Perfectly acceptable introduction to the show and its elements, if the viewer didn't watch the miniseries two parter (which I skipped this time. Sorry lmao). The roughly 48,000 surviors of human civilization are forced to evade the cylons by making a FTL jump every 33 minutes. This sets up the desperate tone of the series, where characters are constantly inundated with survival challenges that they are barely equipped to handle. At one point, a ship is separated from the rest of the fleet, and when it returns, everyone else assumes its filled with cylons. So they blow it up and feel kinda bad. Danger! Suspense! Ethical quandaries!

They lose a bunch of water (Boomer boomed it up I guess) and then they find some more. This episode demonstrates what I consider to be a common issue in this show - survival problems are almost always resolved immediately. It's not that big of a deal, its just a missed opportunity to extend suspense over the course of the season. People could be seen rationing, getting into fights over water, etc. HeckFrak, later on we see they have a big luxurious garden ship where they are hosing water on lush green lawns. Imagine the conflict of whether they should let the last plants from their homeworld wither so survivors could drink?

So. Do they have Bastille Day for some kind of Sagittaron storming of the Bastille? Whatever. They found water on a planet last episode but they need someone to mine it. Commander Adama suggests slave labor! So Apollo and pals go over to the prison ship they happen to have in the fleet and voluntell the prisoners to help. Tom Zarek, imprisoned vaguely communist political prisoner, stages a prison rebellion and takes them hostage. Apollo tells Zarek he read his book in college so he's cool (doubtful), but he thinks Zarek is trying to hard to have, uh, democracy. Conveniently, one of the prisoners attempts to rape Cally, allowing the audience to drop any doubts we're probably having about the virtue of unelected leaderships, or maintaining a prison when we don't have a justice system anymore.

Apollo somehow solves everything by threatening Zarek's life but not taking it, and pinky promising to hold elections in a few months. Apparently, that was supposed to happen anyway, so that's not much of a consession. I'm not sure why Zarek was ready to die on that hill before he even knew whether President Roslin planned on cancelling elections. I mean, she seems mostly reasonable at this point, she's been following procedure so far.

Tom Zarek is such a funny character to me. He's introduced like a scary badass in this episode but ultimately is a political moderate in favor of electoralism, I guess. The specifics of his political views are incredibly vague outside of wanting elections. Sagittarons experienced some sort of systemic oppression that he resisted, maybe, in a possibly violent way. IDK. You're encouraged to side against Zarek most of the time, if for no reason other than he opposes the protagonists. Our protagonists are unhinged loose cannons, though, I'm not sure I'd want them in charge.

The episode begins with the most aburd, comically shot, over the top coincidental tragedy. Most of the Raptor pilots are celebrating a pilot's 1000th flight. They do this by spinning him endlessly in a cart while cheering obliviously. Cut to a rack of missiles menacing. Cut to the spinning cart party. Cut to the missiles again. A nylon strap decides now is the time to break and the missile lands on the ground and powers up before sailing into the still spinning pilot party. Kablooey.

Since most of their pilots are now dead, Cmdr. Adama tasks Starbuck with training some new recruits. But unfortunately, Starbuck carries trauma from the death of her fiance, Adama's own son Zak, in a flight accident. Starbuck had been Zak's flight instructor. She attempts to teach the new pilots but fails them all by the end of the day. Lee Adama rats her out to his dad and lets slip that Starbuck is struggling with her role in Zak's death. When Cmdr. Adama confronts her, she admits that she knew Zak should have failed flight school, but she had passed him anyway. Adama is pissed, says an edgy line and commands her to reinstate the recruits and continue training them.

During an exercise, cylon raiders show up and Starbuck attempts to take them all on by herself. She's shot down and ejects on the way down to a nearby moon's surface.

The interpersonal drama is sosososo juicy. This element of Starbuck's history alters the way you view her relationships with the Adamas. The Commander views her as a daughter, but now he has to contend with the fact that this daughter is responsible (in part) for the death of one of his sons. Yet he must know how she must feel suffering with that guilt. There's no doubt that Adama feels responsible for the deaths of people under his command. But she also hid this information from him. And Lee did, too! That must hurt in its own right. Lee knowing already also adds a particular tilt to their relationship, too. Their relationship is already tested in a way most people won't experience. These angst mines are rich and deep.

The accident in the opening is believable on paper. I can easily accept that safety standards are lax during this situation and with dangerous equipment, disasters can happen. But the execution ... well, my memory of the event definitely edited it differently lmao. But I love the concept and I love the way it fleshes out these characters.

Starbuck is stranded on a moon from the events of last episode. Commander Adama and Lee are losing their minds trying to search for her, using up "Forty-three percent" of their aviation fuel (how can they even afford to do that. why is this not a problem later. how does it get replenished.) and extending the search well past her estimated remaining oxygen has been depleted. President Roslin encourages the Adamas to get a grip.

Meanwhile, Starbuck finds a crashed cylon raider and crawls up inside its guts. Yes, inexplicably they have guts. Why do they have meat and blood? Idk. How do the guts survive? Idk. Do raiders have to eat or do they just consume fuel? Idk. Can I eat raider meat? I have a lot of questions and I don't believe they will be answered. Suffice to say cylons have technology beyond human comprehension. But not that far beyond because Starbuck can yank on its neurons and jerk its brainstem to fly it off the moon.

When Starbuck approaches Galactica they assume she's an enemy raider. She has to do some barrel rolls and assorted stunts to get Apollo to look at the raider more closely. He sees Starbuck is written under the wings. Starbuck gets treated in the hospital and recieves Cmdr Adama's last cigar as a prize for almost dying.

Especially paired with the last episode, I like this episode a lot. Emotional turmoil is cranked to the max, characters are going insane a little bit, Starbuck gets to be overpowered, and it's revealed that cylon raiders are full of flesh and mucus. It's the kind of one-off disaster episode that is appropriate to solve in a single episode.

The cylon Doral explodes after walking right into Galactica. As a result, President Roslin reveals the existence of human cylons to the press. An investigator uncovers Boomer and Tyrol's secret relationship. One of Tyrol's underlings, Socinus, takes the blame for leaving a hatch door open, allowing Doral access to explosives.

Adama is also brought to the stand, for some reason, and accused of covering up for Tyrol and Boomer. And like an ethical military leader would, he arrests the investigator (that he appointed by the way). Tyrol confesses privately to Adama about his secret meetings with Boomer which likely led to the open hatch. Adama scolds him but says he needs his head engineer and that the guilt of destroying Socinus's life is good enough punishment (lmao). I guess Adama felt like he needed to make the conspiracy cover up accusation true. Anyway, after this event, Tyrol breaks it off with Boomer.

So, I have a few questions. So we put the investigator on house arrest for a while and then ... what, exactly? Just let her go? She has to be telling everyone, like, what the frak, I was appointed to investigate the cylon conspiracy and Adama jailed me without due process. And then later it turns out the people she thought were part of a cylon conspiracy were cylons. She's gotta be drinking hard by the end of this series. I also don't really understand why Adama signed off on an independent tribunal if he was just going to cancel it. It sounded like he could have ordered an internal investigation instead. Chalk it up to Adama idealizing procedure but actually being an authoritarian control freak, I suppose.

Gaius's brain Six gets pissed off that he doesn't believe in God (he's an asshole about it to be fair). A physical version of her shows up to accuse him of sabotaging the Colonies' weapons defense systems before the cylon attacked. Apparently there is photo evidence captured on a security camera, but they have to spend an excessive amount of time "sharpening" the image. Gaius tries and fails to destroy the computer containing the evidence (he apparently does not even know how to unplug the monitor despite purportedly being a computer scientist). Desperate, he prays to God, which causes his mind Six to return and shortly after he is exonerated.

I don't know if this is supposed to be something that was planned all along (they have a plan.) or if this was just to scare Gaius straight. Six says at the end that it was a plan to give him credibility ("now they truly believe in you"). But it seemed like they already believed in him, considering they are trusting him to make the cylon detector. I don't really know how its worth it to expose one of your cylon models just to get Gaius 1% more trust. I mean this guy is talking to his imaginary girlfriend and dry humping the air 24/7 and nobody even raises an eyebrow. If its just to get him to believe in God, well, I don't know if coercion makes for the most authentic belief. But I could believe Six would do that, at least.

Starbuck waterboards the cylon Leoben, who pretends there's a nuclear bomb hidden somewhere on board. He talks about how humans are fated to find Earth. He's supposed to be good at mind games but it feels like Starbuck is just really easy to manipulate. At the end President Roslin objects to torturing him and tries to be the good cop, but when he tells her "Adama is a cylon" she instantly has a mental break and she spaces him. Oh, and meanwhile, Boomer has been worried about being a cylon and got herself tested. Gaius lied and said she's not.

I guess this episode is trying to make some kind of comment about US torture but I'm not exactly sure I comprehend it. Starbuck says stuff indicating that she knows torture will result in bad information, but she does it anyway. Maybe we're just saying torture is done purely out of malice? Okay, sure. Roslin is more compassionate at first but then flips and kills him. Starbuck, by the end, prays for his soul. So maybe its meant to say something about human fickleness, emotionality, or something. I really don't know. I think its a weaker episode.

Awww yeahhhh! Tigh episode!

Commander Adama picks up Saul Tigh's wife, Ellen, from one of the fleet ships. She supposedly had been in a coma or something? It's completely sus and everyone knows it. Adama asks Gaius to test Ellen's blood for cylonchlorians. President Roslin, smoking way too much chamalla and paranoid from when Leoben fraking with her, suspects Adama is a cylon. She demands Gaius test Adama's blood first.

Adama hosts a family dinner and there's a lot of soap-y drama between the Tighs, Adamas, and Roslin. Ellen embarrasses everyone and sexually harrasses Lee. Everyone eventually airs out their paranoia while Gaius finally finishes "testing" Ellen's sample. She's human. But he's just lying. Or is he? Yes he is.

Look, you gotta love this episode. Its a little contrived. They want to bait the audience as much as possible about whether Adama is a cylon. Ellen is obviously a cylon. But that's okay. The king needs his queen! Who cares if there's no record of how she got here. Give her direct access to the drunkest guy at the top of Galactica's hierarchy.

The fleet needs to gas up or they won't be able to do FTL travel. While scouting, they encounter a cylon base mining the fuel they need. Galactica's crew plot out a risky attack plan. The plan requires Gaius to instruct them on where to strike the base to successfully destroy it - of course, he doesn't know anything so he prays to God and points at a spot at random. In the end, it all works out besides a few minor character deaths that nobody seems to care about much. There are some aditional revelations, like Roslin being told that she matches a prophecy related to finding Earth.

As per usual, I don't know if I'm supposed to think the cylons allowed their base to be destroyed as part of some grand plan or if Gaius actually just got lucky. Actually, I prefer to think that bombing any structure in the base would have caused the whole thing to blow up. The cylons have no safety features when they build because they are perfect machines that don't make mistakes and anyway, they just upload into the cylon cloud when they die.

It's Independence Day Colonial Day! President Roslin allows the fleet to form a representative government again! How generous! Evil Tom Zarek dares to run for vice president. Roslin assumes Zarek wants to kill her so she pressures Gaius to run in opposition.

While all that's happening, Starbuck and Apollo arrest some guy named Valance who happened to have a handgun. They appear to detain him illegally, abuse him, and then he ends up dead in apparent suicide. They say he might have ties to Zarek. Sure sure sure. Now personally if I heard about this event I would be thinking Apollo and Starbuck killed him and I would be desperate to elect Tom Zarek because apparently the military is torturing and imprisoning and possibly executing people without due process. But that's just me.

Gaius wins, inexplicably, and Zarek claims not to have killed Valance. But he'll be back ... to run a campaign for president against Roslin! Muahhahahaha!

The fleet discovers Kobol, the supposed origin world of humanity. President Roslin believes in prophecy now, so she opposes settling here and instead claims that this is just a required pitstop on the way to Earth. Somehow, the journey to Earth requires retrieving a literal arrow from Caprica that is to point the way. Roslin convinces Starbuck to steal the cylon raider they collected and fly home to collect it.

Meanwhile, Boomer has been continuing to struggle with the suspicion that she is a cylon. She attempts suicide, as helpfully encouraged by Gaius, but she survives.

Additionally, a scouting party is send to Kobol but crashes when they are attacked by cylon raiders. This party includes Gaius, and Tyrol, among others.

So this whole season I've neglected to mention that a Raptor pilot called Helo has been trapped with a copy of Boomer on Caprica. They've been shown in just about every episode getting up to this and that, seemingly surviving by evading the other cylons. In truth, this Boomer is cooperating with the other cylons for some nefarious purposes, trying to get Helo to uh, fall in love and knock her up. Well, the mission was accomplished but Boomer fell in love, too. So she helps Helo to actually escape her cylon managers, but along the way Helo realizes that cylons can look like humans now. Helo considers killing Boomer but she reveals that she's pregnant, so instead he takes her prisoner.

Starbuck lands on Caprica and picks up the Arrow of Apollo. She's confronted by a Six but barely manages to defeat her when Helo and Boomer show up. Starbuck realizes immediately that Boomer must be a cylon and wants to kill her, but Helo stops her.

On Galactica, Commander Adama is throwing a tantrum over Roslin asking Starbuck to abscond with the cylon raider to find the arrow. In my opinion, blame mostly falls on Starbuck, who is supposed to follow Adama's orders and not Roslin's suggestions ... but obviously Adama's character has thusfar been defined by his need for control. And his protectiveness / possessiveness of Starbuck doesn't help. So in his frenzy mode he sends Roslin to the brig, and Lee, too, because he objects.

While all this is happening, Adama has tasked Galactica's copy of Boomer with delivering a nuke to the cylon basestar - the job Starbuck was supposed to do before she stole the raider. It kind of feels like Adama looked at Boomer and said, so you're suicidal right. How would you like to go on a suicide mission? Kind of sucks for Kat to have to join, considering the implications of that. But they successfully board the basestar and arm a nuke. But Boomer is compelled to explore, where she encounters a half dozen naked copies of herself. Horrified, she flees. The bomb goes off successfully, everyone celebrates her return on the bridge - but unexpectedly and seemingly unwittingly, Boomer raises her gun and shoots the Commander twice. The end, RIP, GG EZ.

At some point I should just stop asking questions. I think the majority of answers are just, the cylons planned this because of their arbitrary spiritual beliefs. Why is this one Boomer a sleeper agent? And why didn't she just shoot Adama in the head earlier when he met privately with her? You could say, well maybe meeting her clones downloaded a mind virus or caused a mental switch to flip, but we've been seeing her being unconsciously mind controlled the whole season on and off. And the Boomer on Caprica is fully aware and seems to be able to do her mission just fine (I guess she rebelled eventually, but before that they trusted her to be able to act convincingly). Right now it feels like the cylon plan is just to fuck with the humans for fun. Or this is just part of a prophecy so it doesn't need a reason. IDK, maybe there's something I just don't remember about this element that will be revealed in coming episodes. Or they wrote it expecting by the time the next disaster strikes the audience will have forgotten the details and stop wondering how this fits into a larger plan. I guess we'll see.

But hey, y'know, whatever. This is an exciting set of episodes where a whole lot of drama unfolds. There's a bit of everything - loyalties are flipping, characters are in mortal peril, secrets are being revealed. It delivers on the threads that have been dangling the whole season. Its fun. Its exciting. It makes for good TV. Battlestar's strength is in its characters. They're believably flawed. The plot is just a vehicle for exploring how this random, suboptimal slice of humanity reacts to the end to civilization. And it does a good job of that.