Battlestar Galactica 2.9 — "Flight of the Phoenix" (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
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As always, thread is padded with a content-free OP so the mouseover preview doesn’t pop up unexpectedly and give our UK viewers advance warning of the unexpected death of Baltar at the quadruple hands of the nefarious Ovions.

Spoiler policy: If it’s been aired, or if it’s speculative, no need for a spoiler box. If it’s about an upcoming episode, or if it’s speculation based on known future information, put it in a spoiler box, and label the spoiler box with the type of information contained therein so we can decide whether it’s something we want to highlight.

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This is the second-to-last new episode of 2005. After next week’s “Pegasus,” we in the US get a break while the UK catches up; the season resumes in the US with “Resurrection Ship” in January 2006.

Important advance note regarding next week’s episode: I read someplace that “Pegasus” will run two minutes longer than its scheduled hour. I can’t remember where I saw it, so I can’t go back and make sure I wasn’t misreading it or something. Might want to make a note if you’re setting a VCR, though. If anybody saw this and can link to it before next week, please do.

Okay, so, where are we at with the story for tonight:

Not a lot of developments last week, except for a new Cylon being identified. Boomer’s still in the clink, and her grub’s gestation is apparently not hitch-free; Baltar still doesn’t know whether Six is frakking with him or what; there’s a map to Earth, of sorts; Cally should be out of the brig soon if she isn’t already; Tigh’s still got a brass pair when Ellen isn’t squeezing them, or when he isn’t blotto; Adama’s apparently chosen to back up Roslin all the way; Starbuck is a mediocre kickboxer ;); and so on.

Tonight, after last week’s stylistic departure, we’re back to the conventional story, as Galactica is threatened by a Cylon virus and Boomer may be able to fix it, if she can be trusted.

Can I get a woo-hoo!

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Didn’t we stage a revolution 200 years ago to make sure that felgercarb like this never happened again? We gotta wait for January because of the Limeys? Frak that!!! :smiley:

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Pft. I heard the limeys will actually pass us by, episode-wise. Then we’ll be playing catch-up in January.

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49.5 hours this week without a day off, worked today on my day off only started at 6:45 instead of my usual 9, I want to post something nice but really I just want the show to start

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Hey, do they sub title BG in Britain, or do voice overs? I can’t understand those guys on the BBC. Perhaps we can take solace in the fact that the Limeys can see it but not hear it. :slight_smile:

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You mean Pop-Tart, right? :slight_smile:

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I thought it was known as ‘Demon Seed™’?

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good episode, even if the A-Story was a tad predictable, i had it figured out in the first few minutes…

[spoiler]Cylon Virus?, they must have missed the latest virus definition files from Norton Anti-Virus, tsk, tsk, you’re only as protected as your last set of updates, somebody’s been perusing the “Hot Toaster-On-Toaster Action” websites on company time, methinks…

anyway, as soon as Gaeta mentioned the Cylon Virus (nVir-Cy, perhaps?) my response was “that’s an easy fix, just wipe the drives and restore from the last known-clean backup copy, you do have backups, don’t you, maybe offsite on one of the other ships in the fleet, perhaps?” and it was clear that G-Boomer would use her connection to ToasterNet to upload the virus back to the attack fleet, it’s all so simple, geez, haven’t the Toasters seen “Independence Day”?

i did like the B-story of Chief building a new fighter, and salvaging the scrap from the Raider attack party (which i’m assuming he did) was a nice touch, looks like they won’t be hurting for raw materials for a while…
[/spoiler]

nice touch naming the new craft (the Caprica Flyer, perhaps :wink: ) after Prez. Rosalyn, shows the mutual respect of our intrepid crew and the Prez

and just think, Tigh no longer has to ration his booze anymore, nice touch of him not moralizing to Chief about how the still would be “bad”, be kinda’ hypocritical for Tigh to be lecturing Chief about boozing it up, dontcha think?

the real question now is how far can G-Boomer be trusted, she said herself that the Toasters consider her (the entire production line of BoomerBots, or just her? ) to be “defective”

looks like the Cylon Mothership needs to set up an RMA exchange/refurbishment program for the “Boomer” model meatbags…

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I also thought of Tom Paris. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Tom and Apollo together at the same time.

I dunno, drinking from the flask in his sock while he was beating the shit out of him was pretty cool. :slight_smile:

Run that by again, I don’t understand. Maybe it’s the parts solvent.

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hmmm I thought I smelled a lie from Moma Boomer, she said the Cylons considered her expendable (or whatever, I am omw to bed damn I am tired), she knows the cylons wanted her preggers. they set her up with Helo for exactly that purpose…gonna have to watch this again when I have had some sleep.

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Was Galactica able to transmit instructions on how to get rid of the virus before the Romulan ship’s self-destruct activated?

Will we see Delta Flyer II: Electric Boogaloo again for some covert attacks on the Cylons?

Who would you rather have: Jeff Goldblum with a PowerBook, or Boomer of Nine?

Will Starbuck get a new Raider toy to replace the old one?

There seemed to be a lot of new-style (Mk. 7?) Vipers out there. I thought Apollo’s was the only one left.

Wonder why the Cylons formed up like they did as they waited for the virus to kick in. I don’t ever recall seeing them in formation before. But then, they are usually dashing out of a Basestar that just jumped into range.

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As others have no doubt said, one of two things are going on:

1.) The cylons have set this entire thing up with boomer for her to gain their trust to help them with their enventual plan. They are willing to lose a massive number of resources to further this goal.

2.) The cylon fleet is less then unified. One faction is trying to wipe out the fleet, while the other is trying to follow them.

One is more likely, but I can’t dismiss too. We already know Six doesn’t like Boomer, and it may be deeper then that.

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Can somebody recap what happened in the first flight of the Blackbird? Comcast decided to destroy my soul by blacking out on me.

I saw Starbuck disappear, Apollo started shouting -blip!- and when it came back on Apollo and the BB were cruising nose to nose or something for a second before cutting to the hanger bay.

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My wife had other ideas, so I had to spend the evening in the ER with her, instead of parked in front of the boob tube watching BSG and SG:SG-1. Can someone give me thumbnails on either/both?

I told her as we left at 2 AM that taking her to the ER was grounds for divorce…

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The Blackbird shoots off and Starbuck disappears. Many shots of the crew looking more and more worried while Apollo shouts “Starbuck! Starbuck!”.

Then, we see Starbuck turn on her helmet light, and she had been right in front of him the whole time. “Of course it wasn’t on draydus (sp?) it’s a stealth ship”.

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Apollo falls for every pretty girl, doesn’t he?

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[QUOTE=spiralscratch]
There seemed to be a lot of new-style (Mk. 7?) Vipers out there. I thought Apollo’s was the only one left.

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IIRC, the Galactica had a full compliment of Mk7 Vipers, some of whom were wiped out in the miniseries (I don’t think it was the whole air group). The museum pieces were put in the air because they were immune to the Cylon electronic warfare.

I read somewhere recently that the Mk7s still on board were gradually being retrofitted with older electronics so they could be effective against the Cylons. We’ve seen a few of them in recent episodes; I think Hotdog was flying one a couple of weeks ago.

Sorry about the previous not-really-a-post. Could a mod delete it, please?

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Yeah, the cold-reboot is pretty much always the answer for these, but at least they made an effort to explain why it wasn’t the easy and obvious solution (“we’ll be defenseless while everything is shut down”).

I liked everything about this episode except the above, plus (a) the rehabilitation of Helo (thought it was clumsily written) and (b) yet another Starbuck-yanks-Apollo’s-chain moment; I feel like that’s started to get sort of wheel-spinny without a lot of new material.

Other than that, I enjoyed this quite a bit. Not much forward movement on the story, except for how Boomer continues worming her way into the trust of the fleet’s leadership. (Interesting how two weeks ago Roslin could say “put that thing out the airlock” and now after being guided to the holo-map she’s saying “find common ground with it.”) It’s primarily a character episode, with lovely little moments for Tyrol, Dualla, and Cally, among others. Even Helo is interesting, at least until the very end when it feels to me like the writers forced it.

I wonder if Laura, the blackbird, will be significant later. Seems like it’s got an awful lot of zip, and its invisible-to-draidus quality could come in handy. Though one wonders why all the vipers aren’t made out of it, if it’s that cool.

And next week looks frakkin’ amazing.