Letters to the Editor
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It's About Time
Galactica's third season has been pretty uneven compared to the first two. The occupation of (and escape from) New Caprica worked better than I'd anticipated, and restored my opinion of the show after a string of somewhat mediocre episodes leading to the second season finale. But most of the episodes since have been far below their earlier standard - even when the overall concepts have been strong, the way they're handled disappoints.
That having been said, it's about time they killed off another major character. They've been hinting as early as the middle of last year that the pilots' days are all numbered - it's dangerous work, and the casualty (and burnout) rate's really high. Apollo and Starbuck probably only made it this far because they were each off of flight duty for well over a year.
To kill off one of the main (flawed) heros in the story (via suicide no less) with plot development and backstory which takes place over a single episode - that's just bad writing.
Except it didn't take place over a single episode. We learned during the first couple of episodes of the second season that Starbuck had been badly abused as a child - each of her fingers had been broken. Now we've learned how that happened. We've also known for several episodes that the pattern we saw painted on Starbuck's apartment wall during the start of the second season was mirrored in the temple left behind by the 13th tribe on a distant world. So clearly Starbuck knew there was something unusual about her - as Leoben had insisted as early as the 1st season.
During the second season episode "Scar" they made it pretty clear that the pilots heads were being scrambled by constant combat duty, and that all of them were living on borrowed time. Since then Starbuck had been kidnapped and held for months by a sexually obsessed Cylon, the same crazy Leoben. It's hardly surprising she finally flipped - the only surprise is that it took her so long to kill herself (or somebody else).
As for whether she'll be back, who knows. It would be ballsy for the show to leave her dead, though. There are a lot of other interesting characters in this fleet - like Doc Cottle, or Roslin's assistant Tory - I'd like to see a lot more of. Personally, I think that boring romantic quadrangle Starbuck, Apollo, Dualla and Anders were locked in earlier this season is proof positive they'd run out of things for Starbuck to do. With someone as frakked up as she was, it was obvious from the miniseries her time was gonna come sooner or later. It probably should have come sooner, but the way she finally went out made perfect sense. Here's hoping they handle the fallout on the survivors as well.
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pedantry galore
From http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/only :
3 : FEW
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KStone,
I'd say Angel and Cordelia were central characters (granted, sent off to their own series rather than killed). Having these two exit seriously impacted the central dynamic of the show. And I'd argue that something similar happened with the deaths of Jenny Calender and Tara.
But I agree with you to the extent that the core trio of friends, Buffy, Xander, and Willow, were there from start to finish, and having removed any of them permanently would have been a whole different ballgame. One the series might never have recovered from.
But, even if we agree about this, if I remember correctly, Havrilesky did applaud Buffy specifically in terms of killing of major characters. So whether we think the show quite did this or not, she did, and praised the show for it.
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KStone
Get a fucking life.
Unless you call 5 pointless comments in less than a day a fucking life. Jeez, it would be bearable if at least you had something to say.
It's just a shitty column about shitty TV, give it a rest.
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So...
Starbuck is a great character because they took a cliched male character and dropped it in a womans's body? That's not good writing that's a lazy gimmick.
And going through the tarbuck is dead dance is just the latest jump the shark moment of this show.
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Ugh!
The big mistake this season was the Lee-loves-Kara backstory and its idiotic soap-opera fallout. I like a good love story, but Starbuck (Kara, the wild thing) and Apollo (Lee, the straight arrow) were established as best friends, largely through her prior love relationship with his brother who had died and her surrogate-daughter relationship with his father. Messing with that by introducing romantic love was a Very Bad Idea. The writers wasted a lot of time and energy trying to wriggle out of its consequences, and it damaged the story in some fundamental way.
Kara's death was unsatisfying largely because the last step in the restoration of the relationship between Lee and Kara to normal (Starbuck articulates its nature quite clearly) occurs right before she dies. The writers finally get past the mess they made, and then she's gone. Ugh!
I completely disagree with Heather's assessment of Baltar. He has become more interesting, not less. Same with Caprica Six. Those characters were lame from the start, and only this season have begun to come into their own.
BTW, Moore doesn't actually say the model ship was an antique. He says it was "museum-quality," which is different. There seems to have been a you-break-it-you-buy-it clause in the rental agreement, which the insurance paid.
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Another WASPy name from the 80's you forgot to mention
Heather (Ha!)
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Oh shut up david sugarman
What an idiotic letter. I see you're living up to your reputation. It rather stupid to come into a thread about TV criticism to pissingly complain about someone talking about a TV show and HH's current take on it. If you don't want to take about the show or HH's comments about it, then STFU and move on.
Speaking of which, shouldn't you be somewhere else attempting to harrass LeCastor into embarcing her Jewishness to your satisfaction or complaining about Islam or boring us with trite tales about your family life? Make sure the door hits you on the way out....