Remembering Battlestar Gay-lactica

When a former co-worker shows up at the office holiday party to stir shit.

Battlestar Galactica, that stalwart old ship, has been cruising into fandom's consciousness quite a bit in the past week or so, with an announcement of movement towards a cinematic adaptation at Universal and Alessandro Juliani (Lt. Felix Gaeta from SyFy's rebooted BSG) popping up on the new X-Files series. So although I've been thinking a lot about BSG in relation to LGBT characters in sci-fi the past couple of months, this seemed like a good time to write about it.

I was six years old when the original BSG aired on television, and I was smitten. It was like Star Wars, but it was on TV every week so I could regularly get my fix of cool ships, weird aliens, and soapy space drama. I admittedly had a little schoolboy crush on Dirk Benedict's Starbuck, but mostly I was just there for the Viper dogfights and the shiny kick-ass Cylons.

When SyFy reimagined BSG in 2004, it quickly became apparent that BSG had grown up in the intervening quarter century. The stories were profoundly political, philosophical, complicated, and ambivalent. The design was gorgeous and the cinematography revolutionized that photojournalistic zoom-in style we now see in all sorts of sci-fi today (see, e.g., The Expanse). The performances were uniformly terrific, and sometimes just brilliant--every moment in the romance between Mary McDonnell's President Roslin and Edward James Olmos's Admiral Adama was understated, soaring, heartbreaking, and simply glorious.

Unfortunately, the series finale was pretty infuriating, and, like Lost, did not do justice to the nuance and ambiguity of the series. I remember people referring to it as "Bible-star Galactica": seriously, the implication that Starbuck was a goddamn angel made all of us at our viewing party lunge for the same coffee table to flip. Outrageous.

And speaking of ambivalence, the other aspect of SyFy's BSG that continues to perplex and confound me is its inclusion of LGBT characters.

In general, the humanoid Cylon models (at least the female ones) were sort of pansexual, especially the Sixes, played by Tricia Helfer. There was a threeway reference in Season 3 involving one of those randy Sixes, a Three (played by lesbian super-icon Lucy Lawless), and Gaius Baltar. But while this indicates the fluid sexuality of the Cylons, it was basically gratuitous set decoration.

The Pegasus was capable of FTL (Faster Than Lesbianism) speed.

The TV movie Battlestar Galactica: Razor achieved a deeper exploration of gay main characters when it revealed that the captain of the Battlestar Pegasus, Admiral Helena Cain, was in a relationship with a Number Six model named Gina. The destruction of the colonies drives Admiral Cain mad with vengeance, and when Cain discovers that Gina is a Cylon, things do not end well. What follows is a classic BSG meditation on the ironic/tragic way that leaders obliterate life and humanity to protect life and humanity. Unfortunately, the story doesn't really break any new ground for LGBT characters. Cain becomes a psychopathic villain who is ultimately destroyed, a very well-trod cautionary tale story line for LGBT characters in sci-fi and otherwise.

That look: I'm getting multiple GAY-DIS contacts, sir.

Then, in the midseason break of the final season, Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy was released as a series of short webisodes with long-time central character, Felix Gaeta (Gay-ta? come on), as its main protagonist. In the first webisode of The Face of the Enemy, we see Gaeta share an on-screen kiss and a very sweet moment with Louis Hoshi--and it seemed like BSG was going to give us a gay male hero who could have his own side-adventure and get his guy, too!

Alas, four major issues ultimately left The Face of the Enemy as a less-than-ideal introduction of an LGBT hero:

1. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that Gaeta was romantically involved with an Eight, a Cylon female model. So Gaeta is technically bi, which is great (and kind of even hotter). But a part of me can't help but wonder if that was some sort of assurance from the writers to the straight audience members who might not appreciate bisexuality as a legitimate thing that, yes, Gaeta was gay with Hoshi, but he wasn't that gay, only kind of gay sometimes, so he could still be taken seriously as a male protagonist. The romantic entanglement with the female Eight, while important to the plot and certainly not gratuitous, still feels to me a little like a concession.
2. The only mention that Gaeta is LGBT is in those 33 minutes of webisodes; it never came up at all before or after in any of the SyFy broadcast episodes. Casual viewers of the TV series could have gone the entire show without ever knowing that Gaeta was LGBT. There was suspiciously little audience reaction, which suggests that this canon content slipped by pretty much under everyone's DRADIS. So Gaeta is not exactly the out and proud LGBT hero we're looking for, and it leaves an impression of classic LGBT tokenism in sci-fi content: "Aren't we edgy for having a gay male protagonist in a mainstream sci fi property?! But to be safe we'll just do it over here in this little non-essential side project and shh don't tell anyone, 'kay?" Meh.
3. Gaeta's and Hoshi's romantic storyline goes out with a whimper. Hoshi spends his on-screen time doing awesome boyfriend stuff for Gaeta--smuggling him drugs, persuading Tigh to authorize a fool's errand of a search-and-rescue mission, actually volunteering for said fool's errand search-and-rescue mission, sweetly assuring Gaeta that "Baby, you're good!" when they finally find him, and later holding Gaeta's hand as Gaeta is wheeled away on a gurney to receive medical attention, never leaving his side. So how does Gaeta repay all this concern and devotion? As soon as he's back on his one good foot, he promptly dumps Hoshi. I mean... dude. I know the events on the Raptor were traumatizing but the relationship seems unnaturally easy for Gaeta to simply terminate--he assures Hoshi that he will try to protect him because Hoshi searched for and saved him, but not because they've been fraking each other for gods' sake. Gaeta treats it like some sort of debt, and not even a debt of any particular gratitude. It's a really unsatisfying moment and feels like a contrived way to avoid having to carry the relationship through to the televised episodes.
4. Although largely an enigmatic everyman throughout the series, Gaeta was consistently moral and steadfast, which was why I was so pleased to have him introduced as LGBT. But the events that unfold while Gaeta is stranded in the Raptor with the treacherous Eight leave Gaeta in a very dark place of self-revulsion and regret, and spark his motivation to mutiny against Adama and his alliance with the Cylons in the subsequent SyFy episodes. And in the morally murky BSG universe, consistent convictions get people into serious trouble, so Gaeta's unwavering beliefs lead him to an untimely demise several episodes from the series finale. So... yep. The story manages to turn Gaeta into yet another LGBT antagonist who gets killed before the end. *sigh*

Don't get me wrong here. SyFy's BSG is one of my favorite sci-fi TV series ever. And I really enjoyed The Face of the Enemy--it won Streamy awards in 2009 for Best Dramatic Series, Best Male Actor/Dramatic, and Best Writing/Dramatic, so it was kind of a big deal in terms of web-exclusive quality and impact. Kudos to the BSG producers, writers, and cast for finally showing a gay protagonist in a sci-fi series at all, especially a protagonist as (mostly) heroic and nuanced and sustained as Gaeta was.

But that's not to say that we can't do better. BSG got close, but there's more we can do in terms of decoupling the seemingly inevitable association of homosexual characters with disease, tragedy, and misery in sci-fi portrayals.

*cough* Poe *cough*

And now, here's some of my favorite BSG eye candy because I'm a sharer.

Jamie Bamber. He sure knows how to ride a Viper.

Michael Trucco. "Space athlete" pretty much checks all the boxes, amirite ladies?