How Sci-Fi Fandom Made Katee Sackhoff Miserable Over Her Battlestar Galactica Role

The modern Chud Grifter Industrial Complex is an economic engine unto itself — a boundless, unwashed sea of reactionary YouTube channels, TikTok accounts, and Reddit threads, all with the express purpose of tearing down any "nerd culture" media deemed too disgustingly woke (or, you know, that has a woman in it). Back in the early 2000s, the digital infrastructure that has allowed this tumor on cultural discourse to thrive wasn't nearly as fully formed, but the reactionary rage content persisted nonetheless.

Take "Battlestar Galactica," for example — specifically, the 2003 Syfy reboot. Today, the series is heralded as a genre classic years ahead of its time, having broken new ground with both its genre and overarching narrative structure. Indeed, years before "The Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones" made big-budget science fiction and fantasy shows the dominant force on television, "Battlestar Galactica" provided an early blueprint. At the time, though, there was notable pushback against the reboot, led by self-professed fans of the original 1978 series.

Katee Sackhoff, who played ace pilot Starbuck in the remake, received particular hate, due to her character having been a man in the original. "The first time we went to Comic-Con, they had us in Hall H, and I was booed," Sackhoff recalled during an appearance on "The Joe Rogan Experience." Thankfully, she was able to mostly tune out the noise at the time. "Now, it would probably break me," she continued, "but at 23 I was like, it was like the blissful ignorance of youth."

These days, it's hard to imagine anyone taking the side of the short-lived 1970s series over the acclaimed "Battlestar Galactica" reboot, but that was the sentiment among many vocal critics early on. However, the newer show's success quickly overshadowed the shortsighted sexism on the early Internet.

"It slowly started winning people over," Sackhoff told Rogan, "and then I would go to cons after that and the line would be longer, and the people would be more supportive, and people would say, 'I didn't want to like it, and I love it.'" That said, it was rough going for a while. When Sackhoff heard that the reboot was getting a lot of buzz online, she took a look for herself, only to find people hating on the idea.

"I logged on, and I saw this thread, and just the hate that I was getting in this thread, I was like, 'Oh, don't Google yourself,'" Sackhoff explained. "I would be lying if I said it didn't upset me, but luckily, there were enough people that were championing the show that I really didn't pay any mind to it."

We all know that "fans" of certain genre properties can be, to put it delicately, the worst. But when the same sort of bigoted drivel seeps from the mouth of the actor who previously played the role you've been cast in? An extra level of shaming is in order.

Dirk Benedict, better known for his five-season tenure on '80s TV staple "The A-Team" than his brief turn as Starbuck on the original "Battlestar Galactica," took to his own blog in 2006 — well into the show's acclaimed run, mind you — to complain about, uh ... women.

"There was a time," Benedict wrote, with all the imagination and lingual deftness of your divorced uncle in a post-election Facebook post, "when men were men, women were women, and sometimes a cigar was just a good smoke. But 40 years of feminism have taken their toll. The war against masculinity has been won."

It's ironic that Sackhoff would find a platform to discuss the sexism she faced at the time on The Joe Rogan Experience, a podcast that's become the de facto standard-bearer for the exact sort of manosphere "back in the day" vague-posting that Benedict's rant would slot into today. Harder to cry "woke," I guess, when you're actually talking to a woman.