Dirk Benedict is an Asshat
The original Starbuck is evidently (and amazingly) bitter that the modern incarnation of his dashing, cigar-smoking, playboy pilot is played by a girl. And that Kara Thrace could hand the original Starbuck his ass on any particular day of the week — in the cockpit or in a fistfight.
Starbuck was an irresponsible cad who had not one professional bone in his body. Yeah, he was a charming character, but he was about the third-to-last person that I’d trust behind the wheel (or, in this case, the stick) of anything with guns built into it. “Stardoe,” as the disgruntled actor derisively labels Kara Thrace in his article, is many things, but she is at least believable as a fighter. So are the rest of her fellow pilots; in terms of portrayals, the “military” of the original series is a “good ol’ boys” drinking club by comparison to the hardened warriors of the modern series.
Don’t get me wrong: I have a soft spot for the original Battlestar Galactica, cheesy though much of it was. But I don’t see where Dirk Benedict is going when he praises the original incarnation of the show for its upbeatness, and derides the modern incarnation for its bleakness. He praises the original for being, in his words, “a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family,” and derides the remake as being “a show of despair, sexual violence and family dysfunction.”
And to be fair, that’s an accurate assessment of the old show, and the new, for the most part. I will leave it to the reader to decide which presentation is the more accurate glimpse at the human condition, especially in a story that is essentially the tale of an ever-diminishing number of survivors clinging to a fool’s hope of finding a new world on which to settle after the apocalyptic destruction of their previous home(s). Survivors, no less, who are being pursued by a ruthless enemy bent on their complete eradication.
The fact is, the original BSG was at its best not when it was plucky and campy, and was at its absolute worse whenever Boxey — Apollo’s adopted son — was on the screen. It was better when it looked at the problems and weakness of the people, and was at its absolute best when it took a turn toward the dark and the brooding, as it did with (for example) the Count Iblis storyline. The scene in which Count Baltar recognized Iblis’ voice as that of the Cylon Imperious Leader, and in which Iblis gave his cryptic non-quite-a-dismissal of the recognition, was perhaps the narrative high point of the series.
Dirk Benedict has been bitter about the new BSG since it launched, and ever since they replaced his character with a woman. Evidently, five or six years later, that has not changed — he’s still bitter, and it shows.
He might also want to consider that in an article in which he praises “a television show based on hope, spiritual faith and family,” he could have done better than describe the humanoid Cylons of the modern series as “humanoid six foot tall former lingerie models who f**k you to death.”
Just a thought.
KHdN – Kenneth Hynek (dot Net) » Blog Archive » Me, a liberal? (September 16, 2009, 6:57 pm).
[...] mistakenly assumed that this is a “liberal” blog based on no other evidence apart from my brief thoughts of Dirk Benedict’s whining about how Starbuck was played by a girl in the recent re-imagined BSG [...]