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.