Once again, I must chastise myself for slacking on my Battlestar Galactica review. I know people don't like hearing excuses, but it really was difficult to blog from outside of Jack Murphy Qualcomm Stadium. I am also just very lazy. This episode marks the last installment of the second season and if we are taking the first season as a precedent, then we can expect an episode filled with a ton of anticipation and one crazy cliffhanger. But coming into this episode, things were actually calming down for the most part. The civilians and the military officers protecting them have started to come to an understanding and after some concerns with burnout, the crew rallied to build a fighter of their own design. Even their Cylon prisoner was cooperating with them and helped them escape near certain death. With the relative serenity, it might actually be time for the fleet to start thinking about what had inspired them to keep going in the first place - finding Earth.
You know something? If everything was too easy or there were no surprises, life just wouldn't be that fun. So not two minutes into the episode, the Galactica is already ready for battle. There is an unidentified ship coming straight for them. They assume it is a Cylon basestar, but it is sending a colonial signal. When they hail this ship, the people onboard identify themselves as the Battlestar Pegasus. By the time the intercept vipers can in fact confirm the identity of the ship, Commander Adama is already celebrating the arrival of Admiral Cain. That's right, it really was another colonial ship, and TVgasm readers should love captain of the ship. It's ranking officer is Admiral Cain, played by Michelle Forbes who starred as Lynne Kresge during the second season of 24 and took an unfortunate fall soon after she discovered a traitor among Palmer's staff, but we have loved her ever since her stint as the medical examiner with the odd mole in Homicide: Life on the Street.
The presence of another human ship is northing short of a miracle. One of the reasons why the Galactica was able to make it while the rest of the fleet was getting slaughtered was because of its age. It was old and didn't have a lot of the modern technology and weaponry that newer Battlestars enjoyed. This ended up being a blessing in disguise because the Cylons weren't able to exploit that technology for their own use. With this in mind, the crew of the Galactica waited in the hangar for the arrival of a landing party from the Pegasus.
When the members of the Pegasus crew came aboard, I was kind of surprised at how formal things were going. There was no small significance in the fact that they made contact with other humans, because it immediately boosts the moral of everybody in the fleet. Everybody had assumed that they were the only humans left in existence, and even thought the Pegasus was clearly a special case, if they could survive, maybe there was others out there. Despite what I would consider one the most exciting times in Galactica memory, Cain and the rest of the people accompanying her to the Galactica weren't exactly excited to see everybody, and when she met Adama, she wanted to make it clear who was in charge by telling him "Welcome back to the colonial fleet". Despite the low-rent Dido playing the background, I didn't get the sense that they thought this moment was special at all.
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Comments (10)
Ensign Ro Laren from Star Trek:TNG is on the show now?
1 of 10 | Posted by British | Posted on October 3, 2005 6:00 AM
Great episode; this show gets better every week. The rape scene was possibly the most disturbing thing that I've ever seen on TV. I can't believe that they allowed it...
2 of 10 | Posted by dumbanddumber | Posted on October 3, 2005 7:03 AM
It's interesting to see how they're blurring the lines between "good" and "evil" with the Cylons and Humans. There are strong Roman tidbits (the old polytheistic views in direct opposition to the Cylon's monotheistic ideas, as well as names, terminology, etc.), but what I really enjoy is the shades of gray we're being introduced to.
The idea of a human-looking Cylon is one that we accept easily - it is a robot that looks human. But is it? They look to me to be biological organisms (much like the Cylon Raiders), as evidenced by Sharon's pregnancy.
The use of a beaten, humiliated, and badly raped woman is the quick way to get us to view the Cylons as more "human". But even more powerful, albeit more manipulative, is the image of a young, pregnant woman about to be raped before our eyes. If, as a viewer, you felt anything besides revulsion or abject horror, you need to get your head examined.
And wouldn't it be interesting if the crew of the Pegasus was completely ok? What I mean by that is that we're obviously, at this point, trained to automatically think that someone on the Pegasus' crew is a Cylon; after all, the horrible things they've done MUST be the work of a Cylon operative, right?
But what if they're all really human? What if there is no Cylon spy? Wouldn't that be more horrifying?
3 of 10 | Posted by Rico | Posted on October 3, 2005 11:05 AM
Yes, Ensign Ro has brought her badass-ness to "BSG!" Her disdain for Roslin is hilarious.
dumbanddumber has never seen a little show called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in which we had the hyperstrong Slayer wrestled to the ground and all kinds of icked before she stopped pleading and put those muscles to work. The only thing that saves the repulsively vivid attempt, is that the actors hate doing it so much it looks fake and badly done.
This was an interesting exploration of how different people react to ongoing crisis. The Pegasus didn't even consider trying to preserve its crew (ergo, mankind). They just decided to become resistance fighters in a fruitless contest. This was bound to happen. "ST: Voyager" met that ship of people who were stealing creatures from another dimension to burn them for fuel and get home faster.
4 of 10 | Posted by Lady J | Posted on October 3, 2005 11:09 AM
Lady J--
I have seen that Buffy episode! It doesn't hold a candle to the BSG attempt. I thought that BSG was incredibly realistic, and horrifying. The Buffy scene was pretty vivid, too, I admit ... but maybe it's the actors, maybe it's the fact that Buffy gets beat on every week, or maybe it's that you never really think that Spike can hurt her, but that scene wasn't nearly as revolting...
5 of 10 | Posted by dumbanddumber | Posted on October 3, 2005 12:08 PM
Um, we'll agree to disagree on that. I found them equally revolting.
6 of 10 | Posted by Lady J | Posted on October 3, 2005 2:39 PM
Never thought that I'd be discussing with someone over which rape scene was more revolting. Yuck, I feel dirty just typing that. I'll agree with you, and we can probably both agree that the discussion should be closed!
7 of 10 | Posted by dumbanddumber | Posted on October 3, 2005 5:44 PM
I have recently gotten hooked on this show but am missing a lot of info since i missed season one. can anyone point me to a good website to figure out what is happeneing?
8 of 10 | Posted by Leah3t | Posted on October 4, 2005 9:10 AM
Leah3t,
http://battlestarwiki.org/
An uncomfortable amount of attention paid to this show, but a great source of information.
watch out for the spoilers....
9 of 10 | Posted by J-Unit | Posted on October 4, 2005 9:49 AM
This was probably the worst episode of BSG they have had since the begining. Everything was telegraphed, you knew what was going to happen before it did and the "cliffhanger" was weak and very forced.
Not up to it's usual standards by any stretch.
10 of 10 | Posted by Teafran | Posted on October 4, 2005 4:45 PM