BSG 1.3 Bastille Day

This, for me, was the first episode that betrayed the TV show aspect of the, ah, TV show that is Battlestar Galactica. Maybe it was just in the 'guest star' sense of the revolutionary prisoner taking a lead role in the episode and being a key driver of the plot. Maybe it was just having the episode mostly set on the prison ship. Like, our heroes turn up, get themselves into a bad scrape, but then they manage to sort everything out nicely in the end. Kind of formulaic, I guess.

Of course, the issue of democracy is one that does need to be pushed given the President is one of the key characters of the show, and the decisions made for the fleet are pretty much all about the fate of humanity - so it's a good place to lay out the themes. Maybe it was just a little heavy-handed. I didn't find the episode all that exciting, really; there was more of a feeling that the prisoners turning terrorists was an inconvenience requiring resolution.

Fundamentally, the prisoners were in no position to dictate terms and it was kind of annoying that they all just agreed with this one revolutionary guy despite the situation they were in.

Still, the issue of the President's cancer has appeared again, but otherwise there wasn't much advancement for the other plot points. Cylon Boomer and Helo continue to move on Caprica, but there's no sense of where that is headed. The two Cylons there discussed how humanity needed to be wiped out to make way for them, but there they were watching a human being allowed to live with a Cylon fooling him and praising her for it. Obviously, there's a larger plan but I don't see the end of it yet.

Similarly, the relationship between Starbuck and the drunk Ex-O (whatever his name is, and however that's spelled!) has been one of antagonism right from the start but it's not clear why that is or where that's supposed to be going either. Maybe the problem with this episode is that it all felt a little transitional, and filler.