I liked it but…like mr Moore said in that one episode with the child slavery ring thing, it would be better tc if things werent so black and white. I liked it when Helo saved the Cylons because he was true to his character AND because it was a very tough call on his actions being good or bad for the long term survival of the fleet. this ep was just to clear cut.
and I love Doc Cottle. crotchy old Frak that he is.
I love Doc Cottle, too. Helo, on the other hand, I find so stick-in-the-ass annoying that I couldn’t even enjoy that nice beefcake shot of him sans shirt, treasure trail a-gleamin’. sigh
Though I have to admit they didn’t do what I thought they were going to, which was to rehash the abortion episode. I figured they were going to naval gaze for 45 minutes over whether they could order mass medical care/vaccinations for the good of the fleet (aka humanity), violating the religious freedom of the Sagittarons.
I’m glad SOMEONE finally noticed Six acting a little weird. Has anyone noticed Baltar yet? That whole thing is sort of mind boggling.
Still, Helo really needs to loosen up. Is there any Metamucil on board?
That’s what I guessed, too. Which, of course, would have been more interesting IMO.
Given the serial nature of the show, I didn’t like how they brought in the new doctor character for just the one episode. It would have been such a better payoff if we had already seen him in a handful of episodes. In fact, they could have raised the question of whether they could afford to jail a perfectly competent doctor in their situation. Just how many physicians are in the fleet, anyway?
Another soap opera episode. We actually saw Boomer and Helo having a domestic squabble while Boomer was doing the laundry. I think I’m taking my Sundays back, I’ll just netflix it.
Hey, anyone know the news on that Caprica show?
Lord, this one sucked. To use a TWoPism, it felt like plot anvils were raining down upon my head the entire episode – they couldn’t have telegraphed the plot more had they mailed out the script to the entire viewing audience beforehand.
Well, I suppose they could have had Helo explicitly state the entire purpose of having this episode while having an argument with his wife. Oh, wait, they did that, too.
At least with “Black Market” we got to explore a bit more of Apollo’s character that hadn’t come to light before. We’ve seen all this about Helo before; it’s nothing new. They’d’ve been better off leaving in the deleted plotline whose reference was left in for Baltar’s scene with Gaeta last week (Sagittarons on New Caprica) and instead scrapped this episode completely for a recap/flashback episode, or something.
The scenes with Caprica Six and Zarek were the only worthwhile parts, and they didn’t even last long enough to rise to the level of a B-plotline.
Also, the “wait for the deleted scene” crap is getting frakkin’ annoying. If it should’ve been in the episode, leave it in the damn episode.
This one again suffered from the “no previous set ups”…
Had we known ahead of time that Helo got the desk job…
Had we known ahead of time that suddenly the Galactica was being used to house folks in very crowded and unsanitary conditions…
Those two tidbits would’ve set up the episode better… had we ever met this doctor before tonite, would’ve helped… had we heard more about the sagitarons in tidbits earlier… etc…
had we had any clue that everyone “seemed to hate” the sagitarons, would’ve been a nice thing.
Best part of the episode was the end… Tigh rules… (and not the end, where Adama “apologizes”, but the earlier end).
High point of the episode for me. Perfectly in character, but it caught me by surprise. My reaction to most of the rest of the episode was “meh”.
Oh, and count me as another who’s fed up with the “bonus scene” crap to make us watch the final commercial break. The network must have figured out a bunch of us who don’t like spoilers were tuning out before the preview for the following episode.
Why did they title this episode “The Woman King”?
He’s commanding the Babylon 5 station. 
Welcome to the club, unless you are whoosing me. 
I found it to be an unusually strange title, too. I thought it would be a power struggle with Laura and the VP/terrorist/old Starbuck guy.
Verdict: meh. Not as bad as some of the standalones they’ve done, not as good as the major “core arc” eps.
I thought it was extremely funny, Roslin watching Six intently, murmuring: “What do you think she’s doing now?” as if this is valuable intelligence on Cylon behavior, instead of what it is, the manifestation of delusion unique to this specific individual and thus utterly useless for the larger effort.
Though a plot fantasy on this point did occur to me:
Roslin, watching Six in her cell, muttering to the air: “I don’t know. It seems familiar somehow. I can’t quite place it.”
Later, participating in interrogations of Baltar in jail, seeing his gaze drift off into space: snap!
“Gaius. Gaius! Listen to me. Who are you talking to?”
Baltar, stunned, trying to tapdance away, change the subject, anything to avoid explaining to anyone why he sees his Cylon lover in his head: “What? What do you mean?”
“You see somebody we don’t see. Who is it? What’s the deal?”
And Roslin is off and running, following a hunch and trying to make a behavioral connection between Baltar and Six.
I don’t know. Could be unexpected fun, a plot direction we didn’t see coming but that in retrospect is long overdue.
I thought this was an awful, AWFUL episode. Perhaps the iconic worst. episode. ever.
It suffered from the typical-for-BSG syndrome of “the writers want to make a point, so they manufacture a situation that makes no sense in the ongoing context of the show just to make a point. And then we probably never hear it mentioned again”. Who are sagitarons? How have we never heard of them before? Why is overcrowding suddenly, out of nowhere, such an issue? And why was Helo, who is (as far as I know) a pilot, suddenly in charge of them? Aren’t there people who actually, like, you know, KNOW HOW TO DO THAT KIND OF THING? As their job?
Then we’ve got a doctor who we’ve never seen before, who is so virulently racist that he MURDERS EVERYONE OF A CERTAIN RACE, and yet somehow he has hid his racism so well that Adama and Tigh and Cottle trust him perfectly, despite (in Tigh’s case) sharing that racism to a lesser degree. Oh, and not only is he a racist, he’s an incredibly stupid one, in that he’s murdering people in a fairly obvious way, who are ALL ABOUT TO DIE ANYWAY. Oh, and this doctor also happens to espouse one of the only actually interesting ideas brought up this episode, namely, the difficulty of rationing medicine. Innocent kids dying now or the military who may keep us all alive in the future? That’s legitimately an interesting and gray-area-ful debate, but given that the only person mentioning it is an evil murderer, it’s sure not something we saw explored at all.
Then we’ve got Helo who yet again is the plucky individual fighting against the uncaring system. Wow, I wonder if he’ll be proven right and everyone will apologize?
One other thing that no one else has pointed out… putting Baltar on trial is going to cause such rioting that it will completely destroy society? I mean, it’s one thing for the average man-in-the-street to say that, between giving Baltar a fair trial (clearly certain to result in the death penalty) and throwing him out an airlock, they’d prefer the airlock. But why would they hate the idea of a trial so much that they’d riot? It’s not like Roslin is pardoning him, or putting him on trial with no death penalty, or any of a number of other things. I’ve always been under the impression that the colonies are based heavily on America, but with more religion. Certainly some reasonable percentage of Americans actually do like and respect and revere their traditions of government, including impartial justice, etc. Even us crazy liberals who hate Bush with a passion want to see him impeached, not hit by a bus. Were Americans outraged that Saddam was given a trial? If Bin Laden were captured tomorrow and put on trial, would we be rioting because he was on trial instead of being tortured to death?
(And the fact that I hadn’t watched whatever bonus seen the Sagitaron situation was introduced in didn’t help things either. What a cheesy way to run a show.)
I thought maybe people would bum-rush the trial in order to get their hands on Baltar. The fact that someone who is considered so patently, provably, and unrepentantly a traitor is being given a trial, as if he has a valid POV, might undermine the system. At least, that’s what I thought Zarek was saying.
Dee has been mentioned as a Sagittaron, before, although we learned heck all about them from that. And, really, it’s been established before that there isn’t anybody else to do any random kind of thing. It’s just that, instead of Starbuck interrogating and sniping and such, now it’s Helo off doing stuff.
That, at least, made sense; what else are you going to do with your former-XO once you reinstate your former-drunk XO?
I don’t recall any bonus scene on the Sagittarons, though – outside of the “previously on’s that weren’t previously on” It was referenced in a podcast as a dropped plotline from New Caprica.
But, yeah, this episode both sucked and blew.
I agree, a “meh” episode. The Zarek/Roslyn scene, while good enough to be the high point of a really good episode, wasn’t enough to save it.
Oakminster, I thought the bonus scene was just an extension of the final scene where Adama apologizes to Helo. Adama apologizes, dismisses Helo, Helo turns back and admits he killed the Cylons. So it wouldn’t have anything to do with why Helo gets to ride herd on the unwashed masses.
BTW, we have heard about the Sagittarons before. They were the ones who didn’t allow abortions, so teenage girls were stowing away in containers to Galactica to see Doc Cottle. This of course led to Roslyn’s outlawing abortion and Baltar announcing his run for Presidency.
Also, Tom Zarek’s a Sagittaron. He was originally convicted for terrorist acts against the other colonies because they all treated Sagittarons like crap. That’s when Dee told Billy that she was a Sagittaron and not all Sagittarons agree with Zarek. And Zarek was elected to represent the Sagittarons in the new Quorum back in season 1 as well.
So in fact, we knew more about the Sagittarons then we did about any other colonists besides the Capricans. The episode was still lousy though.
Asked and answered above:
And confirmed over at Battlestar Wiki under the notes section here:
Remember the multiple shots of her staring at Helo? She’s the one that got him suspicious in the first place, then silently rode his ass until he did something about it.
Yikes. I hesitated to tell Mr. Cinnamon I disliked this, lest it color his viewing. But it looks like I’m not alone.
It would have been one thing if Helo had more reason to suspect the doctor. It would still have been boring, predictable, and stupidly “here are the one-shot characters and circumstances for this show,” but it wouldn’t have been as bad as it was.
I kept thinking it would be so awesome if Helo was dead wrong and got his ass handed to him. He had no rational reason to suspect the doctor (yeah, I’m sure despairing, bereaved mothers who are in refugee camps and come from a culture that rejects medicine are absolutely reliable witnesses when it comes to the timing of symptoms, treatment, and cause of death!), and should have been smacked down hard. But no, the doctor had to turn out evil (which we all knew since we’d never seen him before, and Helo’s a main character), and not just morally-ambiguous evil or an “angel of mercy” killer, but someone who Nazi’s might look at and say, “Gee, this guy seems ridiculously prejudiced against a whole race of people!”
I think the best current analogue is Bin Laden. Suppose he had been captured alive during the invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001. Now, certainly, many Americans would have been perfectly happy if he’d been “shot while trying to escape”. And if he’d been brought back and put on trial, it would have been a heck of a media/security circus. But would people have been SO UPSET THAT IT WOULD DESTROY THE VERY FABRIC OF SOCIETY? Or does BSG just want an issue that gets people that upset so that there can be morally ambiguous wankfests about it?
To me, it was analagous to the Hussien trial… both in the spirit of what the President said (" He will get his day in court, he will be found guilty") as well as all of the scaremongering in Iraq saying that the trial (and subsequent guity/hanging) of him would cause alot of upheaval.
On further reflection, what 'zactly is Gaeta smoking in the bar scene? It’s in his left hand, and he hits it…harder than normal for tobacco.