Last time out, I gave you the literary equivalent of the Vietnam War by way of a review. I apologize. Again. I had a lot of info to get through, but let’s see if I can do it in a less murderously insane fashion this time out, by which I mean: “Shorter”
PLAY BY PLAY:
The Galactica is cruising along through space with the fleet in tow. Apollo asks Serina to marry him at a family dinner, and she agrees. After dinner, Starbuck and Apollo go out on patrol. Starbuck is acting jealous (As he, himself admits) because he’s losing a part of Apollo to Serina (hopefully not the icky reproductive part. No, wait, that’s the other Richard Hatch). They go out on patrol, while Boomer and Jolly go out on patrol in a different direction. Meanwhile, we get a cut down, re-edited version of the epilog from the last episode, with all mention of “Let’s be nice to the humans” removed.
Boomer and Jolly discover a Cylon base on “An asteroid” (Obviously a planet), and beat a quiet retreat. Apollo and Starbuck, meanwhile, have found a “Magnetic Sea,” a vast void that, despite all their oohing and ahhhing over it, is frankly not all that impressive looking. Apollo gets lost in it, but Starbuck rescues him, and they, too, beat a hasty retreat. Baltar, in command of a base ship now, is tracking the Galactica, just out of it’s scanner range. He instructs Lucifer, his first officer, to capture him a colonial pilot.
Boomer and Jolly are feeling a bit out of sorts by the time they get back home, but they skip decontamination to go to Apollo’s Bachelor Party (or “Last Night” as it’s called in Colonialese). “Decon” is a really big deal, despite the fact that it’s never seen nor mentioned ever again. Boomer and Jolly manage to infect all the other fighter pilots, and the bridge officers who came by for free food. (Sorry: “Victuals”) Starbuck and Apollo get back late, and are thus spared the infection, but it quickly incapacitates every pilot on the Battlestar. Realizing what’s happened, Adama gets rather uncharacteristically freaked out and fatalistic, but he recovers shortly.
For some time now, the Galactica has been attempting to replace the crew she lost in the previous episode (“Do you know how many shuttle pilots we lost on Carillon?” “Do you know how many civilians?”) and Serina has been training to be a shuttle jockey, unbeknownst to Apollo. When she springs it on him, he’s pretty upset, but eventually the prospect of nookie with Jane Seymour wins out over more reasoned protective urges, and he’s ok with it. Given the plague, all these shuttle pilot trainees are bumped up to fighter pilot trainees, which pisses off Apollo again, but, you know: nookie. He gets over it. And Jane does loon nice in the uniform, even if she isn’t so bouncilicious as last time out. Starbuck and Apollo - as the only two remaining pilots - put the trainees in a crash course in flight and fight tactics, which necessitates a gratuitous - and oddly non-sexy - scene of a whole room full of attractive women in body stockings. (“Pressure Suits” in Colonialese. Athena was changing out of one last time, remember?). And why are all the new pilot trainees chicks again? Never explained. “Flying shuttles is women’s work,” I guess. Meanwhile, upon hearing of the void, the mystical music starts playing, and Adama gets to absentmindedly stroking his broach (Which is one of those things that sounds dirty, but probably isn’t). Meanwhile all the pilots are on life support in some pretty serious-looking medical equipment. Cassiopeia is now a nurse, inexplicably, but I guess that makes sense. You’d probably want a high-priced call girl to have some basic medical training. Things can happen, stuff can go wrong, …I though of five or six funny third things to say here to pay off the joke, but they’re all pretty gross, so let’s just move on, shall we? Suffice to say: I don’t find Cassie’s instant transformation from hooker with a heart of gold to Florence Nightengale quite as shocking as everyone else did.
As an aside: “Doctor Payne” from the first episode is conspicuously absent, and never mentioned again (Let’s just pretend he died on Carillon, rather than getting fired by the producers) and in his place we’ve got the instantly iconic Doctor Salik, played by
I've heard that. I've also heard that American Indians were said to be Jews who'd been punished by God for whatever reason. I used to know an Indian who was quite emphatic about this not being the case. I try not to get into it with people because most of the Mormons I know are really nice folks, not at all deserving of a scathing attack from me, particularly when a lot of my own beliefs (I'm not a Mormon) are objectively pretty silly.
I will say that Mormonism arose in an interesting period in US history when everyone was obsessed with figuring out who and what and why the Indians were, and who'd build the Indian Mounds. This was kind of like an early version of the "Ancient Indians" nonsense in our own time. Just as modern idiots believe that Africans couldn't have built the pyramids, so 19th century folk simply couldn't conceive of the Indians being able to do anything neat. Cockeyed theories for the origins of the Indian Mounds were a major fad. "Lost tribes of Israel" was a really popular explanation, as were a bunch of others.
The US Army corps of engineers did a massive survey of nearly all the known mounds in the 19th century, and concluded that there was nothing mysterious about them, that they were clearly built by Indians using stone-aged tech. That was the end of that obsession, people concluded that if they were Indian they weren't worth having, and plowed most of 'em under. Sad, really.
The Artist Formerly Known As Republibot 3.0