Airdate: 3/11/79
The Council, overruling Adama’s admonitions, decides to
offer the olive branch to the Eastern Alliance prisoners (from the previous
episode), and propose a peace treaty. In fact, they strip Adama of his command
by removing the state of emergency; not good when Baltar uses the opportunity
to hijack the prison shuttle, taking the EE Commandants and the Nomen (from
episode 1.17) with him, along with shuttle pilots Boomer and Sheba as hostages.
It quickly turns into a game of strategy and brinksmanship, culminating in
Apollo’s successful plan of thwarting Baltar’s escape using defective Cylons,
and making sure all prisoners are back, or will be back, in the brig where they
belong.
All the baddies from the series thus far are here except the Cylons (only two are
featured, and they’re incapacitated). Guess what? I hardly missed them – just
going to show that the producers are finally realizing, as I did from the very
beginning, that a bunch of chrome plated robots doth not a villain make. Too
bad – had they figured this out from the get go we might have had Season 2. In
fact, the most frightening do-badders here are probably the Nomen: their
brutish faces are perfectly matched by tough-as-nails demeanor. In some scenes,
they hardly have any dialogue, making them all the more nefarious.
And there appear to be some hawkish sub-themes going on. The
“council” blindly welcomes peace negotiations with enemies clearly thirsting
for blood, with Adama and the Galactica crew the only ones realizing it. Of
course, the council’s appeasement policy backfires, guns start blazing pretty
soon. Hard to believe Vietnam-weary audiences were on board with this. Well, we
were only a year away from Reagan.
Rating: **1/2
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