Episode Report Card Jacob: B | 0 USERS: N/A YOU GRADE IT Flight Of The Phoenix
By Jacob | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on September 15, 2005
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Everybody goes crazy in his or her own way after the adrenaline of "Home" finally subsides. Chief Tyrol builds a ship from scratch (!), and Starbuck offers to fly it. Tigh acts fifteen ways out of character, preaching moderation, pacifism, and at one point...being nice to somebody. It's chilling. Laura doesn't pitch a single person out the airlock, although you can tell she's itching to. Apollo and Dualla redefine "sexy" as a concept, Helo goes slightly Dawson on Sharon's robotic ass, and Gaeta practically slaps Tigh, awesomely. It's emotional anarchy. Unfortunately, they're not the only ones: Galactica herself has gone slightly nuts, thanks to a Cylon logic bomb that Tigh let into the network. After Starbuck and Apollo are nearly killed due to an unscheduled depressurization event in the shooting gallery, and various other mishaps, Gaius and Sharon tell everybody they're going to die in about five seconds. It's a two-pronged attack consisting of a Galactica shutdown and onslaught of around a million Raiders. Roslin helps Adama to stick a pin in his Boomer hate long enough for her to interface grotesquely with the Galactica network and sabotage the attack. Guns are held to people's heads, but in the end there is a lot of "whoo!" and "yeah!" and Adama calls Boomer a "thing" some more. The new ship is christened the Laura; Roslin gets predictably choked up; and Tyrol finally visits Boomer, which is somehow not touching at all, and actually a little bit creepy. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
"There are many copies." For some reason that's my favorite part of the clang-clang intro, and I couldn't tell you why, but I always have to say it out loud right before Sharon ["formerly Boomer" -- Wing Chun] comes on screen. Also, any time I think of this show. Back during "Home," I actually screamed when Adama said it.
Anyway. I'm Jacob. I'm nuts. Hi. I'm Strega's co-pilot this week, so you won't think I've stuffed her somewhere. We're friends and we agree on absolutely nothing whatsoever except for Warren Ellis, Tim Minear, and this show. Actually, we don't agree on this show at all, but we both like it a great deal, so that's nice. Mostly, I've learned not to cross her. I hear she eats puppies. ["Excuse me, I was told that what happened in Vegas would stay in Vegas." -- Strega]
We open on lots and lots of Cylon Raiders, on their way from somewhere to somewhere else. From someplace creepy, that is, to someplace ominous, with the initials B.G. Unless I miss my guess. Chief Tyrol's in the hangar, asking Viper 289er how it's feeling today. It's almost as if he can't tell the difference between a machine and a person.
Helo walks into the Officers' Mess like they're actually going to hang out and have fun, even though he's a toasterfucker, and everybody looks at him crazy. It's awkward. He shakes hands with Starbuck because they're, like, best friends now; it's very "I Got Stranded On Cylon-Occupied Caprica And Nearly Got Killed Seventeen Times And All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt," and it's a good thing, too, because Starbuck's all about forgetting she reacted this exact same way when she saw Helo and Sharon together, except for how she additionally wet herself and had an aneurysm. Helo ("Karl Agathon" is like the coolest name this side of "Anastasia Dualla") introduces himself to Duck, and all the pilots and techs look the same to me so at first I don't know if he's being particularly "pointed" in an asinine way, or if he's just never met Duck. Frankly, I'd be surprised this many people even knew Helo, considering he's never really even been part of the crew as we know it. Starbuck asks if Helo'd like to sit in on the game, but he's feeling the frosty so he checks out. Duck, trying to make his plebe period that much shorter, gets all scapegoaty: "So he's the Cylon lover." Starbuck's kind of impressed at the kid's lack of insight here, considering she just smelled Helo and gave him the alpha dog okay in front of the whole room, so she tells Duck it's not really material who Helo fracks.