Rating: ***1/2
Written by: Bradley Thompson & David Weddle
Directed By: Rod Hardy
A bit hard to follow, especially at first, and later more than a little telegraphed, but all in the service of a good character piece that has an absolutely riveting payoff scene. Once again this remake series proves itself to have the most "real" characters on scifi television.
Not in the first Act, though.
One of the Raptor pilots has apparently just made his one-thousandth successful landing, and a dozen or so of his fellow pilots decide to throw him an impromptu celebration. Beats me why, but who was going to pour cold water over anything that is boosting morale? Certainly not Adama, Starbuck, and Apollo, who even engage in a little joshing at the old man's expense, which he accepts with good humor.
Given the promos for this ep I was thinking that this might have been a Zak flashback (Not even close, as the real ones would carnally illustrate), perhaps where he gets killed. But no such luck. Besides, far more than one pilot bites it on this occasion.
As this inexplicable impromptu carrying-on is continuing, a communications drone is slowly coming loose from its harness, and as "luck" would have it, is pointed straight at all the Raptor pilots. So, when it falls to the deck, it automatically launches, and, well, ick.
The final tally: thirteen pilots killed, another six injured - almost HALF the Galactica's remaining complement.
Do accidents happen? Sure. Do accidents like this happen? You wouldn't think so, especially so soon after Armageddon and all. It would seem to me that this sort of disaster would be a lot harder to take than a beating at the hands of the Cylons - I mean, at least that way it would have been in mortal combat fighting desperately against the enemy for your people's survival. But this - a lousy flight deck accident - you'd have to wonder if maybe this whole "let's find Earth" business just wasn't meant to be, like you're already doomed and why are we even bothering trying to survive.
Of course, this whole "let's find Earth" business isn't meant to be, but that's another episode. In this one the morale of the surviving pilots isn't even at issue, but rather of just the one pilot assigned to train the replacement warriors: Kara "Starbuck" Thrace.
And if you'll remember from the pilot, the last time she was a flight instructor, she let herself get romantically involved with one of her students, and she let that affect her professional objectivity, causing her to pass this student when he really wasn't ready. And it ended up costing him his life.
That pilot was Zak Adama. And, thinking herself about to die, she confessed her sin to Zak's brother Lee, also in the hopes that maybe Apollo knowing this would help heal the rift between him and his dad.
Perhaps it did, though of course Apollo didn't say why. Curiously enough, that knowledge hasn't seemed to have had much of an effect upon the Apollo-Starbuck relationship. I guess neither of them wanted to go there again, and as long as Kara could avoid direct reminders of that tragedy - when she let her feelings for her lover and fiancée indirectly kill him - her outer bravado was enough to keep her going on a day-to-day basis.
Well, thirteen dead pilots took away that comfort zone. Being the best pilot in the fleet, she's the logical choice to train "nuggets" (i.e. newbie pilots). And that brings all that pain flowing back in one flashback after another.
There are lots of flashbacks in this ep. Both years old (lovemaking with Zak) and the previous day or so (during the breakup of her Viper). Perhaps all that jumping around took the place of any true secondary story arc.
There is a standalone scene where President Roslin sees the Galatica's CMO - who, interestingly enough for an ostensible oncologist, smokes like a stack. He's an irascible, wise-cracking, no-nonsense old duffer. He scolds her for having gone five years between mammograms ("I was busy," she evaded…). He recommends conventional treatment, to which she replies that she saw her mother suffer through it for two solid years and expresses a desire for "alternative procedures" instead. He scoffs at her, but with cynical whimsy promises to try and find the herbal whatchamacallit wherever in the fleet it may be hiding.
He had mentioned prayer along with that "alternative treatment" in ridiculing it. But then, suddenly, just as he's leaving the room so the President can get dressed, he sobers, looks at her, and with genuine compassion urges her to try prayer. And the look on Roslin's face was indescribable. It was like her courageous, close-to-the-vest presidential mask slipped, and fear and grief flowed across her face. Like she keeps that mask on even for her self, to avoid as much as possible having to confront the full reality of her condition and what it means for herself and the survivors of humanity.
It was so real.
Just as the storyline back on "Cylon-occupied Caprica" seems so pointless. My long-term guess is that that angle will end up being huge - why else would they send a Boomer avatar to string Helo along like this? - but I'll be hanged if I can figure out what they're doing or why. Tonight they find a fallout shelter in the basement of a restaurant while a Number Six avatar walks by outside. I just shrugged and waited for another Starbuck flashback.
Adama meets with Kara personally to work out the details of the pilot training program. You can tell how uncomfortable she is, but at first she doesn't let on that anything is wrong.
One of the things we learn from the flashbacks, and which had not been disclosed previously in this series, is how close Adama and Starbuck are. He tells her that he loves her "like a daughter," as well he might, since he was aware of her engagement to his son Zak. We don't know her family history (in this version of BG, anyway), but the sentiment sure seems to be mutual. Adama appears to be the father Kara never had, which makes it a lot easier to understand why she never told him about passing Zak when he wasn't ready to fly - he's the last person in the galaxy she'd want to disappoint, and to have to tell him this - well, it would destroy them both.
And yet the guilt over not having done so was doing a pretty fair job of emotionally disemboweling her all by itself. You can see it in the flashbacks to Zak's funeral, which parallel the funeral for the dead Raptor pilots. During the former Adama reaches over and holds Kara's hand, which makes her feel even worse. It's almost as if she was going to tell Adama the whole truth, but his fatherly comforts just fueled her conflicted torment. She just couldn't bring herself to do it. And as time moved on, she grew accustomed to keeping a secret that she convinced herself would never resurface.
But she was wrong. The piper has come to collect. And she knows it.
Oh, she tries to deny it to herself. But the usual bravado just doesn't cut it. Everything produces a flashback. Not even a friendly game of poker with Baltar can keep her head from re-living the feel of Zak's touch the last time they spent together.
And certainly not the flight training. So, almost without realizing it, she starts in on her "nuggets" overcompensating for her fatal leniency with Zak to ridiculous lengths.
Since the Galactica has no flight-simulators, the trainees have to get in the cockpit from day one. Not surprisingly, none of them do very well on day one - but it is day one. Doesn't matter, says Starbuck. She flunks the whole lot of them and tells them to get off her ship.
Before two weeks ago, it wouldn't have mattered. But then, before two weeks ago, she wouldn't have been conducting flight training, either. As it is, these "nuggets" are the only civilians who have any flight experience at all. The next batch won't even have that much. So, IOW, she doesn't have the luxury of flunking them. They're the best they've got and it's her job to train them as best she can.
That's what Apollo tells her. Starbuck won't budge. So Apollo makes the obvious-to-everybody-but-Starbuck observation that this has to do with Zak, doesn't it? And she confirms it by telling him to go to hell.
Apollo passes this hot potato up to his dad, but makes the perhaps understandable assumption that Adama knows about Kara's role in Zak's death. After he starts to blurt it out, and Adama's puzzled reaction tells him that his dad doesn't know, you know that Starbuck's worst nightmare is about to come true.
Adama would have called Kara into his office anyway to get the flight training restarted. But Apollo's inadvertent foot-in-mouth disease prompts the Commander to ask Starbuck about what she had to do with what happened to his younger son.
The look on her face is one of sheer horror, all the more so since it becomes clear that Adama is not going to let her double-talk her way out of answering her question. And the thing is, she knows that she owes him the truth, and can't bring herself to lie to him in any case.
So she tells him. Everything. With the bark on. How Zak wasn't ready, had no feel for flying, that she shouldn't have passed him but loved him so much that she just couldn't crush his hopes and dreams.
They say that confession is good for the soul. And maybe it is. But that doesn't mean that it's easy, or that the confessee will make it easy for the confessor.
As Kara is unburdening herself, Adama's face falls into a mask. You're thinking that it's primarily shock, but you're also thinking that he'll at least try to offer a comforting word or two to the woman that he "loves like a daughter." At the very least he'll clam up like he did when Apollo accused him of killing Zak and just dismiss her.
Instead in bitten-off words he tells her to "get out of my office while you still can."
Starbuck's face fell like all its screws loosened half a turn all at once. Then it collapsed into a thousand emotional shards. This was no father-figure and he was offering her no comfort. She was looking, at that moment, into the eyes of a father who was beholding the bitch who had whored his son to death, and it was all he could manage not to kill her with his bare, avenging hands.
That's when I understood that Adama's expression wasn't a mask; it was one of barely-repressed rage.
Once again, this scene was so real. Every emotional aspect was so identifiable. So were the actions of both that came next.
Now unburdened, for weal or for woe, Starbuck resumes teaching her "nuggets," and is doing so good a job that even Colonel Tigh is impressed. And then, out of nowhere, come eight Cylon fighters. Which is, of course, a plot contrivance to give Starbuck a reason to "go out in a blaze of glory," except that she really is that damn good and manages to wipe out seven of them before her Viper is damaged and falls out of control toward a nearby (I'm guessing non-M-class) planet. She ejects, but I'm not sure how that helps her, since her body will burn up in the atmosphere quicker than her ship will.
Promos for next week indicate a rather predictable conclusion, with Adama unwilling to leave Kara behind. But if the characterizations remain this strong, I'm willing to live with it.
Next: the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many, and it may just mean a mutiny.
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