Doral, the Cylon the fleet abandoned on Ragnar station shows up again with bombs strapped to his body. Tigh spots him but they don’t get to him before he blows himself up, killing himself and wounding others.
Adama informs Sgt. Hadrian, the Master at Arms, that Cylons look like humans and gives her the authority to investigate any and everyone. The President warns him that the tribunal Hadrian wishes to form could turn into a witch hunt, which, of course, it does.
Hadrian immediately zeroes in on Chief Tyrol and his support crew makes things worse by telling conflicting lies about his whereabouts when the explosion happened. Hadrian accuses both Tyrol and Boomer of being Cylons or Cylon collaborators. Spc. Socinus, one of Tyrol’s crew, insists that he, not the Chief, is responsible for leaving the deck unsecured and allowing the suicide bomber access to the arms locker.
But Hadrian makes the mistake of summoning Adama before the tribunal and questions him about why he withheld knowledge of the new human-looking Cylons from the fleet. He quickly dissolves the tribunal. Socinus is stripped of rank, sentenced as a traitor and thrown in the brig. Hadrian is escorted to her quarters by armed guards and presumably is confined to quarters.
Tyrol goes to Adama to insist that Socinus should be released since he was only trying to cover for him. Shockingly, Adama breaks it down for him. Socinus has to take the fall, because as Adama angrily explains, Tyrol is too valuable.
Meanwhile, on Cylon-Occupied Caprica, Helo “rescues” Boomer.
Observations:
- Sgt. Hadrian got fucked over for doing her job. Those of us who have been in the military are all too familiar with being “set up for failure” because of the privileges of rank and boy did she get the royal screw. But as she’s chilling in her rack thinking bitter thoughts, she’s probably going to realize that she didn’t think things through. And she was starting to “flex,” so to speak. Hadrian went wrong when she didn’t stop to think what would happen if her investigation led to someone in a critical position. When there are only 49,000 humans left, some people will really be above the law.
- Apollo was completely absent from this episode. Not too many shows would do that with the guy who’s assumed to be the main character.
- Starbuck is still in sickbay. I can’t remember a Star Trek character being wounded for an extended period of time. I think Nog got his leg shot off in DS9 and was only bitter about it for one episode.
- Baltar visits Starbuck in the hospital and gives her a “get well” cigar. With each episode they show more familiarity. The groundwork for them hooking up in place.
- I chuckled when I saw Chief Tyrol’s crew trying to make moonshine. There was a pilot named Rigel who wanted to do exactly that in the BSG game I ran on CompuServe.
- One of the burn victims in sickbay was truly scary. His skin was charred black and he was howling in pain. He looked like an absolute monster.
- Tigh saved Adama’s life. What the hell was Adama thinking when he lunged at Doral who had 20 pounds of explosives strapped to his chest?
- Adama revealed that his father was a civil liberties lawyer. That’s funny, especially since he screamed down on his son in “Bastille Day” for “sounding like a lawyer” when Apollo told the President that she needed to abide by the Articles of Colonization and hold free elections.
- The scene where Number Six gave Boomer an ass whipping was surreal. You don’t see fashion models administering beatdowns every day. But having said that, it still didn’t look real.
- I’m starting to think that the Boomer model of Cylon is new, or experimental. Both the one on Galactica and the one on Caprica seem like they haven’t worked out all of the bugs yet. Doral and Number Six are evaluating her performance with Helo on Caprica and the Boomer on Galactica really does seem to fight her programming.
- There sure are a lot of reporters among the survivors, huh? At first glance this seemed stupid, but remember -- the decommissioning of the Galactica had a lot of press coverage. A bunch of journalists and cameramen lucked out and survived because of a fluke! Roslyn survived because of this fluke too.
- I don’t understand how Helo “found” Boomer. She could’ve been anywhere in the city or outside of it.
- Was the Cylon really trying to destroy Baltar’s project? I’m unsure.
- Poor Spc. Socinus was convicted of lying under oath and dereliction of duty in time of war. I’m sorry, but Chief Tyrol just doesn’t seem cool enough to justify someone taking such a severe rap for him. Socinus probably didn’t have a clue how hard he was going to be hit.
Adama had the best lines of the episode, as usual:
Tyrol: He’s innocent! You can’t do that!
Adama: I can’t? What I can’t do is let someone who wears this uniform get on the witness stand and lie under oath. He either did it the first time or he did it the second time and it doesn’t matter. He’s guilty and he’ll pay the price.
You’ll pay a different price. You’ll have to walk out onto that hangar deck every day knowing that one of your men is in the brig because you couldn’t keep your fly zipped.
You’re the most experienced non-commissioned officer I have left. You keep my planes flying and I need them to fly. Dismissed.
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