Women of the Orignal BSG Series
With all the attention garnered by Ronald Moore’s re-imagined version of Battlestar Galactica, it’s easy to forget what was good about the original series — and if you’re willing to filter out the 1970s cheese factor there is a lot of good to be found. One of these is the female characters. This week’s Danger Gal Friday profile is on the women of the original Battlestar Galactica series: Sheba, Athena, and Casseopeia. We’ll even talk a little bit about Serina too.
The original series reflected the changing gender roles of the 1970s as well as portrayed the beginnings of a more feminist future. This latter point is evidenced by Sheba’s command of Pegasus’ Silver Spar Squadron. A big deal is made of Galactica pulling its pilots and Viper pilots from civilian — and female — volunteers when a sickness decimates pilot ranks. However, clearly women have not only been serving as Viper pilots, but also as commanders such as Sheba, on Pegasus without the impetus of male pilots’ absence. While this development on the Galactica has more in common with the situation during World War II when women worked in factories simply because most men were away fighting in the war, it did open up the show to portray the friction between women and men in the 1970s as women willingly joined the workforce.
Serina enjoyed a career as a journalist on Caprica prior to the holocaust, but Apollo is definitely not comfortable with Serina putting her life in danger by becoming a Viper pilot and the two have several arguments over it. With Serina’s character we get to see a woman balancing a career and family since she is one of the few mothers portrayed in the series. Incidentally, Jane Seymor was originally offered the role of Lyra, a member of the Quorum of Twelve. Lyra was intended to be an ongoing character, but Seymor wanted to be free to do films so the character was changed.
