Sunday, March 8

'Battlestar Galactica': Frustration boiling over and a ship's decline

Source: LATimes


In this episode directed by Edward James Olmos, Adm. William Adama, the rock of "Battlestar Galactica," and other characters are seemingly on the brink of life or death, or at least involved with life or death situations, that tear at them.

A hull breach starts most of the trouble. On a ship that has seen many wars and hundreds of FTL jumps even before the current residents moved in, Galactica is not what it used to be, illustrated by a deadly rip in the ship's hull that kills 61 members, Cylon and human, aboard. Adama may have been trying to save the ship at all costs, even using Cylon technology, but that may not be enough.

The accident interrupted a discussion about whether to mount another rescue attempt for Hera, seeing how she's the key to human-Cylon relations. Boomer is actually taking good care of Hera on the base star, bonding with the little girl despite knowing that she will have to give her up to Cavil to do god-knows-what with her.


Boomer's conflicting notions about giving her up (after kidnapping her) are a total "too bad." We don't exactly know what Cavil will do, but sympathy for Boomer is out of the question. Hopefully, it spurs her to act against her human-hating Cylon brethren and rescue Hera, but she should never be welcomed with open arms.

Open arms is not what the Quorum of 12 is giving Lee Adama or the military. Squabbling for individual resources for their people, it seems that the political group may cause trouble in the future. A small side note, but will have implications fleet-wide soon.

Another Cylon undergoing a transformation is Sam Anders. So, he's a hybrid. That explains ... wait no, no, it doesn't explain anything. Plugging him in to the ship might've been a good idea, and could help him heal faster/better, but nothing that he does will (to me) make much of a difference until and unless he comes out of his comatose state and says what Kara "Starbuck" Thrace is!

And poor Starbuck. She turns to the one guy who could provide some answers, but at what cost do you go to Gaius Baltar? The cost is having Baltar proclaim that you are an angel, because that's the only way he can rationalize that a living human woman can have the same DNA as a dead one. And do it in an extremely public forum like at the funeral for the fallen victims of the hull breach. Good slap she gave him, but it should've been a fist.

As for Admiral Adama, no one can understand what he's gone through with the Galactica, and his tears and paint flailing obviously also have something to do with Laura Roslin's recent hospital stay as well. But, taking the counsel of Laura and engineers and using his own eyes, Adama decides to scuttle the ship. Tigh disagrees, then sees the truth of the matter as they plan the exodus.

That's all well and good, but, and I will continue to say this, the episode didn't go a long way toward answering the lingering questions many will want answered soon. And could we just not get into the whole Col. Tigh the baby maker tangent? He was the father of an Eight, and according to Ellen, is the father of many more ''children.'' Just going to leave that alone.

2 comments:

Jeannie said...

Point of order, the Quorum of 12 are dead. The bickering you saw there are the various captains in the fleet.

FKIProfessor said...

In response to the point of order, there is a new Quorum. Rather than a Quorum of 12, it is a Quorum of all the ships. What we saw were some ships captains representing their ships. I would like to see people other than captains representing ships, but hey, there's not enough episodes left to develop all that.