Ummm…pathoelectroneuralo…icity. Yeah.
OK, that part I actually thought was pretty well done. The whole torture/sex mind-over-matter thing. That was interesting, at least. Nice little rather literal mindfuck. We know 3’s half-crackers anyway, so it gets that ball rolling as well as it could, I suppose.
No, but it appears as if Baltar will inspire 3’s heresy leading to her entire line being discontinued.
Part of the problem in the writing of this episode – a very small part of the many problems in the writing – is that Helo’s position isn’t opposed by another position that is just as extreme as his own.
We’re supposed to realize that Helo’s position is the correct, “moral” choice. But Lee’s suggestion is both reasonable and almost necessary to Colonial survival. It wasn’t made to look bad enough, despite Laura’s implication that she and Adama would be viewed akin to how we view Hitler or Stalin, now.
It would have been the perfect time for Zarek, the VP, to speak up. His character is tailor-made to point out the unpalatable, necessary choices that need to be taken. His presence would have allowed Laura to seem to actually consider Helo’s opinion like she said she would (even though she really didn’t).
It would have also fulfilled her promise to Zarek that he would be “on the inside.” When Baltar was VP, he would have found himself in on these kinds of meetings (being sneered at and snubbed, of course). But since they didn’t want to pay for an extra guest star, no Zarek.
And so the episode suffered, right along with us (for having to watch it).
Couple more things.
Adama and Roslyn:
“Cottle’s report on the virus. He thinks it was simply an accidental contamination of the beacon we abandoned on the sick bay ship.”
“Somebody sneezed, maybe.”
What’s that about? They never took possession of the beacon did they? When did they abandon it? What sick bay ship? Further:
“According to Cottle, the virus was an exact match to one reported over 3000 years ago right around the time that the 13th colony left Kobol.”
Huh? They have detailed health records of Kobol from 3000 years ago? Man, just put Doc Cottle in charge. That guy’s got the goods.
You know, I think Doc Cottle also just invented a foolproof Cylon detector, in a matter of days.
Baltar takes however long to do so, needs a nuclear bomb, and it takes forever to run the tests. Cottle spends a few days testing Cylon antibodies, notices that they attack RNA, and hey! presto! easy way to know who’s a Cylon.
This episode just gets stupider the more I think about it. I need to go have a lay down or something…
Meh… a thoroughly forgettable episode, ranks down there with Black Market and Epiphanies…
all right, who’s been letting the Jericho writers write Galactica eps? own up now…
as stated upthread, too much Treknobabble, and the “Magic Pop-Tart Blood” makes an unwelcome appearance, i know WHY they did it, so they wouldn’t have to deal with putting Sharon/Athena on a meds cocktail, but they sure went about it in a very ham-handed, Trekky way
i’m surprised on how BORING the BaltarStar scenes are, i mean, here we are, on board a capital ship of Humanity’s most intractable enemy, we should be finding all sorts of cool things about Cylons, their culture and technology, but it’s mostly an angsty Balty Pity-Party
not sure how much more Whiny Baltar i can take, i’m actually beginning to want to see Three/D’anna space him, and now that Adama and Rosylin know that Balty is “helping” the Meatbags, he won’t be welcome back any time soon, that’s for sure, which will probably get him to spiral into a deeper depression…
he should share quarters with Marvin the Paranoid Android on that BaseStar, they could have a Sulk-Off competition…
I know. It’s seriously troubling. I mean, come on, RDM, there’s not going to be much useful info. about old viral strains in the Scroll of Pythia, I don’t think. Are we meant to understand that back-issues of the Proceedings of the Kobol Academy of Sciences survived to the present?
And Helo (still XO?) was absent from the bridge during an emormously important operation?
Question for the masses: did Baltar die?
Believe it or not, that actually wasn’t the worst of it by a long shot. Amazingly, fetal stem cells do pass from the fetus’ circulation to the mother’s, and there’s mounting data suggesting they can play a modest regenerative roll and have a measurable impact on the mother’s biology for many years. Yeah, the magic blood may have been bad to introduce in the first place, but it was, it’s obviously got some amazing properties, and this sort of thing would at least be consistent. In reality, I figure both the President and Athena ought to be damn-near impervious to all kinds of things. They’ve both got Hera’s stem cells floating around in them.
Die? Uh, no, I don’t think so. Had one hell of crash course in S&M, yeah, but besides a bloody ear and probalby an incipient case of post-traumatic stress disorder, he seems about as healthy as can be expected.
Better still, one might note that all Cylons have lupus or scleroderma!
Only in the Shakespearean sense.
Oh, and as far as the episode goes… yeah. It’s like this week, as a penalty for having most of the plot line of Studio 60 not suck, they had to take all of the problems that that show usually has, and screw over the BSG script with them.
They can’t all be classics, I guess. Doesn’t mean we have to be happy about it though 
I’m mystified by this episode. Unlike Black Market, it was all about Cylons and humans looking for Earth. I mean, this is the meat-n-potatoes of this franchise. I thought the beginning got off very nicely, with the humans boarding the Basestar, the tension and fear, and I was all primed for something big to go down. By the end of this episode, almost nothing was accomplished on the Galactica side of the narrative at all, except we learn that Helo lost his frakking mind somewhere. On the Cylon side it wasn’t so bad, I guess. But on the human side it all seemed so incredibly portentious, and in the end we’re left with a single ridiculously-crafted clue that they’re on the right path to Earth. It’s not like the BG writers to pull a fast one on us like that, and fill a two-parter with loads of ultimately pointless conflict. Did they get any new writing staff this season? Maybe someone is having some growing pains?
That’s what it seems like. This really feels like they brought in a new writer who isn’t quite up-to-speed.
I’m also not thrilled with the decor in the Basestar command center. What’s with that wall dripping liquid? We bought lamps that did that in the 70’s.
Go ahead, pretend that you’re surprised that “70s Leisure Suit” Aaron Doral is the Cylon interior decorator.
Yeah, not so good. *BSG *meets Minority Report. But I am now looking forward to learning something more about the other 5 models of “skin jobs” (now, where have I heard that term before…). So, is Tigh going to drink himself to dealth? It’s good to see Apollo w/o all the fat makeup.
It’s also been hypothesized that the presence of fetal stem cells causes women to be more predisposed to autoimmune diseases, so your comments about all the Cylons coming down with lupus may be prescient.
However, I’m pretty sure that it was stated that the Cylons carried an enzyme and not an antibody that destroyed the RNA that they were using to vaccinate them with, in which case they don’t have an autoimmune diseasse. RNA-based vaccines have been proposed as a means of treating HIV infection, so this wasn’t completely a load of biobabble. Of course, if the Cylons carried a specific enzyme that readily attacked these RNAs, then this could be used as the basis of a Cylon detecting test, too.
What’s really bugging me is the fact that they had a chance to sufficiently explain how such a biological virus (and for that matter, any meatbag life-data) could be downloaded to the resurrection ship, but completely muddled it up.