Lt. Starbuck … Lost In Castration.

Big Hollywood ^ | January 19, 2009 | Dirk Benedict

[EveningStar]

Once upon a time, in what used to be a far away land called Hollywood (but is now a state of mind and everywhere), a young actor was handed a script and asked to bring to life a character called Starbuck. I am that actor. The script was called “Battlestar Galactica.”

Fortunately, I was young, my imagination fertile and adrenal glands strong, because bringing Starbuck to life was over the dead imaginations of a lot of Network Executives...

Witness the “re-imagined” “Battlestar Galactica,” bleak, miserable, despairing, angry and confused. Which is to say, it reflects in microcosm the complete change in the politics and morality of today’s world, as opposed to the world of yesterday. The world of Lorne Greene (Adama), Fred Astaire (Starbuck’s Poppa) and Dirk Benedict (Starbuck). I would guess Lorne is glad he’s in that Big Bonanza in the sky and well out of it. Starbuck, alas, has not been so lucky. He’s not been left to pass quietly into that trivial world of cancelled TV characters...

[Philo-Junius]

Furthermore, a race that can no longer distinguish between itself and an advanced line of sophisticated machines is teetering on the brink of suicide anyway.

This is the biggest problem with the series, although its only accessible to those familiar with some background in AI. Merely passing the Turing test does not endow a machine with human rights.

[wally_bert]

I loved the Richard Hatch mini movie/trailer and would have rather seen that used.

[wally_bert]

B5's writing struck me as one of the most fair and even handed treatments of religion and morality too.

[longtermmemmory]

notice how stargate atlantis did not rescue itself until they marginalized then replaced the “odd” woman in charge.

I tuned in by accident one day and realized the pencil pusher was in charge?! I kept watching because he is a generally good actor with no known negative political BS.

[longtermmemmory]

too true, you end up NOT carring.

I thought the series had just died a mercy killing when the writer’s strike killed production.

It has pro union ovetures, intentional digs at the USA, and a host of pro left wing nonsense.

I hope that they will re-envision the reenvisioning in order to get to a decent story without the orwelian pc nonsense.

[Tanniker Smith]

Damn! Great read and spot on!

This part stuck out:

“Re-imagining”, they call it. “Un-imagining” is more accurate. To take what once was and twist it into what never was intended. So that a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family is un-imagined and regurgitated as a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction. To better reflect the times of ambiguous morality in which we live, one would assume. A show in which the aliens (Cylons) are justified in their desire to destroy human civilization, one would assume. Indeed, let us not say who the good guys are and who the bad are. That is being “judgmental,” taking sides, and that kind of (simplistic) thinking went out with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and Kathryn Hepburn and John Wayne and, well, the original “Battlestar Galactica.”

At this point, I wanted John Hodiak to come out and call a Nazi a Nazi.

[Tanniker Smith]

My one problem with Dirk is why he didn't appear in Richard Hatch's Battlestar Galactica trailer that he was shopping around. Hatch did leave it open for Starbuck to appear in it at some point.

A pity that that new Battlestar Galactica will never be made now.

[MoreGovLess]

I guess you’d prefer the following type of story: One dimensional automatons unfailingly follow leaders’ orders for the glory of their people...

Sounds like North Korean propaganda film (not to mention boring as heck!).
Maybe you can get the part of Kim Jong Il (if you make your hair look *really* bad)

[MoreGovLess]

B5 is pretty much the gold standard for SciFi TV, IMO...

[fr_freak]

What an intelligent comment. Thanks for contributing nothing to the conversation.

Don't get too bent out of shape. It's just a show. But let me clarify: it appears that whether one will like the show or not depends on one's worldview. If a person feels that the universe is truly full of moral greyness, that there is no true right or wrong, and that humans are fundamentally weak, then such a person will probably like this show. This show portrays humanity in exactly that way.

I liked this show for the first season or so, when it was a kickass science fiction story about the remnants of the human race trying to survive at all costs, using the battlestars basically as US Navy aircraft carriers in space. Back then, we had hope. We had triumph. We had comraderie. We had people rising above a bad situation and showing what they're made of. Enter Season 2 or so, when virtually every character became a whiny little punk, when humans were increasingly portrayed as the bad guys, and, best of all, when multiple human characters began to question whether the humans had any right to fight for their own survival.

Now, once the show started going in that direction, I pretty much stopped watching because I KNOW that it is complete BS. I know that people, especially professional military, would not behave in this manner en masse. However, there are plenty of people in this world who see humanity as the show portrays: nothing but a bunch of self-absorbed, selfish, disloyal, drunks. Only people with that bleak and incorrect view of humanity could stand to watch the show now, because otherwise it would have no more a real feel to it than an old episode of "Beverly Hills 90210". Apparently, your worldview is such that it allows you to identify with the show and therefore enjoy it. The show is for people like you.

[fr_freak]

The analogy to Truman is perfect. He wasn’t contemplating genocide, merely the killing of about 1/4 million people, yet he stopped to consider. And yet here you are saying genocide shouldn’t even be stopped to consider about.

It really isn’t a hippie show. You like to call it that, but you’re wrong.

Really? The analogy to Truman is perfect? At what point during World War II were Americans whittled down to 40,000 or so people with the certainty of extinction unless they nuked Japan? Never, you say? Well then, I guess the analogy to Truman isn't so great after all. Things are a bit different when you're facing extinction. That was the whole point.

You do bring up a good point about the show, though. Originally, it was almost the anti-hippie show. It was basically the US Navy in space, fighting for humanity's very survival against evil machines. That's why I liked the first season. It was the navel-gazing hippie writers for the show that decided that such a morally unambiguous premise was intolerable, and so started writing in ridiculous things like fighter pilots questioning whether they had the right to kill Cylons. I actually liked the idea of humanoid Cylons infiltrating the humans, but even that turned seriously ridiculous once humans started acting as if the humanoid Cylons were just people too. To illustrate the silliness of this premise, you must remember that the first time the audience ever discovered that there were humanoid Cylons aboard Galactica was when Boomer, in direct contrast to her own feelings, shot the Captain point blank in order to fulfill some hidden programming. Now, given that we know that even the human-appearing Cylons can have hidden programming that they can't control, why would any reasonable person ever trust one? They wouldn't, that's why, unless they were complete mushy-headed suckers. And that's what hippies are, including those who write for the show. It is more important to them to project their utopian ideals upon their audience than to have their characters do even the most basically reasonable thing.

I consider Hollywood's treatment of the new Battlestar Galactica to be the same as their worldview when it comes to our war against Islamic jihad: we can't criticize them or call them evil, even though we know they want to kill all of us and they infiltrate our societies in order to do so. Hippies live in a constant state of complete delusion as to the nature of reality, and the nature of man, and that is what shows most in this show.

[Citizen Blade]

But let me clarify: it appears that whether one will like the show or not depends on one's worldview. If a person feels that the universe is truly full of moral greyness, that there is no true right or wrong, and that humans are fundamentally weak, then such a person will probably like this show. This show portrays humanity in exactly that way.

Perhaps. But that does not mean that everyone who watched BSG shares that worldview. That's where your argument breaks down.

Now, once the show started going in that direction, I pretty much stopped watching because I KNOW that it is complete BS. I know that people, especially professional military, would not behave in this manner en masse.

You know how people would react in a situation where 99% of humanity was wiped out and the rest are on the run?

Apparently, your worldview is such that it allows you to identify with the show and therefore enjoy it.

Whatever.

[FlipWilson]

Quote: “Maybe you can get the part of Kim Jong Il (if you make your hair look *really* bad)”

I did love him in Team America, “Fruck you Hrans Brix.

[Little Ray]

Neah.
If I understand correctly, they’re going to do a pre-Cylon war series with the Adama vs. some evil capitalist who invents the Cylons.
I’m not even going to try to watch it.

[FlipWilson]

Quote: “I guess you’d prefer the following type of story: One dimensional automatons unfailingly follow leaders’ orders for the glory of their people...”

We are not watching the same show, you were right. Glory? I thought the show was about survival.

[fr_freak]

You know how people would react in a situation where 99% of humanity was wiped out and the rest are on the run?

I couldn't say what any particular person would do or say in such a situation, but I could tell you how populations as a whole would react. All we have to do is look at many of the moments in human history when a population faced a far superior adversary in war, and faced possible cultural extinction. More often than not, those populations rose up and fought hard, just like Churchill's statement when Britain was being bombed back into the stone age by the Germans "This will be our finest hour". That is one of the better parts of the human spirit, and I need only extrapolate that to an even more severe circumstance where the enitre race faced extinction, and I think I can be pretty confident that the net reaction to a threat to species survival would not be "Do we have the right to fight for our survival?"

But that does not mean that everyone who watched BSG shares that worldview. That's where your argument breaks down.

Yes, and I suppose you don't have to be a queer or a fag-hag to watch "Brokeback Mountain" either, but it damn sure helps.

Whatever.

Well, touche'.

[longtermmemmory]

after all the weird sex and BS babble I figure the series is going to end with EVERYONE is really a cylon and they all live in a communist utopia.

(then dirk benedict wakes up and it was all starbuck having a bad dream...ala dallas)

[dilvish]

Should try reading whole paragraphs. Truman stopped to consider dropping the bomb even though it would only kill 1/4 million. You’re saying none of the BSG characters should have thought for a second about killing MILLIONS.

I think you just weren’t paying attention in the first season. Right off the bat they started talking about whether or not humanity deserved to live, and questioning whether the killings they were doing were justified (remember the Olympic Carrier).

The audience knew Boomer was a Cylon at the end of the mini-series, 13 episodes before she shot Adama. If you’ll notice the path to eventually trusting Cylons was built on necessity. Once they found out about Boomer they threw the next Sharon straight in the brig and left her there until they absolutely had to use her to purge the virus from the computer, and then put her right back in the brig until they absolutely had to use her again. It took a long time to trust her, and she was the only one they trusted until they encountered the rebels.

You’re projecting. Most of your complaints aren’t even things that happened in the show. You’ve decided it has a hidden agenda and back fill blatant misinterpretations and selectively forgotten events to make it.

[longtermmemmory]

not projecting,

you are glossing over the left wing preaching.

The union BS on the mining ship, the homosexual BS on that special miniseries.

I think what happened is the “new” series writers realized they had poop for script so they just figure if they flash boobies and sex with high end cgi then they could push the propaganda.

They started out slow and had potential but just fell appart. It was like the writers ran out of “simulants” during their writing meeting at some point and just put in “whatever looks like we can attack americanism with”.

[dilvish]

It wasn’t union BS in the processing ship, the unions weren’t always BS and that processing ship was an example. There was a legitimate problem in the fleet, all jobs were becoming hereditary, and work conditions on that ship were unsafe. Something needed to be done. Notice though that it cut in both directions, there was going to be no fleet crippling strike, they were going to work together to fix the problem. Not really the style of unions.

Notice the only homosexuals we’ve dealt with in the entire series were a cylon and a psycho. I know they tagged the movie with a “gays are people too” message at the end, but really given the characters they decided to make gay that was just to keep GLAD from hounding them.

Once again, nothing but projecting. If you don’t like the show don’t like it. But really not everything you don’t like is leftist. People need to stop BSing themselves.