Starbuck strikes back: the gender politics of "Battlestar Galactica"

Dirk Benedict, who played Starbuck on the original "Battlestar Galactica" series, is not at all happy with the changes the creators of the reimagined version have wrought. He's been complaining about the newer series for years, but, now, with the show's final season underway on the Sci-Fi Network, he has re-aired his grievances at Big Hollywood, a new site for Hollywood conservatives.

What does the original Starbuck balk at? First, the addition of moral ambiguity into the tale of humans on the run from a race of hyper-advanced robots. It's not always clear on the show that humanity entirely deserves to survive; in this, Benedict detects the moral equivalence of quisling lefties. Then there are the robots who look like humans and, worse, sleep with them -- a scenario Benedict says should be left to porn films. But most of all Benedict is unhappy that his beloved cigar-chomping, authority-flouting, flirtatious Starbuck was tranformed into a cigar-chomping, authority-flouting, sexually active (it's cable this time) woman. For, as Benedict, who also played a character nicknamed "Faceman" on "The A-Team," puts it:

Women are from Venus. Men are from Mars. Hamlet does not scan as Hamletta. Nor does Hans Solo as Hans Sally. Faceman is not the same as Facewoman. Nor does a Stardoe a Starbuck make. Men hand out cigars. Women "hand out" babies. And thus the world for thousands of years has gone 'round.

Science fiction brings to life the barely imaginable, but there's a tacit agreement with viewers (or readers) that it will obey basic rules of plausibility. For Benedict, a tough female fighter pilot whose first priority isn't "handing out" babies breaks the artistic covenant, and sci-fi becomes dreamland.

Via a typo-cursed Matthew Yglesias