Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
When it comes to Katee Sackhoff-starring sci-fi shows, Another Life is no Battlestar Galactica. It doesn’t have the political overtones or an instantly recognizable aesthetic and it’s nowhere near as taut a thriller as BSG was at its peak. There is, however, one thing that the Netflix sci-fi series has that Battlestar didn’t, and it’s something that the landmark sci-fi series from last decade desperately wanted to use: I’m talking about the word “fuck.”
Battlestar Galactica wanted to drop as many F-bombs as Viper missiles, make no mistake, but the broadcast standards of basic cable in the mid-’00s would not allow it. Syfy (or as it was known way back then, Sci-Fi) had no fucks to give. However, BSG gave us something else: I’m talking about the word “frak.”
It sure feels like Battlestar barely went a scene without someone shouting “what the frak?!” or exclaiming “frak me” or “frak you.” Pilots said “flying frak” and “frakkin’ A” and even “motherfrakker”! Of course the biggest frakkin’, uh, shikk-talker (?) of them all was hotheaded hotshot pilot Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, played with cigar-chompin’ swagger by none other than Katee Sackhoff.
For 76 episodes, Battlestar Galactica dangled the awesomeness of Sackhoff snarling out an F-word through gritted teach, and for 76 episodes we all had to settle for “frak,” a nonsense substitute that always pulled us out of the otherwise engrossing show. Seriously, “frak” is the kinda not-actually-bad word your hyper-conservative cousins made up when they were trying to be rebellious teenagers. It’s not cool enough to be said by Katee frakkin’ Sackhoff.
This is one area where Another Life succeeds… perhaps too much? Another Life curses with the reckless glee of a show written by someone that spent years shackled by the restrictions of Canadian tween programming. And then when you look up Another Life creator Aaron Martin and see that he did 8 years on DeGrassi: The Next Generation, it all makes sense. But the show’s potty mouth means we finally get the one thing BSG fans have been waiting 15 years for: Katee Sackhoff says fuck. A lot.
I counted at least 17 fucks from Sackhoff’s Niko Breckinridge alone in just the first three episodes! The show finds every excuse to give a fuck, and it gives plenty to Sackhoff. Buckle up, the fucks are about to fly!
Sackhoff even gets to use a popular variation of the expletive, one she couldn’t say on BSG.
She lets it fly while asking questions…
… and she lets it fly while giving orders…
…and she says it while asking a question that is also an order.
She says it five times in one minute!
And in a possibly meta move, the show seems aware that Sackhoff finally being able to let a fuck loose is a major moment because it ends Episode 2 on a closeup of a frantic, panicked Sackhoff shouting…
Your mileage may vary on Another Life on the whole, but there’s one thing you absolutely cannot deny: when it comes to letting Katee Sackhoff finally say “fuck,” Another Life ain’t frakkin’ around.
