I think it'd be perfect casting m'self.
rumor mill: Katee Sackhoff for Powers lead?
- Thread starter Temis the Vorta
- Start date
I think we'll have to agree to disagree on her. I didn't find her sympathetic at all and was so very glad when she "died" and doubly disappointed when she came back. In those last couple seasons, she (the character) was a poison and a cancer to everyone on that show and of no value and yet for some reason, they all still cared for her. Maybe that's where your sympathy comes from, but I just found it to be a huge part of the problem I had with all of the characters being written so very stupidly post-Pegasus.
Not to take the thread off on a tangent about Starbuck...I was so-so about her character for most of the series. There were times where I liked her, and times where I didn't at all. I like Katee as an actress. Deena is perfect for Katee.
Starbuck was intentionally written to challenge the audience's ability to sympathize with her. She was self-pitying, self-defeating and kind of contemptible, but as long as that's deliberate, I won't hold it against the character. She retained just enough sympathetic qualities not to push her fully over the edge.
I was fascinated by the very narrow thread that the character had to walk, writing- and acting-wise, and it's so rare that I see characters that are challenging like that, that I tend to cut them a lot of slack. I get sick of characters who are written and acted so it's stunningly obvious whether the audience should love or hate them. Bo-ring. She was the same character type as Baltar, but the specifics were different. Both characters are nice indicators of actors and writers whose brains are engaged rather than on the usual TV type of auto-pilot.
Attacking the more interesting and unusual sort of character doesn't encourage actors and writers to attempt that far more dangerous and risky character type. Shouldn't we encourage creativity and risk-taking like that? Do we really want everything to be so safe and expected?
I was fascinated by the very narrow thread that the character had to walk, writing- and acting-wise, and it's so rare that I see characters that are challenging like that, that I tend to cut them a lot of slack. I get sick of characters who are written and acted so it's stunningly obvious whether the audience should love or hate them. Bo-ring. She was the same character type as Baltar, but the specifics were different. Both characters are nice indicators of actors and writers whose brains are engaged rather than on the usual TV type of auto-pilot.
Attacking the more interesting and unusual sort of character doesn't encourage actors and writers to attempt that far more dangerous and risky character type. Shouldn't we encourage creativity and risk-taking like that? Do we really want everything to be so safe and expected?
Was this actually mentioned by one of the writers or Moore somewhere or is this just your opinion? I find a lot of the "amazingness" attributed to BSG is usually fans who really love something about the show and can find some way to justify why it is the way it is (I don't mean this as an insult to you, just that I find it to be true more often than not in the case of BSG). Because I personally found it to be lazy that they made this terrible character and the only method by which we are supposed to sympathize with her is through the eyes of the other, likable characters. Sympathy by association, so to speak.
I do actually love interesting and unusual characters. I just don't think Starbuck fits either of those. And I think the reason I feel that way goes back to Sackhoff's inability to play anything but angry and crazy.
Heh. I've been reading about and watching interesting and unusual characters in Science Fiction for forty years. The cardboard cutouts on nuBSG don't even rate.
As odd as it may sound, I'm not primarily basing my support for her in the role on Starbuck, but rather Corvis on Bionic Woman. Without revealing spoilers, there's a very specific storyline Deena goes through that parallels some of what Corvis went through and I could see Katee pulling it off beautifully on screen.
It's what I got out of watching the show. I don't pay much attention to what show creators say about things. If it isn't obvious enough that I can tell what they mean by watching what they produce, then they've failed to deliver the message anyway, so their explanations don't much count. "Just" my opinion is therefore the relevant thing here.
There's plenty about that show I dislike - the fact that RDM & the other writers didn't bother to actually nail down an essential part of their premise - the Cylons' motivation - before they started writing is a mammoth oversight that had serious repercussions later on when it caused the story to become incoherent. That's a much more fundamental problem than whether any given character was good or bad. I don't bother to justify shows that don't earn my respect. But Starbuck wasn't one of BSG's problems.
I found her interesting and she's unusual in that she's far from being the usual character type. Even in the small subset of "angry warrior women" types (such as Kira Nerys or Susan Ivanova), she's distinct. That makes her "interesting and unusual."
That's not how I sympathized with her at all. And I don't remember "likable" characters on that show (well maybe Anders?)
If you don't like that character type, fine, but plenty of people do. She's not a "bad" character in the ways characters can be bad - an obvious cliche, or for there to be a disconnect between how the character is written and acted.
Fair enough - and you do make a decent point that every character in BSG had some serious flaws that made them somewhat unlikable at the very least. I think it's just another case of us having to agree to disagree.
I do however maintain my initial point that I don't think the role of Starbuck (or anything else that I've seen Sackhoff in) has stretched her acting enough for me to think she has the range to carry off anything but another Starbuck-like character.
I do however maintain my initial point that I don't think the role of Starbuck (or anything else that I've seen Sackhoff in) has stretched her acting enough for me to think she has the range to carry off anything but another Starbuck-like character.
I'm basing my judgement of Katee on the character Deena Pilgrim not based on any other character she's played before. Deena is pretty complex, so is Christian.
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