Episode Report Card Strega: C- | 4 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT KodaChrome
By Strega | Season 2 | Episode 8 | Aired on 09.08.2005
CIC. Tigh grumps that supply runs are behind schedule. Uh oh, are they running out of coffee? Luckily, we're saved from another bloodbath when Ellen calls and duallas that something's wrong.
Tigh passes a soldier as he enters his quarters. Ellen rushes into his arms and moans, "I'm so scared!" Tigh looks around, and then we see an octagonal mirror with a message scrawled on it in red fingerpaint: "From the darkness, you must fall." On the the wall near the mirror is a framed insignia for the Vigilantes, which I guess is Tigh's old fighter group. Heh. The camera swings around to show Tigh and Ellen reflected in the mirror, and Ellen asks, "What does it mean?" Well, if you don't know, why are you so scared of it? I mean, maybe it's something good. Hey, it says you'll come out of the darkness, so that part sounds okay, right?
Credits. 47,853 survivors. Blipverts: fire extinguishers, duct tape, blood, boxing. Commercials. As I write this, I've finished the rest of the recap and am listening to the podcast. Moore just said that he wanted to use this episode to reveal aspects of the characters that we haven't seen before. Which makes me feel bad, because that's pretty much my complaint. I mean, I wouldn't mind this episode's being basically plotless if we actually did learn things that caused us to see the characters in a new way, or if we saw them acting in situations we don't normally see. But the show is already based on showing us characters who are flawed but heroic. Why spend an hour watching someone else learn what we found out in the first episode? It seems kind of telling that the few new things we do learn are about the secondary characters, who don't get much screen time normally; they're the only people whose dark secrets we don't already know. Meh. It'd have been a lot more interesting to find out what civilians on other ships think of the regular characters.
We return to octacam footage of Adama reading an octagonal magazine. It turns out that he, and Biers and her cameraman, are in a Raptor headed for the Galactica. Eventually, he closes the magazine (Caprican Life) and asks Racetrack where she got it. Racetrack says that the magazines were "left over from a civilian run," and apologetically says that she meant to throw them out. Adama insists, "Put 'em in a safe place. Hold onto 'em. There's a Sudoku puzzle in the back I want to try." Eventually he looks up at the octacam and confirms that Biers is filming all of this. Biers reminds him that she was told she'd have total access. Adama offers an amendment: "You start shooting anything that compromises the safety of this ship, and it'll be cut."