How Battlestar Galactica Recruited A Star Trek Alum For Its Best Villain
The Cylons, androids created by man, are the villains of "Battlestar Galactica," but they wear human guises. This reflects how the show's human heroes are all deeply flawed people and humanity's foibles (from arrogance to self-destructive) continue to haunt them even as their technology soars past the modern day.
Indeed, the best villain in "Battlestar Galactica" was a human character: Admiral Helena Cain (Michelle Forbes), commander of the Battlestar Pegasus. In the series' pilot min-series, the Cylons attack humanity's 12 colonies. The only survivors appear to be Galactica herself and a handful of civilian spaceships, who set out to find the mythical world Earth to be their new home.
Midway through season 2 in the episode, "Pegasus," the Galactica and her fleet meet the Pegasus, the other Battlestar which survived the genocide. (Galactica, as an older model, didn't have networked computers for the Cylons to hack, while Pegasus was undergoing a retrofit and so avoided the full brunt of the Cylons' virus). It doesn't stay a happy reunion for long. In a great dramatic move, Cain pulls rank on Commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) and wastes no time asserting her authority. The weight of her grave situation has made her snap, turning her into a dictator who cares not about preserving humanity but about going down swinging against the Cylons. If any subordinates question her, she kills them.
Forbes, one of few actors who can be as steely and coldly terrifying as Olmos, was perfect casting. Moments like the cliffhanger ending of "Pegasus," where Adama and Cain have a tense phone call before their ships prepare for battle, make me think "Battlestar Galactica" might be the best science-fiction series ever filmed.
Before "Galactica," series co-creator Ronald D. Moore was a writer on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" — which is where he first worked with Forbes.
Star Trek's Ensign Ro
Forbes joined "The Next Generation" in season 5 as Ensign Ro Laren and was a recurring character; she appeared in six of the season's 26 episodes. My first experience watching "The Next Generation" was a season 5 DVD box set, so I think of Ro as a more integral part of the show than she really was.
Ro is a Bajoran. (Like Southeast Asian cultures, Bajoran names arrange the family name preceding the given name.) Ro Laren's full history can be read here, but the nuts and bolts are: Bajor has long been occupied by the imperialist Cardassians and Ro grew up in a refugee camp. Her membership in Starfleet is more of an alliance of convenience; she certainly doesn't share the organization's idealism. In her last appearance (season 7's "Preemptive Strike," the penultimate "Next Generation" episode), she defects to the anti-Cardassian terrorist organization the Maquis.
Producer Rick Berman (who co-created Ro with writer Michael Piller) wanted to shake up the Enterprise-D crew dynamic. Quoted in "The Star Trek: The Next Generation Companion" by Larry Nemecek, Berman says, "The other characters in the cast are relatively homogeneous; some might even say bland. So we wanted a character with the strength and dignity of a Starfleet officer but with a troubled past, an edge." Forbes was cast as Ro due to an impressive guest appearance in the season 4 episode "Half A Life" (far from the only time "Star Trek" has reused an actor as a different character).
Michelle Forbes passes on more Star Trek
The "Trek" producers were so impressed by Forbes they offered her a bigger, more permanent part. "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," set on a station orbiting the liberated Bajor, was originally conceived with Ro as part of the main cast; she would move over from "Next Generation" to "Deep Space Nine" alongside Chief Miles O'Brien (Colm Meaney). But Forbes declined the part and Kira Nerys (Nana Visitor) was created hastily to replace Ro.
Speaking to Indiewire in 2016, Forbes admitted she's a "commitment-phobe." For some actors, a regular part on a TV show would be a godsend, but evidence suggests that wasn't what Forbes wanted. She preferred to focus on her film career, which by nature required only short(er) commitments and moving from project to project.
Forbes started shifting back to television in the late 90s (she was part of the main cast for seasons 5 and 6 of "Homicide: Life on the Street"). She was getting work in the movies, but alas, she wasn't a star the way someone with her talent deserved to be. That move eventually led to her getting the offer for "Battlestar Galactica."
Forbes appeared on the episode of the "Battlestar Galacticast" covering "Pegasus." (This is a podcast covering the series, one episode at a time, hosted by actress Tricia Helfer, aka Cylon Number Six, and writer Marc Bernadin.) Forbes discussed how she and her agents almost declined the role until she watched some of "Battlestar Galactica." Though wary of being typecast as a woman of authority, she knew she wanted to be a part of the series. "How close one can come to making bad decisions," Forbes prefaced the story.
Admiral Cain on Battlestar Galactica
"Pegasus" is roughly adapted from "Living Legend," one of the few times "Battlestar Galactica" remade an episode of the original 1978 series. Moore said on the DVD commentary for "Pegasus" that he wanted to remake "Living Legend" since he first accepted the "Galactica" job. He made the story his own, though, adding the twist of Cain (played by Lloyd Bridges in "Living Legend") being Adama's superior and a woman. The show had previously gender-flipped the hot shot pilot Starbuck, played by Dirk Benedict in the original and then by future "Mandalorian" star Katee Sackhoff in the remake.
On "Trek," Moore wrote two episodes featuring Ro Laren: "Disaster" and "The Next Phase." But while he'd worked with Forbes before, he hadn't reimagined Cain with her in mind, nor was she his first choice. Moore and co. looked at many different actresses for the part and chose Forbes from that sea of options. Like most of their casting choices, it was a good call.
One detail of Forbes' casting that Moore appreciated was her relatively young age (she's 18 years younger than Olmos and was only 40 when she first played Cain). This added dimension to Cain's character; unlike the veteran Adama, she was a fast-tracked admiral who'd snapped when push came to shove.
As for Ro, with her "hot temper" and "rough edges" (as Forbes described her on the "Galacticast"), she would probably fit in better on Galactica than the Enterprise-D. After Ro defects to the Maquis in "Preemptive Strike," Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) observes to Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) that she seemed convinced she was doing the right thing. Cain shares that same sense of conviction.
The fall of Admiral Cain
Forbes admitted on "Galacticast" that she didn't quite piece together the "Star Trek" parallels (i.e. how Moore was purposefully flipping "Trek" clichés on their head) in "Battlestar Galactica." Even so, the same strengths that made Forbes excellent as Ro helped her play Cain. Forbes didn't play the Admiral as insane, merely hardened (as she told TV Zone in 2006):
"She's lost perspective. People ask, 'Is she insane? Is she psychotic?' I hope that's not how she came across because that was never the intention. I think some individuals can appear to be that way, but this is a woman who did what she had to do in order to survive during some very brutal conflicts. Along the way, Cain lost her sense of judgement as well as her sense of reason and rationale."
Cain was a temporary part by design (at the end of her third appearance, "Resurrection Ship Part 2," she's murdered an escaped Cylon prisoner), which is probably another reason Forbes agreed to it. Still, the character was so memorable that Moore and his writers found a way to bring her back. Not with any hackneyed resurrection (though Cain as a Cylon could have been a great twist), but with the prequel TV movie "Razor," showing what Pegasus was up to before its rendezvous with Galactica and how Cain became the ruthless tyrant she was in "Pegasus."
When Michelle Forbes worked on both "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica," both shows clearly understood the kind of actor they had on their hands and did their best to get all they could out of her.