Just from the title, you may be thinking “What the frak?!” And I don’t blame you one iota for thinking that. This is exactly my own thought every time I sit down in front of my television and watch Battlestar Galactica, every episode bringing a tightness to my throat as another slice of crow pie is forced down it.

Let me start from the beginning. There are those who believe that life here began ou—oh, wait a minute, that’s a little too far back to the beginning. How about we step back to 2003?

The Sci-Fi Channel began promoting the return of Battlestar Galactica with quite a fanfare. I was less than thrilled since I continued carrying a chip on my shoulder over past programming choices. This was, after all, The Sci-Fi Channel (also referred to as “Skiffy”), the same people that cancelled Farscape and had gone so far as to insult their audience in a Time magazine article concerning their current project, Children of Dune. Skiffy executives were thrilled at how this mini-series offered strong female characters that women could relate to, something hard to find in modern science fiction.

Have you ever looked at the female characters in Children of Dune? A mother who’s using her son as a political pawn, another who is estranged from her own children, a daughter who is usurping the throne, sleeping around with whomever she can find, and going mad because of it, and a sister who wants to sleep with her brother.

Oh yeah, great  …