I think we just got a solid “Battlestar” rule…which I’m sure they won’t follow.
Great idea.
The Pegasus is going to need to put up posters of “Commander of the Day” to keep the crew up to speed. A lot of turnover in that position!
I don’t think there’s another Resurrection ship nearby. If there were, I doubt the basestar Apollo was charging would have broken off. It seems the cylons are adjusting their tactics as Boomer said they would. With the resurrection ship around, they were more into a flat out attack and were unconcerned about losses. Then we went several episodes with very few attacks, and those that occurred involved a few raiders (including veteran fighters like Scar) who mostly jumped away before being killed (except for Scar). Now they seem to have decided some losses are acceptable. Their strategy this episode was lure and ambush, then send raiders in to take the real risks while the basestars stay safely in the background and launch nukes. I guess raiders are more expendable than basestar personnel. I wonder if the ever changing cylon battle tactics are going to pay off in a big way in a future episode.
I agree that next week’s episode is definitely a flash back to Boomer 1.0 after she got shot by Cally.
I was happy that they addressed the fact that the population count wasn’t going up. I’d been wondering why it went down every week. Wasn’t anyone having babies? If you’re not into joining pacivist movements or taking hostages, what is a civilian to do with his/her time? I think they’d be fraking like rabbits! Then again, if there’s birth control available (and abortion was until this episode), it may make sense that few babies are being born. I don’t know that I’d want to have a child given that the entire human race seems to be in jeopardy. I’d prefer to wait a few years and see if things got a bit more stable.
I liked Baltar’s grab for power. However, I do wonder how viable a candidate he’ll be. Surely someone has footage of the man talking to himself or arguing with his own neck tie!
“6 months earlier…”
Talk about negative campaigning! 
…to say nothing of the …fallout (heh, no pun intended) that would happen if it became publc knowledge that Baltar had a hand in the initial Cylon genocide in the mini, you think the anti-Bush camp is bad?!?..
“Baltar lied PEOPLE DIED!!!”
“Gaius W. Baltar = Lucifer!”
They may be frakking like rabbits. It’s only been about 7/8 months since the Cylon attack. Babies conceived since the attack are only now just starting to be born.
hmm I thought I saw a bit about Helo in Boomers Ranting there. Helo came after the Chief and would be Mama Boomer not OG boomer.
doesnt really matter much either way, an ep that revolves around Grace Park gets my vote any day.
I think Ty will have no problem with Apollo taking over on the Pegasus. Ty is firmly rooted as Adama’s second in command and we saw that when Adama was out of the picture, he took a little while to get adjusted. I’m trying to remember if his wife got killed or not in the bar room episode, guess I’ll have to go back and watch it. If she’s still alive then she’s the one who will be unhappy about Ty being skipped over.
Also I was struck by the fact that Apollo’s relationship is going to be derailed as Dee is staying on Galactica I assume.
Yes parts of this episode were telegraphed, but I think that I’m just most happy we’re making forward motion with the story again.
As I watched last night’s good-but-not-great installment, containing yet another self-contained story arc (the doomed commander), I started to wonder if the design of the last few episodes isn’t a calculated gamble by Ron Moore.
See, one of the difficult things about shows like this, building up long and complicated plots, is that they’re virtually impossible for the casual viewer to get into. If you don’t know who everybody is and what they’ve all been doing for the last twenty-odd episodes, the action becomes close to incomprehensible. That’s why most TV shows don’t work like this; they want anyone to be able to watch any show and quickly figure out who’s trying to do what to whom. I mean, my boss, overhearing me and a co-worker raving about BSG, decided to watch last week’s show after never having seen a single previous episode, and she came in on Monday with lots and lots of questions: “So the girl in jail is a robot? And she’s pregnant? How did that happen? And that platinum model chick, nobody else can see her? Why not? And that blonde girl who shot the hot guy, was she his ex-girlfriend, or what?” And so on. She liked the gritty tension, and she liked the plot of the one show, but she was perplexed about the ongoing story threads. Consider the struggles shows like Buffy and Veronica Mars have had building viewership after they’re deep into their arcs.
Now, BSG has tremendous buzz at the moment; the critics are talking it up, it’s Sci-Fi’s highest-rated show, it’s popping up on magazine covers… Water-cooler conversation is still dominated by Lost and Desperate Housewives and American Idol, but BSG is starting to make inroads. That makes it a very tricky time for the show, because they’re inviting new viewers to check it out, but they’ve got such a deep and detailed story going that it’s potentially too opaque for a drop-in audience member to have a hope of catching up in a single show.
It seems possible to me, in this light, that RDM is rolling the dice a bit here, structuring the current batch of shows as standalones that are friendlier to the new viewer, not so dense with reference to past events, so a first-timer can follow the action, and at the same time hoping that the slight stall in forward movement won’t alienate the longtime fan. He’s an experienced TV producer; he knows how this stuff works. He may have deliberately decided to spend a few episodes at this crucial point of audience development telling self-contained stories that restate and re-establish the relationships and the backstory, and that are therefore comprehensible to the growing audience, before launching back into the main story arc over the last three episodes of the season. Next week, certainly, is going to lean heavily on the story so far, and will probably be largely unintelligible to someone who hasn’t seen the show before. It’s potentially irritating to the experienced viewer, who has gotten used to a more sophisticated style of storytelling (none of us was surprised by the decoy Boomersicle last week, for example), but so far, none of us has decided to abandon the show, either.
I can’t be certain this is what’s going on, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me.
They’ve already shown that Tigh just isn’t cut out for command, and he knows it too.
Like Garner was a good engineer but a poor commander.
No, she didn’t. That keeps alive the “Is Ellen a Cylon or not?” issue.
The ships aren’t going to be that far apart. Their job is still to protect the civilians on the way to Earth.
So say we all! Now, if we can *just * let a Beast CO survive an entire episode for once …
Next week, my bet is that the new Boomer is a copy of the preggers one, not a replacement, from a file somehow transmitted over the CyloNet to let the toasters interrogate her about the humans’ plans.
One thing that’s been bugging me about the episode is the decision to ban abortion. Is there really a rash of abortions going on within the fleet? I somehow doubt that the increase in birth rate due to banning abortions would significantly impact the population. Eliminating birth control altogether would achieve that better (and be so much more draconian). But if I were Roslin, there is no way that I would think that going all pro-life would really boost the population.
Perhaps Moore is using an issue that his audience can relate to.
I think it’s great they brought it up. But Roslyn really screwed the pooch on this one. I’m pretty suprised at her. You ban abortions you’re just driving women to seek less safe alternatives. As it is, Doc Cottle seems to be running an almost but not quite underground abortion clinic. At least he’s safe. Who’s going to be providing abortions now, the black market underground?
Far better than banning abortions, would be to encourage motherhood with incentives. There are lots of women who love having babies. Make them “Heroes of the Fleet.” Give them additional living space and food rations. You wouldn’t have a shortage of mothers, and you wouldn’t have the backlash from I dunno… just about every female fighter pilot who’d rather concentrate on her career than pumping out babies?
Just try telling Starbuck & Kat they can’t fuck around the fleet and not use birth control.
Y’all are forgetting that Roslin was largely motivated by political ends. Without Geminon’s support, she probably won’t get re-elected, and despite her prophet status, they were threatening to withdraw support unless she banned abortion. Add in Baltar’s calculations, whether as another impetus or merely a good rationalization, and there you are.
Personally, I think it was the wrong decision. But at least it looks like it’ll be on the books to mollify the Geminese zealots, without actually being enforced. Somehow I think Doc Cottle will be taking a lot of “R&R trips” suddenly (have I mentioned how much I love him?).
You’re right of course- except when everything is rationed and there simply isn’t much to reward people with, then you have to go authoritarian. This was exactly what the Ceausescu regime did in Communist Romania. It’s a clumsy, semi-eugenicist way to try to force women to have more children, and I think this will hand Baltar the election.
Then take it away from someone else. Make legal fines payable in ration stamps and give them as credit. Starbuck probably owes a feast in Viper parking tickets.
Oh, she does not. Everyone knows that she is the best damn Viper parker in the fleet!
Only by virtue of blasting other vehicles on the lot with 20mm cannon.
The flaw lies in the death of Billy, who had a part time job valet parking on Cloud Nine.
Oh, please, did you see the end? She was parking on the frakking CEILING!
Doc Cottle always gets the best lines.
“You know, she probably could just ask for asylum.”
“Yeah, that’s it. That’s what I want. Asylum.”
The thing with the Geminese zealots, why didn’t Roslyn ask them what they plan on doing with all these unwanted babies? You’ve got x amount of space, and x amount of food. What are you going to do, eat them? What do the scriptures say about that?