1.05: You Can't Go Home Again

[Dave]

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When Kara is hit by enemy fire and goes missing, Lee and Adama stir controversy by conducting search that uses the fleet's precious resources.

 

[Dave]

I guess this was the 'study of obsession' episode:

Ray asked why Kara didn't burn up on re-entry. She hit the satellite, not the Gas Giant, but it was still not explained. There could have been retro-rocket jets built into the suit but they weren't shown, and she obviously blacked-out before she got tangled-up in the parachute.

Kara also got the Cylon Raider working too easily -- it had just crashed from space (she shot the hole in it and it didn't burn up either), and the controls seemed either organic, or else designed for a giant pizza to work them. And she was far too proficient at working them for a first attempt -- either that or Apollo is a useless pilot. And when did she have time to paint on the underside -- before or after her Oxygen supply ran out?

And the Adama/Apollo show, as Ray called it, really hogged this week's ep. The decision to expend 47% of remaining fuel to find one single missing pilot that was almost certainly dead was an extremely poor one. If she hadn't brought back a Cylon Raider -- which will undoubtedly become useful -- then it would remain a very poor decision. They are very lucky it all turned out the way it did.

On the whole, IMHO this was the worst episode yet, because those nitpicks and probabilities are just too huge to believe them.

Do you think the Cylon attack on Helo and Boomer-Cylon was a shear coincidence, or still part of some larger plan to play around with Helo's brain?

Myself, I think it is too much trouble to go to, to organise everything that has happened to him, simply as a kind of social experiment. I don't know what Boomer-Cylon's game is though.

 

[Rik_the_Riff]

Ooops. I started writing this before you posted, Dave. Wrote it with that in mind, and you're probably right, it was pretty weak, except in terms of the acting. Our actors were given lame material and really brought it to life. Here, for posterity's sake, are my first reactions/rant to it:

This was a cracking episode. Very cool.

After crashing out last episode, we got to watch Starbuck at her best - when she's on her own, just getting by.

And we got a priviledged insight into the weak hearts of our two solid, unshakeable hero types.

Baltar and Number 6 were (thankfully) cut back a bit during this episode, limited to one appearance, while Mary Adams' president finally got to show a little spine.

And as for Helo and the Caprican Boomer, I can only say 'the plot thickens'.......

Let me get one thing straight. I liked this episode. I know I've said that about every ep so far, but it's not just 'cuz I'm in love with the show (honest). Things I liked this time: Apollo's performance, and most of the Commander's, plus Tigh's betrayal (let's not mince words). The president finally demonstrating a bit of spine, and, of course, any scene where Starbuck gets to do something cool, like, say, patch up a cylon fighter and fly it well enough to communicate that it's her to Lee.

What I didn't like: let's start with the small stuff. Baltar's tacked-on appearance, about which I can only conclude a level of contractual obligation. Did it achieve anything except to weaken the president's character, when she should be strong? There was an issue with the CGI at the start where Hotdog had ejected and his canopy was just hanging there, rather than busting off into the distance. And Apollo's impromptu promotion of Hotdog? Unconvinving and a bit sentimental.

However, my main problem with this episode is how easily Starbuck got off. Oh, look, the Cylon ship landed intact! How convenient. And why the hell do Cylon ships use *organic* processors when robotic pilots would surely be faster? And plugging the single hole with a jacket? It, she and all air in the ship would be sucked out in an instant in vaccuum. And why doesn't the organic processor use direct neural interface rather than levers? That bit was as full of holes as Starbuck's original fighter. And then getting back to the Galactica? And Adama's reaction? He didn't even tell her that what she did for Zack was wrong! Sure, she went up against 8 Cylons last week in search of redemption - and won - but still, he doesn't have *one word* of reprimand? I am not convinced.

Still, the scenes of cathartic joy and Starbuck's brilliantly cheeky return mean I can forgive it. I mean, there isn't much around that's better.

Just a thought,

Rik

 

[ray gower]

For once- Not guilty for the Apollo/Adama show crack. It is all Rik's

Starbuck's miraculous crash still hangs in the borders of viability- It could have been a small moon, though getting around it seemed pretty normal and the dense atmosphere would still make it a warm experience.

It is possible that the Cylon driver managed to make a crash landing in one piece. As I recall from last week its failure was more of a flame out than any serious damage.

Flying the thing is also conceivably possible. Just find the buttons that make it go up, down, left, right and forwards. I would agree that she seemed to become rather too good at it and shoving your jacket in the hole is not necessarily the best way of creating an air tight pressure seal. Though it was a space suit jacket so perhaps it had self-sealing properties?
But hey! She has already parachuted onto this lump of rock from 500 miles up, so it is really nothing.

As for the driver itself-

Didn't Starbuck refer to the pilot as a cockroach?

It is puzzling that the Cylon's are using an organic life form as driver. But that is more because they are a mechanical race, not because an electronic device could handle it fastter/better. We put humans (sorry pilots) in aeroplanes because they are inately better at handling extreme situations than a machine, which has to be programmed for each circumstance.

Tigh, did, in military parlance at least, act correctly.
He reported a senior officer where his actions are straying too far from the mission objective and placing the unit as a whole in unneccesary danger.
It is just a pity he is such a creep. Perhaps he will get better when he finally dries out?

I can't help feeling sorry for the Chief as well. Last thing you want in your precious aircraft are pilots. They only go around breaking things!

 

[RangerOne SG13 SOR]

Hokey Cokey lets see...

Overall a good Episode, lots of heart and lots of character development.

A nit pick for me is the ease of Starbucks return, this series has been so far all about viability. No simple resets no "well captain if I adjust the emitters I can add a gain of 5000% rendering all enemy dead but i will forget how to do it by the next episode" rubbish.

So while I was happy with Starbucks escape from the burning Viper and her landing and then the finding of the Cylon raidder and happy with the fact the raidder was both biomass and machine (that makes sense) I was not happy with the controls. I am sure that the controls would of been controlled by impulses rather than muscle anyway I will let that slip (cos I can )

Col Tye played the line very well, no real betrayel no hidden agenda (against StarBuck) just a conviction of duty, excellent stuff!

President Roslyn, her sudden landing and giving the Adama Snr and Jnr a reality check, nicely done shes got depth and not a storyline puppet again excellent stuff!

I too fear that the recovery of the Cylon raidder is suddenly going to give them some intense advantage, some easy win button I hope that is not the case.

The Caprica story, hmm well cylon Boomer has been taken but to what purpose? Im not so sure this is about hunting Caprica forces, Ive got a little feeling there could be certain Cylon factions coming to the fore but Im not so sure I could be seeing a little too much into it.

Its a case of "contact wait out"... It will all come out of the wash as my gran would say!

Ok next episode please....

 

[Rik_the_Riff]

Agreed (and guilty as charged for the Apollo/Adama show - this isn't it, though. Here, they were not invulnerable heroes)

And when I said Tigh betrayed Adama, I didn't mean he did the wrong thing. He was right, but he wasn't doing what the cmdr. expected him to, so; betrayal.

And I agree - why would an all-brain creature designed by the cylons be using clumsy, inaccurate, slow levers when it could use neural impulses?

Rant, rant....

Though if we can have this much Starbuck in future episodes, I'll forgive them (I'm not just saying that because she's hot, I swear it!)

Just a thought,

Rik

 

[ray gower]

I'm none too sure that neural links and processors are going to be such a great idea in the BG universe.

Think back a little to the pilot episodes were they explained very nicely why all the technology being used is 1980's in concept.

The Cylon's principle weapon for attacking the Galactica is lots of nuclear torpedoes. While the Galactica is heavily hardened against the EMP pulse caused by all the explosions, this is far from viable on a small fighter, as was found out when the rest of the fleet was wiped out. The 'high' technologies were not up to the job.

 

[Rik_the_Riff]

Good point.

However, the other ships in the fleet were paralysed by Cylon infiltration programs in their systems, not EMP (I think). And I reckon the Cylons are so good technologically that they could manage it.

Just a thought,

Rik

 

[McHorde-Trooper]

I loved this episode.

True it's not a total gem.
True there are definite "is that even possible" questions.

Like how do patch a ship with a hole in it good enough to survive in the hard vacuumed of space?
P.S. Dave that was tape under the wings. Starbuck played around with it more than one during the episode. Although it didn't show her putting it on the wings.

But it reminded me an episode in "Galactica 1980" where Starbuck repairs a Cylon Robot. That episode was made to explain where the silly wiz kid came from, but I love the theme of a well-known character all alone with one of his/her villain.

So over all I thought this was a great episode.

 

[McHorde-Trooper]

Originally posted by Trouble
. . .Can someone please explain why a space ship would need an altimeter, and more importantly, what is it measuring the height from?? The nearest planet?

Maybe the ships work in space and in atmosphere.

Measuring from the nearest planet sounds like a good theory.

I guess the other theory is that they thought it looked cool, so the writers used it even if it didn't make sense.

 

[Brys]

I agree with most of what's been said - there are some major plausibility problems in this, but I still enjoyed the episode because of the acting and the character development. I liked the idea of Cylon fighters being organic - Cylons themselves have become organic (or at least this is what is implied) and it (should) make it impossible for captured fighters to be reused. Of course, then the episode completely ruins this idea by making them machines which can be used with relative ease - surely if you have an organic fighter with its own brain it will directly control how it moves - it won't have the equivalent of the controls in any other spaceship. There shouldn't be a vein you can squeeze to fire the guns, it should only be possible for the Cylon itself to activate these, otherwise it ruins the whole point of it being organic. Furthermore, why can Starbuck do all this so easily? Chief couldn't do this on his own, and he has much more technical expertise. And to get inside the fighter she had to cut a pretty big hole in it - how did she seal that up so that she didn't die as soon as she got into space?

I also didn't like the exaggerated numbers - nearly half of their fuel reserves were spent in two days? That means either their fuel reserves are incredibly low and unless they're very lucky, they're all going to be stranded very soon, or they spent a ridiculously large amount of fuel on that operation, neither of which are particularly plausible.

But because it was about the characters, it worked and it was enjoyable, even if it was very implausible.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

To me this is "Act of Contrition II" so my comments there are applicable.
Once again, only the Helo story had any advancement IMO, although the fuel shortage situation will no doubt be followed up later.