Extended Version
“Unfinished Business” has the appearance of a bag of jumbled ideas, but when you reach in, you somehow pull out an affecting episode with moving performances and a narrative structure that serves the bottle episode feel quite well. To be honest, the show’s been more miss than hit when it attempts to play with structure, but the way this episode handles the location shifts is more effective than we’ve seen in the past.
EPISODE 7: “A Measure of Salvation”
Battlestar Galactica is once again tackling a large moral question and using it to structure an episode, and what we see in “A Measure of Salvation” is a discussion about whether or not to carry out genocide of the Cylon race, whether you’re on one side or the other of the age-old Cylons-as-machines dilemma.
EPISODES COVERED: “Occupation”, “Precipice”, “Exodus Part 1″, Exodus Part 2”
“The dignity and the integrity of the human race rides with us. Good hunting.”
The Cylons occupy New Caprica. What was once a beacon of hope for so many has become a war zone, a deadly situation in which humans and Cylons live next to each other, but don’t necessarily live with each other. There are a vast number of conflicting viewpoints here, and they eventually clash and escalate the conflict beyond the realm of control; here, we have the Cylons attempting to create a peace between their kind and humankind, but they just don’t realize how difficult a task on that magnitude would be to accomplish.
Razor
I’ve already touched on many of the thematic ideas circling Razor, considering it simply shows us the Pegasus backstory that was told in “Pegasus” through “Resurrection Ship”, but there are a few key bits of information presented here that we didn’t know beforehand. It’s all done through the character of Kendra Shaw, a bridge between the story we’ve seen and the story we’re seeing, and we observe how she essentially becomes Cain’s legacy and how that influences her mindset in the present. The kind of stories the writers are crafting probably need more time to breath–as did the Pegasus arc, as thrilling as it was–but all in all, it’s well done for a 90 minute movie.
“People vote their hopes and not their fears.”
The opening sequence of Part 1 is masterfully executed, with each scene flowing into the next and building a sense of dread as we see characters in dark places. Sharon, closed off and distraught over the “death” of her daughter. Tyrol, beating Cally after he has a nightmare of his suicide. Baltar, behind in the polls and taking Hera’s death as his own daughter’s death. As we see throughout the two episodes, there’s a bigger picture to all this dread: with a presidential election coming up and with morale so low, if hope should present itself in the form of a new planet, then people will even go so far as to elect Gaius freaking Baltar as President.
ARC 6, Part 1: “The Captain’s Hand” and “Downloaded”
“The Captain’s Hand”–2×17
I’d hate to be commander of the Pegasus, considering I’d probably die within a few days of taking command. In this episode, Commander Garner becomes the third to perish in the span of five episodes, and he goes the “sacrificing yourself for the good of everyone else” route by returning to the engine room he knows so well.
Season 2, Arc 3: “The Stuff that Happens before Pegasus”
These episodes are far from bad (we’ll get to that soon), but they ultimately wind up as nice ideas that falter a bit due to a general lack of cohesiveness in the writing. The documentary-style approach of “Final Cut” allows us to get into the headspace of minor characters like Kat, so that’s a plus, but most of the interviews don’t necessarily yield any new information about the characters.
EPISODES COVERED: “The Farm”, “Home Part 1”, “Home Part 2”
ARC 2–Let’s go find Earth!
When Adama wakes up, to say that things are different would be an understatement. Like I said in the last review, everything’s been turned on its head, and the Commander is forced to face the fact that much of his fleet has left him, that his own son has abandoned him during this time of turmoil, that someone he knew and respected would take out a gun and shoot him twice in the chest. “Why?” he asks as he stands over Sharon’s lifeless body.
EPISODES COVERED: “Scattered”, “Valley of Darkness”, “Fragged”, “Resistance”
SEASON 2 ARC 1–Tigh’s in command!
As the chaos resulting from Adama’s shooting rages on, the characters of the Galactica are becoming scattered both physically and emotionally, their world turned upside down yet again. Adama’s laying in a hospital bed dying, Roslin, Lee, and Sharon are all in jail, and there’s a group of people stranded on Kobol. A leader is supposed to keep everything together, but when that leader is out of commission, who’ll step up and start to patch together the pieces? Will it be Colonel Tigh, someone who has to take on responsibility here that he never wanted to have, who constantly measures himself up against his friend?
Father and son exchange blows. Pan up along two pairs of entwined legs, legs that belong to Starbuck and Baltar in a passionate bout of lovemaking. The former calls out Lee’s name. Sexy. Baltar doesn’t think so. It’s Galactica Sharon now, torn, with a gun in her mouth. It’s Caprica Sharon, shot and captured by Helo. He can’t bring himself to finish her off, and Galactica Sharon can’t do it, either.
Polar Bears Watch TV 