When I said they had finished clearing up a lot of what happened in season one, that did not mean there wasn't any stuff left from this episode. After all, we still don't know what the hell Helo and Starbuck are doing on Caprica, and the Cylons were still doing a little search and destroy for the human survivors on Kobol. It's Kobol where we start the episode. There are now five survivors left - Chief, Cally (these two will surely hook up at some point this season), Gaius, Lt. Crashdown, and some other random medical trainee.

Their main goal is to evade the Cylons for as long as possible, but while on some routine surveillance, they see something that is going to make them alter their plans. It looks like the Cylons are deploying a missile battery from their ship. Why hunt down the humans when you can nuke everything within fifty miles and get the same result? Obviously, they are going to need a plan of action, because it really is no use to hope for a rescue when the only thing left over is going to be your shadow on some rock after you were vaporized.

We do have to take a little step back, of course; this whole hope of rescue thing depends on people from Galactica taking a chance at a rescue. There was no guarantee of that happening, because since the command of what is effectively the remainder of the human race has fallen into the hands of Colonel Tigh, he hasn't exactly been lights out with the whole leadership thing. He is basically trying to hold down the fort until Commander Adam can get healthy, which is still a long shot, and he is facing hours of surgery. It just so happens that the only person qualified to do this smokes more than a nineteen-year-old starlet after a couple of Vicodin and some tequila shots.

Luckily, there are a bunch of people out there that still haven't completely freaked out since Commander Adama was shot, and that includes his son Lee Adama, or Apollo as we like to call him. Lee is technically supposed to be locked up for supporting President Roslin and her apparently insane idea that she is going to bring salvation on the people because it was written in a prophecy. She did compromise the safety of the entire fleet, but she saw it as a necessary action to save the human race. Although Apollo was supposed to be in jail, Tigh realized that he is going to need him for his skill as a pilot and a military leader. Apollo is working on a rescue plan for the survivors on Kobol (if there are any, because they don't know), and although Tigh yells at Apollo to assert some authority, he wisely lets him continue with his plan.

It's better that Tigh wasn't bothered with the search and rescue, because he does have a lot of other things to worry about. For one, he has locked up most of the press, and they are starting to wonder what is going on. Secondly, the Quorum of 12, the body that is acting as a legislative branch in the current colonial government, wants to know what their president is doing, and who exactly is in charge.

I can tell you who is not in charge, and that is President Roslin. She is dying of breast cancer, and the only thing that was able to keep her functioning was a special drug that many considered quack medicine, called chamalla. I don't know if her herbal approach to cancer is some sort of shout out to Suzanne Sommers, but the chamalla does work for Roslin. The bad part is that when she doesn't have it, she turns into a blathering idiot, as the pain or whatever else appears to have an effect on her. The side effect of chamalla is supposed to be hallucinations, and Roslin seems to have them, although they are fairly clairvoyant. She can stop taking it about as easily as somebody get themselves off of heroin or meth. The fact that she is basically going cold turkey in a jail cell is not helping things at all.

Hallucinations are problems for a lot of important people of the colonial government. Roslin is consumed by them, as is Gaius Baltar, chief scientist and vice president of the colonies. While the President dreams that the prophecies of the gods might come true, Baltar dreams of the Cylon Six, and she is constantly trying to convince him that there is only one true God and he shouldn't believe everything about the history of man. She tells him that man has only brought greed and murder to the universe and they are pretty much not worthy of God's love. But for all of that, God has decided that Baltar and Six's child would bring salvation for the Cylons and humans, but that he must become a man and accept his role as a father.

Posted by J-Unit on August 2, 2005 12:36 PM