By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Battlestar Galactica is a fantastic series that helped revitalize sci-fi. The first two seasons are filled with great character moments and a tense cat-and-mouse chase between the Cylons and the Colonial Fleet. By Season 3, some believe the show started to go off the rails.
As a fan, I grew frustrated with the increasing frequency of moments that ruined years of character development, and that was before the reveal of the Final Five. But as it turns out, showrunner Ronald D. Moore purposely designed the fate of one character, Starbuck, to be confusing and cause fans to fight about it forever.
That isn’t speculation; in an interview with SyFy back after the finale aired, Moore explained, “I felt, as I went into the finale, that the more I defined exactly what she was, the less interesting she became. And so I just made a choice to go out on a more ambiguous note and to let people argue about it perpetually.”
Divine Guidance
The breakout character of the Battlestar Galactica revival, Ronald D. Moore, reimagined Starbuck as a woman, Kara Thrace, casting Katee Sackhoff as the hotshot pilot played by Dirk Benedict in the original series. Though the writers were praised for creating a strong, multi-dimensional character, some of that goodwill went out the window in Season 3’s “Maelstrom,” when Starbuck appeared to die in her Viper as it imploded in the atmosphere of a distant planet. She wasn’t gone long, reappearing without explanation in the season finale, “Crossroads, Part II,” and offering to guide the Colonial Fleet to Earth.
If it seemed like a sudden change from Viper pilot to a Moses-figure offering to lead the colonists out of exile, that’s because it was, and again, Moore explains that “She is what you want to think of her. It was left deliberately nebulous and vague.”
After she died in front of Apollo, Starbuck looked the same, and Katee Sackhoff was still playing her, but as Moore intended, fans were still arguing about whether the character was even human. The show’s creator did weigh in with his own controversial take: “And I think she was a representative of an entity that didn’t like to be called God, but everybody else talked about it in godlike terms. If you want to call her an angel, you could say that.”
There’s evidence of a mystical force guiding her, even years before the start of Battlestar Galactica, represented by the Eye of Jupiter symbol that appears throughout her life, from childhood drawings to strange dreams right before her death. The symbol had appeared earlier in the season on the walls of the Temple of the Five and within the supernova that guided the fleet to their next destination. More directly, Starbuck’s visions before her death of her mother, her apartment, and what appears to be Leoben (Number Two), but turns out to be a spiritual guide.
The Harbinger Of Death
Hanging over Starbuck’s post-resurrection appearance is the prophecy of the First-War Cylon: “Kara Thrace will lead the human race to its end. She is the herald of the Apocalypse, the harbinger of death. They must not follow her.”
How this plays out during the final season of Battlestar Galactica is a little counterintuitive, as she did lead the human race to its end by taking them to Earth. To the humans, she was a guide to the promised land, but it was to the Cylons that she became Death, destroyer of worlds.
While all of this is entirely up to speculation, and there’s evidence to support nearly any reading of the word “harbinger,” I believe that her destruction of the Cylon Ressurection ship and ending their cycle of reincarnation brought about the Apocalypse. There’s also the argument that her choices led others to their deaths or, as explained in one of Battlestar Galactica’s deleted scenes included as a DVD extra, Starbuck explains to Apollo that discovering the ruined Earth made that part of the prophecy come true.
As Ronald D. Moore intended, there’s evidence for every reading into Starbuck’s nature after she died, from fans thinking she was a Cylon to others that believe she was an angel and even a few that go further and believe she was God. By “going out on an ambiguous note,” it’s as likely she has ties to the founding of Kobol as she does to The Five, but despite Moore’s goal of leaving it truly open-ended, that didn’t stop Sackhoff from chiming in on her interpretation.
No Wrong Answers
Buried in the comments to a photo Katee Sackhoff posted of her relaxing in the sun was her response to a fan shooting his shot and asking if Starbuck was a spirit guide. Sackhoff actually responded, saying, “She was a spirit brought to guide humanity to earth and salvation.”
You can see why, over a decade after Battlestar Galactica went off the air, fans are still arguing over Starbuck. Moore and Sackhoff have two different answers, and based on the evidence presented within the series itself, neither one is wrong.
My belief is that she was an angel sent to lead humanity out of exile in a mirror of the story of Moses, but that’s also because I don’t think the Cylon evidence is particularly solid. The visions of the Eye of Jupiter, coupled with the prophecy, seem to point to a divine, spiritual force nudging humanity along a specific path. The theory that Number 7 was her father, and she was thus a Cylon, hinges on too many other factors, some of which are explained in the show, particularly that Cylon mating can’t produce offspring.
But that’s just my opinion, and thankfully Ronald D. Moore realized that, unlike what’s been happening with Star Wars, not everything needs a nice and tidy explanation. When you go back and re-watch Battlestar Galactica on Amazon Prime, see what evidence you can find to support Team Angel, Team Cylon, or the less popular but still valid Team She Was A Ghost.
