Rating: ***
Written by: Tony Graphia
Directed By: Allan Kroeker
All in all, a decent, worthwhile hour. Good continuity, a main story idea that did not degenerate into a stock cliché, but with some characterizations that didn't always make sense.
Let's begin with the continuity. So far there hasn't been a stand-alone episode of this series. "33" made reference to the five days since the "ragtag" fleet left its home space; "Water" referred to the three days that had passed since the destruction of the Olympic Carrier at the climax of "33"; and "Bastille Day" picks up where "Water" left off, with the fleet at the planet where Boomer found H2O. Their challenge now is figuring out a way to extract it so they can be on their way before the Cylons find them again.
The biggest obstacle is that of which they have the least: manpower. The equipment is available, but it is determined that the project will require at least a thousand people. Why a thousand? Because that just happens to be the number of convicts the fleet is carrying on its prison barge, the Astral Queen.
Immediately arises fresh conflict between Commander Adama and President Roslin. Adama, being the no-nonsense pragmatist that he is, looks at the matter in his linear, eminently practical way: they need a thousand men; there are fifteen hundred convicts on the Astral Queen; so send a thousand of them down to the planet and get the water. Mission accomplished.
Not so fast, says the President. Those men are convicts, but they're not slaves. Forcing them down to the planet to extract the water the fleet needs would constitute "slave labor," and she will not hear of it.
Enter Captain Apollo.
Adama, now being aware of his son's role as Roslin's liaison - or, more accurately, buffer between her and himself - isn't too thrilled with the arrangement. Several times throughout the hour he makes references to Apollo "choosing sides," as though the relationship between the military and its civilian overseers is necessarily adversarial. Certainly it can be, but under these circumstances, one would think that such territorial instincts could be minimized or suppressed. Apollo seems to recognize this a lot better than his father does, and for the frankly appalling naivete that he exhibits in later on, he ends up optimally and properly resolving the subsequent crisis.
Not to get ahead of myself in this synopsis, but Adama's hostility seemed forced here. Ever since the pilot he and Roslin seemed to be working together amicably, with Adama even making conciliatory gestures (the pomp & circumstance-laden official visit to the Galactica, and his gift of a book from his personal library) to nurture the relationship. Now, almost abruptly, he reverts back to his initial hostility, and all but accuses Apollo of being a sellout.
I guess maybe Apollo has the makings of a fine politician, unlike his cranky, inflexible old man, but Adama's demeanor in this ep just rang false to me.
Apollo suggests a compromise: offer the prisoners incentives in return for their consent to work on the water recovery project. If they cooperate, they earn "freedom points" that can earn a quicker parole for them. Adama, not being a politician, balks; he wants what he wants, period. Roslin, being not only a politician but the President, agrees, since it appears to accommodate the immediate need and her ethical objections.
I say "appears to accommodate" for reasons that will quickly become day-glo obvious.
Roslin sends Apollo to the Astral Queen as her representative. He dutifully relays the President's offer to the prisoners and asks for volunteers.
The cell doors open. But no convicts step forward.
Then one does. Not to volunteer, but to reveal himself as their leader. His name? Tom Zarek (Richard Hatch, aka "Classic Apollo").
Zarek is a terrorist (or, in his mind, "freedom fighter") who blew up a government building on Saggitaran twenty years before as part of a campaign to, so he says, "free his people." Is he a freedom fighter? The dialogue doesn't really say. His exchanges with Apollo mention a published manifesto of his being banned, and President Roslin speaks of her predecessor, Adar, having "sent in the Marines," but we really don't learn the veracity of Zarek's claims of his planet's oppression by the other eleven colonies.
I suppose, though, that once a "freedom fighter" crosses the Rubicon of utilizing "asymmetrical" tactics, such moral distinctions begin to erode. After twenty years, they're probably gone altogether.
Zarek certainly seems to display this in his attitude. When he steps out into the cell corridor, he does so in a laconic way that fairly drips with equal measures of cynicism and contempt. His reply on behalf of his fellow inmates is simple: no deal.
It wasn't difficult to see the direction this situation was headed. Not just in the "prison break" cliché sense, but the attitudes of the characters themselves. Zarek had the upper hand from the beginning because he knew that he had something "the government" wanted: his comrades' able bodies. And he knew that in Apollo he had just the bleeding heart greenhorn he needed to get what he wanted: a coup de 'tat.
The prison break doesn't take long. Apollo foolishly descends into the cell-block to Zarek's "suite" to negotiate with him, believing that he can appeal to the man's "better nature" by identifying with his cause. He tells him he respects his point of view, and even read his manifesto in college despite its being banned. It isn't quite hero worship, but Apollo does his pathetic best to be the "good cop."
Unfortunately for him, there's no "bad cop" present to play off of, and Zarek never did strike me as being lame-brained enough to fall for such a transparent ploy. Once he has Apollo where he wants him, he plays his winning hand. On a signal, one of the guards, whom Zarek has already persuaded to switch sides, opens all the cells again, and the prisoners quickly overpower Apollo and his small negotiating team. Just like that, Roslin's and Apollo's squeamishness has saddled Adama with a frakking hostage crisis.
To this point the cliché was playing out pretty much by the numbers. But then Tony Graphia threw in a few mild surprises.
Zarek gets on the fleet-wide intercom and states his demands: the immediate resignation of President Roslin and the holding of new elections so that humanity's survivors will have truly representative leadership.
Now what is it that strikes you about this demand? If your answer is, "That's an impossible demand that Zarek has to know will never be granted," go to the head of the class.
Roslin, for her part, despite having precipitated this fiasco with her anachronistic (for her people's new reality) scruples, is firm in her refusal to negotiate for the hostages' release. And there was never any doubt that Adama would immediately order the re-taking of the Astral Queen.
However, it takes a scene or two for all of this to sink into Apollo's moderately thick skull. When it does, he then dutifully regurgitates it for the audiences' sake, to wit, that Zarek wants to force a military solution so that he can "go out in a blaze of glory" as a martyr for his cause, and bring about President Roslin's fall in the process.
Of course, it doesn't turn out that way. Starbuck leads the Galactica's boarding party, which quickly secures the barge. But before she can pick off Zarek, Apollo disarms him and does a different brand of negotiating at gunpoint: accept his terms or die. Zarek, of course, wants to die, and says to go ahead and shoot. Apollo, of course, hesitates, as he's really bluffing. Starbuck, of course, isn't bluffing, and takes her shot when Apollo moves out of her crosshairs, except Apollo pulls Zarek out of the way an instant before his head would have become chunky salsa. This finally shakes the "freedom fighter," since he never believed Apollo would plug him but had no idea where the shot that almost did came from. At last, he's willing to cut a deal.
The deal that is cut is so generous as to piss off both Adama and Roslin: the convicts will have no weapons and will be completely dependent on outside sources for their sustenance and supplies, and they will supply the labor for the water recovery project. In return, they will retain control of the Astral Queen and be granted limited freedom; and an election will be held in seven months.
Of course, seven months marks the end of President Adar's term, which President Roslin is serving out. So all Apollo really did is remind Zarek of what the law already called for anyway. Is it really possibly that Zarek wasn't aware of this? Or did he just assume that in the wake of the Cylon holocaust the law would be dispensed with?
Roslin, impressed by Apollo's newfound intrepidity, acquiesces, commending him for upholding the law. Besides which, as she later confides to the younger man, her cancer may kill her before she can even run for a term of her own anyway. Adama, on the other hand, just glowers and snaps to his son that, "I guess you've chosen your side." Man, does that guy need to get laid.
On the periphery the other ongoing character arcs got some attention, and some of it was quite intriguing.
Dr. Baltar was called before Adama, where the commander demanded point-blank to know where his oft-promised Cylon-detector is.
This was a wonderfully written and acted scene on several different levels. First is that Adama made it clear that he knows Baltar is full of crap, but also conceded that he doesn't have anybody else to turn to. Baltar, for his part, finally broke down and started to admit that there never was any Cylon-detector. I say "started to" because this triggered a sudden fit of rage from Number Six, who started shrieking orders at him to tell Adama exactly what she wanted him to say - at one point lunging right into his face with such force that Baltar dropped the glass of water he'd been holding, causing it to shatter on the deck.
For Baltar, who had gotten nothing but seduction and gently manipulative banter from the sexy Cylon, this had to be a nightmarish development. In his own self-centered, solipsistic way, far more nightmarish than the destruction of the Colonies was. Now this siren in his head isn't just a treasonously ribald distraction, but a malevolent tormentor bullying him to knowingly finish the betrayal he was unwittingly tricked into. The question now becomes what will become more unbearable for him - this mental stalking by the enemy or the secret he doesn't want his fellow humans to ever discover? "Fascinating," as Spock would say.
What Number Six compels Baltar to say is a request for a nuclear warhead. And, almost incredibly, Adama grants his request. Definitely an arc that is coming to a rapid, er, climax, at this rate.
We see further interaction between gruff, spit & polish hardass Colonel Tigh and irreverent hotshot pilot Lieutenant Starbuck. During Apollo's absence Starbuck is acting CAG, and Tigh takes issue with her joking command style (which seems at odds with the dressing down she urged Apollo to inflict upon her in "33," but maybe it's a "There's a time and a place for everything" sort of dynamic). Starbuck replies that you can't just yell at your subordinates all the time or they'll stop listening to you. She follows that up with a wisecrack about his alcoholism, which we see resume in the opening scene.
However, after she volunteers for the rescue mission on the grounds that she's "the best shot in or out of the cockpit," and Tigh backs her up, she attempts to bury the hatchet with the old man over a couple of glasses of water. But he rebuffs her gesture, saying that his shortcomings are personal, while hers are professional. In a word, ouch. For once, Starbuck was left speechless. That feud certainly won't be settled any time soon.
There's a fresh scene back on "Cylon-occupied Caprica" in an empty city that for whatever reason wasn't nuked. Helo and the Boomer avatar are making their way through it on their way to somewhere, while on a nearby roof Doral and one of Number Six's "sisters" look on. I still have the feeling that something huge is going to come out of this arc, but at this point I haven't a clue what it might be.
I should also close the loop on the main plot with a subplot that lent it the authenticity without which the whole ep might have fizzled.
The idea that these are hardened criminals usually never gets exposited in this particular story genre. If all we'd heard from was the comparatively urbane and civilized Tom Zarek, we'd never have gotten the full message that these really were dangerous scumbags whose release could be dangerous to the rest of the fleet (or, as Adama put it, even having control of the Astral Queen put a weapon in their hands).
Fortunately (well, not for Callie, but I'll get to that momentarily), here we get that little bit extra, in maximally visceral fashion.
One of the prisoners begins verbally abusing Chief Tyrol's assistant through the bars of her cell. And, God bless her, she doesn't back off an inch. She doesn't go out of her way to antagonize him, but she stands her ground. This not being the reaction he was seeking, the piece of human debris enters her cell and gets right up in her face, demanding that she "respect" him. Being a bit more frightened now, she says that she does respect him, but in, shall we say, a very "ironic" way. Incensed, the man seizes her and drags her off, presumably to rape her. Subsequently we do hear a high-pitched scream, and both the characters present (Dorky Aide and Petty Officer Dualla, whose torturous - to the audience - courtship persists) assume the worst.
However, in a delightful turn of events, the shriek was from Callie's assailant, whose ear she bit off in Mike Tysonesque style. He gets blown away by her rescuers, but her courage, coming from what has heretofore been a "nervous Nellie," elicited as much fist-pumping from the viewer as it did from her colleagues.
The moral of the story, if there is one? That even after doomsday, human nature remains human nature. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what the Cylons said at the end of the pilot.
Intriguing, isn't it?
Next: How Starbuck killed Zak
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