Almost 15 years later, this writer is still upset about the narrative choice, which resulted in a half-baked plot about Starbuck’s greater destiny as some kind of Christ figure, leading the last vestiges of humanity to Earth. In the Say So We All snippets, the writers try to explain themselves (she typed, with love)… Sackhoff put forth her idea. At this point, showrunner Ronald D. Moore had already talked to Sackhoff about Starbuck having a larger destiny, and Sackhoff wondered if the mandala triggers a recollection of the mandala in her own past that she now interprets in a completely different way. “I came back to the writers’ room in L.A.,” continues Weddle, “and the story up on the board for the episode that they were going to have Brad and I write. In it, Lee and Kara are orbiting this planet with a lot of cloud cover, and while they’re doing their missions, they talk about their fraught relationship. I said, ‘Well, we kind of have done that over and over. Can’t we try to advance it in some way? And here’s what Katee Sackhoff has to say.’” Of course, in an attempt to keep Starbuck’s imminent return from the dead a secret, the BSG writers didn’t tell the rest of the cast or crew about temporary nature of Sackhoff’s departure. “This was one of the stupidest things that David [Eick] and I did in the entire run of the show,” recounts Moore. “You’re right at the cusp of social media and the internet starting to ferret out spoilers from shows. Various plotlines are getting blown online for the first time. This is becoming a thing that none of us had ever had to deal with before. Our feeling was this was only going to work if the audience thinks we mean it, and the characters mean it. We’ll take her name out of the main credits, we want this to be a shock. Katee knows she’s coming back and we swear her to secrecy, so then, of course, it just becomes a fiasco and Katee is telling everyone she’s leaving the show.” Olmos’ resistance to the apparent cast change led Sackhoff to tell Olmos the truth. He turned around and told the whole cast, but, of course, the audience was kept in the dark, leading to a narrative experience that, while impressive and admirable in its determination to manipulate the viewer, never felt like it was worth it. Battlestar Galactica remains one of my favorite shows of all time and I appreciate the fact that the writers room was so organic in the development of its story. I don’t think a TV show should have to have a plan from the beginning, especially given how many elements of TV production are outside of the writers’ control. That being said, I still think this was a dumb plot that didn’t make sense within the show’s larger mythology that only served to undermine the realism of this world and the integrity of this objectively wonderful TV character. In related news, you better believe I am going to consume every page of this book. So Say We All: The Complete, Uncensored, Unauthorized Oral History of Battlestar Galactica(by the wonderful Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman) is available for purchase starting today. Kayti Burt serves as a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. A long-term lover of all things science fiction and fantasy, she is an unabashed defender of the power of speculative storytelling and a proponent of sentimental TV. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.
