Battlestar Galactica: Scattered

Starbuck: "Bitch took my ride."

Wonderful, dark, bloody premiere.

Adama was always the center of the story, and now he's at the point of death. Everyone was floundering for footing, and not finding it. I thought it was particularly fascinating that nearly everyone was bloodstained in this episode, and it wasn't just Adama's blood on Tigh and Lee (symbolically all over Lee's hands); there was blood on the guys on Kobol, and all over Starbuck on Caprica. Adama is near death, but everybody is wounded. The center cannot hold.

So Tigh was in charge for five minutes and he lost the fleet. Ironic that he saved the situation and got the fleet back doing something Adama would never have done: networking the computers. (Of course, Adama wouldn't have lost the fleet in the first place.) The Adama/Tigh flashbacks with all the hair on both of them gave us a pretty clear picture of what we already knew: that Tigh is a drunken screw-up, and Adama should never have brought him on board. Even Tigh knows that.

Meanwhile back at the museum, we got a fun argument but not enough of Starbuck, Helo, and his pregnant Cylon. And now Sharon Two has gone, and with Starbuck's ship. Where is she going?

I was sort of ticked that the whole Baltar/Six and baby girl thing was in Baltar's head. And mildly confused. Six wants to have Baltar's baby and it's "the future." What about Sharon Two's baby? Is it "the future," too? And it's impossible for Six to have had Gaius' baby, isn't it? The original Six on Caprica is dead, and he hasn't physically been with any other Six except in his head... unless there was some crafty involuntary sperm donation occurring back on Caprica before the Cylons attacked?

The other Kobol scenes had one of those omigod moments, when all the bullets were slamming into Tarn and he was unable to avoid them. The other omigod moment for me was when Tigh whacked Sharon One on her injured cheek, not once, but twice. She had a bullet hole in that cheek. What a prince. We still don't know why Sharon One shot Adama. And clearly, she doesn't know, either.

So Starbuck and Helo are stranded on Caprica. The Chief and Baltar and the other guys are stranded on Kobol and under attack. Laura is in jail, Lee is in serious trouble, and Adama is still at the point of death. And now there's a bunch of metal Cylons on the Galactica as well. What more could go wrong? I love this show.

Bits and pieces:

— There were new credits, a new saga sell, and new music. (I sort of liked the old music.) And no more spoiler clips for the upcoming episode, which was good.

— "47,875 survivors in search of a home called Earth"? They didn't think that one through; someone dies in almost every episode. Are they going to update that number every week? Laura's whiteboard was a lot easier to update.

— We had Gaeta and Dee in a unisex bathroom scene. I love the unisex bathroom scenes; they always remind me about never seeing bathrooms in Star Trek.

— The little prayer meeting in the cell was interesting. "Your prophet, Laura."

— The space firefight at the end was absolutely spectacular.

Quotes:

Starbuck: "My gods, men are so painfully stupid sometimes."

Helo: "I mean, I know what she is, but she's not like the others." (I immediately flashed on that Sesame Street rhyme.)

Medic: "From now on, no more heart massages for me. I'm sticking to pills and enemas." The Podcast said that this medic was played by Jamie Bamber's wife, by the way.

I might revise my number later on in the season, but for now, four out of four stars,

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

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