'Caprica' actors

TV Guide reports that the Sci-Fi Channel has given the greenlight to the Battlestar Galactica prequel series, Caprica. A two-hour movie was produced that was to originally air in December, but it will now launch the series in 2010. The series, which will star Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, and Polly Walker, will focus "on two rival families dealing with the implications of society's expansion of artificial intelligence — the AI that gives birth to the original, deadly Cylons."

Who's still missing?

Previously on Battlestar Galactica: Prez Laura Roslin told Adm. Bill Adama that she loved him, and he totally pulled a Han Solo and simply said, “About time.” Hee! And also, aaaawwwww! And squeee! Roslin + Adama 4EAE!!!!1!! Oh yeah, and there may have been some cylons and junk, too.

Not a morning person.

This week we jump backwards in time and find out what happened to Roslin and company from the moment that the hybrid jumped them away from the Colonial fleet. I wonder if maybe this episode shouldn't have been first or perhaps I'm still just smarting from the choppy nature of last week's episode.

Seriously... why the Agent Smith shades IN SPACE?

I don't know if it was due to this essentially being a mid-season episode or whether they just didn't have a great way to get from point A to point B, but this episode, as has been mentioned elsewhere, seemed like filler. More to the point, it felt choppy, without direction and everything that happened in the episode seemed some what... inevitable.

Hey all! Nova A, your friendly neighborhood sub recapper, here. I’ll be taking over the awesome kickassness that is BSG this week. As we open, Lee Adama plays President Roslin a recording of one of Gaius Baltar’s diatribes sermons. Gaius has spilled the beans about Roslin’s vision sharing with Caprica Six and Athena. Y’know, the whole “running after Hera through the opera house” thing. Pretty much everyone in the fleet has heard the broadcast, and wants to know what the frak is up. The Prez is pretty sure that she doesn’t have to answer any questions. Lee’s all, “Um I beg to differ.” He wants to know if Gaius is telling the truth. Roslin wonders what he would think if he started experiencing visions. Would he think the Gods were testing him? Um… hey Roslin? If you’re trying to deny what Gaius is saying, you may want to try a different technique.

Over on the rebel baseship (which currently resembles a wounded octopus that’s missing several arms) Kara tells Leoben that when the rebel cylons asked for help, they essentially turned over their freedom. She doesn’t know if Adama will chuck them out an airlock when they get back to Galactica. Since Leoben luvs Kara, he is too busy making ga-ga eyes at her to care. The Demetrius (currently sheltering shot-in-the-leg-by-Anders Gaeta) and the baseship are planning to jump to the rendezvous point together; if the Demetrius isn’t there to vouch that they’re the good guys, the baseship will likely be blown to smithereens. As they get ready for the jump, Natalie, the Six who’s been elected as the rebel cylon spokeswoman, comments to Athena Sharon that Hera must be beautiful. Athena’s surprised that Natalie knows about her daughter, but Natalie’s all, “Yeah we all know about your kid.” Athena’s clearly not sure how she feels about that.

Time to jump. Three, two, one… and wouldn’t ya know it, the Demetrius has a problem with its coordinates – it doesn’t arrive at the rendezvous point. But hells yes, the basestar does! It appears right the frak in the middle of the fleet, looming ominously over everybody and likely causing many, many people to crap themselves. Ships actually have to steer out of the way not to hit it. Naturally, chaos ensues, with Adama hollering at the civilian fleet to make an emergency jump. All over the place, ships bail, jumping away. Meanwhile, Athena tries to call Galactica, but the jump fried the comm and they can’t get through. Vipers are inbound, and the Demetrius is nowhere to be seen – the basestar is defenseless. That is, until Tigh, staring trancelike at the basestar like it’s one of those fascinating 3-D puzzles, decides something isn’t right. At the last possible second, he hollers for a weapons hold. Wham! In comes the Demetrius, appearing beside the basestar. Immediately they radio to let Galactica know that the ship is under the command of Colonial officers. Phew! Dude, that scene rocked my world. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I frakking love this show.

39,673 survivors.

Galactica sends soldiers to take control of the basestar. Tigh shows up crustily on the bridge (everything Tigh does is crusty, really – he is just crusty in general), wondering which one of the sonsabitches shot Gaeta. Anders looks properly chagrined. Natalie is taken over to Galactica to plead her case. She fills Adama and Roslin in about the cylon civil war, and that the D’Anna model was boxed because she saw the forbidden faces of the Final Five. The Final Five have been to earth, and if D’Anna identifies them, they can lead the fleet there. Apparently the baseship can heal itself (cool!), but the rebels don’t have the means to unbox D’Anna without help from the humans. Roslin’s wondering why they should trust any of this, so Natalie plays her trump card: the boxing facility is in something called the Resurrection Hub. The Hub controls all resurrection ships in the cylon fleet, and if they destroy it, every single cylon will lose the ability to download! Roslin’s suspicious that Natalie would give them such crucial information, but she’s ready to give up resurrection in order to get access to D’Anna. It’ll be a trade: the humans help unbox D’Anna, destroy the Resurrection Hub, and get directions to earth. In return, the identified Final Five will be handed over to the rebel cylons, and they’ll be allowed to go about their merry way on the basestar. “The Final Five are in your fleet,” Natalie proclaims. “That’s why the raiders turned back the attack in the nebula.” This is definitely news to a newly jittery Roslin and Adama.

After the meeting, Adama wonders how Tigh knew to stop the vipers from firing on the basestar. Nervously, Tigh claims that he just got lucky, and of course Adama doesn’t even stop to think that perhaps Tigh is a Toaster whose programming kicked in and kept him from firing on his own. Man, Adama is going to take it like a sucker punch to the gut when he finds out that his old pal is a cylon. Anyhoo, they send a raptor to Gina’s coordinates, and it does indeed photograph the massive Resurrection Hub. Meanwhile, in the infirmary, Gaeta’s looking like crap warmed over as he begs Cottle not to put him to sleep while they operate on his leg. For some godawful reason, Cottle obliges, giving Gaeta a local anesthetic. Then he whips out a giant saw. Dude! These people can fly around space in giant ships, but they still resort to amputation for a bullet wound? I’ve always thought Galactica’s medical abilities were a little bit lacking. Where's Dr. Beverly Crusher when you need her?

I think SciFiHD is still figuring out the HD part...

We begin exactly where we left off, with Kara getting all mutinied on by Helo and the rest of the crew. Gaeta is about to execute a jump back to the fleet, but everyone is losing their minds, screaming at each other. Anders puts a round into Gaeta's leg and that brings the argument to a standstill. Kara then says what she should have said in the first place, that she'll take a Raptor to the baseship and not the entire vessel. Why didn't anyone suggest that a long time ago? Anders is going along and Kara asks Athena to go with, she needs someone fluent in Cylon. Turns out there's no way that the Raptor can get back to Galactica again, but they can with the baseship. They only have 15 hours before they will miss the rendezvous with the fleet. The clock is started and Starbuck is on her way.

Aaron Douglas doing the work of his life...

I like this new format that the show has taken, focusing on a couple of characters and their storylines for the length of an episode. You still get plenty of story pushed into the hour and you don't end up with storylines that you have to struggle through, like Helo saving the disenfranchised Sagittarons from Bruce Davidson. I was almost through the episode when I realized that we didn't actually see many of the main characters in this episode; no Adama, no Roslin, no Six... and the ending of the episode just snuck right up on me. It distresses me to realize that we are halfway through the batch of currently scheduled episodes and a mere fifteen from the end of this fantastic series.

"I'm so sad this show is ending! I'm never going to get work like this again!"

This episode was certainly a slowdown from what we've been experiencing lately, but perhaps that is for the best. It was still certainly interesting, credit that I'll give to Jane Espenson who is a queen at turning out interesting conversational pieces and developing characters (and in this case the world) of a show in interesting ways. If you have to have an episode that you have to carry with very little action in the way of space battles or huge plot developments, then Jane is your woman. That being said, I was disappointed that we didn't see any follow-up with the Cylons this episode (Is Caprica Six the last Six now? Are Boomer and Sharon the last of the their model?), but I suppose we have to watch the slow development of Baltar into a religious figure and the Chief slow decent into insanity. At the same time, you can kind of see where these character arcs are headed in the short term and it feels like filling them out is great for the actors and the writers (and the budget) but a little unnecessary in the larger arc of the series.

That doesn't look like any Earth I know...

And the hits keep on coming. That's the beauty of knowing when your is going to end, when you're on these episodes that focus on smaller issues inbetween characters of the cast (if you can call suspecting that someone is a Cylon a smaller issue), a show that knows where it's endpoint is isn't afraid to make big moves and big choices.