System 13

Last night was the return (finally!) of Battlestar Galactica, after over a month of waiting. It was quite a comeback episode! If you’ve not seen it yet, I highly recommend you stop reading here, because there are some spoilers below!

There were a few things in this episode, ‘Rapture’, that really blew me away. The first one was when Apollo asked Dualla, his wife, to go after Starbuck, the very woman who is probably going to destroy Apollo and Dualla’s marriage. Talk about a slap in the face. D. was clearly upset, but went ahead and did it. I noticed that when she got to Starbuck, she took a bit of pleasure in stabbing needles of morphine into Starbuck. I can’t say I really blame her. I know I’d be in a rather foul mood if I were in her position.

Helo shooting Athena to send her back to a resurrection ship so she could get their baby seemed a bit off to me. I don’t understand why she didn’t just do it herself. She knew she’d come back, and having Helo shoot her was just throwing more psychological pressure on him. Then again, perhaps that’s where the makers of the show were going. I did, however, like when Helo called Roslin on her lying about the baby (after Roslin said that Helo had endangered the entire fleet). It was about time someone gave her the facts. If she hadn’t ferried the kid into hiding upon birth, they wouldn’t have been in such a situation to begin with. I like Roslin’s character for the most part, but occasionally, I do wish they’d throw her out an airlock.

There was, I must admit, a moment that I literally cheered a “hell yeah!”: when Chief knocked Gaius out with the butt of his gun. I’ve been clamoring for quite a while now for Gaius to get what’s been coming to him. That thud on the back of his head was the first step in that happening. It’s about time the slimeball pays for all of his treachery.

There was one aspect of the show that seemed quite odd to me, namely the “rescue mission” bit, when the sun was getting ready to go supernova. In one scene, Admiral Adama is ordering a rescue mission to be sent out immediately. In the very next scene, the rescue mission is back and everyone is safely aboard. It felt mighty rushed. I think that the writers perhaps wrote too much to fill in an hour, and so they had to snip the actual rescuing. Not a huge deal, but it did come across as rather clunky.

The last bit I’ll write about is D’Anna (Lucy Lawless) being offed by the other Cylons. I suppose she had it come to her: she’d slowly been becoming more and more rebellious towards the other models. While he’s treacherous, I really love the character of Brother Cabil, the Cylon that “shut down” all of the D’Anna models. He seems to have retained a lot of the smartass-ishness of Admiral Al Calavicci of Quantum Leap.

While speaking of D’Anna, I was mighty bummed about not seeing any of the final five Cylons when D’Anna had her vision. I didn’t expect to see all five – I know they’ll drag it out for a while – but they could have given us at least one face, couldn’t they? Maybe let us know if Gaius is a Cylon or not? Or, perhaps even shed some light on that last cryptic bit of the episode with Helo and Starbuck? Is Starbuck a Cylon? I actually thought for a brief moment during Helo and Starbuck’s conversation, that she was going to go haywire, kind of like Sharon did when she shot Adama.

I’m really anxious to see where the plot goes with Starbuck. Her being one of my favorite characters, I’m really getting worried about her leaving the show. I’ve read a few different things about her perhaps leaving; whether it’s permanently or just a break, I don’t know. Either way, if she does end up leaving, I know I won’t like it. Oh well. I suppose there’s one way to end this post on a happy note: we don’t have to wait another month until the next episode.