The Classic Battlestar Galactica Had Its Moments

I'm working on a birthday art project for my partner, and needed some background noise, so I popped in the classic Battlestar Galactica TV series set I bought in a frenzy of nostalgia.  I was somehow pressured to puchase it by a really detailed and well-thought out Amazon review, which made it sound like even the *worst* episodes had some sort of reedeming value.  Well, I suppose they do, but I am too busy to ever get to it.  I got the set, like, months or maybe a year ago, and have seen 1.5 episodes (why 1.5?  It's one of those rare "starts with a 3-part episode" pilots, so you bog down right at the beginning) of the total 24 there are.  I'm behind, I'm saying.

I watched the pilot recently, with a younger friend who LOVES the new Battlestar Galactica series (don't we all); I thought she should see the original, although I explained that it wasn't, you know...actually...all that good.  "It's the idea," I said.  But she was just freaked by Starbuck being a man and Tom Zarek being Apollo and a good guy.  Really, who can blame her?  If you started off with the new Starbuck, you will NOT know what to make of the old one.

Me, personally, Starbuck was IT.  Starbuck, as played by Dirk Benedict, was THE reason to watch the show.  I remembered him as being very funny.  And I was atttracted to him; I was not even close to being a tween, but you know, it was one of those pre-tween crushes.  I liked him, but the attraction was also because I think I wanted to BE him.  Maybe it was weirdly narcissistic or something because I thought I could be that cool, but when I was a girl, I really liked Starbuck.

And now that I see the show again, as an adult for one thing, and as a person who has not just seen but loved the new BSG (I mean, I made a 78-card divination set from the characters, I bought authentic props, I went to conventions to see these actors.  It really resonated, I'm saying), I realize...what I secretly feared...is that, it's not very good.  Sometimes, it's quite bad.  Cheesy.  Oh Lord, is it cheesy sometimes. 

But sometimes it's OK.  It's slighly edgy somehow.  It has some production - kind of spotty and weird production, but it's there.  It's oddly, inexplicably compelling.  Take Starbuck - he's just as I remember him.  The daredevil pilot.  It's only in the second episode when he gets captured (so daring! so exciting!) by the cylons.  He's defiant, sarcastic, irreverent, and totally self-possessed.  I just watched the first scene in which he goes before Baltar (ah! The NEW Baltar - now there's one of my favorite characters of probably all time, maybe), and it is actually somewhat funny.

The room is absolutely bare except for Baltar's weirdly high throne - this is classic stuff, if you saw it, you know what I am describing - and when Starbuck is ushered in, he says, "I like the way you haven't gone overboard on furniture."  And then he strikes his match on the cylon behind him!  I was child, and this behavior blew me away!  He was so - so - strong, so cocky.  I didn't even know there was cocky until I saw him (well, him and Han Solo, same thing, really) and as soon as a I saw it, I wanted to BE it.  It looked like a really fun way to be - drinking, smoking, having sex; I didn't fully comprehend that last one, but I instinctively felt there was *something* powerful going on that I couldn't quite put my finger on and of course, I knew he liked the ladies.  A hotshot flyer.  Semi-famous in the fleet.  Certain type of notoriety, attention.  Power.  A colonial warrior was a BIG deal, and I wanted to be one and/or have one.

Of course, I was sort of too young to realize that this was - at that time, and still a little bit now - an exclusively *male* thing.  Women are not cocky.  When they get cocky, it comes of as or is perceived as being bitchy, and bitchy is NOT the same thing as cocky.  I didn't want to be bitchy, I wanted to be cocky.  And as I got older, I learned, this was simply not possible.  There is no Indianetta Jones.  There is no Jane Solo.  There is no female Starbuck.

Wait!  Holy shit, there IS a female Starbuck!  Kara (so close to my name) Thrace, also known as Starbuck - incredibly so.  Who could have thought she would pull it off?  That any mere female could?  I was so skeptical when I heard about the change.  I have geek friends, they prepped me.  I was resistant.  But she was perfect.  She was perfect in her first scene ("Whatdya hear, Starbuck?" "Nothing but the rain." It's beautiful) and got even better.  It was amazing.  And I met her - talked to her.  Just a little slip of a girl.  Shy.  Fine featured.  You know how actresses are different off screen?  It was extreme.  The mind boggled.  And watching the original series, I am amazed at how they (ok, Ron Moore) was able to basically preserve not just Starbuck's personality - wise-cracking hotshot - but also the Starbuck/Apollo love.  It's platonic in one series and romantic / sexual in the other, but basically is a very similiar relationship. 

So sure, we have cocky girls now, but this was then.  There was no Starbuck for me to emulate.  I did the best I could.  I was never very girly, but I was also not too tomboy-y.  I hung out with the guys - I still do, mostly - and yet I was still someone one of them could also be dating.  From my ex-husband's band (less than member, more than groupie; and always the only girl) to meetings at work or classes or workshops, it's often me and the guys.  In my youth group at church, even.  Everywhere.  Still, it was tough to be that tough.  I had to tone down my cocky to merely clever.  Cutting but lightly so.  Dorothy Parker was as harsh as one could get.  (Someone in my writing group once said my writing reminded me of hers, which I took as an unqualified rave).  Dorothy.  Hardly Starbuck, and certainly nowhere near, say, Wolverine.  There are some things a women just cannot be.

It was great to watch Starbuck's vintage cockiness.  It held up.  I'm sure others would disagree, and I wouldn't try and dissuade them.  You can make a case that almost nothing beyond the concept from the original show was ANY good, but I liked Starbuck then, and I still like him.  I started imagining myself in all sorts of situations - scrapes - like he got in.  Captured by cylons, the opportunity to be cocky AND brave all at once.  I imagined one day when I grew up, I would be a fighter pilot and get captured by the enemy, and be so fucking cool about it.  Instead, I've worked for an organic grocery store for over a decade.  Oh well - you fight your dragons where you find them, and I find my places to be defiant. 

Still, I never quite got to the life I was imaging, in which I was partially with some guy like Starbuck, and partially was a guy like Starbuck.  That was not to be, and now I dismiss it as just a childhood fantasy, a flight of fancy, something that never happened because it wasn't meant to be.  In fact, I could have, you know, joined the military, and I'm sure I would have advanced.  I'm competent.  I move up wherever I am.  I'm sure I'd be a lieutenant, a commander, eventually a captain.  I just recently started to have direct reports at work, so you know - there's hope. 

But I'm afraid cocky will never be for me.  Still, the old Starbuck did it pretty good.  For a bad show, it certainly had some good moments.  I guess you could say that about just about anything.