33 written by Ronald D. Moore and direct by Michael Rymer
What’s it about: Every 33 minutes, the Cylons are coming…
Commander-in-Chief: I’ll never forget when I first clapped eyes on Edward James Olmos and I practically recoiled at such a battered looking unattractive man and thought ‘are they really going to push this hulking monster at the front of such a gorgeous ensemble?’ What a lunatic I am. I was thinking with my eyes and not my brain, and it’s something I am sure plenty of people do. Over four years I was consistently wowed with Olmos’ enormous dignity and authority in the role, astonished at how much pain and anguish he could express without ever descending into the hysterical angst of the rest of the cast. I was awed at how safe I could be made to feel just by his presence and how the reverse was true every time the series threatened to remove him for good. He’s magnificent in the role, but quietly so and that’s even more impressive.
President: Is this the closest we will ever see to the President being in complete control and working with the newly formed government to try and think of their way out of a tricky situation? Throughout the series Roslin will be surrounded by vultures from the press and her own elected government questioning her every move but at this point, after the fall of humanity, she is seen completely focussed and amidst a bustling team that is trying to make sense of the civilisation they have left. Why is that tight little smile of Roslin’s so satisfying? For whatever reason it is her reaction to a baby being born that gives the climax its heart.
Firecracker: Look out for the moment where Starbuck gives Lee a pep talk about how he should be behaving as the CAG and not everybody’s best friend. There are times in Battlestar Galactica’s run where it didn’t behave at all like all the other shows around it, to its favour. This scene as presented in Star Trek would be humourless and to the point. Instead, Starbuck and Lee both laugh at how ridiculously serious things have become in the moment. A sermon becomes a beautiful character beat of familiarity.
Traitor: James Callis must have felt as though all his dreams had come true when he scored the role of Gaius Baltar, the man that everybody loves to hate. The series never loses track of this guy or fails to give him interesting things to go through. Despite the fact that he exhibits the worst of humanity and behaves in the most appallingly selfish and is sitting on a steaming pile of hubris that defies description, I just can’t bring myself to condemn him. He’s that character that most shows don’t dare to show – the one who acts as the audience identification figure in the darkest of ways. What would you do if a person who is out of your league offers themselves to you? Would you spill security secrets? I’m willing to bet the larger percentage would. What would you do if you had inadvertently condemned humanity to its doom? I reckon you would stay button lipped and try and make the best of the situation? If someone was pointing a gun at you and giving you the choice of death or a signature on a hit list? The fun with Baltar is putting him in impossible situations and making him squirm because in each and every one you have to ask yourself what would you do…and the answers might not always be as comfortable as you think. In glorious moment of panic the Olympic Carrier shows up with the one man that can prove Baltar is a traitor and he goes into a head spin trying to convince everybody that the Ship has been taken over by Cylons. There is nothing more satisfying than watching Gaius Baltar get a sweat on and watch how he wriggles out of it. Baltar might repent for his sins to have Amarak killed, but he would say anything to save his skin.
Sixie: Does Six genuinely love Baltar or is she just playing an elaborate Cylon game with him?
Chief Engineer: Galen, so fresh faced and enthusiastic. Just like in DS9 Ronald D. Moore loves to torture the Chief, and poor Galen would be hit throughout this series more than most. It makes it more impressive the way he gets up, always bruised and broken, and carries on. In the first series I love seeing him this carefree and free of angst.
Sparkling Dialogue: ‘If we make mistakes people die. There aren’t many of us left.’
The Good: The tension in the early scenes is palpably drawn with the crew forced to man their stations every 33 minutes as the Cylons make a reappearance. This episode asks the question of how human beings would react if they couldn’t get any more than half an hours sleep and be forced to be on their guard constantly and looking over their shoulder. The answer? Fatigued, angry, paranoid, in shock. A huge strength of this show is that it will present a situation and go through the whole gamut of emotions with its vivid and distinctively different cast. Sometimes their contrasting reactions make for the most dramatic moments. The visuals of the Cylon fleet attacking is unlike anything that we had seen at the time. Babylon 5 had similarly chaotic space battles but the CGI was at such a primitive stage at the time that it is hard to watch now without wincing. Star Trek (particularly DS9) staged some impressive looking large-scale space battles where the technology used was top dollar but there was a certain etiquette to the conflict that meant the battles had an air of politeness too them. Battlestar Galactica married both, the madness of the B5 dogfights with the style and visual sumptuousness of the DS9 ones and the result was (still) some of the best effects driven space fights we have ever seen on the small screen. Just watch the insanity as the Cylons appear en masse and swarm through the raiders. It’s hard to take in their sheer numbers and the epic sweep of their advancement. It’s like a human being trying to hold back a tidal wave. The title sequence deserves a mention because I have never seen a show before or since that offers such a tantalising glimpse at the episode ahead. At times, these quick cuts constitute spoilers and so it’s astonishing the show got away with as many twists as it did. However, you could always do what my ex used to, stick your fingers in your ears and shut your eyes and go ‘lalala’ until it goes away. I love how consequences are a huge part of this serial and how we can never forget that the bulk of humanity has been wiped out and that the people left behind are trying to cope with picking up the pieces. A small moment with Dee means everything where she tries to find out if any of her friends or family have survived and we realise in an astonishing visual of photos of a multitude of lost people that thousands of people are going through the same thing. The number that is listed in titles is ever present and ever changing, often decreasing. The show scores some of it’s most uplifting moments when that number increases in size. The re-imagined Cylon centurions are a thing of beauty but the thing that impressed me the most in this episode was how after Helo has detonated a pair that were pursuing him relentlessly through the forest, I actually felt a pang of sympathy for the one that is trying to rag half it’s body along the forest floor, rather pathetically. It’s a potent mixture of SF and horror. The idea that the Olympic Carrier has been compromised by the Cylons is a very real one and given their insidious activities elsewhere it is exactly the sort of ploy they would use to infiltrate the fleet and take them out from within. This leads to one of those impossible situations: trust that they just happened to make it or assume they are the enemy and shoot them down. What would you do? I literally stopped breathing when Lee eases his ship next to the Carrier and can see no activity in the windows. Surely there would be people looking out? The question is we never know and that is the sort of moral ambiguity I like.
The Shallow Bit: Helo, soaking wet, exhausted, battered. Helo is always gorgeous.
Result: There’s nothing more tense than a ticking clock and Ronal D. Moore has centred an entire episode around that keeps resetting every 33 minutes. It’s a genius idea that ensures that several times in the episode we are on the edge of our seats waiting for the Cylons to emerge. Everybody is exhausted, edgy and trying to come to terms with the insane situation they have found themselves in and at the same time they are being pursued by the Cylons every half an hour. It’s a situation where lives can be lost because nobody is at their best but every life lost is another brick lost in the foundation of rebuilding humanity. It’s desperate and desolate. And it’s completely gripping. Because the show is so rooted in its humanity, because it is so fresh and interesting, visually distinctive and bursting with character this is a situation in which this show can thrive. Not many TV series would kick start with an episode as without hope as this one, but when has Battlestar Galactica ever pretended to be like the other shows? This is a show that wants you to feel the situation that its characters are going through but it doesn’t cheat its audience and make everything good at the climax and this episode has a simple but suspenseful plot that asks tough questions about the lengths you would have to go to to make sure the remaining human can keep going. By taking such a risk with the defeatist tone the show earns its first huge surge of hope at the climax, a gorgeous moment that sees us out with a positive touch. Baltar continues to be one of the most riveting people to watch on television and this is only the start of his incredible journey. 33 sees a show confidently striding from expensive miniseries to its first season and its one of those rare hours of television that doesn’t put a foot wrong: 10/10
Water written by Ronald D. Moore and directed by Marita Gabriak
What’s it about: Explosives tear through the water tanks and leave the last of humanity with nothing to drink…
Commander-in-Chief: God bless Adama making a gesture and trying to make Roslin feel like the President.
XO: Watch as Saul looks longingly at a bottle of liquor in his locker. This is a character that goes on a transformative journey more than most. At this point he’s an angry drunk who is one situation away from snapping. I really wasn’t very keen on him at this point whereas come the end of the series he was one of my favourite characters.
President: Again I love how this show bucks the trend. The President makes a rousing speech about everybody’s dedication and tireless effort and in any other military themed show this would be taken as read. But Galactica precedes this scene with one where Roslin admits how tiresome all the empty platitudes of these speeches are. Both Roslin and Adama awkwardly go through the motions and then privately confide that all this official nonsense really isn’t them. In a private moment between them there is a hint of the relationship that will develop between them, discussing their love of books. As ever it is the incredible humanity that Mary McDonnell brings to the show that gives it its warmest moments and her reveal that she keeps the name of the Olympic Carrier in her pocket so she can learn from her own mistakes humanizes the President even more.
Apollo: Lee is haunted, understandably, by his decision to follow orders and destroy the Olympic Carrier. It’s nice that things that occur in previous episodes that were hard to go through aren’t just arbitrarily forgotten about.
Agethon: You would think that two Sharon’s would be hard to keep track of but Grace Park does an excellent job of differentiating between the two whilst at their core being the same person. One is a Cylon infiltrator on New Caprica that is sent in to reproduce with Helo and the other is completely unaware of her status living on board Galactica but is starting to suspect that something is very not right. After discovering an explosive in her bag she heads back to the armoury to return it only to discover that this has happened many times before and that she might be responsible. It’s incredibly difficult to display two personas in one scene without convincingly giving the game away to the other characters but Park achieves it with cool confidence. You can see the sleeper agent in her eyes preventing Sharon from revealing that she has found a water source, but what comes out of her mouth is her humanity fighting through.
Secretary: Billy’s rosy red cheeks whenever he is in the company of one suggests that the Laura is right when she tells him he doesn’t know anything about women. I really love his awkward relationship with Dee. She smiles, confused, at his dreadful compliments but still seems to love the attention.
Slippery: Gaeta. Such a quiet, unassuming character in season one. Watch out for Gaeta. He’s slippery, that one.
Cally: Look at that big huge smile on Cally’s face when the raptor comes into land and everybody is celebrating. That’s not something we will see very often.
The Good: I love the fact that the very commodity that the fleet needs so desperately is falling freely on New Caprica. The first frames of this episode are fluid running through every cavity, dripping from hair, running from the sky, rolling down buildings. It’s a haunting tease of the days gone by where this element so necessary for human survival was so readily available. The idea that the explosives are hidden away on the hull of Galactica and ready to explode was enough for me to catch a breath. I hate how this show has the ability to suddenly pull the carpet from under me with a twist to a point where I’m not breathing anymore. When I say hate, I of course mean love. Gabriak chooses to shoot some scenes from the POV of the characters, almost like we are watching an episode of Peep Show. Given the documentary style nature of the camerawork already I’m pleased this wasn’t a repeated exercise because you don’t want to disorient your audience completely with how you are shooting your episode. As a one off it is quirky and unique. When the investigation of the ruptured tanks begins it is always nice to have a character who KNOWS what has happened because the drama comes from having their fears confirmed and trying to stay buttoned lipped. Again, numbers become very important – one third of the fleet will run out of water in 2 days, that’s 16,000 people. Having the investigators come up to the stand in front of the leaders of the fleet isn’t exactly a trial but it sure feels that way when the Chief is giving his finding. But then he knows something they don’t know. There’s a convincing rhythm to these scenes, and it’s great to see Roslin, Adama, Lee, Tigh and Baltar all sitting side by side and trying to both uncover the details of the explosives and sort out solutions. It’s very convincingly drawn. Can you imagine the paranoia when the people discover that the Cylons look human and can infiltrate?
The Bad: ‘Ready to extend the water boom’ – talk about pre-empting what is coming. Baltar and the card game seems like an irrelevant subplot unless they were going to suggest a romantic spark between him and Starbuck, which is obscene to even think about. It’s terribly well-acted and shot but it feels irrelevant compared to the importance of the water storyline.
The Shallow Bit: The chemistry between Sharon and Helo is undeniable. It’s all they can do during one scene to prevent themselves from clawing each other’s clothes off. I can remember thinking this was all unnecessary padding when I originally watched the first season. Little did I know where their liaison would lead…
Result: Combine my favourite DS9 writer with one of my favourite Buffy directors and you have an episode that scores high on both fronts. Water is the episode where it is revealed that there is a Cylon aboard the Galactica. We know who it is, but the main characters don’t and much of the drama here comes from Sharon’s struggle to both fulfil her mission and sabotage the fleet and to remain loyal to her friends and try and aid them in the discovery of new water. The scenes surrounding the bombings are lethal viewing and watching all of that water vent into space and hearing the amount of people that will affect in such a short period of time really drives home how vulnerable this last gasp of humanity is. This is a production team and cast that is utterly committed to convincing you that this is all happening for real and given the imagination behind the premise of the show it is astonishing that they pull it off to such a degree that you feel what they are going through. Some might say it is too dour and realistic for its own good and indeed the Network had concerns in the early days that it would pick up an audience. But because they were able to hold their nerve and deliver a uniquely thoughtful show, it found not only a core fan base that adored it but extreme acclaim from critics too. Water continues the success of the miniseries and 33, with only the card game sequences feeling inconsequential. The final image of Boomer walking through the corridors of Galactica having gotten away with almost wiping away humanity and then saving its ass proves that there is a hell of a lot more drama to come with this character: 9/10
Bastille Day written by Toni Graphia and directed by Allan Kroeker
What’s it about: What is in the mind of Tom Zarek, a political prisoner who has taken control of the only hope for harvesting water?
Apollo: What is up with Jamie Bamber’s walk? I kind of hobbles when he is walking fast and I have never looked into why. Perhaps, like Jon Pertwee on Doctor Who with his mimsy run, it is just an unusual way of walking.
Vice President: I think it is highly respectful to give Richard Hatch such a pivotal role in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, given he was the star of the original show. It provides a link between the two in a way that there really isn’t anything else aside from the show’s mythology. Zarek is a fascinating character from the off but as a political opponent of Roslin would become even more so as the series develops. He was such a rip-roaring adventure hero in the original show, I think it’s beautiful how he adapts to the new series by giving such a cynical, gravelly performance.
The Good: I remember when Star Trek Voyager set out on its merry way in the Delta Quadrant and there were some questions that needed to be ask like how they would continue to fuel the ship, where they would get their water from, would procreation be acceptable, etc. It was all done in such a sterile way you would have thought they were talking about the latest technobabble anomaly they had come across. There was no passion in the debate and no real hard questions being asked. It was a matter of survival, it should have been tough dialogue and even tougher choices. Battlestar redresses the balance by doing just that and the big dilemma this week is that the drilling and refining of the water they have discovered is ugly, potentially hazardous work, and the only real option is to send in prisoners who have committed serious crimes to risk their lives. That opens a whole can of moral worms. The effects shots of the prison cells all lined up in a row gives the impression that these people are kept like battery hens. Isn’t it gorgeous that the prison ship looks like a tatty old model from the seventies? Just when you think Starbuck has come up with an ingenious plan to save everybody, the reveal hits that Zarek wanted the ship stormed all along. I’m not sure if that makes sense from a political point of view (Zarek’s name would be tied to a prisoner massacre) but it does make for a few moments of suspense in an episode sorely lacking in them. The series is promising an election and a democratically elected government. I can’t wait.
The Bad: It’s unusual to have a show where there are two concurrent storylines taking place entirely independent of each other and Battlestar would only repeat the experience again in season two and for half a season. There’s a danger of preferring one to the other (I am a huge fan of the fleet action where most of the main cast are, and tend to have less interest in the New Caprica scenes that feature only two or three of the main cast) or testing the viewers patience in the long wait to see how one will impact the other. It is great to see the effects of the Cylon attack on New Caprica and the scenes of the deserted city are eerie but it does feel that the show takes an awful long time to get to the point with these scenes. For at least half a season they feel like some bizarre coda to the miniseries. The insinuation that one of the prisoners will take Cally away to have some fun with her is so unremittingly ugly that it feels (for once) like the show trying a little too hard to be near the knuckle when it doesn’t need to be. It certainly adds nothing to the episode. It muddies the water even more with what this episode is trying to say about the prisoners, of which it doesn’t have a clue.
Moment to Watch Out For: That beautiful moment in Adama’s quarters when he asks Baltar if he really has a Cylon detector or not. It’s his first moment of defiance against the Cylons and Six screams in his ear as a result. Cutting back to the silence of Adama’s quarters is like whiplash.
Result: Nowhere near as successful as previous episodes because it throws away its dramatic potential quite early on and never quite manages to grasp it back again. The question of whether to send hardened criminals to die to mine the water to save humanity is an excellent one for debate but just as the episode garners sympathy for the prisoners in this unfortunate situation it turns them into an aggressive force that is trying to take over the fleet. Had they been portrayed as victims and forced into slave labour, this might have had some legs for moral debate but they behave so brutally they can only be seen as the enemy for much of this instalment and practically deserve their intended fate. We have the introduction of Tom Zarek to enjoy, but he’s the only character in the prison storyline to escape with any dignity. The best thing about Battlestar (and it was something I used to level at DS9 too) is that it has such a rich core of characters that every episode, even the weaker ones, have moments to savour between the cast. Here we have Baltar playing a dangerous game with a nuclear warhead, Sharon’s relationship with the Chief brought into the light, Billy’s obsession with Dee given more attention, a lovely moment when Starbuck and Tigh agree on something (it’s extremely rare) and Lee holding Roslin and Adama to a promise of an election in 7 months. Without the balls to engage in intelligent debate or the stifling atmosphere of a really good hostage drama, this falls between several stools and is, at it’s best, a collection of half decent character beats and promises of better things to come. A gutless episode: 5/10
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