Battlestar Galactica: Resurrection Ship, Part One

The second half of season two opens on a cliffhanger… and finishes with
one too. Apologies for the late review; they should be more prompt in the
coming weeks.

Cast

James Callis as
Dr. Gaius Baltar
Edward James
Olmos
as Commander Adama
Mary
McDonnell
as President Laura Roslin
Katee
Sackhoff
as Kara “Starbuck” Thrace
Jamie
Bamber
as Lee “Apollo” Adama
Michael
Hogan
as Col. Tigh
Tricia Helfer as
Number 6
Grace Park as
Sharon “Boomer” Valerii
Tahmoh
Penikett
as Helo
Aaron
Douglas
as CPO Galen Tyrol
Michelle
Forbes
as Admiral Helena Cain

Synopsis

A stand-off between Galactica and Pegasus
threatens to turn Colonial troops against each other, and Baltar obtains
vital information about the mysterious ship in the Cylon fleet.

High Points

  • Six’s breakdown
  • The final scenes of Adama and Cain giving their orders

Low Point

The resolution of the cliffhanger was a bit too convenient,
although it feels much like neither side really wants to fire on the
other, and they grabbed at whatever excuse they could find to avoid
it.

The Scores

Apart from the opening, it feels fresh and original,
although it’s difficult to characterise exactly how. Five out of six.

Again we are treated to some beautiful effects. Starbuck’s scouting
mission was fantastic, as were the opening scenes of the chaos
involving the Vipers. They really have the physics of the ships looking
excellent. Six out of six.

The story picks up quickly from the disappointing start (yes, I am
going to keep mentioning that). The developing Baltar/Six relationship
(with both Sixes), Roslin’s talks with Adama and Adama’s own
developing realisation of Cain’s true nature all leave us demanding to
know what will happen next week. Five out of six.

My comments about the acting from Pegasus stand. I
particularly appreciated Mary McDonnell’s performance as Laura Roslin
during her scenes with Adama and with Adama and Cain together. The
actors particularly shine in the final scene, and Tricia Helfer has
surpassed herself playing the defeated Six. Six out of six.

Emotional response has two main high points for me
— pity, for Six, and awe, at the end. Still, it doesn’t take me to
the extremes of the emotional spectrum. Five out of six.

Full marks on the production, particularly the Viper
choreography and the cuts in the final scene. Six out of six.

Overall, I’ll give this episode five out of six, because of
the disappointing start.

This leaves a total score of thirty-eight out of forty-two. I’m
hoping that next week’s episode will come in slightly higher than this,
as I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be able to.

10 replies on “Battlestar Galactica: Resurrection Ship, Part One”

  1. Re: Cliffhanger Resolution
    I didn’t have much of a problem with the cliffhanger resolution in this episode. At the end of Pegasus I kept thinking that shooting up all those convienent “replacement” vipers would be a heck of a waste. In actuality, there was no other way to resolve it.

    A lot of comments have been made (here and other places) about the lack of ships and materials for Galactica. Ron Moore has an absolute freebie in resupplying the fleet with Pegasus since it is cannon from the original series. I think they will handle that aspect with Pegasus bringing supplies and more support to the fleet, because its needed. However, a similar tie in to the orignal may well happen with the Pegasus going down in the battle next week, but sending all its Vipers to Galactica. It might happen that way, but probably not, I think Moore’s alluded to Pegasus being around longer.

    • Re: Cliffhanger Resolution

      I didn’t have much of a problem with the cliffhanger resolution in this episode. At the end of Pegasus I kept thinking that shooting up all those convienent “replacement” vipers would be a heck of a waste. In actuality, there was no other way to resolve it.

      A lot of comments have been made (here and other places) about the lack of ships and materials for Galactica. Ron Moore has an absolute freebie in resupplying the fleet with Pegasus since it is cannon from the original series. I think they will handle that aspect with Pegasus bringing supplies and more support to the fleet, because its needed. However, a similar tie in to the orignal may well happen with the Pegasus going down in the battle next week, but sending all its Vipers to Galactica. It might happen that way, but probably not, I think Moore’s alluded to Pegasus being around longer.

      I think it makes sense, I just think it felt a bit too convenient. They used Starbuck and the Blackbird as deus ex machina, and it was a bit disappointing. I know network people like cliffhangers, but if anything it might have come over better if they’d resolved the cliffhanger during Pegasus rather than in this episode, since it was a huge one that turned out to be fairly limp.

      Of course, the implications of it are huge and they’ll have to deal with them next week.

      • Re: Cliffhanger Resolution

        They used Starbuck and the Blackbird as deus ex machina, and it was a bit disappointing.

        Apollo got her to act to draw the fleets’ attention and pretend to be a Cylon for a minute. That’s not a deus ex machina, it’s pretty darn clever.

        It is of course very convenient that she got back in time to stop the shootout, but I don’t think the convenience rises to deus ex machina levels.

        • Re: Cliffhanger Resolution

          They used Starbuck and the Blackbird as deus ex machina, and it was a bit disappointing.

          Apollo got her to act to draw the fleets’ attention and pretend to be a Cylon for a minute. That’s not a deus ex machina, it’s pretty darn clever.

          It is of course very convenient that she got back in time to stop the shootout, but I don’t think the convenience rises to deus ex machina levels.

          Maybe. I was just expecting something bigger than what happened, and that disappoints.

          Although I’m now told that the podcast says that this episode and Pegasus were written as one episode, but it overran and couldn’t be cut down at all, so they had to add extra to it and the cliffhanger ended up where it is instead of between acts, where it should have been. In that position, it would have been better, but I’m not surprised the episode overran and I’m glad they didn’t cut it down to one, we needed this much plot.

          • Re: Cliffhanger Resolution
            Resurrection Ship, Parts 1 and 2 used to be the single episode, but were split into two and fleshed out. Pegasus used to be 20 or so minutes longer, but they were able to cut a bunch out and leave a cohesive episode, which they weren’t able to do with Resurrection Ship (apparently, the DVD has the uncut version of Pegasus). It’s the cliffhanger of Resurrection Ship, Part 1 that used to be the Act 2 break in the original script for Resurrection Ship.

            Here’s something interesting from the podcast: the second scene with the Chief and Helo in the brig was split between Parts 1 and 2. In Part 2, their scene will start with them positioned in precisely the same way as they were at the end of their scene in Part 1.

            SP

            • Re: Cliffhanger Resolution

              (apparently, the DVD has the uncut version of Pegasus)

              Scuttlebutt. I love that word. Nice old-school Navy jargon. Gives Galactica that lived-in feel.

              Anyway, the uncut “Pegasus” is definitely not on the Season 2.0 DVD set. There aren’t any extras for that episode, actually; the other nine have deleted scenes, but not Pegasus.

              Scuttlebutt has it that the restored version of “Pegasus” will be on the 2.5 DVDs, though.

  2. Viper choreography
    I was particularly struck by the beautiful ‘choreography’ of the vipers in the beginning. It really captured the total chaos of a 3-D firefight in a way I’ve never seen before. I was blown away by the shot of all the vipers pulling out of the chaos into a unified formation to meet the threat of an incoming Cyclon. I rewound it and watched over and over.

    • Re: Viper choreography

      I was blown away by the shot of all the vipers pulling out of the chaos into a unified formation to meet the threat of an incoming Cyclon. I rewound it and watched over and over.

      That scene alone should be a special effects emmy right there. For all the whining/bitching/moaning us sci-fi geeks have done over the years about space flight/fights being 2D, or unreal, or to airplane like, or whatever I’ve seen more and more nods towards the actual physics with this show than any other.

      I mean there are missles while they smoke and all you gotta have something for the human eye to see to enjoy it there, though I think it’d add to the excitement/realism if they ‘shot it down’ in how hard it would be to find it to shoot it down without a smoke trail, things like that.

      They still use bullets, or maybe mass drivers of some kind.

      Gravity is in effect in turns, a la season 1 where Kara’s knee is toast and on the bombing run with Adama dropping weights on her doing leg presses.

      It’s very hard for me not to become some drooling fan boy over this but they just tell the story so well and the ‘other’ things for us hard core guys are there with plausable answers but at the heart of the show is a good solid story to see.

    • Re: Viper choreography
      <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE="cite">
      I was particularly struck by the beautiful ‘choreography’…

      I was blown away by the vipers pulling out of the chaos into a unified formation…
      </BLOCKQUOTE>

      I had the exact same reaction. It was emminently rewarding to see these shots with such an exquisite attention to detail and realism.

      BSG is the best television show ever made!

  3. It will be interesting to see –
    how the new Number Six, Sharon, and the other unexposed Cylon operatives react to being "out of the collective", as it were. I hope Moore does something with that, and I’m sure we won’t hear a peep about it, because, "That would be telling." Oh wait, wrong Number Six :)

Comments are closed.