 10:02 and resolved everything by 10:59 (see Kat). But her character had basically been ignored for half a dozen episodes, and that reduced the impact of last night.

I am pretty good about avoiding spoilers, and I managed to avoid this one … oh, I knew something big was coming, but it always comes as a season nears its conclusion with this show, doesn't it? I might have guessed that a major character was going to be killed off, but I wouldn't have thought they'd have the balls to do it to Starbuck (and "balls" is the proper term, if they get credit for giving us such a great female character, then they have to be called on the fact that they've now killed her off). I hadn't read any of the interviews with Katee Sackhoff that, now that I've read them after the fact, seem to give everything away … she couldn't talk about stuff because of her contract, she's looking to make some movies, she hasn't been thinking about BSG much of late, when she got one of the late-season scripts she was v.surprised, stuff like that. I'm probably just projecting … there's nothing concrete to base this on … but it feels like Sackhoff wasn't always happy with the direction of her character, she didn't like the love quadrangle plot and didn't like being shunted to the background for so much of Season Three. Ah well, who knows … I doubt we'll ever find out, it doesn't seem to be a case of real enmity where all will be revealed down the line, just a time to move on perhaps.

And of course, there's no reason to believe, yet, that Sackhoff is no longer on BSG. I seriously doubt that Starbuck is still "alive" … if we get one of those "she pulled the ejector seat just before her vehicle exploded" things, the show will no longer be worth watching. But there are many possibilities that involve keeping Sackhoff around, the most obvious being that Kara Thrace is one of the five remaining "final" Cylons (I admit I thought the episode would end with Kara pulling herself out of the goo, reborn). The insistence that she has a destiny seems to remain open … I don't think her destiny has yet been fulfilled … and they've spent too much energy on that plot to just let it blow up in space, haven't they? Suffice to say that I'm not convinced we've seen the last of Katee Sackhoff on Battlestar Galactica, although I think it's true, as some have suggested, that "Starbuck" had to die in order for "Kara" to live, that the burden of being Starbuck is what crushed the actual person Kara Thrace.

And maybe that's why I wasn't as emotionally torn up by last night's episode as I might have expected: I don't really think she's gone. Yeah yeah, denial isn't just a river and all that, but if they've really done it, then, like it or not, I gotta give them another "well, shit." I made veiled reference in an earlier post to the death of Tara on Buffy. Tara was a much more minor character on Buffy than Starbuck was on BSG. But Joss Whedon made certain that we cared about Tara, that we understood what she brought to the Scoobies and to the audience (I understand that not everyone liked her character, so YMMV, but for me, Tara was in many ways the most accessible of the group, even more so than Xander, and while her love affair with Willow was a highlight, Tara's willingness to risk that love to stand up for herself was also well taken). Tara's death was even more random and meaningless than Starbuck's … Starbuck in essence commits suicide, while Tara falls victim to a stray bullet intended for someone else. But the truth is, I still haven't gotten over the death of Tara, a minor fictional character who died in a television episode almost five years ago in a series which has been off the air since 2003. My guess is, that kind of response is what Ron Moore wanted to elicit in last night's BSG episode, but he didn't pull it off. Starbuck deserved more than to have her death be just another WHAM, as if she was merely a glorified Kat instead of the most vibrant character on the show.

Finally, a word about Katee Sackhoff. In one of my first blog posts about Battlestar Galactica, I wrote:

Katee Sackhoff … turns in a star-making performance as Starbuck, the greatest fighter pilot in the world. Sackhoff is a joy to watch, capable of bravado backed up with actions, but also as susceptible as any of us to emotional upheaval. I suppose she won't really become a star ... she's a secondary character on a science-fiction television series on basic cable, and while Sackhoff herself is terrific, her part as written is already starting to annoy some viewers who think Starbuck is a bit too tiring in her overwhelming competence.

Well, her competence never left her, we learned that her emotional upheavals were deep-rooted, we came to understand that Starbuck was easily the most frakked-up character on a show full of disturbed personalities, and now her part has been written right off the show. And Katee Sackhoff is still not a star. I hope she gets another chance to shine, because she was a true constant on this most erratic of shows: she never missed a beat, and she was able to convey complexities in her character in a variety of ways. Starbuck is dead, long live Katee … and maybe Kara, as well.

Comments

[dmalone]

I have to agree that it wasn't a departure worthy of her character. That leads me to believe that she is not off the show for good. That being said, I have read that she is definitely done for season three. If so, that leaves the potential for appearances in future seasons wide open. We can at least hope.

I can't say I'm rooting for her being a cylon, but I can't envision Starbuck reappearing in the show without that plotline carrying out. If not, I don't know if I could handle her appearing to characters as a one from another 'dimension' for the duration of the series -- a la the dad in Six Feet Under. I have heard rumors that one main character will be revealed to be a toaster by season's end. Perhaps this is leading up to that twist? Or maybe the writers/creators just go lazy and wrote a poor, anti-climatic, and unappealing departure for a great character? It wouldn't be the first time in the history of teevee.

[Steven]

Well, one way she could come back without doing it Six Feet Under style but in the same vein while fitting into the series, she could be one of those "in your brain" people ... like Six for Baltar, Baltar for Six, and perhaps based on what he said last night, Leoben for Starbuck. I have no idea which brain she would occupy.