Entertainment :: Television
Forbes Returns to Galactica for Lesbian Roleby Kilian MelloyFriday Aug 31, 2007 Sci-fi fans, prick up your ears: Battlestar Galactica, the re-engineered series on the Sci-Fi Channel by former Star Trek writer Ron Moore and his producing partner David Eick, is about to go where Trek scarcely dared to venture.
As reported by SyFy Portal, AfterEllen, and other Web sites, the two-hour telemovie Razor, which will air in November, two months before the regular series resumes for its fourth and final season of twenty episodes, will flash back to Michelle Forbes’ guest turn from the show’s second season, with strong hints that her character, Admiral Cain, is a lesbian.
According to SyFy Portal, an unnamed source close to the production revealed that Cain and a Cylon infiltrator called Gina "were quite close" early in the series’ mythology, before Cain’s ship, the Pegasus, met up with fellow surviving warship Galactica.
"In fact," the source told SyFy Portal, "they were lovers [before Gina was exposed as a Cylon spy]. We don’t exactly come out and say it, but you’d have to be sleeping through the middle of all this to not pick up on their relationship."
Ron Moore’s re-imagined Galactica takes the premise of the original show--humanity’s last survivors fleeing across the universe in search of a mythical lost world of settlers called Earth, with mortal mechanical enemies the Cylons in hot pursuit--and updates it. The show’s scripts are dark, layered, and sometimes quite violent.
The show has also made a point of addressing real-world political and social controversies, from stem-cell therapy and abortion to torture, civil liberties versus security, and suicide bombers.
But one hot social topic the show has only barely, and obliquely, addressed is that of homosexuality--which seems strange, considering that one handsome regular character is married to a member of the bio-synthetic Cylon race, while fighter pilots of both genders make use of unisex locker rooms and lavatories, suggesting that this strain of humanity are not prudes.
Fan speculation, however, has long included the view that Adm. Cain might be a lesbian. A tough, fearless leader, Cain was depicted on the program as so determined to follow military protocol that she murdered a bridge officer who questioned her orders; the character also viewed civilians as a secondary consideration, pressing survivors of the Cylon attacks into service and abandoning them in deep space aboard stripped-down vessels when her own warship needed spare parts.
Michelle Forbes, like Ron Moore, has had an association with Star Trek, having played another strong female character, The Next Generation’s Ensign Ro.
Fans of the old Galactica series are in for a shot of nostalgia when Razor premieres on the Sci-Fi Channel in November: the original Cylon design will be featured in flashbacks to the first human / Cylon war, forty years before the time of the series, when Cain recollects how her parents were murdered by the robotic soldiers.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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