Battlestar Galactica 1/13/06 S2E12 Resurrection Ship Part 2

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Every one of your points is valid and I enjoyed reading your post.

However, you are wrong. It's a forest for the trees thing. Episode worked - one of the best. Yes some of the parts were shoehorned to fit, but that's how you make great sausauge, to mix a mixed metaphor.

Though I totally accepted the flaws in the context of the overall effectiveness of the episode, what did give me pause was what you lead with, the de-emphasis of the battle, making it almost a throwaway. I suspect the producers struggled with that mightily. It reminded me very much of the major Star Fleet battle with the Borg in Star Trek Next Gen Best of Both Worlds part one. I can only say that it was an unsolvable problem, BG handled it well, much better than STNG, there was a true sense of the epicness of the battle (great decision to kill the dialog) but yes it paled in comparison to the human drama because that's what had to happen. But that drama would not have had the stature without the monumental battle context. In an ideal world of art maybe this episode should have been a 900 page novel or a six hour miniseries. Maybe. Or maybe they did it exactly right.

The producers grasp of this universe/story, and their ability to tell the epic tale with complete authority has reached what seems to be near perfection. We're riding a crest that I hope will last for awhile. I haven't had a chance to watch TV recently so when I looked at my Tivo library tonight I had the choices of a new Monk, a new Veronica Mars, a new Lost and a whole bunch of hi-def movies. I picked BG because it's the best, and I enjoyed every moment.

 

I took it quite the opposite actually. I don't think she is at all disappointed that Adama backed down. She said "I think we were safer with her then we are without her." I think the fact that he asked her to kill Cain will actually be the cause of problems in the future. She also said in her speech that the Pegasus was all alone, which leads me to believe she doesn't know that Cain killed civilians to get some of them to join the Pegasus crew, and she probably doesn't know that Cain stripped the ships she found of their supplies, weapons and jump drives and then abandoned them to die at the hands of the Cylons.

The big question I think now is do they know how involved Baltar was with the release of the Pegasus 6? Will this be the start of seeing Baltar on a Cylon Base Star as in the old show?

 

I didn't see anything to suggest they were friends at all. They backed down from the assassination orders, but that is it. I doubt their next move was to have tea and crumpets with one another.

I thought they established this fairly well in the last episode. They knew there were big risks, but the reward was way too high not to do the battle. Destroying the Resurrection Ship would likely slow the Cylon attacks down greatly since they would now be truly mortal. As it stood before the Resurrection Ship was destroyed, death meant nothing to them. They just downloaded to another body and life went on. Now, with the Cylon homeworld so far away, they can't just download to a new body, they will truly die. There is a cost to death now for the Cylons that wasn't there before. Of course we have to wonder how long until they get another Resurrection ship trailing the fleet.
As for the rest of the fleet they said they would jump ahead, then use a couple civilian ships as a decoy to draw the Cylons in. The idea was to make the ships that stayed behind act like they had troubles with their jump engines. I can't recall if the BSG and Pegasus hid at that point or not, but they come in at some point and start attacking the Base Stars now that the raiders have been drawn off leaving them vulnerable. With the Base Stars no longer a big threat, that freed up the fighters to attack the Resurrection Ship.
Next episode we should see the count of survivors and see just how many people they lost, since they do keep track of the survivor count from week to week.

As to complaints that they didn't get more reconnaissance. I don't know that we need it. I wasn't under the impression that it was Starbuck who focused in on seeing 6 in the ship, but rather Cain from the photos she had. They may have good enough photos already. We may not find out for an episode or few what information they have there.

 

Absolutely the best episode yet, IMHO. The producers apparently know World War II history very well, taking a page directly out the battle of Midway. A Navy or Marine pilot was shotdown near the Japanese Fleet and witnessed the entire battle from a raft. Apollo being that pilot witnessing the battle firsthand.

And Trica (Starbuck), a great performance. The uncertainty of her walk, the expression on her face, the stare into Admiral Ro's face (knowing what she was asked to do), then the expression of her relief once countermanded.

How fitting - the Cylons not only look like " us " , but they act like " us ". The duality of Sharon sharing why the Cylons hate " us ", only to have " Six " act so " human " by being so revengeful. How fitting the Cylons see themselves above their parents, only to be a chip off the old block after all.

 

Am I the only one who thinks Apollo is very whiny for someone who never gets punished for going behind his commander's back?

 

I was expecting Adm Caine to wake up in another body at the end.

I really liked this episode, but... I initially thought the "Previously On" recap went on way too long, then I saw why later on. They spent a lot of time explaining the plan of the battle in the recap. I thought they took some serious shortcuts when we finally got into the battle. There was a cut and all of a sudden we were in the middle of it. There was no suspense as we waited to see if they would take the bait. They didn't show that part of the plan in action at all, and that was diappointing to me. The shots of Lee witnessing the battle were pretty cool, though.

I thought Caine backing down from the asassination attempt was completely out of character. Obviously both teams were relieved when their individual code words were not spoken. As other have mentioned, it was kind of a letdown after the 45 minutes of suspense. It also disturbed me that we never saw Caine's body. I don't know why.

Others touched on this, but I also found it intriguing that Adama spoke to sharon, and then Gina carried out his original plan, right down to shooting Caine in the head. Very cool.

Off to watch it again!

 

I really like the integration of history into this episode. Peagasus and BSG really have some strong firing power. I thought that the ships are shields?

 

I almost posted the same observation, but didn't because it sounded too geeky

 

Yeah, the two battlestars seemed to have no trouble taking out two basestars. They didn't even appear to suffer serious damage, and there wasn't any damage-control craziness at the end of the fight. Seemed a little too easy, after the problems Galactica has had going up against basestars before. I suppose Pegasus could just be a lot more powerful, but still...

As for Starbuck's speech, and the "alone" bit: do we know that the civilian ships were with Pegasus from the beginning? If Pegasus was truly alone for a while, and already running low on supplies when they stumbled upon the civilians, it could explain (not excuse) Caine's decision to strip the ships.

BTW, anyone else almost feel sorry for Caine when she finally got it?

 

The key to the plan seemed to be getting the raiders out of the way. Apparently the point defense on the Battlestars can deal with the BaseStar missile salvos if they don't have to keep the gnats off their backs. Or that's how I read Starbuck's briefing, anyway.

 

Nope.

In fact, I sort of enjoyed watching her swallow hard, right before the trigger got pulled.

 

I was hoping for this scene:

Adm. Cain: Frak you!
Gina: Frak me??? No- Frak you!! <Blam>

 

I loved Cain's XO and Starbuck passing in the hall:

"Good hunting."
"You, too."

(or something along those lines)

Great double-meaning for the viewers.

 

what troubled me is why neither Adama nor Caine expect the other's assassination attempt...I know I would've expected it...but they both just went along as they were the only one trying to kill the other...very out of character for both...

 

I think Caine suspected the attack. I got the impression she knew exactly why Starbuck was there and was aware that the attack was called off. You usually don't get that high in the military without having an ability to read people. It didn't take a rocket scientist to take one look at Starbuck to see that something was up. It was all in her face, especially her eyes. The cockiness was gone and it was replaced by something else, maybe fear or at least apprehension.

 

I'm guessing Starbuck will be the Pegasus CAG and Apollo will be the CAG on the Galactica... or vice verse.

 

But Adama didn't seem to know what was going on with the XO and the additional security people. Even though he and the president agreed that Caine would try to take him out.

I think the storyline had worked much better if Caine gave the order, but the XO either refused or the plot failed. Both backing off seemed weak given the build up.

 

Surprisingly, almost.