BSG Quickies - with Spoilers!

Because I'm so behind on these, I'm afraid these are going to be quickie recaps.

Sacrifice

Original airdate 02/10/06

Sacrifice continued the return in quality to the show with a story about a woman (played by Dana Delaney) whose husband died in a cylon attack and who has become obsessed with exacting revenge against the Cylons. She has learned that the Fleet has the cylon Sharon, alive and well, in captivity, and she wants her blood. Dana and her militant friends take a barful of people captive - including Dee, Apollo, Billy and Ellen Tigh - and demands that Adama turn over Sharon or they will start killing hostages.

The episode was tightly written and very well-acted by all. There was little to no development in the larger mytharc for the show, but again we got character development:

Starbuck - formerly the can-do-no-wrong hot shot, she continues on a downslide here. She bungles a rescue attempt (by no fault of her own), and in the process shoots Apollo, nearly killing him.

Billy - well, Billy has a really bad day: Dee turns down his proposal of marriage, after which he discovers Dee and Apollo on a date together, he gets taken hostage and ultimately dies trying to protect Dee. Poor Billy.

Adama - is still having his little tete-a-tetes with the dead copy of Sharon. Trying to come to grips with his feelings about her, I suppose.

Roslin - she loses the closest she has to family when she loses Billy. The scene where she comes to see Billy's body in the morgue is one of the best scenes the show has ever had. The tension and unspoken words (except for the biting, "Was it worth it" from Roslin to Adama) between Roslin and Adama, her intense grief, the gesture she made of straightening Billy's bangs - very, very sad.

Sharon - she admits to Adama that she is withholding information from him. How truthful or beneficial has the information that she's given them been? Has she led the Fleet right into the hands of the Cylons, all the while making them think she was helping them? I think the 'Sharon' part of her, the part that fell in love with...oh geez, I can't remember his name...I think that part of her did want to help, but she is a Cylon after all. She could have been feeding them just enough information to keep her alive long enough to deliver the baby, an importan element in the Cylon plan. Whatever that is!

Oh, and one final thought: Ellen Tigh needs to die a magnificent death.


The Captain's Hand

Original airdate 02/17/06

This episode brought more of the upper-level intrigue that I like so much - political maneuvering, the Cylon agenda, the struggle for the survival of the human race - all sort of squeezed into the cracks of mediocre storyline. But, mediocre for this show is still good. A weird thing, though - they seem to be relegating the exposition to the previouslies, showing scenes that had been cut from previous episodes as if we had seen them. I felt like I missed an episode in there somewhere.

To sum up the action quickly: The former head engineer of the Pegasus is her new Commander and he is in WAY over his head. Apollo is promoted to Major and is sent over to Pegasus to assist Commander Garner, in some way (sorry this is so half-assed!). Two raptors go missing and Garner makes a bad call and jumps to where he thinks their distress signal is orginating from, only to find it was a Cylon trap. He gives control of the ship to Apollo and goes down to engineering and pulls a Spock because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Apollo does such a good job pulling Pegasus' ass out of the fire, Adama makes him its new Commander. At the rate these Commanders have been kicking it (3 so far this season), Apollo better hope he's not asked to wear a red shirt.

The more interesting part of the story deals with the abortion issue. A young girl stows away on the Galactica, to get an abortion from Cottle. Abortion is legal in the colonies, except on the religious Geminon. The girl is a Geminon and so the Geminon leader demands she be returned to her parents and the abortion not be performed or they will withdraw their support for the President, who is campaigning for re-election. Roslin makes the difficult decision of banning all future abortions (after grandfathering the girl in), in the interest of preserving the human race. Mary McDonnell does a wonderful job of conveying just how much this goes against all of her beliefs regarding a woman's freedom to choose and the struggle between those beliefs and her responsibility as a leader to make the hard choices that she believes to be in the best interest of humanity. Every new life is precious in the most serious sense of the word, when the number on the white board goes down more often than up.

Of course, Baltar siezes this opportunity and announces that he will be running against the President in the upcoming election. He his now allied with Zarek and (at least secretly) with the Cylon Sympathizers, to whom he gave a nuclear warhead. Things are really heating up now.