Starbuck, annoying?

The SciFi Channel has put together another great night of original programming on Sundays, pairing its new "The Dresden Files" with "Battlestar Galactica."

I particularly enjoyed the recent Sunday that ran the "Dresden" episode “Bad Blood” with BSG’s “Dirty Hands.” Both were well-told, compelling stories – but there was something else that made both episodes so enjoyable.

They were very nearly a Murphy/Starbuck-free zone.

The cop Murphy on "Dresden" and Starbuck on "Battlestar Galactica" are the two most annoying characters in science-fiction television today. They are predictable and detract from their respective series in their own way.

I’ve never been too fond of police and crime shows but "The Dresden Files" is different. There’s the magical/fantasy element, of course, but the producers use the storytelling devices of old gumshoe tales – particularly star Paul Blackthorne’s narrative voiceovers – to excellent effect.
There’s just one such device that hasn’t worked well so far, and that’s the character of Lt. Connie Murphy. All private investigator shows seem to include a hard-bitten cop who the PI goes to for help on his cases – the cop who generally doesn’t like the gumshoe and would rather not have him coming around. On "The Dresden Files," that’s Murphy.

This is no knock on the actress, Valerie Cruz, who plays Murphy. It’s just the overall concept is the only old school detective notion on this new series that doesn’t work. Wizard/detective Harry Dresden is obviously one of the good guys, so that Murphy’s generally overly antagonistic attitude toward him is off-putting to say the least.
By contrast, Dresden’s ghostly sidekick Bob (Terrence Mann) often may be grumpy and crotchety but he’s not in Dresden’s face the way Murphy often is. So far, Murphy’s hostility makes her too unsurprising and, in the end, boring. Bob makes for a much more interesting sidekick.

Murphy was nowhere to be seen in the vampire episode “Bad Blood,” and to me, that was a welcome relief. Unfortunately, her absence only made a good story even better.
Then there’s “Dirty Hands” and its pleasant near-absence of Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff). There’s been much talk of "Battlestar Galactica" veering too far into soap opera lately. That’s certainly true, and Starbuck has been right in the middle of that mistake. More than that, the basic Starbuck character is essentially broken. She’s become so dysfunctional, so toxic, that she has basically ceased to be likeable. I’ve just stopped caring.

Starbuck’s dysfunction basically makes her fairly predictable (count on her to make the wrong choice, to self-destruct. Period). Like Murphy, Starbuck’s character flaws have made her one-dimensional. That means boring.

I never bought into Lee’s affair with Starbuck. It never made sense. Yes, they’ve been long-time friends, but Lee (Jamie Bamber) made it abundantly clear he disapproves of Starbuck’s self-destructive tendencies and his need to clean up after them.

For me, one of the finest moments of the entire series was the scene in which Lee stood in command of the Pegasus, riding in to save Galactica from the Cylon attack. His wife, Dualla (Kandyse McClure), stood beside him in the face of what seemed certain death. Lee was clearly proud to have Dualla as his wife.

To turn away from that for Starbuck never rang true to the basic character of Lee Adama. So, when Starbuck’s biggest scene in “Dirty Hands” came briefly at the very end of the episode – that was enough Starbuck for me.

Murphy and Starbuck can yet be redeemed as characters. "The Dresden Files" is in its infancy, so the producers can alter Murphy’s dynamics fairly easily. Starbuck, of course, is much more well-established. But even there, the producers can move in believable ways to bring some interest back to the character.

We can only hope the producers follow through and make the needed changes to fix what are really the only serious flaws in what are otherwise excellent TV series.

A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance is a member of the USS Chesapeake, an independent science-fiction and Star Trek club in the Washington, DC, area. He is a columnist for SyFy Portal, and can be reached at scottnance@syfyportal.com.