TV Review: -''Collaborators'

Source: IF Magazine

After the amazing and exciting emotional roller-coaster of last week’s final part of the four part opening of BSG season 3 … the question becomes where do we go from here?

We’re back to square one. There is only one Battlestar and a fleet of civilian ships trudging across the galaxy to find Earth. But now after everything that happened on New Caprica, nothing is going to be the same. This episode is just the first of many that will deal with the repercussions of all of the events and losses both physical and emotional on the planet’s surface.

I think that this episode is as close to the Salem Witch trials or Communist Red Hearings of the past that we’ve had on BSG since the season one episode, “Litmus”. This is a much harsher, darker episode with a group of ship members (with every right to be pissed and bitter) on board of Galactica passing judgment on their fellow humans who were New Caprica Police or viewed as conspirators with the Cylons. This tribunal acts not only as judge, but also jury and executioner of those they are hunting. Expect a few more familiar faces to go bye-bye in this episode.

I like GALACTICA because it is an ever changing and shifting creature. The show always has unexpected turns and twists, and in the post-Sept. 11 world that is supposed to be a mirror of, it really asks the question of who are the betrayed and who are the betrayers. GALACTICA gets to ask hard questions without attracting too much attention because of its Science Fiction format, but this is still the best most brilliantly written and executed program on TV.

One of the most interesting things to watch this season will be Starbuck’s decline. She’s been pushed to the brink before, but not like this. The emotional, physical and mental abuse that Doral the Cylon heaped onto her for four months in a detention camp are going to eat their way through to the outside of her personality. This is an ugly thing to watch, but its like a car wreck that you can’t quite look away from. Interestingly enough when I interviewed Sackhoff at the end of last season she said she wanted to “have a hot love affair with a Cylon, and have Starbuck really go through something.” I guess she got her wish!

It’ll also be really cool to continue to see the interior of the Cylon Baseship since Baltar is being held captive there. I know there’s some pretty heavy torture ahead for him this season, and I honestly can’t wait. Its kind of time that he gets some payback for almost wiping out humanity for a good lay.

Hera, the Cylon/human hybrid will also be an intriguing plot to watch develop, but there isn’t much new about that on this episode, nor is there very much with Lucy Lawless, who I really can’t get enough of on BSG.

Again this show stays in my A rating bracket and really probably will never waiver. So until Baltar disguises himself in drag as 6 to escape the Cylons, I’ll keep watching and you should too!

By: SEAN ELLIOTT
Senior Editor