Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Stupidly Tilting Planet
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 19 | Aired on 03.02.2006
So Chief Tyrol is rolling about on the hangar deck having a bad nightmare, and it's important to note for both aesthetic and narrative reasons that he looks like one jillion shiny new octagonal cubits on top of a pile of real money. Propriety demands that we stop there, but trust me: it's all happening on the hangar deck. My goodness.
Over in Baltar's lab, a.k.a. the Galactica Morgue, there are octagonal "GAIUS FOR PRESIDENT" flyers all over every surface. The music from "Pegasus" that was so questionable begins at this point, and plays through the whole teaser, and I don't know if there's some subtle point here -- like how Chip Gaius had the same theme in "Downloaded" that Chip Six had, only backwards and sideways and blah blah music theory Crabcanoncakes -- that I'm too thick to notice, or if it's just finally okay in this house, but it's awesome and really contributes to the overall freaked-out awesomeness. Gaius is smoking, totally weirded out and scared, as Six watches from across the lab. "I'm going to lose," he tells her.
Cut to Adama's quarters faster than anything, where Laura's acting weird. She's standing in her stocking feet, reading off little notecards, talking and gesturing to herself, and then tearing them up and tossing them on the floor, doing that subvocalizing and throat-thrumming that makes her so very excellent. Tory knocks on the door and tells her, "One minute." So apparently Gaius and Laura are gearing up for something presidential and important. Laura thanks Tory and goes back to talking to nobody.
Cut like whoa to the Pegasus briefing room, where Starbuck is...different. You don't notice it as much here as later, but it starts here. Did you ever run into a girl you knew in high school, ten years later, and jump back in the James Brownian sense with how she'd turned into a woman? Not necessarily in a romantic sense, but just how your mental image of her as a "girl" is so strained against the reality of her as a woman? Voice deeper, more intense, more sure of itself? And it maybe makes you feel old? That's Starbuck. Katee Sackhoff is a fucking brilliant actor, but I never thought I'd be so impressed with a single choice of hers. Starbuck is a woman. She-- her posture. You know? Her voice. Watch it again with that in mind. It's freaky, and beautiful. She's explaining without any ado at all that they're going to be jumping somewhere two clicks above the surface, and that it's going to be hella dangerous. Helo's there, watching her, and all the pilots in the briefing room are kind of murmuring and wondering about if this is good. Gaeta stands by. Starbuck: "We're also expecting to take heavy fire. Simulations indicate losses of up to 20% can be expected." And who can blame the assembled pilots for going OMG about this, because their lives have been smooth as silk up till now. She admits that the mission -- which seems to be dear to her heart -- is "two-alpha," meaning the pilots can opt out of it; it's voluntary. She watches expectantly as they think really hard and look around at each other.
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