Episode Report Card Strega: A+ | 7 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Sex, Drugs, And New Age Music
By Strega | Season 1 | Episode 12 | Aired on 2005.03.25
Okay, so here's my take. I think that Apollo's partly just jealous, obviously, but I think he's particularly freaked out because he knows that Starbuck doesn't even like Baltar a little. You know? It's not just casual sex, it's sex with someone she's always seemed to regard with faint disgust. I don't mean that he's concerned about her own well-being in a noble way, because that's maybe 10\% of it. And then there's 30\% "You'd rather be with someone you hate than be with me," rejection, 30\% "The girl I dig is batshit crazy!" horror, and 40\% freaked-out-jealousy that he doesn't want to admit he feels. Basically, the pure jealousy is the biggest factor, but Apollo would have been able to repress that as usual if it weren't for all of the other stuff.
Colonial One. Billy tells the Prez that Adama's going to send more ships out to survey the planet Boomer and Crashdown found. The High Priestess of Vague Mysticism is sitting on the conference, for some reason. Billy mentions that the planet "appears to have suffered some sort of a calamity," and mentions that there's evidence of ruins on the surface. The HPVM asks how old the ruins are, and Billy says that they're estimated at being around two thousand years old. The HPVM notes, "That's around the time the thirteen tribes first left Kobol." The Prez takes the survey photo from Billy and looks at it. It shows a large dome with streets radiating outward from it across landscaped terrain, and several bridges over a wide river. The Prez gasps that these aren't ruins, but an inhabited city. Billy takes the photo back and asks what she's talking about. The Prez looks at it again, and everything's gone. The faint outline of the dome's walls remain, along with a few lines where the roads were. The river is also much narrower and almost completely filled in downstream. The Prez stares until the HPVM asks what she saw. The Prez describes the dome and streets, and says it looked like the forum on Caprica. The HPVM pulls out a book and flips it open to an illustration. She hands it over to the Prez, and explains that the drawing is of "the forum and the opera house in the City of the Gods on Kobol." Opera? I think we know why they left Kobol. The Prez looks at the illustration, and it does appear to be a pretty good match. Blipvert of a ruined archway near the river, and a rusted metal arrow in a broken stone hand. The Prez rests her head in her hands while Billy's all, "Wha?" The HPVM expositions that Kobol is "where the gods and men lived in paradise until the exodus of the thirteen tribes." "Oh, that Kobol," Billy does not say. Instead, he just asks the Prez what's going on. Billy may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he's reassuringly sensible. Unlike the Prez, who stands up and paces a little before telling him that all the scriptures and prophecies are real. "So say we all," intones the HPVM, because that's her thing. Billy doesn't look like he's quite ready to join that chorus.