On the off chance you haven’t seen Maelstrom, I warn of major spoilers below.
Writes Heather Havrilesky in Salon
The episode itself was better than most this season, but I still didn’t buy that it should add up to Starbuck basically killing herself. If you’re going to ax a major character, at least stretch it out over a few episodes and convince us that it’s a crucial part of the season’s narrative arc. Squeezing in all of that last-minute camaraderie with Apollo felt forced and rushed, and I didn’t think a few Bad Mommy flashbacks and some mysterious iconic images really did enough to convince us that Starbuck suddenly had a Very Important Destiny in the afterlife.
This captures my basic feelings about Maelstrom and the seeming demise of Kara Thrace. The episode itself was good and Katee Sackhoff put in a fine performance. However, the story didn’t fully pay off–indeed, in many ways it didn’t pay off at all. There was no explanation as to why Starbuck had been drawing the mandala from birth or what her destiny was. Indeed, everything we learned about the significance of the symbol was learned in the Temple of the Five sans any help from Starbuck or her obsession with the pattern. There has been nothing to suggest that the colonials learned anything addition about their quest for Earth from Starbuck and certainly nothing about her death added to that quest.
The appearance of the Leoben who wasn’t Leoben just before her death suggested that something extraordinary (if not supernatural) was gong on–but then again there is the real chance that all of the flashback sequences and the raider were all just Kara cracking up.
Still, if she was supposedly fulfilling destiny, it is wholly unclear as to what it was. And since Ron Moore was insistent that she was doing precisely that (fulfilling her destiny) then one really has to wonder if she isn’t coming back. Of course, Moore was pretty convincing in that same podcast that she was dead and not coming back.
Still, I have to think that Starbuck is either one of the Final Five or is somehow connected to them–otherwise Maelstrom makes no sense and Kara’s destiny was nothing more than to draw a mandala over and over, then go nuts and commit suicide–and that just doesn’t track.
I also agree with Havrilesky about this:
For me, the most upsetting scene of the whole episode was the last one, where Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) is crying and adding Starbuck’s angel to his model ship, and then suddenly he smashes the ship to smithereens. It was such a devastating scene, since Adama loved Starbuck like a daughter and since he’d been working on that ship since the first season.
And if you haven’t heard the podcast, you have to read this:
And as it turns out, according to Ronald D. Moore’s recent podcast, Olmos was improvising, funneling his anger at Sackhoff’s impending departure into the annihilation of the model ship, which was actually an antique worth $100K. The prop department had a heart attack, but the ship was insured. Too bad, really — what better way to inflict revenge on the producers than by landing them with such a hefty bill? You have to love Olmos all the more for that one.
Ouch and indeed.
Technorati tags: Starbuck, Katee Sackhoff, Battlestar Galactica, Ron Moore
I agree. I really hope that wasn’t it, not so much because I don’t want Starbuck to die, but because it was such a meaningless death, dramatically and thematically. As it stands her death was more “Tasha Yar” than “Wash.”
Comment by Eric j — March 13, 2024 @ 7:27 am
And, waddaya know, in the last minutes of the season finale…
I’m getting really impatient with BSG. Resolve some story lines already, dammit! I’m tired of ominous portents that fizzle (what’s the big deal with the hybrid baby?), mysteries that don’t get answered (to whom is Baltar talking, in his mind?), and plotlines that mysteriously stop (is there only one scientist capable of developing a Cylon detector?).
You can resolve some issues, while leaving other loose ends untied. This season started strong, with the Cylon occupation, peaked with the escape, and then went nowhere. (Much like the fleet, it seems.)
Comment by Kingdaddy — March 26, 2024 @ 2:01 pm
I agree that BSG has been bad about presenting mysteries and then never solving them. Heroes, on the other hand, has done a good job of answering questions along the way while asking new ones.
One would hope that the next season (which may be the last, according to reports) of BSG we will have the answers to these nagging issues.
Comment by Steven L. Taylor — March 26, 2024 @ 3:13 pm