TVSquad

There are few moments where TV makes me shoot up in my seat and shout, "AWESOME!" Seeing the hallucination Baltar in Six's head did that for me. I love how they cued it with the same music as when it happens to him. (Have we seen this for her before?)

Otherwise, I agree that it wasn't a very exciting episode. Still, I find beauty in exploring a topic like racism without involving actual race.

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Well if they ditched the Saggitarons killing thing than this episode is even worse. If they kept Gaeta's storyline than this one might have had some backbone from future episodes, but as is they should stick to 13 episode species.

I thought there would be something else to this episode, that the doc was ordered to kill the people, or that Helo was wrong and just crazy, nope. This episode felt like a Star Trek episode and next week's looks just as bad. I can't believe how awful this episode was. It made some of the season 2.5 episodes look good!

And last week's cut scene was much better than the love story parts. I think this weeks was a little "duh" and figured everyone already knew that. My problem is why didn't they save some of the Cylon blood from the virus? Stick in in Six and shoot her, bye bye Cylons.

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Listening to Ron's podcast on this episode, you can see how much was cut with their subsequent decision to scrap the Sagitarron storyline that would've carried over into Baltar's trial.

What a shame...

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Things get cut for a reason, as RDM explains in the podcast. Is it always for the best? No, but I think it's all done for the purpose of making the whole series make sense.

Then again, he was all messed up on absinthe.

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What I liked here was that Sen. Kelly (that's all I can think to call the civilian doc) didn't just say "screw those Sagittarons, they deserve to die, and I hope they burn in hell." He gave a reason for it, and although he's still obviously the bad guy, you can see the logic of why he did it. It's practical, in a heartless sense.

This may have been addressed before, but does Athena know the President's listening in on her conversation with Six?

Also, I hate the bonus scene thing. It could've been a cool scene had it been in the episode, but it wasn't. Did it really happen and will it have repercussions or is it a cut scene? It all feels like a cheap ploy to keep us tune to the SciFi channel for that last commercial break.

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I agree, I think this episode was boring...I mean, I'm ok with good drama, but why not drama with the military and government? That Starpollo romance is pretty painful to watch...perhaps it's the overdramatic words and the weepy eyes from the Apollo actor...

I still think this is one of the best shows on, but next week looks boring as well...I'm no Trekie, but I seem to recall some Next Generation episode where the doctor and someone get trapped in a cargo bay and had to blow the airlock...

This is the first time I'm submitting a comment on a BSG blog, so I thought I'd go on record about being annoyed by the phones with wires and the fuzzy sounding radios...I mean, come on, they were capable of interstellar mass travel 4,000 years prior...you'd think they would have at least figured some of that stuff out... Oh well.

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I am a huge fan of this show.

However, tonights episode was boring. I love Helo, but this storyline didn't hold my attention.

I would have liked to see more of Six, and what's going on with Roslin watching her, and her conversations. And perhaps a little Baltar. The real one, not the one in Six's head.

I really hope this show gets better.

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1. I am damn glad to see that no one else was thrilled by this episode.
2. I am glad to be 100% in sync with Keith for the first time in a long time.

This guy hated it too, BTW. (DISCLOSURE - He's a friend and this is kind of a pimping of his review).

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Well that url didn't work. It's here:

http://tinyurl.com/3756d6

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Ro this week's storyline has been done on like every sci-fi series ever. "Good" guy that's really bad and true good guy says this and no one believes him. Horrid. They really needed the background hatred storyline for this episode.

And next week was done on every episode of Star Trek, and Enterprise (Not a real Trek) but they are stuck on a ship or in a cargo bay. if they get stuck in a holodeck I'm ditching the show.

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Yeah I agree - this episode sucked.

It reminded me of last season's episode "Black Market" - which got off to a good start but lost momentum halfway through, and then was crippled by poor character development.

The idea of a doctor with a 90% mortality rate for a certain colony - going unnoticed - while the other colonies death rates were at 12%, just seems completely unlikely.

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Just a little cylon-speculation, but isn't it possible that they she is "projecting" or whatever Cylons do? There was a point earlier this season when she said that Cylon's phsychology involved projection...maybe she and Gaius are both Cylons? Maybe he always has been, and now we're finding out...es posible?

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Talk about filler. This is exactly why I prefer shorter seasons...it keeps the quality up. Next week is going to be filler too.

It was nice to see though that not everyone on earth was 'the same'. There are people of different backgrounds though an accomplished doctor killing so many of the same tribe/race is stupid. I mean, in real life won't anyone ever notice if some doctor killed 90% of the black people he treated? It just goes to show that it takes a certain skill (or experience) to write about racial conflict.

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Ro wrote:
"I thought I'd go on record about being annoyed by the phones with wires and the fuzzy sounding radios...I mean, come on, they were capable of interstellar mass travel 4,000 years prior...you'd think they would have at least figured some of that stuff out... Oh well."

That is a plot point right from the mini series: Galactica is obsolete and is about to be dicommissioned and turned into a museum. Ultimately its dated technology is what prevents it to be remotely controlled and destroyed by the Cylons.


I ADORE Helo, I really really really do (even clothed) and while this wasn't the best episode ever, it wasn't bad either, just ....unsubtle.
It's a pity but it wasn't out of nowhere and rightfully focused on a character who has moral issues especially with prejudice given his own peculiar personal life.

I'll give anyone that this stand alone didn't further the mythology one bit but I've felt that if frakking Starpollo hadn't been so irritatingly shoved down our throats for too many episodes maybe a few of us here wouldn't have minded this delay in answers as much.

Personally I'm okay waiting for Baltar's trial, Kara's destiny, etc. as long as it doesn't imply more Starpollo crap (I'm an Assollo hater).

All in all, not the best BSG ever but a good stand alone compared to the boring "Litmus" or the pathetic and barf inducing "Black Market" imo.

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i was thinking that baltar told gaeta to stab him so he could test the blood to check if he is a cylon

these drama episodes are really quite boring

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This was a subtle ep IMHO. The medical drama was a sub plot to show that humans are still in turmoil ans can't even now stand together.

By contrast Helo came across as a strong, straightforward and ethcal individual. He stands by his convictions and speaks out. He also is married to a "reformed" Cylon and they are both shown in "real" marraige situations, working stuff out and united in their caring for their child. As compared to most of the other humans who appear not to be able to have a stable relationship, or play straight with each other.

SO IMHO this ep was a subtle indication that there are amongst the motley crew, strong individiuals, capable of ethical actions under pressure situations and capable of true love and commitment and full interaction between the 2 species.

Baltar "on the shoulder model" to C6 is a reminder that these 2 are inexoriably linked. But by whom or what we don;'t yet know.

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Oh one other small subtle point.

Of all the senior Officers the Admiral is the one who stands firm, but when he sees he is wrong is man enough to admit it and make it right.

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"The idea of a doctor with a 90% mortality rate for a certain colony - going unnoticed - while the other colonies death rates were at 12%, just seems completely unlikely."

No it doesn't. Again as established in the miniseries, they don't use many computers, and the computers aren't networked. Which is why Helo is compiling the statistics by hand. How long do you think it would have taken to spot such a trend among Christian Scientists in a town of 40,000 in the early 1950s? Particularly since mortality studies weren't a big priority anyway, and Sagittarons would be expected to have a higher mortality rate since they don't believe in medicine and wouldn't seek medical help until symptoms are critical, if ever.

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Joe Meyers wrote:
"...maybe she and Gaius are both Cylons"

I agree with you Joe, I think the recent episodes are a slight misdirection in regard to Baltar not being a Cylon. When Adama was interrogating Baltar, you notice that they had him bring up the fact that Six specifically "shielded" him from the blast. Looking back at the mini-series, that wouldn't have been out of the question, as we didn't know what the Cylons were made of, for all we knew her body could have shielded him. However, we now know that Cylon bodies are just as fragile as humans, so me standing behind another human when the blast coming towards us isn't going to help me much at all...

Believe it or not, I'm actually not being nit-picky here, because I think this was possibly intentional all along by the writers. Remember when the next time you saw Baltar after the blast? He was running with a group of people towards Helo and Sharron's shuttle. We never actually saw Baltar survive and crawl out of the rubble, because he never did.

And I think the fact that the writers specifically reminded us about Six shielding Baltar from the blast kind of supports the theory.

Of course, I could be wrong. :)

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"Things get cut for a reason, as RDM explains in the podcast. Is it always for the best? No, but I think it's all done for the purpose of making the whole series make sense."

Things that get cut are usually better than a lot of the stuff left in.

Last season's finale they had the rescue go back to Caprica to pick up the survivers. it came out of nowhere and felt kind of lame. Then there were a few deleted scenes that from previous episodes that had them talknig about going back.

Deleted scenes count and I wish that they would add all the delted scenes into the episode for the DVD release.

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