Laura Roslin (Battlestar Galactica)

If there’s one female Battlestar Galactica character that I think is ultimately even more badass than Starbuck, it’s Laura Roslin. Sure, Starbuck could waste her in a fight, but Roslin’s too smart to let it get to that — she’d have figured out a way to outsmart Starbuck before she landed a punch. Roslin, who is Secretary of Education in the pilot, ends up being president of… well, pretty much of the entire surviving human race after the Cylon attacks on the 12 colonies result in the deaths of everyone ahead of her in the line of succession. When she takes the position, it’s clear she’s in over her head, but under the circumstances, who wouldn’t be? She deals with her presidency — as well as the terminal breast cancer she’s fighting — with miraculous competence, both cold and compassionate as each situation dictates. She even orders Adama around a bit, until he decides that she’s awesome and that he agrees with her about pretty much everything — that is, until she becomes religious.

Some people didn’t like the plotline involving Roslin taking the psychotropic chamala extract for her cancer and then having visions and hallucinations that jived with the ancient prophecies, but I loved it. Roslin is exceedingly rational, so when she starts to waver from that, believing that she may be the dying figure that will lead her people to their new homeland, the dramatic tension ratchets up off the charts — especially when her visions fuel a mission that ends in multiple deaths. Roslin, like Starbuck, possesses a dichotomy that deepens as the show progresses, vacillating between hard and soft, practical and spiritual.

One of my favorite scenes is when she orders the Cylon Leoben to be put out the airlock after Starbuck spends an entire day torturing him for information. She promises Leoben safety if he tells her the truth; he does, and she has him killed anyway. Even Starbuck can’t believe it, but Roslin sums up her decision, and her character, perfectly:

During the time I’ve allowed him to remain alive and captive on this ship, he has caused our entire fleet to spread out, defenseless. He puts insidious ideas in our minds, more lethal than any warhead. He creates fear. But you’re right, he is a machine and you don’t keep a deadly machine around when it kills your people and threatens your future, you get rid of it.

Damn straight, Roslin! Roslin for president in 2016! – Joelle