Ellen Tigh

Ellen Tigh arrives on the Battlestar Galactica as Colonel Saul Tigh's wife, a brassy, hard-drinking survivor of the Cylon attack who says whatever she thinks and rarely to her husband's advantage. She flirts, she needles, she embarrasses him in front of the crew, and she clearly intends to keep surviving no matter whose good opinion it costs.

Kate Vernon plays her as comic relief who never quite lets you relax into that reading—there's real hunger and real damage under the brashness. The writing uses her as a mirror for Tigh's discipline and shame, and Vernon makes every scene with him crackle with a messy, lived-in history you believe completely.