TV: Battlestar Galactica Classic, Disc 3

Episode 9: The Young Lords

The second of Starbuck's solo adventures.  Ambushed on patrol, he crashes on the swampy planet Attila, where the last human family wages a guerilla war against a Cylon garrison that occupies their former home, an Olde Tyme castle.  The robots have the numeric advantage, and Starbuck is hobbled by wounded leg, which gets no help from being dragged through a swamp.  He's captured quickly, but faster than you can yell "Wolverines!" Starbuck is freed by Kyle, the unicorn-mounted leader of the resistance.



Kyle, looking for all the world like a young Starbuck is, unfortunately, a preening youth, and chafes quickly under Starbuck's insensitive command advice.  To rid himself of the troublesome warrior, Kyle secretly strikes a bargain with the "tin cans" to trade Starbuck for the kids' captured father.  Demonstrating typical Cylon ineptitude, both sides renege, but given a golden opportunity to slaughter the nagging human resistance with, oh, I don't know, an exchange vessel laden with explosives, they don't, leaving Starbuck with a pre-teen commando squad motivated for one last spectacular raid on their former home.  As a bonus, they compose the individual parts of the raid as a song and recite it over the campfire.

The B plot, rather than a window into the fleet, is also Attila-bound.  The Cylon garrison's commander is an earlier IL series named Specter, who attempts to curry favor with Baltar by promising the location of the Galactica.   Unfortunately, he begins his gambit without ever getting Starbuck into his dungeon, and is forced to cover with an increasingly ridiculous series of lies.   Lucifer sees through the ploy, but Baltar remains blinded by the flattery.   While the episode ends with Baltar promising the never-again-seen Specter a new post, I like to assume Lucifer secretly had him destroyed between episodes.

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Pros: The Specter/Lucifer rivalry is a good bit of Battlestar humor.
Cons: When offered a chance to not be the only humans on a dead planet, the Kyle family prefers to remain in their huge, empty castle.

Then: B
Now: B



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Episode 10 & 11: The Living Legend

Solidly the best, or at least, most enjoyable episodes of the series, the two-part meeting with Commander Cain's Battlestar, the Pegasus.   WoRP, Starbuck and Apollo are suddenly ambushed.  There are tense moments as they struggle with their attackers, neither side noticing that everyone involved is human..   Belatedly, Sheba consults her scanner to confirm that the ship she's tailing and close enough to fire upon is indeed a Viper.  Like the one she's flying.

Awkward introductions are made, and the guys land on the Battlestar Pegasus, under the flag of Apollo's "idol," the tactical genius Commander Cain (Lloyd Bridges, turning his Patton up to 11).  Thought destroyed years ago, the Pegasus instead turned out to deep space and has whiled away the yahrens leveling any Cylons in its path.  When Cain learns a second Battlestar has survived the holocaust, he runs the first draft of his inspirational speech by Starbuck and Apollo: "The Cylon empire is about to fall," he concludes, and slaps the table with his swagger stick.

Cain's charisma quickly makes him the darling of the Galactica; for the enlisted men, it's Beatlemania.   As an encore, he even produces the already-thought-so-dead-even-Adama's-moved-on Apollo and Starbuck.   In a private meeting, Cain tries to sell Adama on conquering Gamoray, the conveniently nearby and newly-christened Cylon Outer Capital.  Adama, who has completely lost his nerve, will not consent to a full assault, the hell with the supplies they could plunder.   When Adama suggests all he desires is enough fuel to get out of the area, Cain sputters: You mean, run?!

Interspersed is something of a B-story, involving the Adama vs. Cain popularity contest; Apollo quickly abandons his "idol," in favor of his steady-hand-on-the-tiller father.  He does, however, take a liking to Cain's feisty CAG daughter, Sheba.  Meanwhile, Sheba herself loathes Cassiopeia, the --gasp-- socialator who took up with Cain after his wife passed.    It's all period-appropriate heavy-handed, and with a short shelf-life since Cain's written out at the end of part two.

To force his strategy on the fleet, Cain personally sabotages a mission to reuse the Cylon tanker footage from the pilot.  With no immediate source of fuel forthcoming, Adama stubbornly refuses to grant Cain his desired assault, and demonstrating some real chutzpah, publicly relieves Cain of command while seizing half the fuel load from the Pegasus.   There's a tense moment as Cain's pilots briefly contemplate mutiny,* but Baltar arrives to defuse the situation.

Baltar, seeing a chance to impress the Imperious Leader, who just so happens to be headed to Gamoray himself, opts to lead a fighter attack.   He has four Baseships' worth of fighters, more than was used to destroy the main Colonial fleet in the pilot.   The Gamoray base never tells Baltar about the problems it's been having with Cain, and so there's a bit of fun in Baltar, in his moment of triumph, suddenly faced with a second Battlestar taking him from the flank.

Cylon civilians, or USS Cygnus crew?

Baltar's attack halted, Cain finally gets his wish: a strike at Gamoray to pillage its fuel depots, wipe out its base, and, unbeknownst to anyone, get a good crack at the Imperious Leader.   A small team consisting of series regulars plus Bojay and Sheba parachute** onto Gamoray (which looks suspiciously like a pre-quake CSUN).  They infiltrate the heart of the Cylon base and in a reverse of the Colonies' destruction, manage to sabotage pretty much all of the planet's defenses in a few minutes,  The resulting attack succeeds beyond the humans' most optimistic projections: nobody is killed, though Bojay becomes the only other human in the series to be shot by a Centurion.   All's well, though; his injury provides an excuse for Cassi and Sheba to bury their hatchet while guarding him.

  Cain sees he has no place in Adama's brave new world, and volunteers the Pegasus to occupy Baltar's three base ships while Gamoray is sacked. Perhaps demonstrating that the Cylons are, ultimately, a weak menace (this is their antepenultimate appearance; the series might as well have killed the Imperious Leader here) Starbuck and Apollo one-up their own pilot derring-do and each cripple a Basestar single-handed, allowing the Pegasus to easily finish them off.  Then it disappears in the resulting conflagration!  Everyone puts on the brave face for Sheba's sake, but it's assumed the Pegasus was destroyed.

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* Sheba gets the worst of this, asserting that Cain is the "greatest man who ever lived," on the schoolyard basis that her dad can beat up Apollo's dad.

** The parachutes are 70s-style recreational jobs; rectangular with the rainbow striping; very fetching in the dark.  Also, why are Colonial warrior uniforms brown and corduroy, but their backpacks are senior-officer navy?

Pros: Bridges, plus some new fx shots!
Cons: Severe Apollo sanctimony, both about and to Cain and Sheba.

Then: A+
Now: A


Episode 12: Fire in Space

Perversely, Battlestar's best episodes are directly followed by its worst. Combining poor science, Irwin Allen disaster-movie subplots, and a key assist by Muffett, Fire in Space has something every series detractor can loathe.

Baltar is nowhere to be seen, perhaps implying that Cain caught up to him (no such luck) but the Cylons are again attacking the Galactica with renewed vigor following their Gamoray debacle.  Rather than engage the Colonial Vipers, the Raiders concentrate on the Galactica herself, ramming both the bridge  and one of the landing bays.  The result: out of control fires rage through the ship, and Commander Adama himself is badly injured when the ceiling in the bridge collapses on him.  And in supposedly safe Rejuvenation Center, Boxey, Athena, and Boomer are menaced by flames.

Right away, the story pokes holes in itself: our B-list heroes are trapped in the RC because the Galactica's compartments seal.  So how is the fire spreading?  The simple solution of shutting down life support as a firebreak? Never suggested.  Instead, a Trek-like technobabble solution of routing the firefighting system through the main deflector dish, and a fresh-from-surgery Adama mumbles  advice, as no one else in the cast is capable of independent thought: plant explosives along the hull and snuff the fire.  Yeah: hull the heavily damaged ship!

He learned this hotwiring cars. Really.

One drawback: if the atmosphere is lost, those poor saps in the RC are dead!  At this point in the series Athena has been largely reduced Rigel status, so if it were Jolly or Greenbean instead of Boomer, one might be tempted to let them all die.  Luckily, Muffett is able to traverse the ductwork to bring oxygen masks from the bridge!  As an encore worthy of Lassie, he rescues a trapped firefighter and gets badly burned, but, alas, survives.

Another drawback: Firefighters? Much of the episode contains footage of anonymous men in asbestos suits fighting the fire.  Who are they? Nobody knows or cares.

With that one, arbitrary obstacle circumvented, Starbuck and Apollo, demonstrating EVA training not previously mentioned, cling to the outer hull and plant explosives.  Oddly, Colonial spacesuits are no more advanced than 1975 Earth technology.  


Pros: Boomer finally gets a little backstory. Also, final appearance by Muffett!
Cons: Turns out Boomer's a former Caprican car thief.  No sir, no stereotypes here.


Then: D
Now: F-