A Little Bit of Kat in Us
As the podcast is transferring to the servers, I thought I’d take a minute to say — at the risk of sounding a little cheesy — that I feel like there’s a little bit of Kat in all of us. While I’m not suggesting that any of us wishes to live in such difficult circumstances as those faced by the crew of Galactica, who among us hasn’t wished from time to time that all of the bulls— couldn’t be cleared from your plate — leaving only the needs of you and yours and your raw ability to provide?
And anyone who hasn’t wished they could walk away from their past mistakes — and essentially receive the ultimate “do over” — is lying.
Of course I’m sad to see Kat go, but as we talk about in the ‘cast tonight, I’m glad to see that she got all her wishes:She got another chance. She went out doing something she loved and with the respect of those she respected. And she’ll definitely be remembered.
Galactic Watercooler 
Modern Geek 
Save Eureka 
Eff This Week 
FitSmart
Thanks for the eulogy, Chuck. I’m still tweaked that she’s gone. And this is supposed to be the episode from Jane Espenson (or however your spell her name… curse her). I’ll NEVER watch Buffy or Angel AGAIN!!!
(and he runs away, crying, and slams his bedroom door)
Heh. I read the post, saw that there was one comment, and said to myself, “That’ll be Bryan.” Sure ’nuff.
I know there was a fair bit of Kat hate (well, I’ve seen a bit elsewhere, etc), but I always kinda liked her. And I loved that the episode centered on her, a somewhat minor character, and not on the standard Kara, Roslin, Adama triumvirate. RIP.
That was a sad way to see her go. It was like watching a horror movie about a killer virus slowly unravel when that clump of hair came out. But she went out as noble as possible so kudos to her for that. And the bedside scene with Adama was pretty powerful stuff and a great reminder why Adama is “The Man”.
After hearing about this episode, I’m really starting to dislike Moore’s habit of killing off minor characters every couple episodes.
I realize there’s a certain aspect of realism in allowing minor, sometimes even major, characters to be killed off as part of an episode, but I’ve got beef with it…
If you compare the stereotypical classic Trek kill-off to Moore’s involved character kill-off, you begin to understand why he does it. In the old Trek episodes, a faceless redshirt who has no background or recurring appearances in the show dies. So when that character dies, the audience doesn’t really care because they feel no attachment. Faceless redshirt who I’ve never seen before? Who gives a frak if he gets iced.
But in Moore’s BSG, whenever a minor or recurring character is killed off, they have a backstory. They’ve been involved in the series, to a degree, since they’re introduction. So Moore’s conditioning the audience to be somewhat shocked and emotionally traumatized by *any* character’s death from day one. It’s really a brilliant way of writing…
But I’m off tangent. Though I respect the ingeniousness of it, I don’t *like* this practice. Because it means that the audience (specifically me), is going to be shocked and hurt by almost any death in the show. And given Moore’s preference of wiping out characters on a fairly regular basis, that means we’re going to be doing a fair amount of sniffling over the duration of the show.
Just for the record, we’ve now lost: Kat, Billy, Ellen, Elosha, Jammer, Duck, Chuckles, Boomer-Sharon, Cain, Crashdown, Socinus, Gina – to name a few. There’s also everyone who was killed in the initial attack on the colonies. And if you want to speculate as to who’s next, I personally am going to officially hop on the bandwagon for Sean’s “Anders is as good as dead” theory right now.
Anywho, that’s my two cubits…
Oh, and just so it’s clear…
I realize it’s not totally Moore’s responsibility; I’m just using “Moore” as a general label for all of the writers involved in BSG.
And I also just realized as I was posting, that it’s possible, and even likely, that the writers do this emotional kill-off thing intentionally.
Dan, Oh, they do. They’re actually reacting against the redshirt syndrome (where you introduce, and then kill off a character to emphasize the danger of the situation.) They intentionally build up minor characters so that you care when they die. (See Pike’s first rule of BSG.) The idea is that it SHOULD sting, you shouldn’t just dismiss them, they are people after all.
And, yeah, attributing that to RDM is fair, it’s pretty clear that his aesthetic is driving the show.