How Battlestar Galactica Turned a Sci-Fi Plothole into Its Most Depressing Episode
Posted by Jonathan Klotz | Published
I Battlestar Galactica reboot turned a fun, sci-fi crime thriller into a dramatic, dark, and emotional horror series that redefined everything. Keeping the focus small turned the entire review of the colony ship survivors into a dramatic moment, and allowed the writers to understand the people’s need for food and water throughout the episodes.
While “Water” was a disappointing episode at the beginning of the show, the Season 3 episode “The Corridor” began with the need for fresh food and then told a heartbreaking story of everyday heroism, guilt, and great sacrifice.
The Passage is a Slow Motion Emotional Doom Spiral
There is nothing attractive or exciting about using things. It’s the act of moving things from point A to point B, but “Passage” is about the work and planning that goes into maintaining multiple spaceships.
It also placed one of the Battlestar Galactica’s one-time background characters, intended for solo appearances only, Louanne “Kat” Katraine (Luciana Carro, who later appeared in Caprica and Ronald D. Moore Helix), in light. Kat had butted heads with Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) moments before, which is why the hot Viper pilot was horrified to learn that “Kat” was a smuggler back on Caprica, accusing her of stealing the Cylons from Earth.
Kat’s smuggling skills come in handy when a colony ship must navigate a cluster of radioactive stars to find new food. One of the Viper pilots tasked with guiding the fleet in the fleet, Kat ends up losing one, furthering her rampage of guilt. He replaces his radiation badge, completely blackened from exposure to deadly radiation, with Helo’s new one, and in the final jump, he is left to find the missing people’s ship. Victorious, but sickened by lethal doses of radiation, Kat returns to Galactica as a hero.
From the moment Starbuck attacks her for being a smuggler, it’s clear that Kat is on a path to self-destruction. His eagerness to show himself was watched with dread Battlestar Galactica fans don’t know how this story will end even before he changes his radiation badge. Kat’s story comes to a close with a poignant flashback showing her promotion to lead the flight crew, followed by Starbuck hanging her picture on the memorial wall for those lost.
Battlestar Galactica Rewrote the Rules of Sci-Fi
On its own, “The Passage” is an excellent episode Battlestar Galacticaand it all started with confronting a reality of life in space that most sci-fi ignores: food. Some shows suggest how food gets on board, from Star Trek reruns to Star Wars pretending no one ever eats, and in fact, most series don’t want fans to think about the setting’s functionality. That Galactica can devote many episodes to the management of resources and the day-to-day operation of the colony ships is proof that, although it is a little unbalanced behind the back part of the game, it is among the highest class of sci-fi shows in history.
“The Passage” also addressed what some fans might consider a plot hole by revealing how the Cylons got into Caprica in the first place. Kat explained that she didn’t know at the time that Cylons could be like humans. It’s an easy way to explain that people like Kat might accidentally help the Cylons set them up for a devastating attack on the colonies. It’s so simple that there was never a need for the show to deal with the Cylons running around Caprica, but it did, and it was handled in a way that made sense given how the two pilots were butting heads.
Battlestar Galactica it ended up killing a lot of characters when humanity found its way to Earth, and honestly, Kat’s death shouldn’t have been as emotional as it was. “Passage” didn’t focus on any of the main characters, and the result was a nice, contained story that made the world of the colonial ships feel a lot bigger. Life on the run would be harsh, brutal, and short, but for the slow train wreck of watching Kat pay a high price to save the colony ships, and there was hope, well, and a story that few sci-fi franchises would dare to tell.
