Home Featured TV Shows All TV Shows Movie Reviews Book Reviews Articles Frequently Asked Questions About Us

Battlestar Galactica: 33

"We'll sleep when we're dead."

If this episode told us anything, it was that Adama and Roslin can both make the tough decisions. It takes serious balls to condemn 1,300 people to die without being absolutely certain you're right.

The theme of extreme sleep deprivation as the survivors ran for their lives emphasized human frailty: there are limits for us, even though there don't seem to be any for the Cylons. (Can you even enter REM sleep in only half an hour?) This episode was intended to give us the feeling that the humans could very well lose, and it totally worked. If Cylons don't need sleep (or food, or shelter, for that matter), how can we ever completely elude them? Chilling.

The scenes with everyone exhausted and burned out were all so good. The conversations between Adama and Tigh almost made me like Tigh. My favorite was the Lee and Kara scene where she actually told him outright how to make her behave and take her pep pills. Very cute.

The civilians certainly had it a lot easier here. Gaius could relax and doze in his chair between jumps, and canoodle with his invisible Number Six, who seemed to be obsessed with fulfilling "God's" commandments and having kids. It will be interesting to see how she's going to manage that without an actual body.

The B plot about the Olympic Carrier and Dr. Amarak, who could quite possibly expose Gaius as a traitor, was sort of confusing. I wasn't really sure what happened there. It appeared that Dr. Amarak was a threat, and Number Six somehow neutralized his danger to Gaius by making it appear that the Olympic Carrier had Cylon agents on it. But how could she do that? If she didn't, then the Olympic Carrier really did have Cylon agents on it. And isn't that an amazing coincidence?

Bits and pieces:

— Laura's whiteboard went from 50,298 to 49,998 to 47,972 to 47,973, with that last being the birth of a baby boy on the Rising Star. How New Testament of them.

— They haven't actually told us what FTL does to people: only Cally saying, "I hate this part" or something to that effect. But we really don't need the details, do we? This episode told us all we needed to know.

— Poor Helo. Running from Cylons in the rain, taking anti-radiation meds, and now at Sharon Two's mercy. I wonder what she's planning to do to him?

— The wall of photos was effective. It made the loss of so many people a lot more personal than explosions in the distance.

— The old, ticking clock counting down thirty-three minutes was my candidate for Most Obvious Symbolism: the clock is definitely ticking for the human race. It was also symbolic of human survival dependent on avoiding high tech.

Quotes:

Roslin: "Okay. Next crisis?"

Lee: "But why you? Take a guess."
Kara: "'Cause I'm on druuggs?"

Tigh: "If the crew doesn't hate the XO, then he's not doing his job." Well, they do hate him, that's for sure. I don't think that means he's doing his job, though.

Number Six: "Do you want children, Gaius?"
Gaius: "Let me think about that for a minute. No."

Roslin: "Do you know him?"
Number Six: (simultaneously) "Have you always been able to multitask like this?"
Gaius: "Yes. Yes."

Excellent, excellent, excellent. Four out of four stars,

Billie
---
Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

5 comments:

  1. So this is the episode that won the last Hugo before Steven Mofat went on a spree with his Doctor Who episodes.

    It was a great way to start the show yet again. I noticed that there was no forced reintroduction of characters like for example in Firefly's The Train Job. But of course that was a second pilot. Anyways it's good they got to the action right away and trusted people to have watched the miniseries.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I forgot to comment on the opening credits. Wonderfull music set to great imagery but why oh why do they have to show scenes from the upcoming episode? I never ever watch trailers and they include a damn trailer inside the episode? Even if they were in the original broadcast why weren't they cut from the DVD release? At least that sequence has a musical cue thet signals the end so i can just close my eyes and wait for it to end.

    That spoiler loaded, for a lack of better word, trailer reminds me of Space 1999. They also liked to show what's going to happen in the next hour. If it's a homage that ok, but i hope it stops in the coming seasons.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I used to close my eyes through that part of the opening credits, too. I just didn't want to know what was coming in the episode!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Another great episode - watched this one twice in my re-watch, once by myself and once with my wife... And I didn't get bored second time round - which is very unusual for me!

    This is such a dark show, but there is always that glimmer of hope which is so important to these people - they had to kill 2% of the (known) human race in this ep, but with the birth of a new baby we're left in high spirits regardless! :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I just started watching this show and am so glad there are reviews to follow along! I was confused by the ending though. If the Cylons were in fact tracking the Olympic Carrier, then how did the Olympic Carrier end up finding them? And if it wasn't the Olympic Carrier that the Cylons were tracking, then why didn't the Cylons continue to chase them?

    ReplyDelete

We love comments! We moderate because of spam and trolls, but don't let that stop you! It’s never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.