Where no TV show has gone before
From Salon.com
Where no TV show has gone before
With its hot, androgynous heroine leading the remnants of humanity against evil, God-fearing robots, "Battlestar Galactica" is boldly re-creating sci-fi TV.
By Laura Miller
July 9, 2005
It took a gay poet to persuade me to check out the new version of "Battlestar Galactica" on the SciFi Channel. The original series is nothing but a dim, cheesy memory, a haze of well-scrubbed flyboys under the beaming paternal guidance of Lorne Greene. (Surely the one foolproof way to make "Bonanza" even more boring was to put it in outer space?) But if my friend Charles -- who I'm pretty sure never sketched rocket ships in the margins of his homework as a kid -- thought the new "Battlestar Galactica" was worth a little TiVo space, I was willing to give it a shot. Two episodes and I was hooked; the second season, which begins on Friday, July 15, should be one of the rare bright spots in the summer TV schedule.
The SciFi Channel emits space operas faster than Tom Cruise gets engaged. Some of these series use the "rag-tag band of misfits" premise so beloved of American pop culture; others more or less mimic "Star Trek" by sending off a team of earnest multicultural middlemen from some indistinctly virtuous intergalactic federation on weekly missions that amount to a string of pat civics lessons. All feature stock figures, including but not limited to, the wisecracking maverick who always comes through in the end, the barely pacified (and usually quite hairy) noble savage, the goddess/nature-worshipping telepath, the pseudohuman troubled by the rumblings of genuine emotion, the tech guy, and of course freakish aliens, who, however bizarre their reproductive processes and skin textures, will, if female, be endowed with sizable breasts and skin-tight costumes.
These shows have ranged from the passable ("Farscape") to the appalling ("Lexx," a sort of R-rated "H.R. Pufnstuf"), and without a doubt each of them has its own cadre of fire-breathing hardcore fans, just as the hokey original "Battlestar Galactica" does. For someone never that thrilled by original "Star Trek" (or any of its permutations), they hold little charm. So what put the new "Battlestar Galactica" at the top of my Season Pass queue? Let me count the ways.
It began with Starbuck, the best pilot among the marines on the battlestar, which is the last remaining warship belonging to the remnants of the human race. In the series' back story, humanity has been at war with the cylons, robots that have rebelled against their makers. The cylons went into hiding, then returned with a devastating sneak attack facilitated by their recently developed ability to simulate the appearance of human beings. Only 50,000 people have survived from 12 planetary colonies, and most of them are on an assortment of civilian ships, now on the run from the cylons, with only Galactica to protect them. The battlestar's fighter pilots are crucial to the future of the species.
Starbuck is blond, cocky, insubordinate, a cigar-chomping, card-playing showoff; another stock figure, really, with roots as far back as Shakespeare's Hotspur -- if not for a clever twist. In the original series, Starbuck was played by Dirk Benedict; in the new version, it's Katee Sackhoff, a gender switch that knocks the character well out of type. Starbuck's no kick-boxing babe in stiletto heels, either. Like all the other pilots -- in fact, like all the soldiers aboard Galactica -- she wears a uniform, a flight suit over a tank top-T-shirt combo, a distinctive Galactica military outfit that makes everyone who wears it look buff; Starbuck is a tomboy.
She's also the only TV character who's ever sent me back to a fascinating book, "Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety," by Harvard professor and Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber, in search of the key to her appeal. Technically, Starbuck isn't a cross-dresser, or even a tomboy, because the society she lives in doesn't seem to subscribe to our own gender roles. Civilian women sometimes wear skirts and pumps, it's true, but the military appears to be seamlessly integrated. No one ever accuses Starbuck of being insufficiently feminine, although her friend and immediate superior, Capt. Lee "Apollo" Adama, has complained that she doesn't bathe often enough.
Still, Starbuck (whose real name is Kara Thrace; Starbuck and Apollo are pilot call names), is a tomboy by the standards of our world, and we all know what happens to a tomboy in pop culture. She tries to be one of the guys while harboring a secret, unrequited crush on her best guy friend, but the guy doesn't even see her as a girl until she has the sense to put on a dress, lipstick and a suitably demure manner at the big dance, whereupon he is wowed. Well, you can scratch that scenario. Late in the first season, Starbuck did put on a dress for a party, and Apollo was duly wowed, but he was already in love with her before that, and she wound up in bed with another man anyway, and then that guy fell for her, too. This is one tomboy who never has trouble getting laid.
Click on the link to read the entire article (3 pages)
Where no TV show has gone before
With its hot, androgynous heroine leading the remnants of humanity against evil, God-fearing robots, "Battlestar Galactica" is boldly re-creating sci-fi TV.
By Laura Miller
July 9, 2005
It took a gay poet to persuade me to check out the new version of "Battlestar Galactica" on the SciFi Channel. The original series is nothing but a dim, cheesy memory, a haze of well-scrubbed flyboys under the beaming paternal guidance of Lorne Greene. (Surely the one foolproof way to make "Bonanza" even more boring was to put it in outer space?) But if my friend Charles -- who I'm pretty sure never sketched rocket ships in the margins of his homework as a kid -- thought the new "Battlestar Galactica" was worth a little TiVo space, I was willing to give it a shot. Two episodes and I was hooked; the second season, which begins on Friday, July 15, should be one of the rare bright spots in the summer TV schedule.
The SciFi Channel emits space operas faster than Tom Cruise gets engaged. Some of these series use the "rag-tag band of misfits" premise so beloved of American pop culture; others more or less mimic "Star Trek" by sending off a team of earnest multicultural middlemen from some indistinctly virtuous intergalactic federation on weekly missions that amount to a string of pat civics lessons. All feature stock figures, including but not limited to, the wisecracking maverick who always comes through in the end, the barely pacified (and usually quite hairy) noble savage, the goddess/nature-worshipping telepath, the pseudohuman troubled by the rumblings of genuine emotion, the tech guy, and of course freakish aliens, who, however bizarre their reproductive processes and skin textures, will, if female, be endowed with sizable breasts and skin-tight costumes.
These shows have ranged from the passable ("Farscape") to the appalling ("Lexx," a sort of R-rated "H.R. Pufnstuf"), and without a doubt each of them has its own cadre of fire-breathing hardcore fans, just as the hokey original "Battlestar Galactica" does. For someone never that thrilled by original "Star Trek" (or any of its permutations), they hold little charm. So what put the new "Battlestar Galactica" at the top of my Season Pass queue? Let me count the ways.
It began with Starbuck, the best pilot among the marines on the battlestar, which is the last remaining warship belonging to the remnants of the human race. In the series' back story, humanity has been at war with the cylons, robots that have rebelled against their makers. The cylons went into hiding, then returned with a devastating sneak attack facilitated by their recently developed ability to simulate the appearance of human beings. Only 50,000 people have survived from 12 planetary colonies, and most of them are on an assortment of civilian ships, now on the run from the cylons, with only Galactica to protect them. The battlestar's fighter pilots are crucial to the future of the species.
Starbuck is blond, cocky, insubordinate, a cigar-chomping, card-playing showoff; another stock figure, really, with roots as far back as Shakespeare's Hotspur -- if not for a clever twist. In the original series, Starbuck was played by Dirk Benedict; in the new version, it's Katee Sackhoff, a gender switch that knocks the character well out of type. Starbuck's no kick-boxing babe in stiletto heels, either. Like all the other pilots -- in fact, like all the soldiers aboard Galactica -- she wears a uniform, a flight suit over a tank top-T-shirt combo, a distinctive Galactica military outfit that makes everyone who wears it look buff; Starbuck is a tomboy.
She's also the only TV character who's ever sent me back to a fascinating book, "Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety," by Harvard professor and Shakespeare scholar Marjorie Garber, in search of the key to her appeal. Technically, Starbuck isn't a cross-dresser, or even a tomboy, because the society she lives in doesn't seem to subscribe to our own gender roles. Civilian women sometimes wear skirts and pumps, it's true, but the military appears to be seamlessly integrated. No one ever accuses Starbuck of being insufficiently feminine, although her friend and immediate superior, Capt. Lee "Apollo" Adama, has complained that she doesn't bathe often enough.
Still, Starbuck (whose real name is Kara Thrace; Starbuck and Apollo are pilot call names), is a tomboy by the standards of our world, and we all know what happens to a tomboy in pop culture. She tries to be one of the guys while harboring a secret, unrequited crush on her best guy friend, but the guy doesn't even see her as a girl until she has the sense to put on a dress, lipstick and a suitably demure manner at the big dance, whereupon he is wowed. Well, you can scratch that scenario. Late in the first season, Starbuck did put on a dress for a party, and Apollo was duly wowed, but he was already in love with her before that, and she wound up in bed with another man anyway, and then that guy fell for her, too. This is one tomboy who never has trouble getting laid.
Click on the link to read the entire article (3 pages)
