Sure seems like being CO of the Pegasus is right up there with being Admiral on the Star Destroyer Exector.
Overall I liked the episode, and it addressed some things, but stuffing some dead Apollo just seemed a bit unnecessary. If Moore was so unhappy about it I don’t know why, but I guess I’ll get the 'cast and find out.
Finally, I don’t see why a whore wouldn’t take the chance to get out from under random clients and, instead, become the Admiral’s sole source,if you know what I mean…
-Joe
I was wondering about the economy too. We saw what appeared to be paper currency changing hands several times, and I was particularly wondering how paper currency can survive as a medium of exchange in a fleet with such scarce resources. After all, what’s backing up the paper? Is there an intra-fleet banking system? It seems unlikely that one’s wealth in the fleet would depend on how much paper money you were carrying with you when the Cylons attacked.
I watched the lately improving Enterprise until the bitter end, but that was Trek.
They screwed up Andromeda untill it became “The Kevin Sorbo Show” AKA “Hercules in Space” and I dropped it like a hot rock. I curse the money I spent on video tapes for “John Doe”. This could happen to Galactica. Trek in whatever incarnation is like a first love returned, there is always hope. Andromeda and perhaps Galactica is like someone met in a bar. Interesting and fun, but don’t push it. At the first hint of BG becoming “Cylon of the Week”, or “The Space Baby Show” I’m outta here. I got those DS9 CDs.
Maybe they’re ration tickets?
well at least partial successs there, I was thinking at the end how this reminded me of Appocolypse Now.
the children werent only there for prostitution (I think there was a coment along this line) they were there for whatever reason one could want.
some of the complaints that are popping up are a bit out there, the show is about humans, why is it that every time they do anything thats been done anywhere else people bitch? its not like humans dont comit the same evils time and time again, and its not as if any of us learn from others mistakes in life, we all have regrets to deal with, most of us are repeled by the same things. if you took out child slavery/prostitution what “superduperspankingnewbrand of evil” would you have replaced it with? seriously.
I liked the episode, parts seemed left out of the investigation but thats fine, if I want the details I can watch CSI. the story was kinda straight down the road and Zarek still has some questions to answer…that or Apollo is dumber than I think. (or the Mr. Moore is simply not going to head down this road again)
I have no predictions, I am 0 for my last 12 or so…and I started out doing so well.
Same thing that backs it up here and now: Nothing. Not since we went off the gold standard over thirty years ago. Paper money has worth only by our common agreement, via the government. These people have lost everything familiar; why wouldn’t they hold onto a link to the destroyed Colonies? It isn’t all paper money, either - Doc Cottle took a strip of gold-pressed latinum out of Fisk’s mouth, remember?
It coexists with the barter system called the “black market” on the show, but which is really just a normal economic system, which would be why the Adamas only want to keep out the worst abuses of it. The military has enough on its hands without enforcing a command economy beyond necessary rationing. The supply side is almost completely inelastic there. It does seem odd that the military command accepts a free market with only the most necessary limits while the schoolteacher President would prefer to be a Soviet-style chief apparatchik.
But that’s more of the interesting character development in this show.
they’re using leaves as legal tender… 
I was wondering . . . would Admiral Adama have accepted the situation of Apollo returning with the hooker and her child? Would Shevon the hooker play a counterpoint against Ellen Tigh (the predatory slut against the hooker with a “heart of gold”)?
I guess Apollo was quite surprized when his father said “You should have said something about the girl?”
I would have replaced it with nothing. That’s my point, exactly. I think it would have made for a much more ambiguous, and therefore interesting, confrontation if Evil Smuggler Guy were JUST an evil smuggler guy. Let’s say he was everything that was shown other than a kiddie pimp. He was an organized crime boss, a smuggler, and a murderer. Still, one could make the argument that he was a necessary evil and that the powers that be could deal with him. That would have made Apollo’s decision much weightier.
Now add in the child sex ring. Suddenly, all his arguments go out the window, because there’s no WAY Apollo could let him live and keep going about his business. His decision was no decision at all, because ESG went from being a run of the mill criminal to an eeeeevil psycopath.
In the first scenario, the “it’s hard to find a moral high ground line” works, because ESG really hasn’t done much that Apollo hasn’t. In the second scenario (as broadcast), Apollo absolutely has the moral high ground, because he hasn’t been pimping out children.
The more I think about it, the more annoyed I am. That was just lazy, sloppy writing.
Did anyone note the markings? How many cubits was it? The doctor thought he might be able to retire on just a few more.
This is a reference to a passage of Douglas Adam’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” for those of you who have not yet read it.
I thought that the point was made quite clear… He was NOT just into the black market, or prostitution pimpiong, or kiddie stuff… he was KILLING PEOPLE… and he wasn’t just killing people, but officers. The ring-leader also made it clear that he intended to keep ordering people being killed as long as he was in power.
Apollo also says something like this to Zareck - (Approx) “You start killing people and I will shut you down.”
Using a measure of length for money?
Didn’t the first series use a distance unit for time or something else stupid?
Typical bridge dialogue: “The Cylon ship is only 3 microns away! Fire!”
No worse than measuring the time for the Kessel run in parsecs, I suppose.
I watched this again last night with a fellow Galactica nut. His first time, my second (third if you count the podcast).
The adjective that seems to fit the episode best is “clumsy.”
It definitely does not hold up to repeat viewing. First time through, I was sort of carried along, keeping mental notes about the stuff that didn’t work but letting it roll off, and focusing on the elements of interest: Apollo’s character, the nifty scenes between him and Tigh and betwen Baltar and Roslin, the glimpses of fleet life outside the military bubble, and so on.
This time, though, the problems were harder to ignore. I’ll stand by what I said about RDM’s own complaints — he’s right that the choice to use kids-in-danger as a gut-punch substitute for abstract economic theorizing is overkill, but the other issues, the very-bad bad guy and the straight-line investigation, aren’t bad at all — but far more bothersome are the things he doesn’t dwell on.
Specifically, it’s the introduction of so much significant information in such a compressed time frame. We’ve never seen Apollo’s Caprican girlfriend before; didn’t know anything about her. Nor Shevon, his “professional” squeeze. Nor the children in either scenario. Nor the existence of prostitution as a legitimate business. Nor the involvement of Fisk in anything shady. And the possible relationship between Apollo and Dee, while vaguely hinted at, wasn’t given nearly enough weight to support the confrontation as played. This episode piles on the exposition, and then expects us to care about it.
This, I think, is what RDM is getting at when he says the episode feels like “ordinary TV.” This is the storytelling model of episodic television as of a few years ago, in which each installment is largely stand-alone. In this model, the core characters are largely archetypal, components in a narrative mechanism. Each episode introduces the information you need for that hour’s story, processes the information, follows the conflict, and provides resolution by the end. Take that one episode of STNG where Riker’s father shows up: We knew virtually nothing about him before he appeared; we spend the first few minutes learning about the man and how he and Riker fail to communicate; and by the end of the hour the conflict has been at least partly erased. And as far as I recall, we never meet the man or even hear about him again.
Galactica has, up to this point, been better than that. Plot threads are laid into the narrative and allowed to lay dormant for many episodes; check the gap between Starbuck’s confession to Apollo in the miniseries about her role in Zak’s death, and her later confession of same to Adama. And last week’s episode finally paid off Six’s demand that Baltar acquire a nuclear weapon, after, what, sixteen or seventeen episodes since he first got it?
This episode would have worked a lot better if it had been drawn out a bit. Not a lot; just a bit. In particular, during “Resurrection Ship,” while Apollo was doing his spacewalk, that’s when we should have seen flashback glimpses of the Caprican blonde. Wouldn’t have required more than a few seconds, or even an explanation of who she is — just a flash, so we see her face and wonder why she was on Apollo’s mind. (According to the podcast, this was the intent, but it was cut for time. Bad choice.) Similarly, we needed one more brief moment between Apollo and Dee. We’ve seen it twice (the grappling moment, and Dee eavesdropping after Apollo’s rescue); we needed one more to solidify that they wanted us to pick up on it. It’s the rule of threes in storytelling: once is an incident, twice is curious, three times is setup. Naturally, we also needed to know that Apollo was in bed with Shevon, the pro, something else that wouldn’t have taken a lot of time.
So here’s what should have happened:
In “Resurrection Ship (1),” we needed a moment of awkward intimacy between Apollo and Dee. This pays off in part two when Dee’s repeating her searching messages over the wireless, and at the end.
In “Resurrection Ship (2),” we needed a fleeting glimpse of the blonde on Apollo’s mind during his spacewalk.
In “Epiphanies,” I would have sacrificed the revelation of Roslin’s affair with Adar in order to show Apollo with Shevon. I also would have included an exchange of throwaway dialogue to establish Fisk as possibly being involved in something odd, like somebody asking about a fine good of some kind (jewelry, whatever) and somebody else saying, “Talk to Fisk, he seems pretty well connected.”
In “Black Market” itself, by shifting out some of the above exposition, we buy a little time so we can see a bit more of Apollo’s investigation. And, of course, Shevon’s big speech at the end needed to be revamped completely, to make it about the character and not about the delivery of stupidly obvious emotional information.
And that, I think, is all that would have been required to pull this episode out of its mediocrity. Sounds like a lot, but they’re tweaks, really. By failing to lay the groundwork properly, the way they’ve been doing it all along, it makes this episode feel awkward, overstuffed, and, as I said above, clumsy by comparison with preceding episodes. And that, I think, is at the heart of what makes this installment feel like “ordinary TV.”
(I have similar concerns about how they’re going to handle the introduction of Starbuck as a drunk, as seen in the previews for next week. If it’s something that just suddenly is happening, without having been established, it will feel equally awkward. The right way to do it is to see Starbuck at the top, dissatisfied and distanced from Adama and what used to be her moral center, and to let us in on the beginnings of her plunge. She’s an extreme enough character that I can buy a steep plummet after she steps off the edge; she’s not a functioning drunk like Tigh.)
Point is, in “Black Market,” they didn’t miss by much, but what they did miss had a pretty significant impact on the success of the show. If nothing else, this episode demonstrates what a careful balancing act this kind of storytelling really is.
CENTON for (I figure) 1/100 of a daily division
It’s been a while but I remember them using centon as a substitute for seconds. I thought it was used just because it sorta sounds like second. Like using the word Frak.
I think that was it, maybe it just sounded silly. Especially when Lorene Greene said it. 
Yeah, I saw it again too. I had problems with it.
I admit, I tune in for space battles first, acting and character development second, and some cheesy ad hoc let’s-find-Earth story third (hard to care about the overall story when I know it’s being made up every week). Last week it was all number two, but with an emphasis on development rather than character. Fisk, we hardly knew ye. Apollo’s shacked up with a whore? WTF, since when?
I think Moore needs to relax, and stop trying to produce “The Usual Suspects in Space” every week. The joint Galactica/Pegasus victory should have been followed by raptors sifting the debris for salvage & intel, Starbuck setting up a pyramid league, some more on Fisk and a general debriefing on the biggest military op since the fleet got smashed. In other words, a show about an interstellar warship and its crew, and the logical things they would do after a big victory.
You had good tv right there, but it got passed over for…ehh.
Stuff like cancer fairies, poptarts and whore girlfriends *can * move characters forward development-wise and lend weight to the drama, but they don’t necessarily lend actual depth to those characters, or mean that the drama is entertaining. Once poptarts and cancer become the routine rather than the exception, you’re beginning to enter the world of suck.
Note to Ron: bring back the poker game. Actors acting with no ridiculous underlying story thread was good for the show. They’ve shown a talent for improv and don’t need a ridiculous script to distract the audience from how bad they are as actors.
Unlike other science fiction shows. 
I’m kind of dreading this Friday, Starbuck as a boozer is an example of what I’m talking about. She’s cool the way she is, annoying or not, did anyone order a plate of Starbuck as an alkie? Was normal Starbuck too boring? Did this character need another layer?
Who writes the “next week on Battlestar Galactica”. Moore or some dummy at the network? I haven’t paid much attention to see if it is really about the next show or not.