Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | 2 USERS: D+ YOU GRADE IT Speaking Truth To Power
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 8 | Aired on 11.16.2006
Meanwhile, Adama has sent for Lee, and is very tentative and weird when his son arrives. "Thank you for coming. Sit down. It's time for us to talk."
Bulldog asks what Tigh's whole pirate/hermit deal is all about, and Tigh will only say that he's "been a little under the weather." Bulldog introduces yet more continuity weirdness into the situation, asking how Adama wound up on "this old bucket," and "what happened to the Valkyrie," which doesn't jibe exactly with the sense I've previously gotten of Bill's relationship with the Galactica, which relationship would be shorter than three years by this reasoning. But maybe it's our fault for assuming in the first place, I guess. "Let's just say that last mission wasn't exactly a boon to the old man's career. Galactica was his graceful retirement." Why have this in there? I guess it establishes the timeline insofar as having Six already right up in Gaius's infrastructure by then, so there's no way Adama did what he thinks he did? But that makes this episode suckier, not less sucky. Bulldog asks why Tigh and Adama aren't talking: "What's wrong? He won't cover your ass day and night like he used to?" HA! Seriously, dude. "Oh, no, he still does his share of ass-covering. Problem is, it's his main function now. Of course," Tigh dangles, "considering how you wound up getting captured in the first place, I guess you found that out the hard way yourself, didn't you?" Saul Tigh: Also Not Helping The Tortoise. He then turns into Sabrina the Teenage Bitch. "OMG he didn't tell you? He didn't tell you. I can't believe he didn't tell you! I thought he was going to tell you! But he did not!" and finally Bulldog is like, "Fuckin' what, dude?" And Tigh's response? "OMG I'm so disappointed. That son of a bitch! Dang! Why didn't he tell you!? I can't believe he didn't tell you!"
Meanwhile, in Adama's office, there's a whole other vibe that is not irritating, as Adama explains the thing that he didn't tell Bulldog, doing so without fanfare: "I shot him down." Lee goes to that special Lee Adama place: "Well, if you shot him down, you had your reasons. You were following orders. Preventing something worse. Right?" Grrrross. Adama clarifies that he did it to avoid detection: "Protect the mission, so it wouldn't be discovered by the Cylons. It was a black ops mission whose sole purpose was to ascertain the likelihood of a Cylon strike." ["Duh? What I don't get is the notion that Bulldog wouldn't know he might end up getting shot down for that exact reason. Maybe I've just seen Fail Safe too many times." -- Wing Chun] Lee's jaw drops as the world reshapes itself around him: "You're saying that we knew they were out there? That they could launch an attack on the Colonies?" Well...nothing for sure: "There were theories in some circles that the reason that the Cylons had stayed dormant for so long was because they were building a war machine. Preparing a strike." Other circles, of course, assumed they were knitting cute hats and mittens. The received wisdom that the Armistice was completely silent for forty years is only partially true: "The Admiralty had grown restless with the Adar administration. They thought we were resting on our laurels, unprepared to protect against an attack." (Not to mention the Lockheed "We Never Forget Who We're Working For" Martin contracts.) "My mission was to escort a stealth recon ship just beyond the Armistice line, stick our nose over, gather evidence, see if there was any suspicious activities." So if they got caught, Lee figures out, the Cylons would see it as an act of war. Which, um, is exactly what it is.