Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 5 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT When The Know-Nothings Get Control
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 11.09.2006
When's the last time we broke an act on Sharon? Interesting. Down in Galactica brig, Cottle picks a Doral for tests -- "He's the furthest gone" -- and takes him for testing. Proud Doral, shaking and pulling against his restraints even though he's the furthest gone. I guess Cottle was making more medical decisions, then: first the crew certified, then Athena, experimenting on the prisoner stock. I can see holding off on that shit.
On Colonial One, Cottle's expositing his findings to Roslin and Adama: He can't cure them, but he can keep them alive indefinitely: "I identified the virus. We know it as lymphocytic encephalitis. The disease is carried by rodents. Rats, mostly. But a couple of hundred years ago, humans developed an immunity. Now, I can create a simple vaccine that will dramatically reverse the effect of the virus on the Cylons, but, uh, they have an antibody in their blood which breaks down the RNA of the vaccine. So they will need regular, close-interval injections of the vaccine. Or they will die." Okay. Pause. The virus thing still makes no sense, but I'm sure that every word here is to shore it up anyway, answering questions before they're asked, and I don't really care about the nitpicks and whatever with this, because: They are robots. It is not up to me to figure out how the bodies and DNA of robots works. You tell me the story, you get to make up the rules, and I am not interested in halving my appreciation of your story by getting hung up on details you obviously think make sense. No blame on either side, just an appreciation for the fact that Cottle spit out all that 'babble in about five seconds, so let's get to the moral dilemma already and leave the fights to the gift horse people. Like Lee Adama: "Can I ask the ugly question here? Is there a reason to keep them alive?" Helo, jumping at this, stammers out quickly that they're good for interrogation: trading scary necessities against the finality of death. Adama agrees, trading a final ending for the ongoing conflict. Lee protests that they won't talk: trading his flab for war. Roslin agrees with his sentiment, but allows as how they might talk if they don't know it's a stop-gap measure: trading the possibility of collaboration in any form for the hardline measure. These are your characters for the episode, so pay attention, because everything that happens develops organically from this one scene. They all stay on these vectors throughout: it's the way they combine that makes it interesting.