By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 1 minute ago

The Battlestar Galactica reboot turned a cheesy, fun sci-fi guilty pleasure into a dramatic, dark, and shockingly emotional series that redefined the entire medium. Keeping the focus small turned every update of the colony fleet’s survivors into a dramatic moment, and it let the writers mine the humans’ need for food and water for entire episodes.

While “Water” was a disappointing episode early in the show’s run, the Season 3 episode “The Passage” began with the need for fresh food and then told a tragic story of everyday heroism, guilt, and the ultimate sacrifice. 

The Passage Is A Slow Motion Emotional Doom Spiral

Kat’s Secret Exposed To Kara in Battlestar Galactica

There’s nothing sexy or fun about logistics. It’s the act of moving things from point A to point B, and yet “The Passage” is all about the work and planning that goes into keeping a fleet of ships moving through space.

It also put one of Battlestar Galactica’s one-time background characters, intended for only a single appearance, Louanne “Kat” Katraine (Luciana Carro, who later appeared in Caprica and Ronald D. Moore’s Helix), in the spotlight. Kat had butted heads with Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) a few times previously, which is why the hotshot Viper pilot was so horrified to learn that “Kat” was a smuggler back on Caprica, blaming her for sneaking Cylons onto the planet. 

Kat’s smuggling skills turn out to be invaluable when the colonial fleet has to navigate a radioactive star cluster in order to find fresh food. One of many Viper pilots tasked to guide the ships through the cluster, Kat ends up losing one, furthering her downward guilt spiral. She replaces her radiation badge, which has gone pure black from exposure to the deadly rays, with Helo’s fresh one, and on the final jump, stays behind to find a missing civilian ship. Triumphant, but sick from lethal doses of radiation, Kat comes back to Galactica as a hero. 

From the moment Starbuck attacks her for being a smuggler, it’s clear that Kat is on a path of self-destruction. Her desperation to prove herself was watched with horror by Battlestar Galactica fans who knew how this story would end even before she swapped her radiation badge. Kat’s story comes to an end with heartbreaking back-to-back scenes showing her promotion to the lead of the flight group, followed by Starbuck hanging her photo on the memorial wall for those they’ve lost. 

Battlestar Galactica Rewrote The Rules Of Sci-Fi

On its own, “The Passage” is a fantastic episode of Battlestar Galactica, and it all started with addressing a reality of living in space that most sci-fi ignores: food. Other shows wave away how food gets onboard, from Star Trek’s replicators to Star Wars pretending no one ever eats, and really, most series don’t want fans thinking of the practicalities of the setting. That Galactica would devote multiple episodes to managing resources and the mundane day-to-day running of the colonial fleet is a testament to the writing that, though a little uneven in the back half of the show’s run, is among the top tier of sci-fi shows in history. 

“The Passage” also addressed what some fans might have considered a plot hole by bringing up how the Cylons snuck into Caprica in the first place. Kat explained she had no idea at the time that Cylons could look like humans. It’s a simple way to explain that humans like Kat may have accidentally assisted the Cylons to put them in position for the devastating attack on the colonies. It’s so simple that there was never a need for the show to even address the practical logistics of Cylons moving around Caprica, but it happened, and it was handled in a way that makes sense given the way the two pilots had been butting heads. 

Battlestar Galactica ended up killing a lot of characters by the time humanity found its way to Earth, and in truth, Kat’s death shouldn’t have been as emotional as it was. “The Passage” didn’t focus on any of the main cast, and the result was a beautiful, contained story that made the world of the colonial fleet feel so much larger. A life on the run is going to be harsh, brutish, and short, but thanks to the slow-motion trainwreck of watching Kat pay the ultimate price to save the colonial fleet, it was also hopeful, beautiful, and a story that few sci-fi franchises would have ever the guts to tell.