By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
In many ways, Ronald D. Moore was the ideal person to restart Battlestar Galactica. As a person who broke into Hollywood by writing for Star Trek: The next generationHe knows a few things about the difficulty of seducing older fans. However, even he was not prepared for the very early reaction following his decision to make the character of Starbuck a woman for his restarted series. However, once the showrunner realized that all these opponents created an essential free advertising, he decided to deliberately angry them as much as possible.
Make starbuck a woman
The crazy story of Battlestar Galactica The showrunner and his angry fans are captured in the book of Edward Gross/Mark A. Altman So let’s all say: the complete, non-censored and unauthorized oral history of Battlestar Galactica. In this book, Moore recalls the complex relationship he had with unconditional fans of the original series that were bored by the changes he brought, in particular the decision to make the popular character Starbuck a woman. Rather than being angry with all fans’ tobrades, the showrunner quickly realized that he now had a free source of advertising for the restart he was trying to take off.
“Once it has become one thing, so I said to myself, yeah, fuels these flames, guy,” said Moore. “We need all possible help.” At that time, he was ready to encourage angry fans to “scream on this subject” and to “get angry” for the simple fact that “I need advertising”.
In a particularly cheeky tone, the Battlestar Galactica The showrunner claims that he urged fans to “go to the discussion forums” because he needed “more men demanding Ron Moore’s head”. Of course, part of what makes this story so ironic is that Moore has not exchanged the sex of Starbuck to make a declaration on equality or anything. He just wanted to get around one of the oldest shots in science fiction.
The original Battlestar Galactica Program strongly centered on friendship between two very different pilots: Apollo, who liked to follow the rules, and Starbuck, who loved to break them. This worked well for the 1978 original series, but Moore feared that fans of the genre would be tired of this cliché trophy at the time of the first of its restart in 2003.
Regarding Starbuck a woman, Moore said that he “had just realized that it would change everything”, including “all the dynamics” between the characters. In addition, he wrote the series “just when we started to familiarize ourselves with the idea of women in combat in the United States”. Consequently, making one of his most eminent and talented soldiers a woman allowed the intersection of reality and fiction, a narrative technique Battlestar Galactica will perfection later to the delight of his fans.
Angry fans
Therefore, the Battlestar Galactica The showrunner did not try to relaunch the cultural war with his mastery of the genre of the character of Starbuck … Instead, he wanted to change the oldest cliché of science fiction in order to make things fresh and interesting. Once he realized how much his creative decision had upset the nest of angry fans, he did not hesitate to continue kicking in this nest in order to generate the advertisement of which his program had Need to succeed. Unfortunately, the current media landscape is now different … Instead that negativity helps a program to find an audience, there is a whole craft industry. YouTube Chains that try to destroy new franchises before they start.
But does anger serve as an anchor for injured fans? This is not new. Fans are angry with the creators who simply try something different … As Moore’s cylons would likely remind us, all of this has already happened and all of this will happen again.
