Battlestar Galactica Recap/Review

Sacrifice
This is the episode that proves that whatever life was like on Caprica before the Cylons came to bomb it out of existence, it was nothing like what life here on our Earth today. Why do you ask?

Because I'm thinking if there were sci-fi programming on Caprica, Billy might have seen what was coming and decided that instead of asking Dualla to marry him, instead he might have stayed and worked on Roslin's upcoming speech about some issue instead. I could have saved the poor boy a lot of heartache and then death by pointing out that his name comes up in the "guest star" credits and isn't one of those names featured over them fancy credits with the nice theme music playing behind it, so you're pretty much doomed to either heartbreak or death. Or in Billy's case both.

Poor Billy...we hardly knew ye.

Though I do wonder something--would it not be cool if Billy turned out to be a Cylon agent? How cool would it be to suddenly have Billy wander back into the storyline in a couple of weeks?

OK, maybe not so much. But if it happens--you saw the prediction here first.

On to this week's storyline. It's interesting to see Galactica shift the perspective a bit this week. Heaven knows, it was far more successful than "Black Market" a few weeks ago. We get to hear a bit about how the regular Joe or Jane would expereince life in the fleet. There are rumors that swirl and we realize how little of the overall vital information the average citizen in the fleet is privy to. The average citizen has no idea that Adama and company have a Cylon prisoner on-board Galactica and that said prisoner is expecting a child. I can see why they'd keep the fleet in the dark on this one but on the other hand, that's a powder keg just waiting to go off. Kind of like we see here.

We meet Dana Delaney's character who's pretty upset that her husband was killed and yet Adama and company are keeping a Cylon alive. I guess they want to go Pegasus crew on Sharon. I do wonder if not revealing who Cylon agents are is a tactic to keep the enemy faceless and easier to hate on the part of Adama and company. We see that Adama is a bit more conflicted about Sharon becuase it's a copy of Sharon--as are others in the command structure. I wonder if it were a Six model that showed up pregnant if Adama and company would be quite as forgiving of her sins or work as hard to keep her alive. Of course, if it was Six, would she have been as able to seduce Helo to become pregnant?

I do wish we'd had a scene or two with Helo as he found out why the group was being held hostage and what they wanted in return. Though I imagine his reaction would be the same as a few weeks ago when Roslin decided to terminate the pregnancy--no only no, but hell no.

All of these plotlines intersect on Cloud Nine, which is getting a lot of use these days storyline wise. I understand that part of the use of bottle shows like this one is to defray expense from a special-effects driven story like last week's "Scar." The thing with BSG is they're now one for two in this department. It works this time out because they bring in characters we have some investment in instead of making up new ones out of left field. As an audience, there is more tension and interest gained from it being Lee, Dualla, Billy and Ellen Tigh being held prisoner than some random woman we've never met before. And boy howdy, that Lee is becoming the male slut of the fleet, don't you think. Two weeks ago, he's with the prositute, last week he nearly hooks up with Starbuck and now he's romancing Dualla. The man is a player. And poor old Billy who loves Dualla gets shut out from Lee, the Galactica Casanova.

Dualla's reaction to Billy's death was interesting. Surely, they could have gone the standard TV romance way of Dualla telling Lee she loved Billy but didn't realize it until he was killed. But they didn't. Also, in looking at things, it does not pay to be romantically involved with Dualla. Lee is shot (by Starbuck no less) and Billy is killed. Yeah, if I were Lee I think I'd be reconsidering that decision. It's hard to buy her a nice Valentine's Day present when you're dead.

And this was another episode to serve as a break from the unrelenting arcs of the first half of season two. I understand why these episodes exist and I like them. I enjoy these characters and I enjoy finding out more about them. But I do hope that when the arc comes roaring back or the next one kicks-off, that the lesson we've learned in these character building stories will have a definite and legitimate impact.