Rating: ***
Written by: Jeff Vlaming
Directed By: Sergio Gezzan
Remember how speculation in the Battlestar Galactica fan community has run rampant over the morale of the Battlestar Pegasus crew after its having lost two commanding officers in a very short period of time right after meeting up with the Galactica? Well, we still don't find out much, if anything, about that. But we do find out who is the latest Pegasus CO, and why he's really not cut out for command.
And that's not even the best storyline of the episode.
On the Galactica, movement inside a cargo container draws the suspicion of Tyrol and his deck crew. When the box is opened, a stowaway is found inside, a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl named Rya Kibby. Once in custody, she asks to be brought to Doc Cottle.
Vlaming might as well have named Rya "Pandora," because when Tyrol opened up her box (the cargo container, you perverts….) all sorts of interesting things came out.
For one thing, Cottle has been performing abortions clandestinely ever since the fleet escaped the Colonies. Why he was keeping it quiet is anybody's guess, since President Roslin indicates in the dialogue that abortion is a protected "right" under Colonial law. Presumably it was a mutual assumption that with the population of humanity down to the level of a small city, the act of snuffing out new human lives might not be looked upon too kindly by the diaspora. At least that's a reason that makes a bit of sense.
Well, there is one more reason, of a less savory nature for those viewers with a pro-life orientation: Miss Kibby is a Geminon, and Geminons are depicted as the Kobolian equivalent of the "religious Right," with all the attendant left-wing stereotypes therein. Accordingly, Rya is, by Geminon custom, considered the "property" of her parents since she's underage, and if she's returned to them, she will be horribly punished and tortured and, of course, the worst fate of all - "forced" to give birth to her baby.
Where this exercise in moderately unsubtle religious bigotry gets interesting is in its effect on the imminent presidential election.
Recall that President Roslin's adaptation of the role of Moses for the human exodus back in "Kobol's Last Gleaming" won her the slavish devotion of the Geminons. While Roslin herself never really "converted" to their religious beliefs, her actions being a blending of her trademark pragmatism and chamalla tripping, she made sure not to let that slip to her number one supporters - in much the same way, I guess, that Doc Cottle didn't advertise his abortion moonlighting. By such inadvertent mutual discretion did this political collision course remain on ice.
Poor little (well, okay, not anymore, but you know what I mean) Rya Kibby made herself a one-teenager blowtorch, and set loose the public relations dogs. And where they led not even Roslin could anticipate.
The Geminons immediately demand that Rya be returned to her family as chattel. Rya begs to be given "asylum" on Colonial One, or the Galactica, or anyplace else but with her own people. Cottle sides with Rya. This was Roslin's instinct as well, since, as was also part of her dialogue, she's always been pro-"choice." Something of which I'd have thought the Geminons would have taken notice before now if they're the knuckle-dragging zealots the writers waste no screen time attempting to portray.
So, now, comes the kind of fork in the road that pragmatists despise: does Roslin stand on her libertine (and, frankly, Cylonesque) principle of upholding a "woman's right to choose," or does she do the expedient thing and satisfy a constituency she cannot do without?
It is left to Admiral Adama, in one of their stock "sounding board/conscience" scenes, to point out the obvious other shoe to Roslin: that there are only 48,000 or so human beings left in the universe, that number needs to be boosted, there's only one way that's going to happen, and aborting the unborn isn't part of that equation. He also, in a neat little reminder of her own words that also harkened back to "KLG" when she used his Earth lie against him, brought up her declaration way back at the beginning of this flight across the stars that the #1 mission of their people was to have babies.
To me this self-evident fact seems overpoweringly pragmatic, but Roslin still frets that she'll be "taking away the freedoms of the people" if she decrees restrictions on baby-killing. That reminded me of Boomer v. 2.0's question to Adama of whether humanity deserves to survive. This sort of bloody-mindedness would certainly seem to bring that into at least as much question as her urging Adama to assassinate Admiral Cain in "Resurrection Ship," but what do I know?
In any event, Roslin manages a near-impossible political feat: she issues an executive order banning abortion, but not until after Cottle is allowed to murder Rya Kibby's baby, thus pissing off both sides of this sudden fleet-wide abortion dispute. It's such a political boner that it provides an opening bigger than a battlestar for her suddenly ambitious vice president, Gaius Baltar, to jump through - which he does at Roslin's presser announcing her executive order, catching her completely flat-footed with pro-abort "arguments" that slur the Geminons as Cylonesque and have the assembled press corps, as well as imaginary Six, giving him a standing ovation as he announces his candidacy for the presidency of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol.
Ever since this woman miraculously survived breast cancer, she's really, really been off her game. Maybe she needs to get back on the chamalla.
The ep's ostensible "A" track was simply a means to an end - although you have to wonder if Adama the Younger is really up for it.
The newest Pegasus CO is her erstwhile chief engineer, Commander Barry Garner. Now that's not a handicap in and of itself; Montgomery Scott always acquitted himself well when he was left in command of the Enterprise, and Geordi LaForge didn't do so badly himself in the TNG episode "Arsenal of Freedom." In Garner's case, however, it is - something that Colonel Tigh (again) recognizes but Adama either doesn't or feels he doesn't have a choice.
Once again, Tigh's instincts are right. Guess he's not hitting the ambrosia like he used to.
Garner is a close-minded martinet who, as Apollo later observes, tried to command people the way he programmed machines. It goes without saying that this ran him afoul of Starbuck, who happened to be aboard the "beast" (Galactica's nickname is the "bucket") training new Raptor pilots. Completing the triangle is one Major Lee Adama, assigned to the Pegasus as Garner's new XO.
The complications just keep coming for Apollo. Now free to frak Dualla's boobs off, and heartily availing himself at every opportunity, it's apparently enough to make him forget his last squeeze, but not Starbuck's totally out-of-character bungling in shooting and nearly killing him just a week earlier. Or Starbuck's totally in-character clashes with Commander Garner, which Apollo is forced to referee. Or Apollo's own clash with Garner when the Commander vows to take the Pegasus to the rescue of a missing Raptor against Adama's direct orders, which are given on the basis of Starbuck's advice that it's a Cylon trap - an opinion Apollo is compelled to endorse.
Garner simply won't listen - not to Starbuck, not to Apollo, not to Adama. Like the late Crashdown in "Fragged," the glorified mechanic thinks that leadership means commanding subordinates as opposed to commanding the situation. He wants what he wants - to rescue his missing Raptor - and any subordinate who doesn't bark, "Sir, yes sir!" gets thrown in the brig. First Starbuck, and then - until his incarceration is interrupted by disaster - Apollo.
The major tries to relieve Garner under regulations for insubordination to the admiral. Garner orders Apollo arrested for insubordination to him. Legally Apollo is in the right, but here we see a single glimpse of the Pegasus crew's divided loyalty, as the Colonial marine takes Apollo into custody - or does until Garner jumps the "beast" into the very Cylon ambush his XO and CAG predicted. As they feared, the Raptor crew is already dead, and three Cylon base ships pop in out of nowhere (Don't ask me where they keep getting them, or how they're tracking the ragtag fleet now) and pour a fusillade of nukes into the Pegasus that the battlestar only survives by Apollo's tactical prowess and Garner's belated self-sacrifice in getting the FTL drive back online at the cost of his own life.
I will admit to feeling a modest level of suspense at whether the Pegasus would survive, or whether this is how the writers would get rid of her. Although Lee's presence aboard was a powerful clue that that moment hadn't arrived yet. I was a bit more surprised, and intrigued, when Admiral Adama gave command of the Pegasus to his son, on the grounds that "I need someone I can trust." How this will go over with the "beast's" crew, now under the command of not just an outsider but the son of the officer who attacked their ship in the still recent past, is definitely the fodder of future episodes that I do not want to miss.
You can feel things building toward another climatic season ender, even without consulting a calendar.
But not quite yet.
Damn teases.
Next: Original Boomer wakes up, and finds a very different Six waiting for her.
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