Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Looking Up At The Admiral
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.17.2007
"The airlock's designed to lock down if the pressure increases unexpectedly," Lee starts to explain, and Bill snaps at him. "-- I know the system. We have redundancies..." Nope. The manual override is down and they can't get the inner doors open. "The thing must've taken heavy damage on the way out of New Caprica." Tigh nods sagely. "Whole ship's taken a pounding. We'd need six weeks in dry-dock just to hammer out the dings, let alone tackle the structural damage." I don't know why that line made me laugh, but I think it's the immense crotchetiness with which it's delivered. Like if he still had both eyes, he could just glare the dings out. Lee explains -- he's experienced in these things, remember -- that a hole that size means "half an hour, maybe less." There's a billion years of explaining so that the hyper-literal nerds won't start with the "actually, they could have just blah blah blah blah," which is A) never going to stop them and B) doesn't add to the plot at all, not to mention C) if you think like a hammer, everything's going to look like a nail, and if somebody's determined to pick and pick and pick, they're going to find something. And yes, I do understand the irony, thank you, but honestly, there's a difference between subtleties of characterization as built up over years of both written words and expertly tuned performances, and the made-up physics of a made-up spaceship in made-up space. So in case you were thinking you might offer the made-up people some advice and get them out of this in a jiff, Tigh and Lee would like to inform you that it would take an hour to cut through the blast doors, they can't blow the glass because it's "strong enough to withstand a tylium explosion" and would kill Chief and Cally bad, and finally: there's no solution. Bill wigs out because if there's no Chief and Cally, then he might as well have killed them the day they broke ground, and if there's no Chief and Cally, there's no cabin, and if there's no Chief and Cally, that's two more children he's abandoned. If he loses Chief, who will punish him for losing Chief?
The twins stand with Sharon in the hangar bay, timing how long it takes Sharon's Raptor door to close: seven seconds. It feels weird to be in here without Chief, like we're all dancing naked with porn on Geminon or something. "Then another ten to repressurize, since we'll doing this in open space," says Kara. "That's pushing it." Sharon asks whether anybody's ever tried anything like this, and just in case watching it happen needs to get hyped some more, Kara's like, "No one's ever been crazy enough!" They're totally going to do a Barn Swallow! Into the arms of a Cylon! Specifically an Eight! That is SO AWESOME! This episode is not bad! Lee's like, "No talking, we're done. Prep for launch. We've only got 18 minutes left." Sharon's down, and starts getting amped, but I'm wondering about Kara right now, like has she ever dreamed about this? Saving someone from getting airlocked? If she'd never seen Laura murder Leoben, if she'd never prayed for his soul, how would she have felt about the Circle, when it came for her? That one small body, traveling under enormous pressure, out into the endless gap of space, without air or warmth or light, on an eternal trajectory: how much hate would it take to watch that happen? How could you not dream of it?
("What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day...I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.")