NATTER ALERT!

* The 2004-2009 Battlestar Galactica remake had a large number of Artifacts, due to the fact that in the later seasons, the writers admitted they had no coherent plan for the overall course of the series...despite the fact that the opening credits themselves hyped ever week that there was a "Cylon Plan" to decode. The resulting Artifacts are quite numerous, but one of the most prominent would be Anastasia Dualla, the radio-operator and more-or-less their Uhura. In the pilot miniseries, they paired her off with President Roslin's assistant Billy, and the general idea is that they'd be the "lowerdecks Everyman couple" in the story. The problem was that the actor playing Billy wanted to leave the show (he was only a third-string character) to work on several pilots for other series he'd be a regular in. Thus his role was drastically reduced when season two started, and he was ultimately killed off fairly quickly in the second half of season two. Unfortunately, the writers hadn't really built up Dualla's relationships or interactions with any other characters besides Billy, and while she was "present" in episodes, she was basically just repeating dialogue from command officers into the radio to pilots, back and forth (exactly like Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest). Further, Dualla/Billy was essentially usurped as the "lowerdecks, Everyman couple" by the unplanned Cally Henderson/Galen Tyrol relationship. Then to create tension, the writers paired off Dualla with the male lead, Apollo. This met with widespread criticism because they had zero chemistry, most of the setup for the relationship was cut for time (but they did it anyway), and fans and critics alike were using Apollo/Dualla as the butt end of a lot of jokes by the end of the second season. Rather than ending it, however, the writers let the relationship drag out for another 20 episodes across the entire third season, possibly to do with that season 3 is when the writers admitted they had only planned out about the first third-to-half of the series. By the end of season three, the relationship was finally ended unceremoniously. However, Dualla's true "The Artifact" moment was in the first half of season 4: the network divided the final season into two halves of 10 episodes each then aired them almost a full year apart, to essentially get two micro-seasons for the price of one. So in the first half, "Season 4.0", Dualla simply didn't....* do* anything. She'd hang around in the background or repeat radio dialogue other characters said, but there was this pervasive unspoken feeling of "why is she still even here?". This is of course, exacerbated by the events of season 3: when the Pegasus was evacuated and sent on a suicide run at the start of season 3, her surviving command staff was integrated into Galactia's: this meant that the Pegasus radio guy, Lt. Hoshi, was now working in Galactica's control room, both of them doing exactly the same job, rendering Dualla even more redundant. In the first episode of "Season 4.5" (which aired after almost a year of just Dualla drifting around in the background), the writers unceremoniously had Dualla randomly commit suicide by putting a pistol to her temple and blowing her brains out (well, everyone was really depressed to find that "Earth" was a nuclear wasteland, but there was no more reason for Dualla to kill herself than any other character). Fans cheered to have her finally removed and that the writers were "cleaning house". Even after the series ended, the head writer has stated that the entire "Apollo/Dualla relationship" is one of the three things he'd take back and never do on the series if he could do it again. What really makes Dualla "The Artifact" is that there's running speculation that she was kept around, simply because the writers had originally intended for her to be a "beloved audience favorite" only to shockingly reveal later on that she was a Cylon sleeper agent. Comments by the writers in the podcasts for later episodes actually loosely confirmed this: there was actually never one person planned to be "the Final Cylon" the whole time, but Dualla was on the short list of potential candidates. Even the head writers * wife* , co-hosting the podcast, said she thought it was Dualla. But as he explained, it came down to a choice between Dualla and Ellen Tigh, and they chose Ellen...simply because they realized that the character of Dualla had deviated so far from her original role, had become so * marginalized* , that it would actually have no dramatic impact to reveal she was a spy the entire time. No one cared.

• Good riddance ''Beloved audience favorite'' my ass.