When fans of the old-school
Battlestar Galactica got their first peek at the character line-up for the contemporary "re-imagining", there was outrage resonating through the halls of geek-dom. Starbuck a chick? Boomer a chick and a cylon?
As time went by, many
Battlestar Galactica fans, old and new, came to warm up to these concepts. You watch
Battlestar Galactica for a couple of episodes and you realize that Ron Moore has tapped into the most captivating aspects of the original; the eternal struggle of mankind, the dregs of war, government indifference, the pain and horror behind 'heroism'. Originally the gender swapping seemed to be some kind of territory marking that only a TV producer would understand, an act meant to sway any question of the new producers rule over the domain of this material. Since then, the shock has sort of drifted to 'meh, what's a few gender changes...'
However, they weren't done yet. Now that caprica-Sharon, who is now the fleets first Cylon officer, has boldly proclaimed that she is not "Boomer", (if you remember, that variation of the Sharon model attempted to assassinate Adama at the end of season one), here fellow fly-jocks have determined she is in need of a new call-sign, and that sign is: Athena. Athena is one of the characters from the original
Battlestar Galactica that was notably absent from the re-imagining. A lot of people would say she is the slightly more feminine basis for the current rendition of StarBuck, a hotshot Viper pilot kicking cyclon butt with the best of the boys. (Yes, the new
Battlestar Galactica did not break ground in having women amongst the combat troops.)
The few hold-outs who have never warmed to the new
Battlestar Galactica will be irked, for sure, that the producers decided to desecrate the memory of yet another old-school
Battlestar Galactica character: Athena a Cylon? Athena, a Cylon who looks like Boomer, who is supposed to be guy? Shocking to the change-resistant
Battlestar Galactica fans for sure. Since these changes are of no consequence to the fan-base of the original, you have to wonder why they do it? Is it simple homage? Or is the hope that the controversy will add another layer of word-of-mouth. Who knows, the socially aloof
Battlestar Galactica fan, staggering around the cubicles trying to get somebody, anybody, to connect with his pain, might just get a few new people to tune it to see what the fuss is about.