Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Looking Up At The Admiral
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.17.2007
Airlock 12: Chief and Cally put on their oxygen masks. They look so tiny and thin; they're shivering. Chief tries to patch the rough spot again. Cally calls him over to Adama, at the glass. "Airlock's still jammed, Chief. Overrides are not responding." Chief notes that they're running out of options. What do you do when you can't get out? Turn into something else: "I'm going to take you out through the front door," Adama says, with all the grace and gravitas he's got. Chief nods, getting giddy and hypoxic: "You'll put a ship out there and rig up some kind of docking collar?" There's no time for a collar, of course: time's almost out.
Adama stands at the glass, looking down on Chief and Cally. "Sir, if you're talking about an EVA, we don't have pressure suits." He shakes his head. No options. "Athena's gonna position her Raptor in front of the airlock, hatch open. We're gonna blow the bolts right off of that door, and when it opens, you're gonna have to jump for it. Now, listen to me, both of you."
Cally and Chief stand at the glass, looking up at the Admiral. "You can do this. People have been able to live up to a minute in exposure to vacuum without a suit." True, apparently. Chief gets worried, Adama cuts him off; he can barely look at them.
It's later. Sharon's Raptor is away. Cally stops. "Wait. What about Nicky?" Chief's flagging, bends his back to Chief work, moving everything toward the door so they don't get crushed. "Galen...we both know what happens to kids in the Fleet when their parents aren't there for them." I thought Lee saved all of those kids? I mean, I suppose she means it sucks for them, is what happens. Abandonment by parents, gone to the war and never coming home. Humanity is a Fleet full of orphans.
We stand at the glass, looking down. "Apollo and Dee," he says, as though it's obvious. "They'd take care of him." She shakes her head. "No. No pilots. He's not going through this twice." No more parents going off to war and never coming back. The Cylons have been gone 49 days, but their damage continues to take and take. She comes to the window. "Sir? There's a civilian family, the mother's name is Susan Deckler. She has a little girl. If anything happens to us..."
Cally and Chief stand at the glass, looking up at the Admiral. We don't see him speak, but he says he'll see to it. Cally holds her husband and cries, terrified. The Chief holds his wife, and apologizes for the dust on his shoes: "I was being selfish. I wanted you with me, like old times. I didn't think about Nick."
Adama looks down at them, crying and shivering, and his heart breaks. "I'm sorry," the Chief says. "I'm sorry," Bill says, silently, to nobody in particular. Cally promises her husband that the Admiral will save them; the Admiral looks down on them, through the glass. They share oxygen. In the airlock, on the site of murder and worse, Chief and Cally wait for the Cylons to take one more thing from them, and they share breath. I mean to say that Seelix looks down on them, through the glass, and Saul, as they step across the line of salt and wrap their arms around each other, tighter.